关键词: 在线产品呈现, 社会临场感, 产品临场感, 自我-品牌联结, 购买意愿

Abstract:

Customer “unboxing” has become a kind of common consumption behavior and marketing phenomenon, but there are few researches on the mechanism of its influence. Through two experiments, some important findings have been obtained. First, according to the different presentation contents, customers “unboxing” can be classified into three categories: the pure product presentation, the consumption scene presentation and the customer presence presentation. They can be perceived by potential customers and lead to different psychological reactions. Compared with the pure product presentation, the consumption scene presentation and the customer presence presentation can lead to stronger sense of product presence and greater purchase intention of potential customers; but there is no significant difference between the effect caused by the consumer scene presentation and the customer presence presentation. Second, the product presence has a positive impact on customers’ purchase intention, and plays a full mediating role in the impact of the product presentation on the purchase intention. The consumption scene presentation and the customer presence presentation will lead to stronger sense of product presence than the pure product presentation, which in turn leads to a stronger purchase intention. Thirdly, the interactive effect is significant between the product presence and the self-brand connection. compared with the weak self-brand connection, the product presence under the strong self-brand connection has a greater positive impact on the purchase intention. This shows that when purchasing a specific product, consumers need to not only understand the appearance, the function and the experience of the product, but also pay attention to whether the symbolic value of the product is consistent with their self-concept. This conclusion confirms that online shopping consumers have not only the need for the product presence, but also the need for self-brand connection, and reveals the psychological path of how consumers combine functional needs with symbolic needs in online shopping environment.

In theory, the research results make up for the lack of the research on the customer “unboxing” effect, clarify the influence mechanism of the customer online product presentation on potential customers’ purchase intention, expand the research on antecedent variables and backward effects of the presence, enrich the theory of the social presence, and promote its research and application in the field of E-commerce. In practice, the study provides operational countermeasures and suggestions for the development of e-commerce. E-commerce enterprises need to pay attention to the functional design of the website and provide powerful “unboxing” function. For one thing, enterprises can encourage customers to present products online in an appropriate way, especially through the consumption scene presentation and the customer presecet presentation, so that potential customers can better experience and understand their products’ functions; for another, they should provide guidance with regard to the scene and the content of the product presentation, encourage customers to present pictures that can bring positive association and strong self-brand connection, so as to improve the purchase intention of potential customers.

Key words: Online Product Presentation, Social Presence, Product Presence, Self-brand Connection, Purchase Intention