Creation of consumer loyalty and trust in the retailer through store brands: The moderating effect of choice of store brand name

Within the current economic context, store brands play an important role in differentiation strategies based on assortment and positioning in terms of distributor prices. To begin with, this study identifies three determining aspects of retail loyalty and trust: satisfaction with price levels, the perceived image of the assortment and loyalty to the store brands (SB). Secondly, this study proposes a theoretical relational model among the aforementioned aspects. Finally, this study analyzes the moderating role that the strategy of choosing SB name (umbrella brand label vs. brands different from the label brand) plays in the relationship between loyalty to SB and loyalty to and trust in the retailer. By including this moderating variable, we seek to contribute to current academic research and to provide insights into the importance that SB strategy (label vs. own name) has for the effect of loyalty to SB on the relative results of the retail company. Our research results show that making the umbrella SB name the same as the label brand name increases the positive effect of customer loyalty to SB on loyalty to the retailer, but not the effect of trust on this loyalty compared to chains that use SB names different from those of the label. These results have important implications for management.     

The quest for consumer engagement via cause-related marketing: A mixed method study in an emerging economy

The present study attempts to understand the concept of consumer engagement (CE) in Cause-related Marketing (CRM) context. Utilizing a simultaneous qual + qual mixed method research approach; the authors have attempted to consider two research questions: (1) how online retail organizations operating in India are framing CRM campaigns for enhancing consumer engagement, and (2) what are the factors that motivate consumers to engage with CRM initiatives of online retailers. Integrating the findings of the study with the ‘Hierarchy of Engagement Model’ provided by Grewal et al. (2017b), the authors have proposed a conceptual model of CE in CRM context. Further, the study provides implications for both academics and marketing practitioners.     

The role of mobile value and trust as drivers of purchase intentions in m-servicescape

Building on the premises of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), this study introduces the concept of mobile servicescape (m-servicescape) and explores the drivers of purchase intentions in the mobile service environment. Data were collected from a sample of 284 service mobile users and analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results show that the dimensions of m-servicescape (i.e., aesthetic appeal, perceived security, and layout and functionality) generate mobile value (i.e., hedonic and utilitarian), which in turn, leads to user purchase intentions. Utilitarian value was found to have a higher effect on purchase intentions than hedonic value and trust was found to enhance this effect. We highlight theoretical contributions and offer managerial insight for mobile marketers and designers on the specificities of consumer behavior in the service mobile environment.     

The role of trust and privacy concerns in using social media for e-retail services: The moderating role of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the customers habits of purchasing as well as shopping behaviours. This study seeks to develop an integrated model of the critical role of trust and privacy concerns in influencing consumers purchase behaviour through social media. It also explored the moderating role of COVID-19 on these relationships. Quantitative data were collected using survey strategy through questionnaires to address different levels of the study. Our proposed model was tested with 1,200 consumers, 600 prior to COVID-19 and 600 during COVID-19. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling was conducted to assess the hypotheses. The findings revealed that purchase intention depends on trust and privacy concerns. Information quality, security concerns, ease of use, privacy/security assurance seal, and disposition to third party certification are the main drivers of trust and privacy concerns. Furthermore, our proposed model during COVID-19 period has higher explanator power (R2 = 0.741) than before COVID-19 period (R2 = 0.603 and consumers buying behaviour has been increased during COVID-19. The results offer important implications for retailers and are likely to stimulate further research in the area of purchase behaviour through social media.     

The role of country-of-origin,ethnocentrism and animosity in promoting consumer trust. The moderating role of familiarity

The objective of this study is to present empirical evidence on the extent to which socio-psychological variables (ethnocentrism and animosity) and the reputation of firms associated to a country-of-origin (COO) are related to an important relational exchange factor (trust). Furthermore, the study tests the moderating effects of familiarity. Data were collected from 202 automobile owners in a large Spanish region. Path and multi-group analyses were performed using a structural equation modelling approach. This paper investigates the effects of reputation of firms associated to a COO and animosity on trust, which have not been commonly used as a dependent variable of these concepts before. Moreover, this study explores the moderating role of familiarity. This study supports the view that reputation of firms associated to a COO can safeguard international transactions and create trust in foreign firms, and thus may decrease due to interrelated emotional consumer reactions such as animosity and ethnocentrism.     

Value co-creation and employee service behaviours: The moderating role of trust in employee - hotel relationship

Value co-creation (VC) is generally considered as having mutually beneficial implications for all actors involved. Nonetheless, emerging evidence on value co-destruction and its consequences on the wellbeing of co-creating actors implies that narrowing down on specific fallouts of this process is needed for managerial interventions. This paper contributes to the value-co-creation literature by exploring the relationship between customer participation in VC on some difficult to detect employee service behaviors: workaholism and fear-based silence. The extent to which employee trust (TRS) in employee – hotel relationship moderates these relations is assessed. While the findings from 422 frontline employee-customer data within luxury hotels in Ghana support a negative effect of VC on fear-based silence and workaholism, TRS buffered these effects. We recommend that VC in service failure and recovery be approached with tact, compassion, and forgiveness.     

Checkout button and online consumer impulse-buying behavior in social commerce: A trust transfer perspective

To enhance social media users' shopping experiences, social media platforms launched an online shopping feature – the checkout button –allowing users to browse new products, examine items via multiple photos and videos, and purchase items without leaving the platform. Yet, few studies have examined the impacts of the ‘checkout button’ on social commerce users' perceptions and impulse-buying behaviors. Thus, this study seeks to investigate the impact of the ‘checkout button’ on consumers' trust and impulse-buying behavior based on the trust transfer theory, as well as how the impact will differ based on social factors and brand familiarity in social commerce. This study provides valuable insights into social commerce. Checkout within Instagram does not facilitate impulse-buying behavior, but brand familiarity and social factors influence consumer trust and impulse-buying intention. This indicates that well-known brands might be more suitable for social commerce. Furthermore, active social interaction is conducive to impulse-buying intentions in social commerce.     

The effects of framing messages and cause-related marketing on backing intentions in reward-based crowdfunding

This study explores the main and interaction effects of framing messages and cause-related marketing on backing intentions by manipulating frame types, frame valences, and cause-related marketing in the message narratives of crowdfunding projects. We conduct an online experiment for a crowdfunding campaign and analyze data using independent-samples t-test and ANOVA. This study's findings show that negative messages lead to higher backing intentions than positive ones regarding attribute and goal framing messages. Narratives with cause-related marketing in crowdfunding projects had a more significant effect on increasing backing intentions than those without cause-related marketing. Positive attribute framing messages combined with cause-related marketing had significantly higher backing intentions than messages without cause-related marketing; for negative attribute framing, there was no significant difference between with and without cause-related marketing. This study theoretically advances the literature on reward-based crowdfunding, which provides scholars with insight into the effects of the written narrative design of crowdfunding projects on backing intentions and extends to the applications of framing effect theory and cause-related marketing. Practically, this study provides project initiators and crowdfunding platform operators with new perspectives on proposal copywriting content design and project operation.     

The role of the Internet in physician-patient relationships: The issue of trust

The Internet has proven to be a powerful and very popular vehicle for distributing health information to millions of individuals; it is interactive, user-controlled, and provides an effective means for communicating detailed information. While there has been increasing use of the Internet in healthcare, little research has been conducted to examine what, if any, impact the availability and integrity of healthcare information on the Internet has on the physician-patient relationship. Importantly, several studies show that Web-based health information frequently contains inaccurate or incomplete information. Patients who retain such information go so far as to suggest approaches to their physicians and express disappointment when the physicians refuse to prescribe as expected. For their part, doctors are concerned about the physician-patient relationship when they have to explain to patients that their Internet-based information is less than accurate; consequently, the physician-patient relationship is often affected. While many issues bear upon the physician-patient relationship, the central one is trust. This article examines consumer use of the Internet for healthcare information, considers the problems caused by inaccuracies or omissions from third party websites, and sets forth recommendations regarding how the Internet can be used to improve the physician-patient relationship. It is hoped that these suggestions provide a better understanding of the required components of upcoming healthcare strategies.     

The critical role of trust in obtaining retailer support for a supplier’s strategic organizational change

It is well established in the marketing literature that the bond of trust is a cornerstone of interorganizational relationships. However, trust is considered to be context-specific, as it is difficult to endow on new relationships. We argue that the existing trust between organizations not only survives tough and shifting times, but also helps steer those organizations through such trying periods. We investigated a context where a major change was instituted in a cooperative marketing channel. Here, the supplier (the focal channel member) had to convince the other channel members (the retailers) about the impending merger, which may or may not bring benefits to all. We empirically show the existing trust in the supplier was a major determinant of the support for the merger and inducing the post-merger trust in and commitment to the changed supplier.     

