People

Many mobile applications use push notifications and reminders to explicitly educate, remind, and motivate users to perform healthy behaviors. However, users do not always act according to these explicit digital interventions. Our study investigates whether users’ self-regulation can be implicitly facilitated with a proper mobile interaction design. Specifically, we investigate the impacts of two touch modes that are supported by force-based interaction technology, that is, pressing and tapping. Drawing on the theory of embodied cognition, which suggests that people automatically infer meanings from their bodily actions, we conjecture that pressing, compared with tapping, enhances self-regulation because the action of pressing on the touchscreen embodies resolute approach motivation toward goals. We test our hypotheses in three experiments. The first experiment investigates beverage choices on a mobile app; the second experiment examines goal setting on a fitness app; and the third experiment focuses on personal hygiene learning on a mobile education app. The results from the three experiments show that pressing actions can improve users’ self-regulation in selecting a healthier but less tasty beverage (Study 1), setting higher exercise goals and performing more physical exercise (Study 2), and reducing lapses in maintaining personal hygiene (Study 3). In addition, such effects were more salient among users with a higher level of health knowledge and a promotion-focused health orientation. This study contributes to healthcare IT research by showing that mobile interaction can be leveraged to nudge users toward enhanced self-regulation.

Online retailers employ various kinds of social and marketing information cues to influence consumers’ product interest and purchases. This study focuses on the effects of two types of information cues, product popularity and time restriction on product promotions, on consumers’ product approach behavior. It takes a unique perspective by examining how such effects change as consumers’ shopping goals become more concrete. The results of a field experiment and a laboratory experiment show that product popularity and time restriction may not always have a positive influence on consumers’ product approach behavior. In particular, when consumers have not yet formed specific shopping goals, product popularity and time restriction weaken each other's effects on users’ initial product judgment, whereas these two information cues reinforce each other's effects on consumers’ final product evaluation when consumers’ shopping goals have become more specific. This study deepens our understanding of the individual and interaction effects of product popularity and time restriction at different levels of consumer goal specificity. The findings have significant implications for how retailers can leverage different information cues for promoting products.

Ding! These days, it seems that we live in a sea of nonstop, never-ending mobile notifications: every waking moment, we receive buzzes and pings that remind that we have to do things or be somewhere or respond to someone about something. Ding!

User-generated content (UGC) is increasingly used in the marketing communication mix for promoting products. This research investigates how firms can actively manage consumer-generated reviews in the form of highlighting authentic reviews at firms’ discretion. Whereas highlighting a positive review is expected to lead to positive product evaluations, this practice may elicit consumers’ skepticism if consumers are explicitly informed of the promotional intent of the firm. In three studies, we examine the effect of presenting a firm-highlighted review on consumers’ consumption intention and behavior. Our findings confirm that highlighting a positive consumer review can effectively attract consumers’ attention to this review. However, the heightened attention does not always lead to higher consumption likelihood. In particular, the extremity of a highlighted review will interact with the variance of the review context as well as the reputation of the firm being reviewed to determine the effect of the firm-highlighting practice on consumers’ consumption behavior. When other reviews convey mixed opinions or when the firm has not established a strong reputation, highlighting a positive but less extreme review may effectively improve the likelihood of consumption, but highlighting a review that is extremely positive will not.

Gesture-based interaction has greatly changed the way in which we interact with online products by allowing users to control digital systems with hand movements. This study investigates how gesture-based interaction modes, namely, mid-air gesture and touchscreen gesture, compared with mouse-based interaction, affect consumers’ virtual product experiences (VPE) by eliciting mental imagery (i.e., haptic imagery and spatial imagery). Furthermore, we explore how visual product presentation can be designed to facilitate different types of interaction modes. Through a lab experiment, we find that touchscreen gesture outper- forms mid-air gesture and mouse-based interaction in terms of eliciting haptic imagery, and this effect is mitigated when 3D presentation is used. We also find that mid-air gesture outperforms touchscreen gesture and mouse-based interaction in terms of eliciting spatial imagery when 3D presentation is used. Both haptic imagery and spatial imagery can further reduce consumers’ product uncertainty. Our results extend prior work on interactivity design of VPE and further contribute to the emerging literature on gesture-based interaction.