Factors Influencing Consumer Willingness to Pay for Low‐Carbon Products: A Simulation Study in China

Consumer choice behavior is crucial to supporting cleaner production and plays an essential role in low‐carbon development and environmental policy‐making. Therefore, combining system dynamics with an agent‐based model (SD–AB), the present study explores influencing factors on both providers' and consumers' sides. Using empirical data from selected firms and a questionnaire survey of residents in China, the simulation results revealed that consumers' low‐carbon awareness and income have little effect on their willingness to pay for low‐carbon products. In contrast, some factors have an obvious effect on consumers' willingness to pay for low‐carbon products, including the delivery speed of low‐carbon products, consumers' patience and degree of satisfaction. Thus, companies that provide low‐carbon products should be more focused on customer expectations and should ensure timely and efficient delivery to consumers. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Identifying consumers' engagement with renewable energy

A moral engagement with sustainability enhances consumers' willingness to pay an increased rate for renewable energy when utility firms offer a variety of financial incentives to buy, rent and lease energy solutions to promote the uptake of energy‐efficient technologies. Using structural equation modelling, with data collected from 140 residential energy consumers in Canada, this paper tests and finds evidence that consumers' moral disengagement with environmental concerns negatively influences their willingness to pay more for renewable energy. Furthermore, it is observed that a consumer's perceived sense of control when evaluating energy solutions further accentuates the effects of moral disengagement on willingness to pay. These findings also illuminate the socio‐economic factors that encourage moral engagement concerning renewables. These findings underscore and build upon the claims of the theory of moral self‐regulation. The results and implications guide energy suppliers in potential niche business models to promote the uptake of energy efficient technologies. Similarly, the findings can guide policy‐makers on the cognitive and psychological factors that shape consumers' moral engagement with environmental concerns.     

Research continuum on consumer education and brand knowledge: A critical analysis

Consumer education and brand knowledge have emerged as the dynamic tool in the complex marketplace today that actively stimulate the cognitive behavior of consumers toward developing purchase intentions and buying decisions. The general objective of this study is to critically review the previous studies on the role of brand literacy, transfer and perceptions of knowledge, purchase intention, shopping ambiance and customer satisfaction, and illustrate the consumer decision making process induced by the above factors. The literature review reveals that brand education plays significant role as a driver of decision making among consumers, which not only empowers consumers in developing perceptions on the brand but also helps the companies on brand co-designing and knowledge dissemination process. Consumer literacy and brand knowledge helps the consumers in assessing the brand value, competitive advantage, and operational efficiency of the brand toward building purchase intentions. The effects of the increasing levels of customer expertise in the marketplace today is seen as the outcome of consumer education and perceived brand knowledge.     

Is the environment‐friendly factor attractive to customers when purchasing electric vehicles? Evidence from South Korea

In a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, several countries worldwide are implementing policies to promote electric vehicles (EVs). However, contrary to expectations, the diffusion speed of EVs has been rather slow in South Korea. This study analyzes consumer preferences for the technological and environmental attributes of EVs and derives policy and environmental implications to promote market diffusion of EVs in South Korea. We conduct a choice‐based conjoint survey of 1,008 consumers in South Korea and estimate the consumer utility function using a mixed logit model considering consumer heterogeneity. Based on the consumer utility function, we analyze consumers' willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) for EV attributes such as driving range, charging method, charging time, autonomous driving function, carbon dioxide (CO₂) reduction rate, and purchase price. The results indicate that the current low acceptance of EVs is due to their relatively high price and lack of a battery charging technology that satisfies consumers' expectations of the charging method and time. One interesting finding is that Korean consumers have a relatively higher WTP for the CO₂ reduction rate of EVs than consumers in other countries; however, they do not consider CO₂ reduction over other technological attributes when choosing EVs. This implies that the rate of CO₂ reduction of EVs is not an important factor for South Korean consumers when buying EVs. We also calculate the effect of CO₂ reduction with the market penetration of EVs and find that CO₂ reduction through the diffusion of EVs depends on the country's electricity generation mix.     

Customer Information Sharing: Strategic Incentives and New Implications

We study oligopolistic firms' incentives to share customer information about past purchase history when firms are uncertain about whether a particular consumer considers the product offerings as complements or substitutes. We show that both the incentive to share customer information and its effects on consumers depend crucially on the relative magnitudes of the prices that would prevail in the complementary and substitute markets if consumers were fully segmented according to their preferences. This paper has important implications for merger analysis when the primary motive for merger is the acquisition of another firm's customer lists. Our analysis also suggests a new role of middlemen as information aggregators.     

Inflation perceptions and expectations in Sweden – Are media reports the missing link?

