Study On The Influence Of Consumer Confusion On Conformity Consumption In Online Shopping Situation

With the rapid development of the Internet economy,consumers enjoy the convenience of online shopping while also suffering from its troubles.The stimulating competition in the market makes the product renewal speed up,the difference between old and new products is getting smaller and smaller,and the newborn brands and niche brands will choose to imitate the brand products that are more well-known and trusted by consumers in order to improve their popularity and sales.The huge number of product categories and product information,indistinguishable differences between old and new products,complex product features and vague product descriptions can lead to confusion and make it increasingly difficult for consumers to make purchase decisions.Consumers will take different approaches to reduce confusion,and many consumers will refer to others’ purchase opinions to make their own purchase decisions,resulting in conformity consumption behavior.Since herd consumption can easily lead to potential misuse of products,purchase of products that are not suitable for you and thus lead to dissatisfaction,increase the chance of return and spread negative reputation of the brand,so although the herd behavior of consumers may be beneficial to brands with certain popularity and reputation in a short period of time,it is not conducive to their long-term healthy development,and has a certain impact on new brands and niche brands.It can be seen that consumer confusion and conformity consumption can have a series of adverse effects on brand owners,but the problem of consumer confusion has not yet attracted enough attention from scholars in China,so it is necessary to explore the influence and mechanism of the relationship between consumer confusion and conformity consumption.After collating and summarizing previous studies on consumer confusion,this paper categorizes consumer confusion into three dimensions: similarity confusion,overload confusion,and ambiguity confusion,and uses cognitive dissonance as a mediating variable to explore the relationship between consumer confusion and conformity consumption.This study takes online shopping as the research background,uses AMOS25.0 to construct a structural equation model,and combines SPSS23.0 to analyze the data through 419 valid questionnaires obtained by the questionnaire method to draw the following conclusions:(1)Among the effects of consumer confusion on herd consumption,similarity confusion,overload confusion,and ambiguity confusion all significantly and positively affect conformity consumption.(2)Among the effects of consumer confusion on cognitive dissonance,similarity confusion and overload confusion significantly and positively affected cognitive dissonance,and ambiguity confusion had no significant effect on cognitive dissonance.(3)Cognitive dissonance partially mediated the relationship between consumer confusion and conformity consumption.Cognitive dissonance mediated the relationship between similarity confusion and overload confusion and conformity consumption,and did not mediate the relationship between ambiguity confusion and conformity consumption.(4)Self-construction play a moderating role in the effect of cognitive dissonance on conformity consumption.Dependent self-construction positively moderate the relationship between cognitive dissonance and conformity consumption,while independent self-construction negatively moderate the relationship between cognitive dissonance and conformity consumption.(5)Compared with males,females have a higher degree of ambiguity confusion;consumer confusion has a positive trend with consumer age;consumer confusion has an inverse trend with consumer education;consumer confusion has an inverse trend with the average monthly number of online purchases;there is no significant correlation between consumer confusion and the average monthly income of consumers.Finally,the paper proposes different marketing improvement suggestions based on the findings of the study in order to help businesses develop the right product design and marketing plan and reduce the negative impact of consumer confusion and conformity consumption.