The Effect Of Attribute Alignability On Product Purchase:The Moderating Role Of Product Familiarity And Self-construal

With the rapid development of economy and the growing diversity of product category, consumers are facing more and more product choices, and the competition among enterprises is becoming more intense. Different companies are focused on different aspects of the functional attributes. When the consumers make their product purchasing decisions, they will compare the advantages and disadvantages of existing products. In recent years, many scholars study the consumers’ decision-making process according the structural alignment model. The attribute alignability of product has been becoming a hot research spot, and many firms also begin to apply the concept of product attribute alignability to the research and development product and marketing. Previous researches show that when assessing alternative products, consumers rely on more alignable attributes than nonalignable attributes. Hence scholars suggest that enterprises should highlight the improvement of their products in the existed attributes. While other researches find that in some certain situation, consumers will focus more on nonalignable attributes rather than alignable attributes, so scholars suggest that enterprises should emphasize some unique attributes of their products so as to win in the competitors. Then, how do consumers rely on the attribute alignability in their product purchase? Which strategy is more effective? From the perspective of the consumer product experience and individual trait, on the basis of absorbing the domestic and foreign research results, we systematically verify the regulating effect of product familiarity and self-construal on the influencing process of attribute alignability on the consumer product purchase.By issuing the questionnaire to collect data, we use SPSS18.0 software to analyze the collected data and have following conclusions. In the consumer behavior:(1) when consumers possess high product familiarity, they will rely more on nonalignable attributes, and when consumers possess low product familiarity, they will rely more on alignable attributes. The different reliance on attribute alignable is driven by their perception of the diagnosticity of alignable versus nonalignable. The different reliance on attribute alignability of consumers is driven by their diagnostic to the attributes.(2) When making a purchasing decision, different product familiarity consumers rely on attribute alignability is affected by their self-construal. Specifically, regardless of the product familiarity of consumers is high or not, independent individuals rely on more alignable attributes than nonalignable attributes. For interdependent individuals, when they have a low product familiarity, they will rely on alignable attributes significantly more than nonalignable attributes, but when they possess high product familiarity, they will rely on nonalignable attributes significantly more than alignable attributes. Finally, the results of this study provide guidance and suggestions for enterprises to determine their product positioning and communication strategy.