The impact of popularity cues on consumer effort for making experiential purchases: A study within the context of hospitality services

Purpose: Based on the framework of social influence theory, this paper aims to explore the influence of popularity cues on consumer effort for making experiential purchases, as well as to examine the mediating role of conversational potential and the moderating role of consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence (CSII). Design/methodology/approach: A simple random sampling method was used to recruit participants from Chinese online survey platforms with a final total sample size of 371 participants for three experiments. Taking an experimental approach, this paper tests the proposed hypotheses by conducting three online experiments based on hospitality service scenarios. The data analyses were carried out using SPSS 25.0 software. Specifically, the effect of popularity cues on consumer effort was verified via a one-way ANOVA; the mediating role of conversation potential was analyzed using PROCESS Model 4; and the moderating role of CSII was tested using PROCESS Model 7. Findings: The presence of popularity cues significantly increases conversational potential and consumer effort in acquiring hospitality services. The impact of popularity cues on consumer effort is mediated by conversational potential. The relationship between popularity cues and conversational potential is moderated by CSII. Specifically, the effect of popularity cues on conversational potential is only observable in high-CSII consumers. Originality/value: To date, limited research has been conducted on the antecedent variables of consumer effort. This paper contributes to the existing literature on popularity cues and consumer effort by examining the effectiveness of popularity cues in motivating consumer effort and exploring its boundary conditions. This study empirically validates the proposed model and provides suggestions for future research and practical applications in hospitality services.