Does the additional purchasing
effect occur in online shopping?
by
Milo van Wermeskerken
University of Groningen
Articles
• Blair, S., & Roese, N. J. (2013). Balancing the basket: The role of shopping basket composition in
embarrassment. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(4), 676–691.
• Krishna, A., Herd, K. B., & Aydinoğlu, N. Z. (2015). Wetting the bed at twenty-one: Embarrassment as a
Embarrassment
• Public embarrassment:
– A social emotion arising from a deficiency in one’s presented self to others in unpleasant situations that result in an undesired public identity.
• Private embarrassment:
– Audience is not neccesarry
Hypotheses
• H1: Purchasing an embarrassing product with unrelated additional purchases reduce the anticipated embarrassment relative to purchasing only the embarrassing product.
• H2: There will be no significant difference in anticipated embarrassment while purchasing an embarrassing product in public or in private.
• H3: Privately purchasing reduces the effect that unrelated additional purchasing has on anticipated embarrassment relative to purchasing in public.
Results
Public context Private context Total
With additional n = 23 M (embarrassment) = 3,174 n = 22 M (embarrassment) = 2,470 n = 45 M = 2,830
Without additional n = 29 M (embarrassment) = 3,494 n = 26 M (embarrassment) = 2,949 n = 55 M = 3,236
Total n = 52 M (embarrassment) = 3,353 n = 48 M (embarrassment) = 2,729
Means of the dependent variables per condition
• Purchases with additional products (M = 2,830, SD = 1,353) have not significantly lower anticipated embarrassment than purchases without additional products (M = 3,236, SD = 1,499), F(1,94)= 1,828, p= 0,180. • Publicly purchasing embarrassing products (M = 3,352, SD = 1,517) have
Results
Interaction effect between additional purchases and the purchase context
• Privately purchasing does not reduce or increase the effect that unrelated additional purchasing has on
Contribution
• Even though recent studies show the similarities
between private and public embarrassment. This current study shows that there is enough reason to be sceptical about it.
• Experiencing less embarrassment in purchasing online could have potential practical implications.
