The Influence of Social Crowding on Consumer Brand Choices in the E-Commerce Market

Abstract

With the widespread adoption of smartphones and IP geolocation technology, many enterprises offering e-commerce services are seeking to leverage offline environmental information to gain insight into consumer preferences and improve online operations. Among the various environmental variables, crowd density is a key factor that influences consumer behavior. This paper conducted three studies to explore how social crowding affects consumers' brand preferences in online consumption scenarios, utilizing secondary data, ANOVA, regression, and bootstrapping analysis. The results demonstrate that high social crowding has a significant positive impact on consumers' preferences for brands with logos that have clear boundaries. Furthermore, this effect is moderated by consumers' regulatory focus. In the context of e-commerce, the findings suggest that enterprises can benefit from leveraging offline environmental information to optimize online operations and improve brand recognition.