Increase hedonic products purchase intention through livestreaming: The mediating effects of mental imagery quality and customer trust

Although online retailing is applying livestreaming to promote both hedonic and utilitarian products, the differential effectiveness of utilizing this tool across the two types of products is still unclear. With an online experiment, the study found that livestreaming (vs. traditional e-commerce) is more effective in boosting hedonic products while making no difference in increasing purchase intentions of utilitarian products. By running a moderated serial mediation analysis, the research also demonstrated the underlying mechanism that livestreaming could significantly enhance mental imagery quality and customer trust in hedonic rather than utilitarian products. Therefore, our research has discovered an important boundary condition for the livestreaming effect and also the mechanism for the success of utilizing livestreaming to boost hedonic products. Considering the indiscriminate use of livestreaming regardless of product types and the huge amounts of resources required to sustain livestreaming, the study not only provides a theoretical glimpse of where livestreaming is more effective and why, but also practical insights as to how to apply livestreaming to different types of products and how to leverage mental imagery and customer trust to achieve business growth in an online retailing context.     

The roles of multiple channels in predicting website visits and purchases: Engagers versus closers

In today’s online environment, consumers and sellers interact through multiple channels such as email, search engines, banner ads, affiliate websites and comparison-shopping websites. In this paper, we investigate whether knowing the history of channels the consumer has used until a point of time is predictive of their future visit patterns and purchase conversions. We propose a model in which future visits and conversions are stochastically dependent on the channels a consumer used on their path up to a point. Salient features of our model are: (1) visits by consumers are allowed to be clustered, which enables separation of their visits into intra- and inter-session components, (2) interaction effects between channels where prior visits and conversions from channels impact future inter-session visits, intra-session visits and conversions through a latent variable reflecting the cumulative weighted inventory of prior visits, (3) each channel attracts inter-session and intra-session visits differently, (4) each channel has different association with conversion conditional on a customer’s arrival to the website through that channel, (5) each channel engages customers differently (i.e., keeps the customer alive for a next session or for a next visit within a session), (6) the channel from which there was an arrival in the previous session can have an enhanced ability to generate an arrival for the same channel in the current session (channel persistence), and (7) parsimonious specification for high dimensionality in a low-velocity, sparse-data environment. We estimate the model on easy-to-collect first-party data obtained from an online retailer selling a durable good and find that information on the identities of channels and incorporation of inter- and intra-session visits have significant predictive power for future visitation and conversion behavior. We find that some channels act as “closers” and others as “engagers”—consumers arriving through the former are more likely to make a purchase, while consumers arriving through the latter, even if they do not make a purchase, are more likely to visit again in the future or extend the current session. We also find that some channels engage customers more than others, and that there are interaction effects between the channels visited. Our estimates show that the effect of prior inventory of visits is different from the immediate prior visit, and that visit and purchase probabilities can increase or decrease based on the history of channels used. We discuss several managerial implications of the model including using the predictions of the model to aid in selecting customers for marketing actions and using the model to evaluate a policy change regarding the obscuring of channel information.     

The Effect of Pricing and Advertising on Customer Retention in a Liberalizing Market

This study investigates the drivers of customer retention in a liberalizing market. The authors address key retention issues that allow them to contribute to existing retention research in several critical ways. They (1) examine the effects of pricing and mass advertising, (2) account for (new entrants) competitors' actions, (3) investigate the dynamic impact of marketing tactics, and (4) study the proposed relationships in a market recently opened to competition. Using longitudinal data for a sample of 650 mobile phone consumers and a split-population hazard model that accounts for the notion that some customers are never at risk of defection, the authors show that both the focal firm's (incumbent) and the competitors' price and mass advertising exert a significant influence on the probability of terminating an existing incumbent relationship. They find that the relationships between marketing variables and retention are not static but vary over time. Price is generally less effective in the early stages of market liberalization, which suggests that customers become more price sensitive in later stages. Finally, the study findings can have important strategic implications on designing customer management and marketing resource allocation strategies, as well as on providing a competitive regulatory framework in liberalizing markets.     