Institutional trust and repurchase intention in the sharing economy: The moderating roles of information privacy concerns and security concerns

The sharing economy has accumulated a great number of experienced users, which makes repurchase behaviors a major concern. This research concentrates on two types of institutional trust, namely, trust in the platform and trust in the community of providers, and their various effects in shaping repurchase intention under different conditions specified by the innate human perception of risks. Drawing upon the privacy calculus model, we identify two types of risk-related perceptions, i.e., information privacy concerns and security concerns, as the primary situational factors for trust to take effect. We then propose a model to illustrate how these two types of trust operate under the boundary conditions specified by information privacy concerns and security concerns. Our findings based on experienced users of sharing accommodation platforms in China suggest that both types of institutional trust can promote repurchase intention, and their effects are moderated by both information privacy concerns and security concerns to varying extents. In doing so, our study contributes to the existing studies by confirming the essential role of institutional trust in driving repurchase behaviors and by adding a new understanding of institutional trust in platform-based businesses such as the sharing economy.     

Consumer purchase intentions for green products: Mediating role of WTP and moderating effects of framing

This research examines the role of consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) in the purchase decision process for a green product and investigates the moderating effects of two types of framing: price and ecological message claim. Using an experimental design, 262 participants were assigned randomly to one of nine conditions (3 price × 3 ecological message frames). The results reveal a mediating effect of WTP on the relationship between consumers' perceptions and purchase intentions. Furthermore, a price framed in aggregate terms reinforces the positive effect of WTP on purchase intention. The mere presence of an ecological message claim also enhances the relation between WTP and purchase intentions. This research proposes ways marketers can promote their green products. The results encourage the use of ecological messages and frames of prices in an aggregate form to enhance consumers' purchase intentions through WTP.     

Perceived organizational justice, trust, and OCB: A study of Chinese workers in joint ventures and state-owned enterprises

We examine the relationships among perceived organizational justice, trust, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of workers in joint ventures (JVs) and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China. We hypothesize different dimensions of organizational justice are related to trust in organization and trust in supervisor, which will in turn affect workers’ OCB. Some of these relationships are hypothesized to be different in SOEs and JVs owing to the differences in management practices and employment relationships between them. Our hypotheses are tested on data collected from 295 supervisor–subordinate dyads in a JV and 253 such dyads in an SOE. The analyses reveal that (1) the positive effect of distributive justice on trust in organization is stronger in JVs than in SOEs, (2) the positive effect of procedure justice on trust on organization is stronger in SOEs than in JVs, (3) the effect of interaction justice on trust in supervisor is similar for both types of organization; (4) trust in organization affects OCB in both SOEs and JVs, and (5) trust in supervisor affects OCB in JVs only.     

Interactive music for multisensory e-commerce: The moderating role of online consumer involvement in experiential value,cognitive value,and purchase intention

Background music adds a multisensory element to marketing and e-commerce. Applying interactive sensory-enabling technologies (SETs) to online shopping websites is an area of interest in sensory marketing. This research examines interactive background music in e-commerce and investigates how online consumer involvement moderates the effects of interactive music. Single-factor experiments with three conditions (interactive music, static background music, and control) were conducted to investigate its impact on experiential value, cognitive value, and purchase intention of high- and low-involvement consumers among both students (Study 1, N = 251) and nonstudent samples (Study 2, N = 218). Different music genres were applied to stimuli of the two studies to demonstrate the generalizability of the findings. Results find that interactive music enhances the experiential value of e-commerce for low-involvement consumers. By contrast, high-involvement consumers show greater purchase intention under the interactive music condition due to a heightened level of perceived cognitive value. Involvement is an effective predictor of elaboration and purchase intention under the interactive music condition, but not under the other two conditions. The contribution is twofold: (a) it shows the impact of music as an interactive SET and, (b) demonstrates the moderating role of consumer involvement in the context of multisensory integration in e-commerce. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed along with limitations and directions for future research.     

The antecedents and consequences of a market orientation: the moderating role of organisational life cycles

Abstract

There is widespread agreement in the marketing literature that newly founded and established mature companies have different perspectives on marketing. However, there is little comparative research in this respect. Therefore, the current research compares the antecedents and effects of a market orientation (MO) – as one major construct in marketing research – across organisational life-cycle stages, thereby integrating organisational life-cycle theory into MO research. Our hypotheses are based on the information-processing model of Tushman and Nadler (1978 Tushman, M. and Nadler, D. 1978. Information processing as an integrating concept in organizational design. The Academy of Management Review, 3(3): 613–624. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). In order to test these hypotheses, we conduct a survey-based empirical study of 252 new high-tech ventures. Our results show that the organisational life-cycle stage does indeed exert a moderating influence on the links between MO and its antecedents, and performance consequences. The implications for the market literature are discussed in detail. A map of possible future research topics is derived.     

