This paper investigates a theoretical and experimental evidence for a niche strategy for small and medium online shopping malls to survive against large famous shopping malls dominating the E-commerce market. The present study explored both theoretically and empirically how consumers’ preferences for alternatives in online shopping context are affected by their construal level and concentrated its efforts on the verification of the phenomenon under various frames and regarding various categories(Liberman and Trope 1998; Liberman, Trope, and Stephan 2007, Liberman Trope, and Wakslak 2007). For this, this study demonstrates how chronic construal levels of consumers may affect their alternative choice for online shopping via various contexts (Experiment 1-3) and categories (Experiment 3-5). This series of experiments suggests that consumers with high construal level can be defined as a group that is relatively less susceptible to reputation of the shopping malls. Thus, strategically targeting this group of consumers will help small online malls lacking store reputation to mitigate their competitive disadvantage. Based on both existing literature and the experimental results as above, this research discusses possible methods for small online shopping malls to target high-construal segmentation.

The purpose of this study is to present theoretical and experimental evidence for a niche strategy for small and medium online shopping malls to run business against large famous shopping malls prevailing the E-commerce market. For this, the present study demonstrates how chronic construal levels of consumers may affect their alternative choice for online shopping via various contexts (Experiment 1-3) and categories (Experiment 3-5). This series of experiments suggests that consumers with high construal level can be defined as a group that is relatively less susceptible to reputation of the shopping malls. Thus, strategically targeting this group of consumers will help small and medium-sized online malls lacking store reputation to mitigate their competitive disadvantage. Based on both existing literature and the experimental results as above, this research discusses possible methods for small and medium-sized online shopping malls to target high-construal segmentation.