How Do Social Information Cues Affect Consumers’ Product Choice Experiences? Findings from a Controlled Online Experiment

Thomas Friedrich; Sven Overhage; and Sebastian Schlauderer

						@Select Types{,
							 
							 
							 
							 
							 
							Journal   = "Band-1",
							 Title= "How Do Social Information Cues Affect Consumers’ Product Choice Experiences? Findings from a Controlled Online Experiment", 
							Author= "Thomas Friedrich, Sven Overhage, and Sebastian Schlauderer", 
							Doi= "https://doi.org/10.30844/wi_2020_o1-friedrich", 
							 Abstract= "Social media change the way consumers gather and evaluate information when choosing products. To benefit from this development, online sellers have begun augmenting product presentations with social information cues like sales numbers or product ratings. While such cues can influence consumers’ buying behavior, it remains unclear how they affect consumers’ product choice experiences. This makes it difficult to use them in a systematic manner. Using the stimulus-organism-response paradigm, we develop a research model to explain how a social information cue affects consumers’ satisfaction with their product choice via perceived choice difficulty and enjoyment. We evaluate it in a controlled online experiment, in which 147 participants used versions of an e-commerce website with varying social information cues. The results indicate that the provisioning of social information cues positively affects the choice satisfaction by decreasing the perceived choice difficulty and increasing enjoyment. The effects of individual cues vary considerably, however.

", 
							 Keywords= "Social Information Cues, Electronic Commerce, Product Choice, Stimulus-Organism-Response Model, Controlled Online Experiment.
", 
							}

Thomas Friedrich, Sven Overhage, and Sebastian Schlauderer: How Do Social Information Cues Affect Consumers’ Product Choice Experiences? Findings from a Controlled Online Experiment. Online: https://doi.org/10.30844/wi_2020_o1-friedrich (Abgerufen 24.04.24)

Abstract

Social media change the way consumers gather and evaluate information when choosing products. To benefit from this development, online sellers have begun augmenting product presentations with social information cues like sales numbers or product ratings. While such cues can influence consumers’ buying behavior, it remains unclear how they affect consumers’ product choice experiences. This makes it difficult to use them in a systematic manner. Using the stimulus-organism-response paradigm, we develop a research model to explain how a social information cue affects consumers’ satisfaction with their product choice via perceived choice difficulty and enjoyment. We evaluate it in a controlled online experiment, in which 147 participants used versions of an e-commerce website with varying social information cues. The results indicate that the provisioning of social information cues positively affects the choice satisfaction by decreasing the perceived choice difficulty and increasing enjoyment. The effects of individual cues vary considerably, however.

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