The influence of eco-label knowledge and trust on pro-environmental consumer behaviour in an emerging market

Consumers are increasingly concerned about the negative environmental implications of purchasing goods, which in turn shape their behaviour. Yet, there are indications that consumers do not always act on these concerns, causing an attitude–behaviour gap. For consumers to make ecologically responsible purchases, they need relevant product environmental information. Therefore, marketers and firms are increasingly integrating more detailed environmental information in their offerings, including eco-labels with externally validated information. This study integrates consumers’ knowledge and trust in eco-labels with their environmental knowledge to determine how these affect pro-environmental consumer behaviour (PECB). The findings suggest environmental and eco-label knowledge is positively associated with attitudes towards the environment, and that positive environmental attitudes and trust in eco-labels affect PECB. This implies that firms, policy-makers and accreditation organisations (i.e. labelling) can educate consumers about eco-labels and the environment to increase PECB. Such strategies will also build consumer knowledge and trust in eco-labels, necessary for facilitating PECB.     

The role of trust in the relationship between consumers,producers and retailers of organic food: A sector-based approach

Given current environmental concerns, the organic food market is an important issue in terms of sustainability. The consolidation of this market is based on trust. Many consumers rely on partial information to assess the quality of organic food and cannot determine its authenticity with certainty. They are led to trust the actors of the organic food chain and the government. In addition, numerous industrial and sanitary scandals have highlighted the need for the actors of the sector to establish relationships based on trust and transparency in order to guarantee the traceability of products and to protect the health of consumers. This research examines the impact of trust and confidence in producers and retailers on the intention to purchase organic food. To address this research issue, we conducted an online questionnaire survey of 316 organic food consumers in France. The results show the central role of quality as a strategy for building and maintaining trust with producers and retailers. They show for the first time the positive impact of trust in producers on trust in retailers. The results of this research allow us to provide advice to growers and retailers to maintain trust and promote purchase intent.     

The four levels of loyalty and the pivotal role of trust: a study of online service dynamics

A four-dimension scale of loyalty that reflects Oliver’s [Satisfaction, a Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1997] conceptualization of a sequential loyalty chain is proposed, operationalized, and tested. Further, through both synthesizing and building on existing research into loyalty, trust, satisfaction, value, and service quality, a framework is proposed and tested that positions trust as a pivotal driver of loyalty. Data is collected and analyzed from two surveys of online customers, the first being purchasers of books and the second being a study of online flight purchasing. Analysis suggests that the hypothesized cognitive-affective-conative-action loyalty sequence is statistically most likely out of all possible variations. Although some differences emerge in the two studies, structural modeling largely supports the hypothesized framework and positions trust as central to service dynamics.     

A CSR perspective to foster employee creativity in the banking sector: The role of work engagement and psychological safety

The entire service sector has acknowledged the importance of employee creativity. However, the underlying mechanism due to which employees are engaged in creativity has been relatively unexplored. Moreover, where the banking service sector in advanced countries has realized the potential role of employee creativity for a bank's success, the same was not fully realized in the context of a developing country, especially in Pakistan. Against this backdrop, the current study is an effort to explore the underlying mechanism of employee creativity as an outcome of corporate social responsibility (CSR) with the mediating effects of work engagement (WE) and psychological safety (PS) in the banking sector of Pakistan. Data were collected (n = 483) from banking employees through a self-administered questionnaire, which used the paper and pencil method. The hypotheses of the current survey were validated by employing structural equation modeling (SEM) in AMOS software. The results confirmed that employee creativity, as an outcome of CSR, was significantly influenced by the CSR orientation of a bank. Furthermore, PS and WE produced a significant mediation effect (41%) between the relationship of CSR and employee creativity. The findings of the current study are helpful to the banking sector of Pakistan in understanding the CSR-employee creativity mechanism, which is of utmost importance from the standpoint of competition.     

The role of perceived control and gender in consumer reactions to download delays

An empirical study finds that perceived control strongly mediates the effects of perceived speed of a Web site download on consumers' attitudes and intentions to use the Web site. Moreover, results show that men are more likely to react positively to the perceived speed of a Web site download, whereas women are more likely to base their reactions on perceptions of control in the context of download delays. In contrast to past online research, the gender differences are intrinsic in two ways—they are context independent, and they are not caused by length of Internet experience, extent of Internet usage, or type of Internet connections.