We analyze the interrelation between consumers' quantitative inflation perceptions and expectations as well as actual inflation rates in Sweden. The role of media reports about inflation is emphasized. Structural vector error correction models show stable cointegration between actual, perceived and expected inflation. Impulse responses and forecast error variance decompositions suggest strong interaction between perceived and expected inflation, with a lesser role for actual inflation. Media effects are generally small, but imply an asymmetric reaction of inflation expectations and perceptions to news on increasing vs. decreasing inflation. Thus, to anchor inflation expectations, central banks should explore better communication channels to inform consumers about actual inflation.     

感知差异化对零售店顾客惠顾与支付意愿影响机理研究

本文在零售顾客感知归类模型的基础上构建了顾客感知差异化对惠顾与溢价支付意愿影响机理的理论模型,并通过大规模调查,运用结构方程及回归分析对该模型进行检验.研究结果显示感知差异化与享乐性价值、功用性价值、店铺印象存在正相关关系,而享乐性价值、功用性价值、店铺印象与惠顾意愿、溢价支付意愿的关系受到场所依赖的部分中介作用.本文还发现在高顾客介入情境下,功用性价值对场所依赖的影响程度削弱,店铺印象对场所依赖的影响增强.     

Which are the determinants of green purchase behaviour? A study of Italian consumers

Green purchase behaviour is receiving a growing attention in the academic community, as understanding it is crucial for the growing number of companies developing and marketing green products. In order to provide a broader and novel picture of the phenomenon, this study extends the widely used Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) model in several ways, through a large survey of Italian consumers. First, three dimensions of green purchase behaviour are considered, namely, the willingness to pay a premium price, the green purchase frequency and the green purchase satisfaction. Second, several antecedents are considered simultaneously. Third, new (consumer creativity) or so far marginally studied (materialism and green practices) antecedents are included. Fourth, the mediating roles of green purchase satisfaction and willingness to pay a premium price in the link between the considered antecedents and the frequency of green purchase are investigated. Results show that the three dimensions of green purchase behaviour have different antecedents, so highlighting that green purchase behaviour is a multi-faceted phenomenon that should not be studied as a single general concept. Personal norms and value for money emerged to be very relevant predictors. The significant effects of creativity, materialism and green practices provide evidence that extending the TPB model with these three antecedents is useful to more deeply understand green purchase behaviour. Green purchase satisfaction is the strongest predictor of purchase frequency and mediates the effects of personal norms and value for money.     

Motivators and barriers to sustainable food consumption: Qualitative inquiry about organic food consumers in a developing nation

The present research attempts to qualitatively explore the motivators and barriers of organic food consumption in the Indian context. The data were collected using semistructured in‐depth interviews and analyzed using grounded theory. The theoretical sampling technique was used to interview 34 consumers who have purchased organic food in the past. The findings reported health consciousness, environmental consciousness, social identity, consumer ethnocentrism, and concern for farmers as the factors that motivate organic food purchase among consumers. The factors such as high prices of organic food, unavailability, trust issues, and limited marketing communications from the firms were identified as major barriers to organic food purchase and consumption. The study is one of the initial attempts to qualitatively explore the consumers' motivation for organic food consumption in the Indian context. The findings will help policymakers to devise suitable strategies so that they can effectively target the organic food choices by understanding the motivators/barriers, and promote the sustainable lifestyle in the society, as food consumption plays a crucial role in achieving environmental sustainability.     

Personalized Pricing and Quality Customization

We embed the principal–agent model in a model of spatial differentiation with correlated consumer preferences to investigate the competitive implications of personalized pricing and quality allocation (PPQ), whereby duopoly firms charge different prices and offer different qualities to different consumers, based on their willingness to pay. Our model sheds light on the equilibrium product-line pricing and quality schedules offered by firms, given that none, one, or both firms implement PPQ. The adoption of PPQ has three effects in our model: it enables firms to extract higher rents from loyal customers, intensifies price competition for nonloyal customers, and eliminates cannibalization from customer self-selection. Contrary to prior literature on one-to-one marketing and price discrimination, we show that even symmetric firms can avoid the well-known Prisoner's Dilemma problem when they engage in personalized pricing and quality customization. When both firms have PPQ, consumer surplus is nonmonotonic in valuations such that some low-valuation consumers get higher surplus than high-valuation consumers. The adoption of PPQ can reduce information asymmetry, and therefore sellers offer higher-quality products after the adoption of PPQ. Overall, we find that while the simultaneous adoption of PPQ generally improves total social welfare and firm profits, it decreases total consumer surplus.     

感知利益和感知风险对持续共享意愿的影响机制

以社会交换理论为基础,探讨了共享经济下多维度感知利益和多维度感知风险对消费者持续共享意愿影响机制的性别差异。研究表明:感知利益对消费者信任/持续共享意愿的正向影响显著,感知风险对消费者信任/持续共享意愿的负向影响显著,消费者信任在感知利益/感知风险与持续共享意愿之间发挥部分中介作用。同时,感知利益和感知风险对持续共享意愿的影响路径上表现出显著的性别差异。当前,我国共享平台企业应注重加强参与共享的利益宣传,通过完善制度机制提高消费者信任,减轻消费者的风险感知水平,同时应在运营和营销实践中关注性别差异,实行差异化运营管理和营销策略。     

A Strategic Approach to Software Protection*

This paper demonstrates that there is a strategic reason why software firms have followed consumers' desire to drop software protection. We analyze software protection policies in a price-setting duopoly software industry selling differentiated software packages, where consumers' preference for particular software is affected by the number of other consumers who (legally or illegally) use the same software. Increasing network effects make software more attractive to consumers, thereby enabling firms to raise prices. However, it also generates a competitive effect resulting from feircer competition for market shares. We show that when network effects are strong, unprotecting is an equilibrium for a noncooperative industry.     

Competing for Consumers with Self‐Control Problems

I examine strategic implications of competing for consumers with self‐control problems. For investment goods, like health clubs, I find that the equilibrium sign‐up (lump‐sum) fees decrease when competition intensifies, similarly to prices in standard oligopoly models. However, the equilibrium attendance (per‐unit) price increases due to firms' deteriorated ability to take advantage of consumers' self‐control problems. Moreover, firms earn less profit due to consumers' self‐control problems—the firms have a unilateral incentive to charge per‐unit fees lower than the marginal cost; however, they cannot make up the lost margins by increasing the lump‐sum fee, due to competition. I also show that for plausible parameter regions the market adjusts to consumers' self‐control problem in such a way that firms play the standard equilibrium strategies that they would have engaged in with fully rational consumers, with identical market outcomes. Most of the results are qualitatively the same for leisure goods (for example, credit cards); however, some results are reversed: the per‐unit fees are higher than marginal cost and decrease as competition intensifies.     

Understanding consumers' purchase intentions toward natural‐claimed products: A qualitative research in personal care products

In recent years there is a trend of consuming natural products for a sustainable and healthier life. Therefore, firms began aligning their strategy with sustainability by communication strategies that they produce natural products, which are better for health as well as the environmental sustainability. However, sometimes these claims may be deceptive. The purpose of this paper is to understand the consumers' purchasing intentions toward products claiming naturalness in their advertising and packaging strategies. This research also examined greenwashing perceptions and their potential roles in purchasing intentions. In‐depth face‐to‐face interviews carried out with 20 Turkish women regarding personal care products (local brand and international brand). The findings of the interviews revealed eight themes (perceived greenwashing, perceived green image, price perception, environmental concern, green trust, skepticism, perceived risk, and purchase intention). This study contributes to predict a framework from consumer viewpoint for identifying the themes related to greenwashing.     

Understanding sustainable consumption in an emerging country: The antecedents and consequences of the ecologically conscious consumer behavior model

For past few decades, consumers have lately started to adapt sustainable consumption in emerging countries. The increasing importance of sustainable consumption led the researchers to analyze green purchase and ecological behaviors. The aim of this study was to examine the antecedents of ecologically conscious consumer behavior model and show the relationships among ecologically conscious consumer behavior, green purchase conspicuous behavior, and green purchase intention based on the theory of planned behavior in an emerging country. Data were collected from 650 consumers in Turkey, one of the emerging countries, by using face‐to‐face survey technique and analyzed by factor analyses and structural equation modelling. In findings, environmental concern, altruism, and perceived consumer effectiveness were found as the antecedents of the model, and there were significant effects of ecologically conscious consumer behaviors on green purchase conspicuous behaviors and green purchase intentions.     

The extended theory of planned behavior in Turkish customers' intentions to visit green hotels

Over the last decade, many studies have started to focus on understanding customers' green purchase intentions since the increasing importance of environmental issues in the hotel industry. This study examined customers' intentions to visit green hotels by using the theory of planned behavior. Two constructs, environmentally friendly activities and overall image, were incorporated into the theory, and the extended theory of planned behavior model was tested. The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of the extended theory of planned behavior constructs (attitudes towards green hotels, subjective norms, perceived control, environmentally friendly activities, and overall image) on visit intentions and also to predict the effects of visit intentions on willingness to pay, satisfaction, and loyalty. Within this aim, the research model was formed to show the antecedents and consequences of intentions to visit green hotels. Data were collected by face‐to‐face survey technique, and 400 usable questionnaires were held from the customers in Izmir City, Turkey. In the findings, four of five constructs in the antecedents of intentions, except perceived control, were found as significant, and all three consequences of intentions were found as significant. The results of the study supported the usage of the extended theory of planned behavior in the context of green hotels. Theoretical contributions and discussions were explained lastly.     

What drives organic food consumption in Lebanon?

To increase the sparse knowledge about what drives organic food consumers in developing markets, Lebanese consumers' reasons and motives for buying organic food are studied in the framework of means‐end chain theory. A sample of N = 180 Lebanese consumers was interviewed in several retail outlets using a hard laddering questionnaire. The data were subjected to frequency analysis, cluster analysis, and structural equation modelling. Hierarchal value maps constructed from the laddering interviews revealed that “quality of life,” “pleasure,” and “peace of mind” are the main values driving organic food consumption in Lebanon. Frequent organic consumers displayed higher concern for their family's health and for the environment, whereas occasional organic consumers cared more about their own pleasure and were more likely to perceive organic food as a traditional and nostalgic product. Structural equation modelling revealed that “care for nature” and “care for children's health” significantly affect consumers' (self‐reported) purchasing behaviour. The found means‐end chains are a useful basis for marketing campaigns for organic food products in the Lebanese market. One focus of marketing campaigns should be raising consumers' awareness on the environmental benefits of organic production and the fact that it does not allow the use of harmful chemical products.     

Green consumer behaviour: an experimental analysis of willingness to pay for remanufactured products

Products' end‐of‐life management has recently become a critical business issue. One of the possible end‐of‐life strategies is remanufacturing, which can provide competitive advantages through material and energy savings. Beyond industrial organization challenges, there is a question about the interest of developing a green marketing strategy for remanufactured products. Indeed, remanufactured products can be considered as green products since their industrial process has environmental benefits. Our paper asks whether consumers are willing to pay for remanufactured products, especially when they are informed that these products are ‘green’. We use experimental auctions to elicit consumers' WTP for specific characteristics of remanufactured products. Our study indicates that consumers tend to value the remanufactured product less than the conventional one unless they are informed about their respective environmental impacts. We find no evidence that consumers are willing to pay a premium for the green (i.e. remanufactured) product. However, providing environmental information to consumers has an effect on their WTP for the conventional product: they generally decrease significantly their WTP for the conventional (and thus most polluting) product. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Sind positiv eingestellte Kunden generell bereit, mehr zu zahlen?

At first sight it appears plausible that customers who display more positive evaluative reactions to a company, which previously had sold goods to them (=?supplier-related attitudes [SRA] such as customer satisfaction or loyalty), generally should be willing to pay higher prices for additional offerings of this supplier than their counterparts with less positive SRA. However, sizes of the respective correlations reported in past empirical research diverge considerably. Therefore, two empirical studies were conducted to explore the extent to which eight socio-demographic and psychographic customer characteristics influence relationships between SRA and willingness to pay intentions in the sense that the characteristics systematically increase or decrease (moderate) the considered relationships. In a first study of 238 customers of power companies, four characteristics (age, female gender, household size, electricity bill) were found to significantly negatively moderate the relationship between customers’ attitude toward their electricity supplier and their price tolerance for “green electricity” and one characteristic (involvement) was detected to have a significant negative moderating influence. A second study of 319 mobile communication customers suggested that customers’ involvement and relationship length with their current mobile services supplier positively moderated the association between the customers’ attitude toward their supplier and willingness to pay for a packet offer of their mobile service provider, whereas female gender exerted a negative moderating influence. The results imply that companies should conduct analyses aiming at the identification of socio-demo- and psychographic moderators or customer segments with heterogeneous impacts of SRA on behavioral price intentions respectively as part of their marketing planning process.     

Electronic reverse auction configuration and its impact on buyer price and supplier perceptions of opportunism: A laboratory experiment

Buying organizations are increasingly using electronic reverse auctions (eRAs) to source from suppliers. However, recent quasi-experimental and field research has suggested that the use of this sourcing technique can create perceptions of opportunism among participating suppliers. Yet from the buyer's perspective, online reverse auctions can yield lower purchase prices. Given the many ways in which to configure on-line auctions, we extend existing research by using a laboratory experiment to investigate how different reverse auction configurations jointly influence bid price and suppliers’ perceptions of buyer opportunism.Our findings suggest that supplier bid prices decrease over time as they participate in more eRAs, regardless of the configuration of auction parameters. However, the combination of rank (versus price) visibility, high (versus low) supplier need to win a contract, and six (versus three) competitors was significantly more effective than other combinations of variables in immediately reducing bid prices. The data also indicated that when suppliers’ bids dropped substantially across auctions, their perceptions of opportunism increased. Notably, auction parameter combinations such as price visibility, three competitors, and low need for the contract yielded comparably low bids by the third auction, without any increases in perceived buyer opportunism.