Online shoppers' decision biases: The effect of response mode

Abstract

The transaction under electronic commerce context is full of uncertainty where the information collected by buyers is limited (that is, they can only obtain the information such as product pictures but cannot touch the products). The way how the information was presented to the consumers will influence people’s decision. Framing effect and anchoring effect are both the human judgment decision biases induced by the presentation way of decision problems. In addition, how people respond to the decision problem is also one possible source in resulting in different decisions. There are three response modes discussed in the present study: choice, evaluation and bidding. This study is going to discuss the whether the influence of framing or anchoring messages on consumers’ decision depends upon the way they respond to the decision problem. The experimental results confirmed this phenomenon in which different response modes determined whether the framing and anchoring effect occurred. Specifically, when the consumers respond in choice mode, both attribute framing effect and anchoring effect were observed. In addition, significant attribute framing effect occurred when the subjects respond by using evaluation task. Finally, anchoring effect occurred in bidding mode where high and low anchoring messages resulted in significantly different bidding prices. Key words: E-commerce, framing effect, anchoring effect, experiment, response mode