Search-Purchase (S-P) Strategies of Multi-Channel Consumers

Abstract

Our study sought to determine whether a consumer's search-purchase (S-P) strategy could provide a viable market segmentation tool for understanding consumer's channel choice behavior in today's increasingly complex, multichannel market environment. We collected data (N = 519) nationwide, using a self-administered mail survey and focusing on two product categories (books and apparel). Based on the respondent's search-purchase channel behavior, we identified nine segments and deemed three as viable: the Physical/Physical S-P strategist, the Cross/Cross S-P strategist, and the Cross/Physical S-P strategist. Our findings indicate that a consumer's S-P channel choice strategy is indeed a viable segmentation tool; furthermore, a consumer's S-P channel choice strategy is influenced by the consumer's level of sophistication in regard to the technology and by the benefits sought. We conclude by speculating on the uses that retailers could make of our study, and we propose several possible subjects for future studies.     

The Use of Quality and Reputation Indicators by Consumers: The Case of Bordeaux Wine

The absolute and relative impact of current quality and reputation variables on consumer decisions are examined using data from the market for Bordeaux wine. The estimates indicate that a model of consumer decision making which incorporates information on reputation (past quality) and collective reputation (average group quality) rejects alternative models that include current quality. The results also indicate that reputation has a large impact on the willingness to pay of consumers, that long term reputation is considerably more important than short term quality movements, and that consumers react slowly to changes in product quality. Collective reputation is shown to have an impact on consumer willingness to pay that is as large as that of individual firm reputation. If reputation and collective reputation effects are ignored, the estimated impact of current quality and short term changes in quality on consumer behaviour are overstated.     

Consumers un-tethered: A three-market empirical study of consumers' mobile marketing acceptance

This study examines factors influencing consumers' acceptance of mobile marketing across three influential markets, namely U.S., China, and Europe. The authors develop an integrative conceptual model on consumers' attitudes and behaviors toward mobile marketing. The authors incorporate three individual-level characteristics, namely personal attachment, innovativeness, and risk avoidance and investigate how permission-based acceptance influences the relationship between consumers' attitude and mobile marketing activity. Focusing on Generation Y consumers, the model is empirically tested with data from U.S., China, and Europe. The findings illustrate several cross-market differences and similarities regarding the relationships between individual-level characteristics, attitude, and mobile marketing activity. Research and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

The path of least resistance: Regulatory resource depletion and the effectiveness of social influence techniques

Two experiments examine the role of regulatory resource depletion in the effectiveness of social influence techniques aimed at inducing consumer compliance. They test the two-step hypothesis that a) responding to the initial request stage of an influence technique requires self-control, thereby depleting one's limited resource of self-regulatory energy, and b) a state of regulatory resource depletion fosters the use of heuristics present in the persuasion context, which increases the odds of compliance with the target request of an influence technique. A first field experiment shows that yielding to initial requests (answering a series of questions) induces resource depletion. Experiment 2 demonstrates that a lower level of self-regulatory resources increases the extent of compliance with a request through the employment of the heuristic principle of authority. Together these results provide support for the prediction that regulatory resource depletion is important in explaining the effectiveness of social influence techniques.     

Ethical Decision-Making by Consumers: The Roles of Product Harm and Consumer Vulnerability

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effects of perceptions of product harm and consumer vulnerability on ethical evaluations of target marketing strategies. We first established whether subjects are able to accurately judge the harmfulness of a product through labeling alone, and whether they could differentiate consumers who were more or less vulnerable. The results suggest that without the presence of a prime, subjects who depended on implicit memory or guess were able to detect differences in “sin” and “non-sin” products and consumer vulnerability, but were far less likely to be able to distinguish among high and low levels of product harm and consumer vulnerability. The inability to accurately identify high and low levels of product harm and consumer vulnerability impacted their perceptions of the ethicality of target marketing strategies, such that only four out of 18 target marketing strategies were judged as unethical. Thus, our findings contradict previous research that found subjects judged many more of the integrated strategies as unethical [Smith and Cooper-Martin, J Market 61(1997) 1]. Our results suggest that assessing ethical evaluations of strategies varying in product harm, and consumer vulnerability may only be relevant if consumers can accurately identify product harm.     

