The Neural and Psychological Basis of Herding in Purchasing Books Online: An Event-Related Potential Study

Abstract

In this study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the neural and psychological bases of consumer herding decision in purchasing books online. Sixteen participants were asked to decide as quickly as possible whether to buy a book on the basis of its title keywords and the numbers of positive and negative reviews in stimulus. The given title keywords were very similar, and participants did not have special preference for any particular one. Hence, they were forced to adopt the strategy of herding decision: choosing to buy the book when there were consistent positive reviews, choosing not to buy when there were consistent negative reviews, randomly choosing to buy or not to buy when there were no consistent reviews. The herding decision triggers a categorical processing of the consistency level of customer reviews. Remarkable late positive potential (LPP), a component of ERP sensitive to categorization processes, was elicited. The LPP amplitudes varied as a function of review consistency. The LPP amplitudes for three categories of review consistency were significantly different, and their order is such that absolute consistent review was greater than relative consistent review, which was greater than inconsistent review. In addition, behavioral data revealed that the higher the consistency of the customer reviews, the higher the herd rate. It is possible that customer reviews with higher consistency let participants make herding decisions more resolutely. The present results suggest that the LPP may be regarded as an endogenous neural signal of the herding mechanism in a sense and that the LPP amplitude is potentially a measure of consumers' herd tendency in purchase decisions.

Neural Correlates of Consumers Perceiving the Stereotypes of Brand Personality: An Event-Related Potentials Study

“…The LPP is sensitive to the motivation and emotional valence, reflecting the attitudes of the consumers (Ma et al, 2018). It is worth noting that the LPP reflects a cognitive process of categorizing assessment in the later decision stages (Jin et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2010). For the stereotype of the brands in different categories, when the personality evaluations of brand names are consistent with its categorizing criterion (or the expectation), we suspect that obvious evaluative priming occurred in addition to semantic priming.…”

“…Electrode impedance was kept below 5 kΩ. A 16 Hz (24 dB/octave) digital low pass filter was applied off-line to the continuous EEG data (Jin et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2010). Trials with peak-to-peak deflections exceeding ±100 µV and other artifacts were excluded using BrainVision Analyzer 2.1 software.…”

Harm avoidance in adolescents modulates late positive potentials during affective picture processing

“…ERPs were constructed by separately averaging three picture types (positive, neutral, and negative). The following nine electrodes (C1, Cz, C2, CP1, CPz, CP2, P1, Pz, P2) were selected for statistical analysis (Chen et al, 2010). Fig.…”

The Brand Scandal Spillover Effect at the Country Level: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials

“…P2 was found to peak approximately 200 ms after the onset of stimuli and was mainly distributed in the frontal area (Crowley and Colrain, 2004;Polezzi et al, 2008). P2 is an attention-related component, reflecting early rapid automatic activity (Crowley and Colrain, 2004;Polezzi et al, 2008), and an enhanced P2 reflects the engagement of attentional resources (Carretié et al, 2001;Chen et al, 2010;Bublatzky and Schupp, 2012). Furthermore, it has been reported that negative stimuli can engage more attentional resources compared to positive stimuli, resulting in negative stimuli that induce larger P2 amplitudes than positive stimuli (Carretié et al, 2001;Huang and Luo, 2006;Thomas et al, 2007).…”

“…In previous consumer neuroscience studies, P2 and LPP are two ERP components that have always been used to examine consumers' evaluations of marketing stimuli (Carretié et al, 2001;Chen et al, 2010;Bublatzky and Schupp, 2012). P2 was found to peak approximately 200 ms after the onset of stimuli and was mainly distributed in the frontal area (Crowley and Colrain, 2004;Polezzi et al, 2008).…”