How does information encountering enhance purchase behavior? The mediating role of customer inspiration

Abstract

With the explosive growth and fragmented dissemination of information, information encountering, a form of passive information acquisition, has become a dominant way for consumers to obtain consumption information online. This means of acquiring information may have implications for consumer behavior. The current research explored the influence of information encountering on purchase behavior. Three online experiments were conducted to test the interaction between information relevance (interest-related vs. problem-related) and consumers' goal state (no-goal vs. other goal) in relation to purchase behavior, and tested whether this link was mediated by customer inspiration. Results showed that information relevance and goal state interacted to predict purchase behavior. Specifically, purchase behavior was highest when participants encountered problem-related information in the no-goal state and when participants encountered interest-related information in the other-goal state. Moreover, customer inspiration mediated these effects. Our work expands the literature on information encountering and customer inspiration, and has implications for enterprises’ information dissemination strategies.