Consumer Product Redistribution

Abstract

Formats for product redistribution are emerging and evolving, creating alternative channel options for consumers' disposition of unwanted possessions. These retail formats operate in both informal (e.g., garage sales) and formal (online auctions) economies. As consumers participate in redistribution channels, some retailers are confronted with new competition and the potential for declining sales. This article expands on both recycling and disposition literature by examining consumer disposition behavior and the flow of used products through various redistribution channels. Strategies are offered to address consumer disposition behaviors as well as to assist retailers in combating traditional and non-traditional competition.     

Experimental analysis of consumer channel-mix use

Today's consumers have access to multiple consumer distribution channels. To remain competitive, retailers must offer different contact points to consumers. This empirical study examines channel-mix use decisions for 352 online customers' holiday booking preparations. A scenario based experimental approach studies consumer channel-mix use by channel and decision context attributes. The study models effects of time pressure, expected expenditure, channel quality, and access costs on the use of eight channel options, including traditional and online options. Over one-half of respondents use multiple channels to decide trip booking; however, most travelers book trips using the channel they initially investigated for information. Results show expected expenditure does not influence channel use; however, overall cost affects the booking's timing. Time pressures force respondents to visit a travel agent or collect additional brochures to quickly complete the purchase. Results suggest brochures fulfill an important support role.     

The effect of attribute originality on consumers’ adoption intention of customization: The role of construal level

As consumers' preferences become increasingly diversified, many companies strive to satisfy individual needs by offering customization options for products or services. To enhance the effectiveness of customization strategies, managers need to decide what type of attributes to provide for consumers to customize and also take consumers' individual differences into consideration. The current research investigates the joint impacts of the originality of the attributes involved in a customization option and consumers' construal level on their intention to adopt customization. Findings from two experiments consistently demonstrate that, in comparison to customization options that include common customizable attributes, offering customization options that includes original customizable attributes undermine consumers’ adoption intention. However, such negative effects will be mitigated when consumers have a high construal level.     

Feed them facts: Value perceptions and consumer use of sustainability-related product information

More than ever, consumers are demanding sustainable options on retail shelves. Retailers, however, are not finding clear evidence of the financial benefits for doing so. This study attempts to provide concrete suggestions to retailers on what kinds of sustainability-related information to provide to consumers. Our online study of approximately 3600 participants provides evidence that, when provided with full information on all sustainability-related attributes, consumers make price/benefit trade-offs resulting in the selection of higher priced, more value-differentiated products. Further, when sustainability-related information is provided for some products and not for others, consumers will “punish” the non-sustainable option. Managerial implications are discussed.     

Chronological cues and consumers’ preference for mere newness

Chronological cues are ubiquitous in retail settings, whether they come in the form of production, release, on-shelf, or purchase dates, etc. Yet, they remain relatively underexplored in the marketing literature. Could newness that arises from these chronological cues lead consumers to prefer options merely because they are newer, above and beyond any substantive benefits conferred or implied by that newness? We propose and find in a series of eight preregistered studies (n= 2,216) that consumers exhibit mere newness preference across many product domains—preferring chronologically newer options over older options with no substantive benefits to newness. We provide evidence that overgeneralization is one important driver of mere newness preference: Most consumers hold positive (negative) associations with chronological newness (oldness) in an implicit association test, and mere newness preference is reduced in domains in which the opposite association exists. Consequently, consumers are willing to pay a newness premium even for mere newness.     

Rent‐to‐Own Pricing: Theory and Empirical Evidence

The rent‐to‐own (RTO) industry given its emphasis on subprime or, at least, financially constrained consumers is often seen as exploitative with excessive financing costs. This paper develops a rational‐expectations competitive equilibrium model to explore the pricing mechanism of an RTO agreement. The model accounts for the contract's embedded options and several bundled services. Using detailed transactional data, we infer how customers exercise these options to calibrate our model for several product categories, contractual lengths and payment periodicity. The resulting predictions provide a justification for the high financing costs observed in the marketplace.     

The Consumer Impact of Alternative Allocation Plans: The Case of Gasoline

This paper assesses the potential impact of rationing, “lifeline,” rationing with resale and tax-rebate approaches to extra-market allocation from the consumer's perspective. Basic microeconomic tools are used to demonstrate that the rationing with resale and tax-rebate plans have similar effects and that all consumers would prefer those policies to lifeline allocation. Conventional rationing is shown to benefit households consuming intermediate quantities of an allocated good while rationing with resale and tax-rebate programs provide large and small users with higher levels of satisfaction. These propositions are empirically confirmed for the case of gasoline. Quantitative results suggest that simple rationing and lifeline plans calculated to reduce aggregate gasoline consumption by 10 percent would have severe impact on high income consumers. Alternative policies would broaden the burden of conservation and cause income redistribution toward low income consumers.     

Designing multi-channel technologies – the mediating role of risk perceptions

ABSTRACT

The integration of online and offline distribution channels has become a major topic in practice and research. Several studies reveal beneficial outcomes for retailers if consumers use multiple channels. Therefore, many retailers offer multi-channel technologies (MCTs), i.e. click & collect, check & reserve and the availability check, which encourage this behavior. However, research is still sparse on how retailers should design these MCTs to provide the highest usefulness for consumers. Our study thus analyzes the impact of different MCT design characteristics on consumers’ perceived usefulness of these MCTs. Moreover, we examine how consumers’ perceived time and product availability risk mediate these effects. The results show that some MCT design characteristics exhibit the expected positive impacts on consumers’ perceived usefulness of the MCTs, while others seem to be less relevant and even counterproductive. In particular, a certain (vs. unspecified) product pick-up time and a high (vs. low) displayed inventory status lead to a higher perceived usefulness of the MCTs via the two risk dimensions. However, the immediate (vs. delayed) confirmation of product reservations does not have any positive effects. In fact, it even decreases the perceived usefulness of click & collect. These findings provide implications for the design of MCTs.     

Cancel anytime!: How easy cancellation options enhance purchase intentions for services that require long-term commitments

The authors recognize that an uncertain environment associated with prolonged pandemic conditions have made consumers reluctant to make long-term contractual commitments in various retail contexts. Hypothesizing that retailers might offer cancellation options to motivate consumers to undertake long-term commitments, the authors conduct two studies in which cancellation messages accompany ads for an online language course and a gym membership. Findings indicate that retailers can alleviate the pressures associated with long-term commitment decisions and can heighten purchase intentions by providing cancel options for consumers who register for services requiring long-term but not short-term commitments. Perceived goal achievability is identified as an underlying mechanism that mediates the effects.     

When Do Online Consumers Shop in an Offline Store: The Moderating Effects of Product Characteristics

This study serves as an initial attempt to demonstrate empirically how online consumers react to the offline channel extensions (i.e., opening physical stores) of e-tailers. Specifically, we examine how the attributes of offline channels influence consumer intentions to switch to offline channels and how they also lead to incremental demands on online channels. We investigate how these effects vary across highly complex utilitarian and hedonic products. The results of the study indicate that although store openings encourage online consumers to shop there when purchasing highly complex utilitarian products, the addition of offline stores results counterintuitively in incremental patronage of the online channels when consumers shop for highly complex hedonic products. This study validates the guiding role of product characteristics in designing offline channels for e-tailers and suggests that incorporating product type and complexity into the design is likely to contribute to the development of stores tailored to specific consumer segments.     

Developing a framework to improve virtual shopping in digital malls with intelligent self-service systems

Growing movements to urban places, increasing unemployment, decreasing buying power, rising real estate cost and demanding consumers for convenience and price are creating challenges for retailers. This paper reviews a sample list of retail channels, and proposes a systematic framework for conceptualizing the data-driven, and mobile- and cloud-enabled intelligent self-service systems to improve virtual shopping. With adoption of intelligent self-service systems, – more service oriented, more instrumented (from sensors to smart phones for monitoring consumers׳ behaviors), interconnected (patterns of interactions), and intelligent (algorithms help recognize patterns) – retail organizations can provide more cost effective quality retail service experiences to consumers.     

Consumer choices under product option framing: Loss aversion principles or sensitivity to price differentials?

The effects of options framing can be theoretically explained by loss aversion principles as well as by potential alternative explanations (e.g., sensitivity to price differentials). This paper examines the interaction effects between option framing and two types of cognitive constraints (availability of cognitive resources and additional redundant product information) on consumer choices for adding or deleting optional product features. In the process, the research attempts to provide empirical support for one theoretical model (e.g., loss aversion principles) versus the other (e.g., sensitivity to price differentials). The results support the hypotheses that consumers choose a higher number of product options when starting from a fully loaded model than from a base model, and that this effect is magnified when consumers make choices under high cognitive constraints. In essence, the results empirically support the theoretical premise of the effects of option framing being driven by loss aversion principles than by diminished sensitivity to price differentials. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Multichannel customer purchase behavior and long tail effects in the fashion goods market

The fast-paced growth of e-commerce is impacting the type and variety of products consumers purchase across channels. A commonly held theory, known as long tail theory, posits that online sales are less concentrated at the top of the sales distribution than offline sales, and that more variety is bought online, making the tails of the overall sales distribution denser with the growth of e-commerce. Most of the literature testing the long tail theory has focused on examining entertainment goods markets that do not require much physical examination, and has predominantly found results consistent with the theory. However, the magnitude and antecedents of the observed long tail effects might be different for product categories containing products that require more physical examination before purchase, such as fashion goods. In this study, using detailed individual and transaction level panel data from two multichannel fashion goods retail brands, we show that while the shift to the online channel results in a decrease in the concentration of overall sales for both brands, this change mostly results from consumers buying different products online rather than consumers buying a greater variety online compared to offline. We show that the flattening of the overall sales distribution with the growth of e-commerce in our data is driven by consumers sorting their purchases into channels based on product characteristics. In contrast to the recommendations from the previous long tail literature, our results show that fashion apparel retailers do not need to offer broader assortments online compared to offline, but they may find it profitable to carry or emphasize a different product mix online compared to offline. Our results also provide guidance to fashion goods retailers in curating their online and offline assortments and setting inventory management strategies across the channels.     

More than Just an Opinion: The Effect of Verbal Self‐Expression on Consumer Choice

In an ever‐widening range of occasions, consumers have the opportunity to comment and express their opinions on brands and products. However, little is known about how voicing opinions about the choice options before actually choosing might affect consumer choice, and specifically liking of choice. This paper proposes that pre‐choice opinion expression undermines the effect of post‐choice bolstering, because opinion sufficiently satisfies self‐expressive needs and therefore supersedes the use of subsequent choice as a self‐expressive resource. This proposition is based on the assumption that opinion can psychologically substitute for choice, because the two represent alternative routes to self‐expression. Two experiments provide empirical support for this hypothesis. Study 1 showed that after articulating their opinions about the choice options, participants were less likely to idealize their choices, and this effect was mediated by a change in the construal of choice as self‐expression. Study 2 further showed that this effect is moderated by public versus private occasions of opinion voicing and by individual differences in the value of expression. Together, findings support that opinion is enough to express the self, and if such an opportunity is made available prior to choosing, consumers’ liking of their choices is weakened.     

Mature Consumer Awareness and Attitudes Toward Retirement Housing and Long-Term Care Alternatives

The retirement housing and long-term care industries have been responding to the needs of aging consumers by developing a wide range of housing facilities and personal care services. The increasing variety of long-term care options is expected to better satisfy the heterogeneous needs of older consumers. Results of a national study and qualitative research suggest that many present and potential consumers of supportive housing and long-term care services do not have a good understanding of these offerings. Many are unaware of the alternatives available. Mature consumers often perceive all long-term care negatively as nursing homes. The proliferation in the variety of housing and long-term care services and the lack of standardization in labeling products may be contributing to the misunderstanding of various options. This misunderstanding leads to consumers not obtaining the housing and long-term care services best suited to their needs. Government agencies, consumer interest groups, and housing and long-term care providers can help to differentiate products and educate consumers to better serve their needs.     

Increasing online sales by facilitating spillover shopping

The Internet can serve dual roles as a source of information and a shopping channel for consumers. As a source of information, it competes with traditional sources such as print and direct mail. As a shopping channel, it competes with traditional shopping formats such as brick-and-mortar retailing and catalogs. There is little research as yet, however, regarding how the use of the online channel for information can affect its use for purchasing products. Our research is aimed at filling this gap in the literature, i.e., of examining if and how the use of the Internet as a source of information can affect consumers’ willingness to shop online. We use an integrated modeling framework that simultaneously models consumers’ choice of a shopping channel from three options – brick and mortar, catalog and online – and a source of information from three options as well: newspapers and magazines, direct mail, and online.     

Internet and distance channel use and European consumer complaint behavior

This exploratory study analyzes the effect of distance-shopping channel choice (i.e. the format first used by consumers in a retail transaction) on consumer complaint behavior, with a special focus on the Internet channel. It analyzes 2011 Eurobarometer data using a logistic regression model controlling for sociodemographic and country-specific variables to measure the impact of using the Internet, post/catalog, and telephone channels on complaint behavior. The results indicate that consumers using the Internet channel exhibit the greatest likelihood of complaint behavior when compared to consumers using traditional distance-shopping channels. Implications and suggestions for retailers are discussed, as are the contributions to the consumer complaint behavior literature.     

Engaging consumers on new integrated multichannel retail settings: Challenges for retailers

The rapid diffusion of more channels for shopping posits new challenges for retailers, who need to compete in a complex environment for avoiding the problem of consumer cross-channel free riding. To discourage this behaviour, we propose a new environment where one retailer simultaneously handles more channels. The emerging integrated environment would engage more consumers if compared to the single handled channel, which in turn would avoid switching behaviours towards competitors' channels. Our empirical research, based on the stimulus–organism–response paradigm, involves a sample of 237 consumers who were asked to explore the new retail settings simulated in a university lab. The results lead us to suggest the effective combination of multiple channels managed by one retailer as the new challenge for scholars and practitioners. We note that our participants showed positive emotional reactions towards the environment, which lead them to choose this environment for purchases.