Image transfer from malls to stores and its influence on shopping values and mall patronage: The role of self-congruity

Little research attention has been paid to the image transference from a shopping mall to its stores. The study reported in this article proposes an integrative model dealing with the image transference phenomenon from malls to stores and its implications in terms of creating value for shoppers and enticing mall patronage. Structural equation modeling is applied to data collected from shoppers in two urban North-Amercian shopping malls. The findings are broadly supportive of the proposed model. Mall image spills over the image of the stores located in the mall, and this occurs through a shopper's self-congruity mechanism. Furthermore, the mall's image dimensions influence hedonic shopping value through self-congruity. The stores’ image dimensions differentially influence utilitarian and hedonic shopping values assessments. Both types of shopping values are strong drivers of mall patronage. The study also discusses the implications of the findings as well as its limitations and directions for future research.     

The effects of mall personality and fashion orientation on shopping value and mall patronage intension

It is imperative for mall operators in China to gain insights into consumer shopping behaviours that will allow them to further develop their mall personalities, in order to better differentiate themselves from the competition. The overarching objective of the present study was two-fold: to increase our understanding about contemporary Chinese shoppers; and to examine the relationships among mall personality, fashion orientation, shopping value and mall patronage intention. This study presents the results of a research survey conducted in Wuhan, China. Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS SEM) was used to analyze the survey responses from 324 shopping mall patrons. The findings indicate that consumers' fashion orientation has a significant influence based on their perception of the shopping mall personality. The path model analysis revealed that consumers' perception of shopping value had the strongest effect on their shopping intentions at the mall.     

Managing E-commerce Platform Quality and its Performance Implication: A Multiple-Group Structural Model Comparison

This study develops a comprehensive e-service quality measure of e-commerce platforms as intermediaries, which considers both the functionality of the website itself and the performance assessment of independent sellers. The study further investigates the joint impacts of both the attributes of e-commerce platforms and the performance of independent sellers on users’ online shopping experience: perceived online transaction value and the ensuing satisfaction. Finally, the study examines the effects of e-service quality on the outcome variables across two major e-commerce platforms as intermediaries, eBay and Amazon. The multiple-group structural model analysis provides important insights to understanding differing impacts of different quality components on shopping experiences across various online marketplaces. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Why Do Consumers Go Internet Shopping Again? Understanding the Antecedents of Repurchase Intention

Consumer intention of reusing online websites for shopping is a major consequence for an electronic commerce company's profitability. Therefore, understanding the factors that influence online customers' repurchase intentions is of great importance to the EC companies. Drawing on specific dimensions of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), Information Systems continuance model, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and empirical findings from prior studies as antecedents, the related factors were adapted and integrated within the context of Internet shopping repurchase intentions and were tested in a field study. Empirical data for hypotheses testing were collected from the online virtual store of 7-ELEVEN in Taiwan, yielding 444 valid samples. The results show that online consumer repurchase intention is determined by satisfaction, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and Internet shopping self-efficacy. Satisfaction is influenced by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, confirmation, and positive Internet shopping experience. Perceived usefulness, in turn, is influenced by behavior modeling, positive Internet shopping experience, Internet shopping self-efficacy, and confirmation. Confirmation is affected by positive Internet shopping experience and behavior modeling. In addition, confirmation has significant effects on perceived ease of use. Finally, positive Internet shopping experience appeared to have a significant impact on Internet shopping self-efficacy. From the empirical data, meaningful findings and conclusions are derived, and suggestions for future research are also discussed.     

The role of the brand in driving online loyalty for multichannel retailers

Multichannel retailers offer shoppers the possibility to cross channels to complete their shopping process. Multichannel retailers, unlike pure online sellers, offer shoppers multiple contact points to experience the brand. Also, multichannel retailers can leverage the trust and attachment to their brands that has been built with their offline presence to drive customers to buy online. Our paper explores the role of the customer relationship with the brand, with variables such as brand trust, brand attachment and length of brand relationship, as drivers of loyal behaviours towards the online channel. We compare the impact of these variables with those of the technology acceptance model. Multiple linear regression analysis is applied to data collected through a survey answered by 1533 multichannel retail shoppers in two product categories (apparel and consumer electronics) in two countries (UK and Spain). Our findings show that both brand trust and brand attachment have a positive impact on loyal behaviours towards the online channel, and that different loyalty behaviours, i.e. purchase intentions, word of mouth and electronic word of mouth are explained by different variables.     

