Deception and Shopping Behavior Among Current Cigarette Smokers: A Web-Based, Randomized Virtual Shopping Experiment.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Virtual stores can be used to identify influences on consumer shopping behavior. Deception is one technique that may be used to attempt to increase the realism of virtual stores.

Objective

The objective of the experiment was to test whether the purchasing behavior of participants in a virtual shopping task varied based on whether they were told that they would receive the products they selected in a virtual convenience store (a form of deception) or not.

Methods

We recruited a US national sample of 402 adult current smokers by email from an online panel of survey participants. They completed a fully automated randomized virtual shopping experiment with a US $15 or US $20 budget in a Web-based virtual convenience store. We told a random half of participants

SUBMITTER: Dutra LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6045792 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature