Understanding consumers’ behavior to adopt self-service parcel services for last-mile delivery

Self-service parcel delivery service has been favored by E-commerce retailers as an effective solution to the “last-mile” delivery, and consumers' adoption behavior is the key point to apply this emerging technology. The aim of the present study is to empirically test the influence of psychological factors on online consumers’ behavioral intention to adopt it. An extended UTAUT model is developed and 525 structured questionnaires were collected. Empirical results demonstrate that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions are positive determinants, while perceived risk was negatively factor to behavioral intention. The difference in the behavioral intention among demographic groups was examined as it might provide an opportunity for developing a new strategy to promote the application of self-service parcel delivery service for last-mile delivery.     

Understanding consumers’ paths to webrooming: A complexity approach

Webrooming (practice whereby products are researched online before making an offline purchase) has been recognized as a prevalent form of cross-channel shopping behavior. Grounded in complexity and configuration theories, this study examines how different causal conditions determine webrooming intention. Required data was obtained from a purposive sample through paper surveys, and was analyzed using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The findings reveal three configurations in which different combinations of product, consumer, and channel factors may interact in different ways to explain high webrooming intention. Notably, product involvement was identified as the core condition in all configuration paths. This study enriches the theoretical foundations of webrooming behavior, and the findings yielded are expected to assist retailers in developing better-targeted strategies in dealing with this increasingly prevalent cross-channel behavior.     

Understanding consumers’ social networking site usage

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine consumer motivations to use social networking sites (SNSs) for three distinct activities: (1) general SNS usage, (2) the joining of a business’s SNS page and (3) clicking on an advertisement on a SNS. To assist with this exploration we draw upon the decomposed theory of planned behaviour as a theoretical lens and conduct a mixed-method study that utilises both an empirical investigation as well as qualitative focus group interviews in order to delve deeper into specific reasons why individuals engage in SNS activities. Results show that a number of antecedents such as attitude, compatibility, relative advantage, complexity, normative influences and self-efficacy come into play when determining SNS usage activities. However, specific antecedents may vary according to the explicit activity under investigation. This study’s main contribution involves advancing our understanding of consumer behaviour as it relates to SNS activities by examining not only antecedents to intention but also attitude, subjective norms and behavioural control. Other contributions include additional development of the SNS literature, integrating SNSs into a classical theoretical framework and providing valuable insights and implications for both practitioners and researchers alike.     

Effects of social media on consumers’ purchase decisions: evidence from Taobao

Given the rapid growth of social media, it is important to understand the effects of social media on consumers’ purchase decisions in the e-commerce environment. However, although some e-commerce sites have started to link themselves to social media to enhance user interactions, previous studies of social media and service management have shed little light on the effects of social media on consumers’ purchase decisions. This study proposes a theoretical research model that includes social media factors, social impact transfer factors, and e-commerce outcome factors. We posit social interaction ties and social media commitment as key elements of social media. An online questionnaire was conducted to test the research model and hypotheses based on survey data collected from Taobao, the largest e-commerce site in China. The analysis results indicate that social interaction ties have significant positive effects on social impact transfer factors and trust in online vendor, whereas they do not directly influence visit intention. Social media commitment plays a crucial role in increasing social impact transfer factors and e-commerce outcomes. The findings reveal the different effects of normative and informational social influences on consumer purchase decisions. Further implications are discussed.     

Decisive visual saliency and consumers׳ in-store decisions

This paper focuses on consumers׳ in-store visual tactics and decision-making. It has been argued that many consumers shop by routine or by simple rules and justification techniques when they purchase daily commodities. It has also been argued that they make a majority of decisions in the shop, and that they are affected by the visual stimuli in the store. The objective for this paper is to investigate the visual saliency from two factors: 1) in-store signage and 2) placement of products. This is done by a triangulation method where we utilize data from an eye-track study and sales data from grocery stores. The first study takes place in laboratory settings with a simulated purchase situation, and the second research design builds on manipulated in-store settings and data from real purchases. We found optimal placement of two comparable goods (branded good and private label) to increase visual attention and sale for both goods. The use of signage increases visual attention and sale as well, yet only for the product that the label addressed, implying a cannibalization effect. The limitation of the study and implications for retail managers and for brand owners are discussed.     