食品企业实施绿色营销的消费者博弈分析

步入21世纪以来,人们的生活水平日益提高,对日常饮食的质量要求也逐渐提高。食品企业实施绿色营销战略已是大势所趋,但是受绿色市场的信息不完全、消费者的绿色消费意识不足以及政府的监管力度不严等因素的影响,绿色营销举步维艰。本文讨论了消费者与绿色营销食品企业、非绿色营销食品企业以及虚假营销食品企业之间的博弈,在此基础上提出了建议。     

The Ethics of Online Retailing: A Scale Development and Validation from the Consumers’ Perspective

While e-commerce has witnessed extensive growth in recent years, so has consumers’ concerns regarding ethical issues surrounding online shopping. The vast majority of earlier research on this area is conceptual in nature, and limited in scope by focusing on consumers’ privacy issues. This study develops a reliable and valid scale to measure consumers’ perceptions regarding the ethics of online retailers (CPEOR). Findings indicate that the four factors of the scale – security, privacy, non-deception and fulfillment/reliability – are strongly predictive of online consumers’ satisfaction and trust. The results offer important implications for e-retailers and are likely to stimulate further research in the area of e-ethics from the consumers’ perspective. Sergio Román is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Murcia (Spain). He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Arizona. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Business Research, International Marketing Review, International Journal of Market Research, European Journal of Marketing and Journal of Marketing Management. His research interests are focused on personal selling and sales management, international marketing and business ethics.     

非处方药品消费者信息搜寻行为的实证研究——以天津地区为例

当前OTC市场存在进入壁垒低,产品同质化严重,市场竞争激烈等问题.政府部门应继续完善药房、药店的监督管理法规并保障其执行;继续加大对药剂师的认证与培训工作的力度,杜绝社会上一些不良风气对药剂师的侵蚀,以提高其在消费者心目中的地位,更好地指导消费者合理用药.企业应把平价大药房和社区药房作为现阶段的营销重点,更多地运用媒体广告来向消费者传递信息,同时,努力把握消费者购买决策的全过程,以期在各个阶段都能有效地对其施加影响.     

A Comparison of Consumers and Dieticians: Nutrition Focus,Food Choice,and Mental Accounting

Nutrition labels on processed foods are becoming more common throughout the world. How do experts and consumers compare at using this information? This study compares three different conceptualizations of expertise—a body of knowledge, better processing skills, and a greater facility for mental accounting. A survey was used to compare 237 consumers over age 40 with 131 dieticians. We examined the focuses, choices, and mental accounting of food selections. The results demonstrate similar focuses, food choices, predictability, and mental accounting by both groups on all three conceptualizations of expertise. This suggests that nutrition labels benefit both consumers and experts.     

Critical consumer issues in St. Lucia: an examination of consumer challenges and related learning among rural adults according to income levels

Consumer education is a relatively new and growing interest in St. Lucia. Neither the government nor the National Consumer Association has established a consumer education programme to address the growing consumer concerns in the country. The purpose of this study was to examine critical consumer issues, related learning challenges and strategies among rural adults in St. Lucia according to income levels. Rural adult consumers are most disadvantaged in terms of levels of education, income and access to resources, which may help to prevent and mediate consumer concerns. The specific research questions examined were: (1) What is the nature of problems experienced by rural St. Lucian adult consumers in the marketplace? (2) How do rural St. Lucian adult consumers solve the challenges they encounter in the marketplace? (3) What is it like for rural St. Lucian adult consumers as they go about trying to learn to solve the consumer issues they face? and (4) What do rural St. Lucian adult consumers perceive to be the requisites for effective decision making in the marketplace? Data were collected using a questionnaire comprising of 29 questions divided into four sections (problems, strategies, solving consumer problems and making effective decisions) and two biographical questions. A total of 500 rural adult consumers were surveyed verbally through door‐to‐door contact. The findings of this study revealed that middle‐income rural adult consumers experience more problems in the marketplace than those with each lower or higher level of income. Middle‐income rural adult St. Lucian consumers in particular seek more information and are comfortable with using more strategies than the lower‐ and higher‐income rural adult consumers. This research gives us a better understanding of the problems faced by rural adult consumers based on their income. Research results will be useful to the government of St. Lucia and the National Consumer Association when they decide to establish an adult consumer education programme for St. Lucia.     