Effects of store loyalty on shopping mall loyalty

The key purpose of this paper is to bridge a research gap in shopping mall literature by investigating the relationship between store loyalty and shopping mall loyalty. The paper also examines the effects of perceived store value and store relationship commitment on store loyalty en-route to loyalty towards the shopping mall hosting the stores. The study shows that store loyalty influences shopping mall loyalty under certain conditions and that such an influence is moderated by the geographic distance between the consumer and the shopping mall. Further, the study found that distance has a moderating effect on the relationship between perceived store value and store loyalty, but not on the association between relationship commitment and store loyalty. The insights provided by this study offer academics, retailers and shopping mall managers a richer understanding of the relationships between store loyalty and its antecedents, customers' distance from the mall, and shopping mall loyalty.     

Credibility and price premium-based competitiveness for industrial brands

Extant research on brand competitiveness concentrates on the B2C contexts, yet it remains poorly understood in the B2B contexts, especially for industrial brands. This current research aims to investigate how seller credibility potentially drives organizational buyers' willingness to pay price premiums (WTPP) through customer-company identification and buyer long-term orientation. In particular, we argue that buyer WTPP represents the industrial brands' competitiveness since buying firms express such strong preferences for the industrial sellers’ products and services compared to competitors that they are willing to pay price premiums. Based on data from 454 US-based industrial buyers, our findings generally support the proposed hypotheses. Our research sheds light on how industrial sellers can build their brand competitiveness. Actionable insights for research and managerial practice are provided.     

Intelligent Cyber Logistics Using Reverse Auction in Electronic Commerce

In electronic markets, customers can purchase products online. In addition, the seller or an Internet shopping mall has to deliver the products to the buyers. Transportation agencies can be chosen to deliver the products from an Internet shopping mall. Much research about efficient and automatic delivery scheduling has been carried out on delivery-ordering. By and large, transportation agencies need to maintain not only a cooperative relationship but also a competitive relationship among themselves to meet with customers' preferences for their purchases. This article suggests an intelligent, cyber-logistic framework as a multiagent system and presents designs for an intelligent software-agent structure to maintain this cooperative and competitive relationship. This intelligent cyber-logistic system consists of shopping mall agents, a broker agent, and delivery and scheduling agents. These components, based on the concept of reverse auction, lead to improvement in the overall system efficiency as well as increased profits for each transportation company. Traditionally, in researching vehicle routing problems (VRP), the cooperative and competitive relationships among the transportation companies have not been addressed. However, in this article, we have addressed these issues. We also suggest the reverse method of auction, which solves VRP for their own trucks to provide the transportation of goods for the shopping malls. After finding their own solution, the transportation company can bid with its own cost of delivery. We have used the constraint satisfaction problems solving method to conduct truck scheduling for each transportation agency. To perform the delivery-ordering process between agents, we have defined the logisticsKQML to represent the message protocol of upper level. Finally, we have evaluated the cyber-logistic system using reverse auction by a simulation experiment and have discussed further research and drawn conclusions.     

The relationships among family and social interaction,loneliness, mall shopping motivation,and mall spending of older consumers

The study implemented 419 mall‐intercept interviews with people who are 55 or older in large malls in three metropolitan cities in the United States. The five subdimensions of mall‐shopping motivation of older consumers were identified under two dimensions: Consumption‐oriented mall‐shopping motivation (service consumption, value consumption, and eating) and experiential mall‐shopping motivation (diversion and aesthetic appreciation). The structural model revealed significant effects of social interaction, loneliness, and mall‐shopping motivations on mall spending. Outcomes suggest that a mall can be a place to reduce older consumers' loneliness and that retailers in the mall can attract and make older consumers spend more by emphasizing value consumption and service consumption. Results also provide the implication for mall developers that providing more experiential features and events in malls may attract more older consumers. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A PLS-SEM approach to understanding E-SQ,E-Satisfaction and E-Loyalty for fashion E-Retailers in Spain

Brand related goals in the online environment are consistent with those of the retail environment: providing products and services that ultimately convert customers into brand loyal customers. Investigating the components of e-loyalty may be a way to improve it. Using a Spanish sample, this study investigates a nine-dimension, latent variable model to understand the relationship between electronic service quality (e-SQ) and e-satisfaction, as well as that between e-satisfaction and e-loyalty within Spanish fashion brand e-retailers. Results suggest that for fashion e-retailers in Spain, e-service quality is positively related to e-satisfaction and e-satisfaction is positively related to e-loyalty. This work supports the use of this framework in future research to better understand these relationships in other countries.     

