The role of warehouse club membership fee in retail competition

There are several explanations as to why warehouse clubs charge membership fees and how the fees play a role in the competitive landscape of the retail grocery market. We provide another insight into the nature of the membership fee using a model of price competition between a warehouse club and a supermarket. We show that the warehouse club's membership fee is an optimal competitive reaction to the supermarket's promotional activity. The more frequent the promotion is, the lower is the membership fee. However, the larger the promotion depth is, the higher is the fee. We show that the cherry-picker segment plays a key role behind these results. Our analysis not only provides a justification of warehouse club membership fees by discovering its duality with the cherry-picker segment but also gives managers several guidelines on yearly fee and retail price decisions.     

The Effect of Online Shopping Platform Strategies on Search,Display, and Membership Revenues

Most online shopping platform firms generate revenue from three sources: pay-per-click search advertising, pay-per-impression display advertising, and membership fees. The strategies that influence these revenue sources typically are studied individually, rather than in a holistic fashion. In response, this study uses time-series data with 18 million buyers and sellers from 2010 to 2011 and undertakes a quasi-experiment to analyze how the distinct effects of buyer- and seller-side strategies on revenues (1) vary across all three revenue sources and (2) depend differentially on a platform’s upmarket repositioning strategy. The results show that buyers that purchase through direct traffic (e.g., typing in the site address) yield more display advertising and membership fee revenues than those gained through organic traffic (e.g., landing from a search engine). Engagement strategies that appeal to established sellers (i.e., value-added services) yield more search advertising and membership revenue than those that appeal to new sellers (i.e., social forums). An upmarket repositioning strategy (i.e., eliminating low quality sellers) enhances the revenue effects of buyer traffic generation and seller engagement strategies. Post hoc analyses suggest that a 1% increase in direct traffic generates an additional $151,506 in display advertising revenue after (vs. before) the repositioning.     

An Analysis of Factors Influencing Membership Retention at a Children’s Museum

Membership fees are an important source of sustained revenue for not-for-profit organizations. Moreover, these membership programs facilitate loyalty to the organization and provide certainty to a percentage of revenue intake. In this study, we examine how frequency of visits, satisfaction with membership programs, length of membership, age, average household income, and driving time affect membership retention in a children’s museum. Findings indicate that all of the factors above influence membership renewal intention. We summarize this study with recommendations for both member recruitment and retention for not-for-profit organizations that utilize membership programs.     

我国审计收费现状及改进

会计师事务所作为营利性机构,与被审计单位有着客户与商家的关系,这导致审计收费不可避免的成为事务所生存的主要来源、相互竞争、争揽买卖的重要手段。审计收费的合理与否不仅影响事务所的生存发展,还影响该行业在社会上的地位和形象以及社会经济的稳定程度,所以研究审计收费有着重大的理论意义和现实意义。     

Loyalty Formation for Different Customer Journey Segments

The proliferation of new touchpoints empowers today’s customers to design their own journey from search to purchase. To address this new complexity, we segment customers by their use of specific touchpoints in the customer journey, investigate the association of several covariates with segment membership, consider the rise of mobile devices as potential “game changers” of existing segments, and explore how the relationships among product satisfaction, journey satisfaction, customer inspiration, and customer loyalty differ across segments. Based on anticipated utility theory and using latent class analyses on large-scale data from two samples of 2,443 and 2,649 journeys, we identify five time-consistent segments―store-focused shoppers, pragmatic online shoppers, extensive online shoppers, multiple touchpoint shoppers, and online-to-offline shoppers―that differ considerably in their touchpoint and mobile device usage, their segment-specific covariates, and their search and purchase patterns. The five segments remain unchanged in the two data sets even though the usage of mobile devices has increased substantially. Furthermore, we find that the relationships between various loyalty antecedents and customer loyalty differ between the segments. The insights from this paper help retailers develop segment-specific customer journey strategies.     

Reward redemption effects in a loyalty program when customers choose how much and when to redeem

The redemption of loyalty program (LP) rewards has an important impact on LP members' behavior, particularly on purchase behavior before and after redeeming a reward. However, little is known about the interplay between members' purchase and redemption behavior when members are not pressured with point expiration and they choose for themselves when and how much to redeem. In this context, the effects of redemption are not straightforward, as little additional effort is required from an LP member to obtain the reward. Analyzing the behavior of 3094 members in such an LP, we find that the mere decision to redeem a reward significantly enhances purchase behavior before and after the redemption event, even when members redeem just a fraction of their accumulated points. Conceptually, we refer to this enhancement as the redemption momentum, which is an alternative and novel explanation of the existence of pre-reward effects that do not depend on points-pressure. In addition to the overall impact of redemption on purchases, prior purchase behavior also enhances redemption decisions. Finally, we find a number of moderating effects on purchase and redemption behavior that derive from the length of LP membership, age, income and direct mailings. Our study's most important managerial implication is that firms should avoid imposing point expiry and/or binding thresholds in order to enhance members' purchase behavior.     

Sport sponsorship,team support and purchase intentions

This research assessed the influence of team support and perception of sponsors on the purchase intentions of sport consumers. In a case study of a not‐for‐profit, membership‐based Australian professional football club, 1647 respondents reported their perceptions of team support, sponsor integrity and purchase intentions for the sponsor's products. Results revealed that the key pathway to purchase intention is associated with fan passion and a perception of sponsor integrity. This implies that the best mechanism for sponsor return on investment comes in the form of activities to bolster both passion for the team and perceptions of sponsor integrity.     

菜价之殇

一头是菜贱伤农,一头是菜贵伤民,在这一流通怪圈中,谁是真正的赢家?何时出手?何时放手?考验着各方智慧及政府决策的执行力……     

道德关联品牌负面曝光事件溢出效应实证研究——事件类型与认知需求的交互作用

文章研究界定了产品性能型、公司道德型和道德引致产品性能型三类品牌负面曝光事件,引入消费者认知需求,运用自然实验法研究道德关联的两类品牌负面曝光事件对品类和竞争品牌溢出效应的差异性。研究结果显示对低认知需求者,道德引致产品性能型负面曝光事件对品类态度和竞争品牌购买意愿的负面溢出效应强于公司道德型事件;对高认知需求者,两类事件溢出效应没有显著差异;道德引致产品性能型负面曝光事件对低认知需求者品类和竞争品牌评价的影响大于高认知需求者,而公司道德型负面事件溢出对不同认知需求水平消费者的影响无显著差异。     

Customer happiness as a function of perceived loyalty program benefits - A quantile regression approach

Customers consider pursuit of happiness to be fundamental to their purchase experiences; thus, companies are increasingly looking for opportunities to bring happiness to customers especially in their consumption activity. The current study undertakes analysis of effect of perceived benefits of loyalty programs and customer satisfaction on customer happiness/purchase enjoyment if he/she has loyalty program membership. Empirical study with 407 participants found that Discovery and Entertainment Benefit (DEB) and Satisfaction Derived (SD) have an effect on customer happiness/purchase enjoyment while being a loyalty program member. Quantile regression analysis was used to analyze if independent variables have a differential effect on different levels of the dependent variable i.e. customer happiness/purchase enjoyment from use of loyalty programs. Since DEB and SD were found to be positively significant in influencing customer happiness/purchase enjoyment, companies should focus on balancing these aspects of customers’ consumption experience.     

Modelling real-time online information needs: A new research approach for complex consumer behaviour

Abstract

A major challenge for online vendor website operations is serving information that meets visitor needs at a given point in their purchase process. The problem arises from the complexity of human behaviour, as well as changing needs with the evolution of consumer knowledge and skills through the purchase process. The most difficult element, however, is determining the effects of information provided on the site, as well as from other sources that the consumer may access, and anticipating resulting consumer needs. This paper discusses the contributions and limitations of current modelling techniques and utility studies of online consumer information to model consumer needs in real time. An alternative basis for real-time customer need appraisal is proposed using clickstream and customer input data combined with online information utility to enable more effective information serving. This requires further academic research and changes in practitioner online marketing operations.     

A membership pricing policy to facilitate service scale-expansion

This paper proposes a multi-year membership pricing policy for a service business like a gym chain. In the pricing policy, the equivalent membership price per year is relatively low to attract customers, and the multi-year membership fees must be prepaid in full. The prepaid cash provides resources for scale-expansion by opening new stores. We develop a nonlinear mixed integer programming model to formulate the pricing decisions. Numerical experiments reveal that the multi-year membership pricing policy, from a long-term perspective, is substantially better than the business-as-usual pricing policy (1-year membership) in cash balance, profit, and market share. Yet, the performances of the two pricing policies do not differ much from a short-term perspective. These findings indicate that the multi-year pricing policy may be a good strategy, because it initially attracts less attention of competitors; suddenly it emerges and substantially outperforms its competitors in cash balance, profit, and market share.     

Patterns of inter-organizational purchasing: Evolution of consortia-based purchasing amongst GP fundholders

In the last few years there have been considerable changes in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. Arguably the most significant of these has been the introduction of competition into health care with the split of the health service into purchasers and providers of care. Central to this development has been the introduction of General Practice fundholding, whereby practices purchase health care for their patients directly from competing suppliers. Those practices that have become fundholders have faced considerable challenges in developing their purchasing function given the complexities of contracting within the context of the NHS internal market. Although one of the original aims of GP fundholding was to facilitate locally responsive purchasing, such have been the complexities of contracting that many fundholding practices have attempted to reduce the managerial demands of purchasing through membership of purchasing consortia. Based on an in-depth study of GP fundholders across Scotland, this paper explores the development of consortia-based purchasing in terms of the managerial implications for the participant practices of purchasing through such inter-organizational networks.     

Membership Benefits,Membership Action: Why Incentives for Activism Are What Members Want

SUMMARY

This article identifies the benefits of political party membership and which of these benefits also operate as incentives for participation. This exploration is conducted in the context of competing relationship marketing hypotheses, and frameworks from other relevant academic disciplines.

Exploratory empirical research identifies two purposive and three solidary benefits of membership. Values functional motivations, socialization and job satisfaction are identified as having statistically significant relationships with participation. Frequency of agreement with party policies and enhancement functional motivations do not appear to have any relationship with participation.

The article concludes that members using their membership as a vehicle for realizing solidary benefits are more likely to respond to incentives for participation, whilst those merely seeking a relationship with their party are more likely be inactive.     

The effects of product scarcity and consumers' need for uniqueness on purchase intention

Scarcity strategies are employed by marketers to influence consumer decision making. Many famous brands have been designed and produced for the purpose of as being marketed as limited‐edition products to intensify consumer desire and intention to purchase them. However, very few studies have simultaneously integrated relevant constructs to explain the phenomenon of scarcity purchasing. To fill this void, this study develops a comprehensive research model in order to fully understand how scarcity affects consumer value perception and purchase intention. Simultaneously, two competing models are developed to compare the explanation power of Lynn's Scarcity–Expensiveness–Desirability (S‐E‐D) model and Synde and Fromkin's desire for uniqueness model. The results suggest that the effects of scarcity on purchase intention through perceived uniqueness, perceived sacrifice and perceived value are stronger than the scarcity effects through assumed expensiveness, perceived quality, perceived sacrifice and perceived value.     

Online Purchase Paths and Conversion Dynamics across Multiple Websites

Low transportation costs online allow shoppers to visit multiple e-commerce sites for a purchase decision. This research investigates online shoppers’ visit and purchase behaviors across competing websites. To consider that shoppers’ longitudinal cross-site visit data may consist of several unobserved shopping episodes, we propose a modeling approach to probabilistically clustering and relating online visits to latent shopping episodes, based on the temporal patterns of the visit events. The inferences are then used to examine shoppers’ visit-to-purchase behavior across websites. Using Internet clickstream data on individual-level browsing and transaction records at major air travel sites, we find that online shoppers’ cross-site visit patterns tend to be clustered and the purchase propensity is significantly higher at later visits within a visit cluster, compared to earlier visits. As our results suggest the possibility that visit clusters can serve as a reasonable proxy for shopping episodes, we look further into shoppers’ website choice and purchase behaviors within a cluster. We discuss how the cluster-based analysis can help managers tailor online marketing and advertising strategies based on shoppers’ cross-site visit and purchase patterns.     

Market segmentation: A comparison of benefits/attributes desired and brand preference

Benefits/attributes desired is commonly considered the most strategically meaningful market segmentation base. However, in practice, problems in product benefit/attribute specification and data collection are frequently observed. This research compares the performance of benefits/attributes desired and brand preference (a competing segmentation base that provides similar information but is more closely related to purchase behavior) on the criteria of segment identification, brand purchase, and responsiveness to marketing mix elements. Results suggest that brand preference segmentation produces more interpretable and managerially useful segmentation results than benefits/attributes desired. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Indian Consumers' Value-Based New Food Product Adoption

In response to increased attention toward Indian markets in general and food markets specifically, multinational companies need to accurately identify the attitudinal and product attribute factors that impact new food product adoption among Indian consumers. Applying integrated decision utility theories, we examined the influence of product familiarity on value-based product purchase decisions and intentions. The results indicate that expected value, perceived value, and purchase intentions are influenced by familiarity; only expected value influences purchase intentions. Marketing implications are also discussed.     

“Green cannibalism” or an “organic inside job”? Empirical insights into the rivalry of ethical grocery types

Despite having favorable purchase intentions toward organic groceries, the respective purchase behavior falls often short. This so‐called intention–behavior gap is investigated by exploring the impact of competing ethical products fulfilling green consumption motives (“green fit”) as well or lacking credibility of organic groceries on organic purchase behavior. The first two studies (n ₁ = 225; n ₂ = 321) assessing actual and reported purchase behavior are testing the impact of perceived substitutability of local and fair trade alternatives compared with organic groceries. A third study ( n ₃ = 145) examines the impact of food miles and packaging on perceived product quality and credibility as possible reasons for a lacking “green fit” of organic groceries in terms of an experimental design. Local (fair trade) and organic groceries are perceived as substitute (complementary) alternatives. Additionally, local (organic) “green fit” impedes (enhances) the transformation from organic intentions into a respective purchase behavior. Wrapped organic produces with high food miles are linked to lower quality and credibility perceptions, reducing organic sales rates in favor of local groceries.