Large Online Product Catalog Space Indicates High Store Price: Understanding Customers' Overgeneralization and Illogical Inference
Title：Large Online Product Catalog Space Indicates High Store Price: Understanding Customers' Overgeneralization and Illogical Inference
Speaker: Huang Yunhui (School of Business, Nanjing University, Professor)
Host：WANG Lin (Lingnan College, Sun Yat-sen University, Associate Professor)
Date and Time：January 3rd, 2020 (09:30-11:30 a.m.)
Location：Huang Binli Conference Room, Lingnan Hall
Language：English+Chinese
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that because offline store space is costly, customers tend to associate large interstitial space among products in a bricks-and-mortar store with high price. Drawing on consumer inference and signaling theories, the present research suggests this offline association could be overgeneralized to online contexts and lead customers to illogically infer high price based on large interstitial space among products in an online product catalog (i.e., online product catalog space, OPCS). We conducted five experiments to test whether and why OPCS affects customers’ online store price perception and its downstream effect on store evaluation. Our findings indicate that (1) an online store with larger OPCS is perceived to be selling more expensive products (Study 1); (2) the effect of OPCS is due to offline-online overgeneralization rather than online learning, because either a reminder of offline-online differences (Study 2) or sufficient web design knowledge (Study 3) diminishes the effect of OPCS on store price perception, and only people who believe that large offline space is linked with high price show this effect (Study 4); and (3) customers who care more about quality evaluate a store with larger OPCS more positively, whereas customers who care more about price do the opposite (Study 5). These findings contribute to literatures on web design, price perception, consumer inference in e-commerce, and offline-online behavior transfer. We also discuss implications for practice and offer suggestions for future works.
Bio:
Yunhui Huang is an Professor in the Department of Marketing and Electronic Business, School of Business, Nanjing University. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Peking University. Her research interests include online retailing, consumer inference, and marketing communications. She has published her works in journals such as Journal of Consumer Research, Information Systems Research, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Information & Management, among others.