Price competition in a differentiated products duopoly under network effects

We examine price competition under product-specific network effects, in a duopoly where the products are differentiated both horizontally and vertically. We emphasize the role of consumers’ expectations formation. When expectations are not influenced by prices, the market may be shared but shares must be equal unless product qualities differ or one firm, possibly even the low-quality one, may capture the entire market. When expectations are influenced by prices, which would be the case when there is commitment, competition becomes more intense and the high-quality firm tends to capture a larger market share. Under strong network effects there is a continuum of equilibria and the higher the prices, the smaller the difference between those prices can be. Requiring continuity of expectations, however, delivers a unique equilibrium where one firm captures the entire market.     

“省直管县”改革会损害地级市的利益吗?

我国多个地区正在探索"省直管县"体制改革,目前的最大顾虑是改革是否会损害地级市的利益?本文利用1999—2008年我国地级市数据,通过系统GMM估计对此进行了实证研究。结果发现:"强县扩权"提高了城市财政收入,抑制了城市财政支出增长;财政"省直管县"的作用则恰好相反。"强县扩权"促进了城市经济增长,但不利于城市第三产业的发展;财政"省直管县"虽然降低了城市经济增长速度,却提高了第三产业比重。两项改革措施都抑制了城市规模的扩大,但有利于改善城市的环境质量。因此,我们不能笼统地断定"省直管县"改革一定会有损地级市的利益、阻碍城市化的进程,应深入地研究各项改革措施的利弊得失,做到综合运用、扬长避短。     

宏观统计数据质量规范研究

根据国内外宏观统计数据质量规范演变的历程,在界定宏观统计数据质量新内涵的基础上,依据国际货币基金组织评价数据质量的规范,本文对我国宏观数据质量的规范进行了实证研究。我国宏观数据质量在金融统计数据、社会人口统计数据上与国际货币基金组织制定的数据公布通用系统(GDDS)一致,而财政统计数据与对外经济数据与GDDS尚存在差距;我国数据公布系统在金融统计和人口统计上与GDDS一致,在对外统计与财政统计上与GDDS存在一定差异。     

More on the role of switching costs in service markets: A research note

The present paper focuses on several important and under-researched issues related to switching costs (SC) as a defensive marketing tool in retaining customers with complaint handling. While most previous research analyzed the effects of SC on the behavioral intent of customers, our findings have focused on the actual behavior of bank customers; that is, staying with or leaving the bank to which they had complained previously. The findings show that, of the six potential facets of SC, only two significantly affect the actual behavior of complainants, one directly (i.e., Continuity Costs) and the other as a moderator (i.e., Learning Costs). Likewise, a customer's evaluation of the complaint handling affects behavior directly.     

Strategies to offset dissatisfactory product performance: The role of post-purchase marketing

This research examines the role of post-purchase recovery initiatives in offsetting the negative effect of a dissatisfactory product experience. Experiment 1 explores the effect of counterfactual thinking, a mental simulation process of reflecting upon past events and generating alternative possible outcomes, on product evaluations after an individual experiences a negative purchase outcome. Experiment 2 builds on these findings and shows how customer surveys can be used as tactical tools to boost post-purchase product evaluations. The results indicate that post-purchase marketing efforts, such as customer surveys, can engage consumers in counterfactual thinking and positively affect their product evaluations.     

Customer participation and citizenship behavioral influences on employee performance, satisfaction, commitment, and turnover intention

Despite increasing awareness of the importance of customer behaviors in service delivery, understanding consequences relating to employees receives little attention. Therefore, using data from a large electronic firm relating to customers, employees, and managers, this study examines the effects of customer participation and citizenship behavior on employee performance, satisfaction and commitment, as well as indirect effects on turnover intention. Furthermore, the study examines how similarity and likeability moderate the effects of customer participation and citizenship behavior on employee satisfaction. The study also includes a laboratory experiment and provides further support for causal direction. The article discusses marketing implications of the results.     

Investigating mediators between corporate reputation and customer citizenship behaviors

Recent corporate reputation research focuses on customers as an important stakeholder group for whom firm reputation matters. The authors hypothesize that customer-based corporate reputation (CBR) may affect customer citizenship behaviors (CCB) and that both commitment and loyalty mediate the CBR-CCB relationship. The tests of the hypotheses use a sample of 583 service customers who evaluate the reputation of service firms. These results suggest that commitment and loyalty mediate the relationship between CBR and one type of CCB, that is, helping the company. The authors discuss the implications for marketing research and practice.