Exploring Consumers’ Buying Behavior in a Large Online Promotion Activity: The Role of Psychological Distance and Involvement

As a key marketing tool, online sales promotion has been widely used by online retailers to increase sales of products and brands. Most previous researches on online sales promotion have ignored the effect of consumers’ psychological factors and the heterogeneity of product and consumers. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of psychological distance and involvement on consumers’ buying behavior in large online promotion activities. The research model was examined using empirical analysis of data obtained from consumer surveys after the Double 11 promotion. Our results indicate that temporal distance has positive impact on purchase decision of high involvement products, while having negative impact on purchase decision of low involvement products. Social distance has negative impact on consumers’ purchase decision. Temporal distance is positively associated with consumers’ purchase-decision involvement, and then purchase-decision involvement positively impacts consumers’ total consumption. Social distance has no impact on consumers’ purchase decision involvement. These findings not only advance the understanding of the role of psychological distance and involvement in online sales promotion but also offer implications regarding strategies that online retailers can employ to publish their promotions at different times and encourage consumers more to share promotional information among their friends.