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3.4 Experimental Procedure
All participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions and were
linked to the privately-constructed commercial website of the assigned condition.
Participants were asked to purchase three food products. Participants in the quality
condition received the scenario of food connoisseurs, whereas participants in the social
condition received the scenario of celebrities. Two alternatives were provided, one broad-
appeal and one narrow-appeal product, for each kind of food product. In addition, a sales
volume was presented along with each product alternative. After reading the assigned
scenario and browsing the information of product alternatives, participants needed to
make a purchase decision between the choices of broad-appeal and narrow-appeal. In
total, they were asked to make three purchase decisions. At last, participants answered
questions regarding the manipulation check of inference, demographic information and
online shopping experiences. After completing the experiment, every participant received
a gift worth of US$5 as appreciation for their participation.
3.5 Participants
A mass email describing the purpose of the experiment was sent to potential
candidates in universities and companies in Taiwan. A total of 200 participants in this
experiment comprised of 44% male and 56% female. The majority of participants (88.5%)
were aged 15 to 34. Demographic information of the sample population is illustrated in
Appendix C.
Participants who responded and were willing to participate in the experiment were
asked to conduct the experiment online by following the self-explanatory guide. Every
participant was randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. At last, a total of 200
volunteer participants, with 50 in each condition, were recruited. On average, it took
around 10 minutes to finish the assigned task. Since participants could be from
universities or companies (48% students vs. 52% nonstudents), the KS test was performed
to verify whether there was a significant difference between the responses of these two
groups. The result showed no significant difference between the purchase decisions of
students and non-students (
D
= .091;
p
= .808,
n.s.
); therefore, the data of these two
groups of participants were combined for later analysis.