Consumer Self-Confidence in Wine Consumers: The Role of Knowledge-Based Factors

This study uses the Wine Self-Confidence Scale (WSCS) with a sample of 297 customers of ABC Fine Wine and Spirits, a Florida-based retailer, to examine aspects of self-confidence in wine purchasing. The results indicate that two knowledge-based self-confidence factors (information knowledge and persuasion knowledge) were predominant for these consumers. The study showed strong support for the WSCS, which was developed as a measure of self-confidence in wine buying by Olsen, Thompson, and Clarke (2003) and how these relate to reliance on personal experience.     

Macro-economic determinants of consumer price knowledge: A meta-analysis of four decades of research

For the past four decades, dozens of researchers have studied consumer price knowledge, often with disagreements on the extent of consumer' ignorance about prices. While some of these disagreements have been attributed to research design variations among studies, no inquiry has yet been made on the role of the economic environment on consumer price knowledge. Nevertheless, environmental factors such as interest rates, unemployment, and economic growth may significantly influence consumers' knowledge of prices. Certain economic environments may therefore provide marketers with the ability to utilize pricing tactics which rely on limitations in consumers' knowledge of product prices. Using a meta-analytic framework, this paper synthesizes the results of 297 previous price knowledge studies to document the effects of inflation, unemployment, GDP growth, interest rates, country of study, and passage of time on consumer price knowledge. The meta-analysis results demonstrate that economic factors have considerable influence on explaining variations in consumer price knowledge. Managerial and public policy implications of the findings in light of turbulent economic environments are discussed.     

Web Perception and Young Consumers: An Empirical Investigation of Factors Influencing Perceptions of Online Companies

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to identify and empirically test factors important to building a positive Web perception among young consumers. Factors that affect Web perception are divided into Web design, vendor, and product/service groups. Based on regression analysis we found that Web design and product/service characteristics play the most important roles in developing a positive Web perception among young consumers. More specifically, online vendors must provide a vast selection of products that are of high quality, and their sites must be fast, easy to navigate, contain relevant information, and allow ease of ordering.     

Effects of comparative advertising format on consumer responses: The moderating effects of brand image and attribute relevance

In this research we distinguish between ads that compare two different brands (Across-Brand Comparison or ABC ads) and those that compare different versions of the same brand (Within-Brand Comparison or WBC ads). Results from an experiment indicate that when comparative ads use attributes that are relevant to product performance, ad type and brand image interact such that an ABC ad leads to less favorable consumer perceptions than a WBC ad when image of the sponsor brand is low but not when it is high. However, when the ads use attributes that are irrelevant to product performance an ABC ad leads to less favorable consumer outcomes than a WBC ad, regardless of the image of the sponsor brand. We further propose and show that ad believability mediates these effects. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed and directions for future research are provided.     

The Use of Marketing Plans and Advertising Among Accounting Firms

A decade has passed since accounting firms were allowed to advertise. While the response has been mixed, a more important question is whether accounting firms have embraced a marketing orientation as measured by their use of marketing plans. This study investigates the attitudes toward and use of advertising and marketing plans by accounting firms. The results provide insight into the marketing orientation of the accounting profession and the viability of efforts b marketers to develop a marketing orientation. It is suggested that the current environment provides a real opportunity for marketers to become an important part of the accounting firm's organizational structure and provide the expertise needed for the firm to be competitive into the next century.     

