Investigating consumer confusion in the retailing context: the causes and outcomes

Abstract

This study explored, in detail, a comprehensively integrated framework for understanding the process of three types of consumer confusion (similarity, overload, and ambiguity confusion) linking the antecedents (stimuli and store knowledge) and the consequences (decision postponement and inertia) in the context of the Taiwanese convenience store. The simultaneous results reveal that similarity confusion mediates the relationship between the antecedent variables and the consequence variables, overload confusion only mediates the relationship between inefficient stimuli and the consequence variables, but a mediation effect of ambiguity confusion was not found in our model. The findings reflect the rational and irrational behaviour with regard to consumer confusion and provide managerial implications in designing such decision-making mechanisms that sales promotion of intense competition should focus on differentiated marketing strategies to deal with the similarity and overload confusion in the creation of store chain image and loyalty.

Keywords:

• stimuli
• store knowledge
• consumer confusion
• decision postponement
• inertia

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Wilson Vanthac Dang for his assistance in data collection and analyses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this paper was financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan [grant no. MOST 103-2221-E-127-003] to the author during the years 2014–2015.