Understanding consumers’ multichannel choices across the different stages of the buying process

This article provides a more integrative approach toward channel choice than previous research by considering all stages of the buying process (search, purchase, and after-sales), and by taking channel attributes, experience, and spillover effects into account when examining consumers?? channel choice intentions. The authors show that such an integrative perspective is important as channel attributes, experience, and spillover matter for consumers?? channel choices in all stages of the buying process. Notably, the study stresses the importance of channel experience and spillover effects for explaining consumers?? channel choice intentions in the different stages of the buying process. Channel experience effects occur when using the channel increases the likelihood that the consumer will use the very same channel on the next occasion. Spillover effects result when the likelihood of using a channel in one stage of the buying process affects the likelihood of choosing that channel in another stage. The results show that both effects influence consumers?? channel choice intentions over and above channel attributes. Importantly, the model results strongly pledge for studying attribute, experience, and spillover effects simultaneously.     

Understanding consumers’ perceptions of competitive tiers—can perceived risk help?

A review is presented showing the increasing power of multiple grocery retailers from which an argument is developed questioning whether consumers perceive packaged grocery product fields in terms of brands versus own labels versus generics. Consumers’ perceptions of risk are reduced through information search and it is thought that the different search activities between the high and low risk perceivers may explain perceptions of the competitive structure of product fields. For six packaged grocery fields, separately, qualitative research was undertaken to elicit the dimensions consumers use to evaluate competing items. Data was then collected from 829 householders and was subsequently subjected to cluster analysis. Consumers’ perceptions of the competitive structure of product fields differed from marketers’ expectations and brands were always perceived as being distinct from retailer labels. The result did not appear to be influenced by consumers’ perceptions of risk. Reasons for the result are considered, and managerial implications explored.     

Antecedents of consumers’ intention to visit food trucks

The food truck industry has become a national phenomenon in the United States by gaining attention and praise. However, there has been limited attention on how and why consumers decide to patronize food trucks. The purpose of the study is to investigate determinants of consumers’ intention to patronize food trucks by applying the model of goal-directed behavior. Structural equation modeling was employed to assess the relationships among constructs in the proposed research model. This study contributes significant theoretical and practical implications by first attempting to examine what specific psychological variables influence the decision-making process regarding consumers’ intention to visit food trucks.     

Exploring the effect of Starbucks' green marketing on consumers' purchase decisions from consumers’ perspective

This study contributes to current literature by constructing a model to evaluate how using green marketing to promote brand image affects consumers' purchase intentions. First, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method was used to explore the mutual influence on evaluation indicators, and an influential network relation map (INRM) of indicators and sub-indicators was constructed based on the results. The DEMATEL method was then combined with the analytic network process to create a DANP method to calculate weights for each indicator and sub-indicator. A modified Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method was then employed to explore the comprehensive performance of each indicator and sub-indicator using empirical data. Finally, conclusions were summarised and suggestions were proposed. This study's findings can serve as a reference for firms seeking to improve the tangible effects of their green marketing strategies by stimulating consumers' purchase intentions.     

Multichannel marketing: the operational construct and firms’ motivation to adopt

Multichannel marketing has been gaining attention to its importance in both practice and research in the recent years with the rapid diffusion of Information Communication Technology. Due to the relative recency and rapid proliferation of research in the subject, the literature lacks a well-defined construct of multichannel marketing generalizable to different types of firms, and lacks understanding of the actual reasons that firms adopt multichannel marketing. Through comparing and complementing the extant literature with practitioners’ perspectives from interviews with 32 Italian firms, the authors propose a comprehensive and generalizable framework of the multichannel marketing construct, and identify and categorize the firms’ motivations to adopt the multichannel marketing practice. Furthermore, some unforeseen but interesting factors emerged from the interviews. Future research opportunities and managerial implications of the study are discussed.     