Cross-Cultural Differences in Ad Likeability and Ad Element Likeability: The Case of Benetton

This empirical study examined cross-cultural differences in affective responses to standardized Benetton advertisements, and the role of the likeability of four ad elements (colors, logo, people/models, and situation) in predicting overall advertising liking. Respondents from Oslo, Kiel, and Bologna evaluated three standardized Benetton ads on a series of liking scales. In addition to identifying cross-cultural differences in ad likeability and ad element likeability, the results from stepwise multiple regression analyses suggest that the same dominant affective response to one ad element influences overall ad liking.     

International Advertising Strategies by NIC Multinationals: The Case of a Korean Firm

Managers of new brands seek to leverage positive WOM and establish a critical mass of consumers who interact with their brands on social network sites (SNSs). Effective selection of ‘seeds’, or influencers, on SNSs, who will recommend the product and leverage the power of their social networks to influence other consumers is key to organic growth. This research examines the role of an influencer’s activity on a social network website (network size, membership duration, share-of-posts), brand message source (marketergenerated versus member-generated), and recipient type (SNS member versus nonmember) on an influencer’s decision to recommend a new brand and the recipient’s decision to make a referral visit. Empirical analyses of clickstream data from SNSs at a commercial website show that marketer- and consumer-generated brand ads differ in their impact on recommending propensity for high share-of-posts and long-term influencers, and for member and non-member recipients, which has implications for referral management.     

Consumer Ethics: A Cross-Cultural Study of the Ethical Beliefs of Turkish and American Consumers

The ethical climate in Turkey is beset by ethical problems. Bribery, environmental pollution, tax frauds, deceptive advertising, production of unsafe products, and the ethical violations that involved politicians and business professionals are just a few examples. The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the ethical beliefs of American and Turkish consumers using the Ethical Position Questionnaire (EPQ) of Forsyth (1980), the Machiavellianism scale, and the Consumer Ethical Practices of Muncy and Vitell questionnaire (MVQ). A sample of 376 subjects that consists of American consumers (n = 188) and Turkish consumers (n = 199) was used to compare the ethical beliefs and practices of the two samples. The MANOVA results for the two nationality groups found that five out of six criterion variables differed between the two groups. The implications of this study are intended to assist marketers to develop strategies that suit a particular market and lessen their risk of entry. Mohammed Y.A. Rawwas is Professor of Marketing at the University of Northern Iowa. He also taught as a Visiting Professor at a range of universities in Japan, France, Austria, Russia, China, Hong Kong, Trinidad and Tobago. His areas of research include ethical and social issues in marketing, cross-cultural studies, marketing education, and supply chain management. He has published extensively across these areas including works in Journal of Business Research, International Marketing Review, Journal of Consumer Ethics, and Journal of Marketing Education, among others.Ziad Swaidan is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Houston-Victoria. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi. His research has appeared in several journals, including the Journal of Business Ethics, and International Business Review, among others. Mine Oyman is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Anadolu University in Turkey. Her areas of research include consumer ethics, cross-cultural studies, and marketing education. She has presented previous works at a range of international and local conferences.     

Memory-Based Store Price Judgments: The Role of Knowledge and Shopping Experience

This paper investigates the processes underlying consumers’ memory-based store price judgments. The numerosity heuristic implies that the greater the number of relatively lower priced products at a store that consumers can recall, the lower will be their overall price image of the store. That is, people use the number of recalled low-price products to judge the overall store price image. We show that this expectation holds only for knowledgeable consumers. Instead, less knowledgeable consumers use the ease with which low-price products are recalled (i.e., the availability heuristic) as a cue to make store price judgments. Therefore, the fewer low-price products they recall, the easier their recall task, and the lower their price perceptions of the store.Field studies using different manipulations tested and confirmed these predictions. Managerial implications for retailers are offered. Theoretical implications for behavioral price perceptions, memory-based judgments, and the use of heuristic cues are also discussed.