R ESEARCH M ETHOD

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people may usually think the value of the service doesn’t fulfill their needs because of the chronic high threshold of accepting new things.

(b) Unconscious of the need of a new service

Several previous researches (Crowe et al., 1997) showed that, compared to those with chronic or induced prevention concerns, those with chronic or induced promotion concerns are able to solve more insight problems, generate a higher quantity and quality of innovative uses for common, daily objects. The promotion focus inclination is to avoid errors of omission, whereas the prevention focus inclination is to insure correct rejections and avoid errors of commission (Crowe et al., 1997; Levine et al., 2000). For example, there are two students in an upper-level college course and they both are highly motivated to earn an “A”. One of them focuses on promotion concerns and views this as an opportunity to improve his class rank. The other one focuses on prevention concerns and views this as a necessity for protecting his good standing in the pre-medical program.

As a result, people with promotion concerns usually set a low threshold to accept new things; in other words, it is easy to make them accept a new service.

So, we argue that if they don’t take a new service, they may be unconscious of the need of it. Once the awareness of the service is raised, they may change their decision to accept the new service.

1.3 Research Method

The transtheoretical model (TTM) of Behavior Change is one of the most popular theories used to describe how people modify their own behaviors. The TTM is a model of intentional change that focuses on the decision-making

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abilities of the individual rather than the social and biological influences on behavior as other approaches tried (Velicer et al., 1998). The problems of taking new services are similar to the problems in the first stage, of behavior change which is called precontemplation stage, proposed in the transtheoretical model.

There are five stages in the TTM model. The first stage is precontemplation stage. Individuals at this stage do not have intention to change their behavior. They may be unconscious or uninformed of the need to change or they may have failed to change many times and give up changing. People who decide not to accept a new service are in this stage. People at this stage are opposed to acknowledging or modifying a problem behavior. They often overestimate the cons of changing, underestimate the pros, and are unaware of making such mistakes (Prochaska et al, 1983), just like part of the people who do not taking new services often set a high threshold to change. If we can raise their awareness of the need of changing and make them reevaluate the impersonal environment factors, their willingness to changing may be increased and they may move to next stage, contemplation. This movement is a significant part and also the starting point for the entire process of changing.

In this study, we argue using reference point and anchoring effect can help us more understand the thoughts when considering behavior change, or more specifically, using a new service. The reference point is the criterion we use in judgment and it’s similar to the threshold we set in our mind. Human judgment is often influenced by salient norms and standards (Mussweiler et al., 1999;

Mussweiler, 2002). Anchoring effect, the assimilation of a numeric estimate, is one of the previously considered standard (Mussweiler, 2002). It reliably influences judgments in a variety of domains, like general knowledge, probability estimates, legal judgment, pricing decisions, and negotiation.

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The selective accessibility model proposes that anchoring effects are affected by a selective increase in the accessibility of anchor-consistent knowledge about the target (Mussweiler, 2002). This model mentioned that when receiving an external stimulus such as a comparative question, the information about the target will be activated and easily extracted. It also assumes people will unconsciously make a hypothesis that these activated information are related to the actual target value and then measure the probability of this hypothesis with the consideration of the applicability and representativeness of the information (Strack, et al., 1997). For example, in the negotiation process of buying a new house, the sales person may provide a first price and we don’t know whether this price is reasonable or not without the relative domain knowledge. But we still have to give a counter offer, so we may retrieve the price of the similar house that friends bought or appeared in the television ads and use it as the starting points of the adjustment. So, when answering a comparative anchoring question, judges are engaged in an active hypothesis-testing process in which they consider the possibility that the actual target value may be similar to the anchor (Mussweiler, 2002). Moreover, we can say the result of anchor effect is based on anchor-consistent knowledge which is highly related to the past experience, received information and preferences. As a result, we assume that the result of anchor effect can partly represent the attitude of the target, which is the anchor point.

Previous research has found that in a negotiation process, while an anchor point affects the counter offers negotiators make, a reference point determines how an offer is perceived (Kristensen et al., 1997). The concept of reference point was first introduced in prospect theory (Kahneman et al., 1979; Tversky et al., 1991; Tversky et al., 1992). It’s a criterion that we use to judge whether an

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event makes us feel gain or loss. The most common reference point is the present situation or the expected result. For example, when participating in a competition, an individual may expect himself to be at least getting the third prize. If he finally gets the third prize, he may think that is exactly what he should get and feel nothing. If he get the second prize or win the championship, he may think that he has done a better work than usual and feel gains. If he gets the fourth prize or lower in the end, he may think that he has not expressed the best performance and feel loss. Shortly saying, a result which is better than reference point makes us feel gains; and a result which is worse than reference point makes us fell loss. Moreover, we can say reference point represents the attitude when considering a situation. In a negotiation process, if provided information, which is an anchor point, is perceived as gain by the reference point, the adjustment from the anchor point to the final estimation is smaller; if provided information, which is an anchor point, is perceived as loss by the reference point, the adjustment from the anchor point to the final estimation is bigger (Kristensen et al., 1997).

We assume the reference point is the reservation value of the service of the user, which is also the user’s minimum expected service quality. Since the interaction between anchor point and reference point exists, if we divide a service into many attributes that can be judged by reference point and anchor point, we can use the result of anchoring effect and reference point to analyze how they make decisions depending on these attributes. We can further know which attributes are attractive, one-dimensional, must-be, reverse or indifferent and provide suggestions that which attributes are supposed to be remained, adjusted or removed.

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