Conceptualising consumers’ word-of-mouth behaviour intention: evidence from a university education services in Malaysia

The aim of this study is to propose a theoretical model to examine consumer word-of-mouth (WOM) behavioural intention in Malaysian education services. The results from a survey of 247 respondents indicate that servicescape, service recovery, service quality and satisfaction significantly affect consumers’ intention to engage in WOM behaviour. The results support majority of the hypothesized relationships, suggesting that servicescape and service recovery function as antecedents, directly affecting consumer perceptions of education service quality. The analytical results also demonstrate that perceived service quality positively affects satisfaction, which subsequently induces consumers’ behavioural intentions. Consistent with previous empirical studies, our findings suggest that satisfaction is a super-ordinate construct with a positive relation to behavioural intention, and significantly mediates the effect of service quality on the intention to engage in WOM behaviour. The insignificant direct effect from service quality to WOM further suggests the role of satisfaction as a complete mediator in the university education service setting. Implications for future research are discussed and limitations noted.     

Understanding the factors affecting consumers’ behaviour when purchasing refurbished products: A chaordic perspective

This paper seeks to develop an integrated conceptual framework to explain the conditions that lead to consumers' behaviour when purchasing refurbished products. Innovative methodology was used, including “fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis” (FsQCA), to explore the factors affecting consumers’ behaviour in this regard. Data gathered from 472 consumers were used to test the suggested model. The results revealed that ethical constructs (i.e., “moral obligation, moral accountability, moral outrage”), threat and coping appraisal variables (i.e., perceived severity, perceived venerability), and value are key drivers of the purchase of refurbished products. The findings also revealed that moral obligation, moral outrage, perceived venerability, egoistic value, and attitude are necessary to stimulate purchase behaviour, while perceived severity, rewards, perceived cost, and altruistic value, although sufficient, are not in themselves necessary. This study offers useful implications for retailers, and re-manufacturers, which may help to enhance their marketing strategies and policies.     

Attributes of background music and consumers’ responses to TV commercials

This study extends and crystallizes the literature on the effect of background music in the TV advertising setting by focusing on differential effects of attributes of background music on consumers’ attitudes toward TV advertising based on their involvement. The familiarity of background music was more likely to influence attitudes towards advertisement, brand attitudes and purchase intentions in the low-involvement condition, whereas the product fit of background music was more likely to do so in the high-involvement condition. This indicates that effective attributes of background music can be varied according to consumer involvement.     

Selling digital services abroad: How do extrinsic attributes influence foreign consumers’ purchase intentions?

This article investigates, through the country-of-origin effect and value-in-use lenses, how the implementation of digital services creates opportunities for cultural industries to expand internationally. We argue that intrinsic attributes of cultural content such as the capacity to entertain are difficult to parameterize because they are somewhat experiential and subjective. This means that extrinsic cues are essential to foreign consumers when making a decision to purchase digital services. We specifically evaluate the influence of Britishness, cultural distance, exoticness, brand image, and flag-brand congruence on the purchase intentions of consumers in foreign markets. This study employs a unique consumer dataset with information on the internationalization of British cultural digital services. The depth and breadth of the survey data collected through collaboration with a UK media industry partner with a globally recognised brand is significantly richer than data used in previous studies. In particular, the study exploits a survey with 5,200 usable data points from consumers residing in fourteen geographically dispersed countries. Findings support theoretical predictions that Britishness, cultural distance, exoticness, brand image and flag-brand congruence are positively linked to the purchasing decisions. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Are consumers with disabilities receiving the services they need?

People with disabilities in the U.S. command a buying power of $220 billion. This study combines service quality theory and disability orientation theory to focus on perceived service quality for this segment, with attribution theory providing a connecting framework. The results show that there is much room for improvement. A survey among people with disabilities reveals that retailers are rated lower on accessibility than on traditional service quality dimensions. Furthermore, feelings of disability pride and social activism (mediated by a sense of exclusion) significantly affect ratings of accessibility. Service “intangibles” such as assurance and empathy have the greatest positive effect on service quality ratings, which in turn significantly affect purchase intention (mediated by customer satisfaction). Implications and research issues are discussed.     

