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

Area of Science:

• Consumer Psychology
• Behavioral Economics
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Virtual stores offer a platform to study consumer behavior.
• Deception tactics, such as misrepresenting product fulfillment, are sometimes used to enhance virtual store realism.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if deception influences purchasing behavior in a virtual store.
• To determine if participants' buying habits differ when they are led to believe they will receive selected items versus not.

Main Methods:

• A randomized virtual shopping experiment was conducted with 402 adult smokers.
• Participants were allocated a budget and either told they would receive their selected items or simply to complete the task.
• Demographics, tobacco use, and purchasing behaviors were compared between the intervention and control groups.

Main Results:

• No significant differences were found in purchasing behaviors between the groups.
• Specific tobacco product purchases, overall spending, and item quantities remained consistent across conditions.
• Participant demographics and tobacco use patterns were largely similar, with a slight overrepresentation of females in the intervention group.

Conclusions:

• Deception, specifically the promise of receiving virtual purchases, did not alter consumer behavior in this virtual store experiment.
• The findings suggest that deception may not be an effective or necessary tool for influencing behavior in virtual shopping environments.