Gender differences in the linkage of online patronage behavior with TV-and-online shopping values

The main purpose of this study is to investigate gender differences in the linkage of online patronage behavior with multi-channel shopping values in context of TV-and-online retailing. Data collected from 226 respondents in Taiwan are tested against the research model using the partial least squares (PLS) approach. The empirical result shows that utilitarian and hedonic TV shopping values have indirect positive effects on consumer online patronage intention through their associated online counterparts. Additionally, both utilitarian and hedonic TV shopping values are found to influence their associated online counterparts more strongly for men than for women. The findings of this study provide several important implications for the research and practice of multi-channel retail service.     

Value‐driven Internet shopping: The mental accounting theory perspective

When faced with competition and the ease with which customers can compare prices across sellers, Internet vendors often lower prices in a bid to increase sales. However, recent research reports that even price‐sensitive customers do not always purchase from Internet vendors offering the lowest prices. In contrast, value has been considered a key motivator of customer decision making in economics and marketing. However, little is known about the role and effect of value in Internet shopping. This study examines online customer purchase decision making from the value perspective based on mental accounting theory. This study also identifies monetary (perceived price) and non‐monetary (perceived risk, convenience, and pleasure) determinants of value. This study further explains how the individual determinants affect online purchase decision making directly and indirectly though value perception. The findings of this study offer Internet vendors practical suggestions for increasing online sales. This study, with its results, also helps advance knowledge of electronic commerce. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Shopping mall retailing: A bibliometric analysis and systematic assessment of Chebat's contributions

Shopping malls are unique retail environments offering individual consumption experiences within a holistic retail ecosystem. Drawing on a bibliometric analysis and a systematic review of 31 articles, this research synthetizes Jean-Charles Chebat's contributions to the shopping mall literature. Findings highlight four core clusters of the shopping mall literature, namely spatial wayfinding, atmospherics, consumer differences across shopping mall experiences, and shopping mall consequences. The newly developed Shopping Mall Experience Framework extends Chebat's research proposing additional elements of interest for current mall retailing research. Managerial implications offer practical guidance on successfully designing and maneuvering shopping malls of the future.     

Beyond the random location of shopping malls: A GIS perspective in Amman,Jordan

The purpose of this research is to examine shopping mall location selection in the area of West Amman in Jordan. Following the Time-Resistance Approach, ArcGIS's Network Analyst tool was used to calculate the distance in terms of minutes to reach each shopping mall using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) techniques.ResultsThe area under study, which covers multiple sub-districts, suffers from excessive oversupply, due to the lack of established planning criteria and regulations, which in turn has resulted in high population-to-retail-area-ratio. This result was further supported by referring to other evaluation criteria, including the planning criteria used in other countries such as UAE and Saudi Arabia.     

Influence of demographics,psychographics, shopping orientation,mall shopping attitude and purchase patterns on mall patronage in India

Retail boom in India is generating considerable interest from within the country as well as abroad. This growth in retail has been fueled by the mushrooming of shopping malls across the country. Despite this very little is known about the characteristics of the Indian mall shoppers. Also of special interest is the behavior of heavy shoppers because regardless of the footfalls at the mall, if the money spent is low, the mall does not benefit. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to profile Indian mall consumers, identify characteristics differentiating the high rupee volume purchasers at the mall and to evolve a model that can help predict heavy rupee volume purchasers in a catchment.The results of this study, spanning eight cities of India and 3026 mall consumers, indicate that the heavy shoppers are significantly different from the other groups along multiple demographic and socio-economic variables, behavioral variables, attitude and shopping orientation. Additionally, the study contributes to literature by evolving a typology of shoppers. The model evolved using Discriminant Analysis was used to predict potential heavy and low rupee volume purchasers for a city of interest, where currently there are no malls.     

Consumer Decision Making on the Web: A Theoretical Analysis and Research Guidelines

Recent empirical data on online shopping suggests that consumers have the potential to make better quality decisions while shopping on the web. But whether such potential is being realized by most consumers is an unresolved matter. Hence, the purpose of this research is to understand how (1) certain features of electronic environments have a favorable effect on the abilities of consumers to make better decisions, and (2) identify information‐processing strategies that would enable consumers to make better quality decisions while shopping online. A cross‐disciplinary theoretical analysis based on constructs drawn from economics (e.g., time costs), computing (e.g., recommendation agents), and psychology (e.g., decision strategies) is conducted to identify factors that potentially influence decision quality in electronic environments. The research is important from a theoretical standpoint because it examines an important aspect of online consumer decision making, namely, the impact of the electronic environment on the capabilities of consumers. It is important from both a managerial and public policy standpoint because the ability of shoppers to make better quality decisions while shopping online is directly related to improving market efficiency and enhancing consumer welfare in electronic markets.     

B2C环境下网上沟通过程中卖方对顾客感知价值的影响——以网购手机为例

近年来关于顾客感知价值的研究越来越多,网购顾客感知价值研究成为新热点。学者们对B2C环境下顾客感知价值结构维度进行了很多有意义的研究,但是鲜有学者从卖方影响的角度来研究顾客感知价值。本文结合B2C环境下网上的沟通过程,以网购手机为例,提出直接顾客感知价值和间接顾客感知价值这一对定义,在途径一目的理论框架下,应用二阶验证性因子分析对间接顾客感知价值的结构维度进行了验证,得出结论认为间接顾客感知价值由质量维度、情绪维度、价格维度、社会维度四个维度构成。最后提出卖方应在沟通过程中可以着重从质量维度、情绪维度、价格维度来影响顾客,以实现提升顾客感知价值的建议。     

Rethinking Catalogue and Online B2B Buyer Channel Preferences in the Education Supplies Market

The purpose of this study is to better understand B2B paper-based catalogue and online buying channel determinants in the education supplies sector by identifying factors that are critical in determining buyer channel preferences. A conceptual model was developed and empirically tested using self-report survey data from 316 B2B New Zealand educational institutions and analyzed with Hayes PROCESS macro (SPSS). The findings indicate that catalogue is the preferred channel for B2B educational buyers. The most important determinant of channel preference is channel experience. The catalogue and online channels appear to be less substitutable in B2B markets then proposed by B2C market studies. Structural assurance (trust, security, safeguards, and robustness) is a significant predictor of general channel satisfaction, and online channel preference, but not catalogue channel preference. The study results benefit practitioners in the development and implementation of channel strategies by providing a better understanding of the factors that determine online and catalogue channel preference in B2B markets. This study is the first to empirically demonstrate the influence and importance of structural assurance in catalogue channels, while channel experience supported by structural assurance significantly influences online channel choice. These findings indicate that determinants of channel preference found in B2C studies cannot be uncritically transferred to the B2B domain. The research also suggests that existing B2B channel adoption and preference drivers are different from B2C, and B2C research is not necessarily applicable in the B2B context.     

The death and life of shopping malls: an empirical investigation on the dead malls in Greater Lisbon

At a moment when new retail formats are emerging and consumers are changing their preferences, it is vital to reflect on the existing shopping malls, which are being challenged in European cities. With their vitality endangered, many become dead malls, a phenomenon that has increased over recent years. With this in mind, the objective of this study is to explain the factors behind the proliferation of dead malls through an empirical analysis of the evolution of shopping malls in Greater Lisbon, Portugal. We combine three sets of retail change theories (cyclic, conflict and environmental) with current perspectives on the resilience of urban retail. We expect that our study will contribute toward current debates on the resilience of shopping malls. The methodology of our study comprises two stages. First, we updated the Greater Lisbon shopping mall database and analysed the growth and decline of each shopping mall type over the last 44 years. In a second phase, we conducted a fieldwork survey on 150 shopping malls, which allowed us to identify and profile the dead malls of Greater Lisbon. Our results show that dead malls match declining shopping mall types, and we discuss four factors affecting the resilience of shopping malls.     

Anatomy of shopping experience for malls in Mumbai: A confirmatory factor analysis approach

The city of Mumbai has not yet exhausted its potential in terms of availability of mall space. Yet shoppers of Mumbai seem to prefer high-street locations even if the product or format is operating from inside a shopping mall also. It means that shoppers look beyond the basic chore of shopping and experience plays a vital role. This study was undertaken to understand the composition of shopping experience so that mall developers and managers succeed in generating exciting among shoppers by orchestration of shopping experience using components as identified at the end of this research. It is based on empirical investigation of 400 respondents selected from four shopping malls in Mumbai. The study identifies ambience, convenience, marketing focus, safety & security and physical infrastructure as factors vital in defining shopping experience. Results were confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis.