摘要
過去消費者動機推理研究常採用非人際的訊息(如：市調、報章雜誌等)來檢驗。但在網路科技發達的現代，網路口碑已經成為消費者在從事購買行為時的重要參考資訊。本研究採用人際的網路口碑資訊，驗證了消費者為偏好選擇辯護的動機推理現象不復存在。具體而言，消費者具事前偏好時，得知選擇組合中產品的正面口碑，其對於偏好產品的評價並不會顯著提升，但得知負面口碑時，其對於偏好產品的評價則會顯著降低(實驗一)。接著我們為了排除實驗一購買情境潛在的時間急迫性因素，形成對於我們研究結果的另一種解釋，我們操弄受試者的時間觀點(遙遠vs.急迫)重複驗證了我們的假說(實驗二)。更進一步，我們將口碑的品質降低以進行對於假說進行更嚴格的檢定，假說依然獲得支持，顯示研究結果的穩健性(實驗三)。最後，我們證實消費者的事前偏好強度為我們宣稱的現象之邊界條件。意即當消費者的事前偏好為強時，得知選擇組合中產品的正面口碑時，其對於原偏好的產品態度會顯著提升，但得知偏好產品的負面口碑時，其產品態度則不會有顯著的降低；相反地，當消費者的事前偏好為弱時，消費者對於偏好產品態度的變化則與本研究假說一致(實驗四)。

Past research on consumer motivated reasoning often use impersonal product information (e.g., surveys, magazines) to examine the mechanism. Nowadays, since the internet developed fast, the online word-of-mouth has become important sources for consumer to refer to before purchase. The present research adopts personal online word-of-mouth and demonstrates that consumer motivated reasoning is ruined by the valence of online word-of-mouth. Specifically, for consumer with prior preference, knowing the positive word-of-mouth about the product in the choice set will not enhance their preference toward the preferred choice, however, knowing the negative word-of-mouth about the product in the choice set will decrease their preference toward the preferred choice (experiment 1). And to rule out the contexts we design in experiment 1 may raise consumer’s temporal perspective to be proximal, we manipulate consumer’s temporal perspective (distant vs. proximal) and replicate the finding in experiment 1(experiment 2). Furthermore, these findings are confirmed even when we lower the quality of word-of-mouth to conduct a strict test for our hypothesis (experiment 3). Finally, we show that the strength of the preference is the boundary condition of our claim which means that for consumer with strong prior preference, knowing the positive word-of-mouth about the product in the choice set will enhance their attitude toward the preferred choice, however, knowing the negative word-of-mouth about the product in the choice set will decrease their attitude toward the preferred choice; conversely, for consumer with weak prior preference, we reconfirm our claims(experiment 4).

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