What do consumers want? A methodological framework to identify determinant product attributes from consumers’ online questions

Determinant attributes play an important role in consumers’ purchase decisions. Firms rely on them to differentiate their products. Determinant attributes are typically identified using direct methods or indirect methods. However, the voice of the customer online can also provide key insights regarding attributes that are part of the consumers’ pre-purchase search process. The purpose of this study is to propose a framework to identify determinant attributes from online consumer questions. Our method uses semi-supervised Latent Dirichlet Allocation to identify product attributes initially. This is followed by the application of sequence pattern mining to identify temporal sequences of determinant attributes. Finally, hierarchical time series is used to forecast consumer interest in determinant attributes over time. The results show that our study can be used to identify determinant attributes of competing brands and can also be used to forecast consumer interest in these attributes. Brands can use this framework to have a pulse on what consumers look for before purchase. This will aid their decisions related to promotion as well as product development processes.     

Social bundling: A novel method to enhance consumers’ intention to purchase online bundles

Bundling in retail has been argued to improve sales volume and speed, which can improve retailers’ operation performance. However, recent research finds that the purchase quantity requirement in traditional bundling deters non-buyers from becoming buyers. This paper proposes “social bundling,” as a novel method that alleviates the quantity requirement while satisfying the bundling benefits for consumers and retailers. We empirically test a theoretical model that explains the advantages and disadvantages of social bundling vis-à-vis traditional bundling in influencing consumers’ intentions to purchase in bundles. We conclude that social bundling outperforms traditional bundling in driving intention to purchase in bundles.     

A two-stage model for forecasting consumers’ intention to purchase with e-coupons

E-coupons (electronic coupons) have been a mainstay of online marketing to attract consumers and promote them to repeat purchase, distributing right e-coupons to right consumers is of critical importance. In big data era, analyzing consumers preferences for e-coupons by their online behavior and the impact of data imbalance caused by low active consumers are rarely studied. Thus, we propose a two-stage hybrid model. Firstly, consumer segmentation is implemented to analyze behavioral characteristics for each segment and distinguish low active consumers, then models are constructed for different consumer segments. The proposed model is applied to a real online consumption data. Consumers are aggregated into four segments: potential e-coupons user, low discount sensitive user, high discount sensitive user (including discount preference and fixed preference). The first one is defined as low active consumer segment and others are high active consumer segments. Isolation forest model and logistic regression model are respectively constructed for them. Result shows that data imbalance is effectively relieved, prediction performance is also significantly better than the traditional approaches. Finally, e-coupons’ usage characteristics for each consumer segment are summarized, according to that, companies can increase sales and improve consumer satisfaction as well.     

Power logics of consumers’ gendered (in)justices: reading reproductive health interventions through the transformative gender justice framework

ABSTRACT

Global gender asymmetries in marketing and consumer behavior were recently exemplified by the Transformative Gender Justice Framework (TGJF). The TGJF, however, lacks an explicit reference to power – an aspect that becomes apparent when it is used to assess a consumer phenomenology. In this article we augment the TGJF by building out the power logics and by empirically testing it through an assessment of the reproductive market in Uganda. We capture macro-, meso-, and micro-level power asymmetries, and explore how bio-power and control over resources melds with local gender relations and agentic practices that (i) leave social marketing efforts misaligned with embodied realities, and (ii) result in dichotomies and tensions in the reproductive health market as the North–South strive to define the modern-traditional, medical-pleasurable, and women-men nature of contraceptives.     

Experience and facilitating conditions as impediments to consumers’ new technology adoption

The recent proliferation of new technologies and impediments to their adoption has made predicting new technology adoption/use complex and challenging. This paper aims to compare the predictive ability of behavioural expectation (BE) and behavioural intention (BI) given such impediments. BE predicts an attempt to perform a targeted behaviour, whereas BI predicts the likelihood of actually performing a targeted behaviour. An online longitudinal experiment was designed to examine the effects of two contrasting sources of impediments to new technology adoption: experience (internal) and facilitating conditions (external). The results confirm the tendency of subjects, who responded to BI measures, to make overestimations when they think they have more control over the (internal) impediments, and to make exaggerated underestimations when they think they have less control over the (external) impediments. Moreover, it is found that subjects who responded to BE measures have a stronger adoption–use correlation compared to subjects who responded to BI measures regardless of the type of impediments encountered. This study offers a basis for marketers to increase the rate of consumers’ adoption/use of new technology such as mobile applications. The research identifies boundary conditions to the predictive ability of BE and BI in the context of mobile applications adoption/use.