Gain-Loss Framing: Comparing the Push Notification Message to Increase Purchase Intention in e-Marketplace Mobile Application

Cart abandonment is a phenomenon that occurs when a customer begins an online transaction but does not complete the sale until the payment process of an e-marketplace app. It has become an issue for e-marketplace sellers and developers because it can reduce sales and delay income. One way to reduce cart-abandonment rates is to send push notifications as a reminder to persuade customers to complete their transaction. A stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework is used as the conceptual foundation. The stimulus is the push notification, then the organism perceives the value of the product, and purchase intention is the response. The push notification is designed to use message framing, which can be gain-framed or loss-framed. The personalization effect is also analyzed, because it has been shown to persuade users with marketing and promotional products effectively. This study also compares two product types: utilitarian and hedonic. The study was conducted with a 2 (gain-framed and loss-framed) × 2 (hedonic and utilitarian) × 2 (personalized and general) between-subjects experiment. Hypotheses were tested by comparing the perceived value for each group using analysis of variance and a mediation analysis of 600 datasets. The result shows a general message with gain-framed and the loss-framed message is not significantly different from the perceived value of the product, regardless the product type. A personalized message with gain-framed content has a better effect than loss-framed content as it relates to the perceived value of a utilitarian product, but the improvement is not significant for a hedonic product. Perceived value of the product also has a significant effect on purchase intention and partially mediated the effect of message-framing toward product purchase intention. Thus, it is better to design the push notification as a personalized message with gain-framed message content in order to reduce cart-abandonment rates.