Customer Experience Management in Retailing: Understanding the Buying Process

Retailers recognize that greater understanding of customers can enhance customer satisfaction and retail performance. This article seeks to enrich this understanding by providing an overview of existing consumer behavior literature and suggesting that specific elements of consumer behavior—goals, schema, information processing, memory, involvement, attitudes, affective processing, atmospherics, and consumer attributions and choices—play important roles during various stages of the consumer decision process. The authors suggest ways in which retailers can leverage this understanding of consumer behavior. Each of these conceptual areas also offers avenues for further research.     

A comparison of two types of price discounts in shifting consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions

This study focuses on consumer responses to two different types of price discounts: 1) a price discount with and 2) a price discount without a minimum purchase requirement. The effects of the discounts are examined to the extent that they may change consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions regarding a particular brand, by moving it from consumers' hold set to consideration set. A three-phase study on fast-food services in China was conducted. The results of the study provide new empirical insights regarding how to use a brand categorization model to predict the effects of different types of price discounts on consumer purchase behavior. More specifically, this study demonstrates that when a price discount with and without a minimum purchase requirement is applied to a brand in a hold set, the brand moves from the consumers' hold set to the consideration set. However, the effects of the two types of price discounts on consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions are not significantly different. The results are discussed in relation to brand management and marketing strategies in consumer goods industries.     

Consumer cosmopolitanism: Review and replication of the CYMYC scale

Extant marketing literature mainly focuses on explaining why consumers might prefer domestic products and refrain from buying foreign products but, however, is weak in explaining why consumers might intentionally opt for foreign products. Against this background, consumer cosmopolitanism has gained increasing attention as a potentially relevant consumer characteristic for explaining foreign product preference and choice. However, empirical evidence on the impact of consumer cosmopolitanism on consumption behavior remains scarce. This paper identifies the absence of an appropriate measurement instrument as a main reason for this lack of empirical studies by providing (a) a review of cosmopolitanism scales used in other research fields, and (b) a replication with extensions study of the CYMYC scale, the only consumer cosmopolitanism scale currently available. The findings highlight a need for a new scale to measure the consumer cosmopolitanism construct. To stimulate further research in this direction, the paper proposes a conceptual definition of consumer cosmopolitanism along with a nomological network to guide the scale development process.     

The information needs of prospective homebuyers: an exploratory study of apartment purchases in Finland

Ultimately, the search for housing depends on information about the housing market and individual apartments for sale. The housing search process gives rise to diverse information needs. Their nature is elaborated in an exploratory study drawing on interviews conducted with 16 Finnish homebuyers in 2008. The data were analysed by means of qualitative content analysis. The constant comparative approach was utilized to capture the nuances of information needs experienced at three major phases of the housing search process. At the phase of orientation to the housing market and identifying vacancies, the information needs covered a broad area including the supply of relevant apartments in preferred districts and the realistic funding opportunities. The temporal frame within which these needs were experienced was fairly broad. At the phase of assessing vacancies, the information needs became more specific and the temporal frame narrower, since the needs primarily dealt with concrete issues such as the renovation requirements of the apartment. Finally, at the phase of bid formation, information needs were mainly related to the determination of the proper price level and the optimal timing of the price bid.     

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.     

The role of conflict, culture, and myth in creating attitudinal commitment

Using qualitative methods, the authors examine commitment in the sports industry and specifically in a NASCAR context. Commitment, or the culmination of the customer-service provider relationship, plays a particularly critical role in NASCAR, for which more than 70% of fans consciously choose a current sponsor's brand over a competitor's. Previous research, primarily in the domain of business-to-business marketing, focuses on attitudinal, instrumental, and temporal components of commitment; this article examines attitudinal commitment within the NASCAR context. Whereas previous research conceptualizes attitudinal commitment as identification, value congruence, and affiliation, this research presents a wider view. Specifically, within the NASCAR consumption culture, hero/villain myths surrounding drivers create conflict that heightens attitudinal commitment to the sport. This research therefore offers implications regarding non-traditional components of attitudinal commitment.     

Purchase behavior in favor of domestic products in the West Balkans

Despite the long tradition of research on country-of-origin and consumer ethnocentrism, many of the issues remain unresolved in the literature, most notably the relationship between cognitive, affective and normative mechanisms in consumer choice behavior, and generalizability of existing research findings to non-traditional emerging and/or small country markets. This study responds to the current gaps in knowledge in that it examines behavioral manifestations of consumers’ choice of domestic vs. foreign products in four transitioning post-war markets in the West Balkans. Data were collected via personal interviews with 1954 adult urban consumers. The model of domestic purchase behavior was tested using SEM analysis. The results for all four country samples indicate that consumer ethnocentrism has affected domestic purchase behavior both directly and indirectly through domestic product appraisal. Moreover, we found consumer worldliness, a controversial construct in previous studies, to be uniformly negatively related to ethnocentrism. On the other hand, the findings related to the role of national identification as an antecedent to consumer ethnocentrism and domestic product appraisal were inconsistent across the samples. The implications of these findings for the validity and generalizability of existing models of consumer behavior in a new cultural context are considered, and implications for marketers interested in exploiting opportunities in the region are discussed.     

改革开放三十年城市居民消费演变实证研究

改革开放三十年来,社会生活的各个方面都发生了巨大变化。消费日益成为人们日常生活不可或缺的组成部分。本文深入分析了不同时期城市居民的消费特征,对改革开放三十年来城市居民的消费演变进行系统梳理。总体来看,改革开放后至20世纪80年代,城市居民消费结构连渐优化,在20世纪80年代中后期形成耐用消费品热潮;在消费态度方面．居民从被动消费向主动消费转变,但“他人取向”仍占据主流。20世纪90年代至今,城市居民耐用消费品升级,形成“倒金字塔”结构．居民文化消费领域扩大,个性化消费意识增强。     

第三方物流服务的顾客满意度研究——基于电子商务情景

在中国电子商务情景下,基于国内外物流服务质量与顾客满意的相关文献和顾客的访谈,从第三方物流服务的实体配送服务质量和顾客营销服务质量两个方面出发,结合信息系统和营销学领域的信息化水平和品牌形象变量构建了我国电子商务情景下第三方物流的顾客满意度模型。采用结构方程模型对收集的423份国内电子商务第三方物流服务顾客数据进行分析。结果表明,电子商务情景下,除实体配送服务质量外,顾客营销服务质量是第三方物流服务质量的关键维度。研究还发现,第三方物流服务质量显著正向影响顾客对物流服务的满意度;物流信息化水平和品牌形象对第三方物流服务质量存在显著正向影响,且还通过第三方物流服务质量对顾客满意存在重要的间接影响。     

生态脆弱地区农户耕地利用结构及投入要素配置优化——基于塔吉特-总绝对方差最小模型的大别山区农户实证

以大别山区为研究区域,采用塔吉特-总绝对方差最小模型(Target-MOTAD)分析了生态脆弱地区农户风险状态下耕地投入要素配置的优化途径.研究表明:调查区域农户耕地投入要素结构和耕地利用结构有优化空间,典型农户在现有耕地资源条件下可以通过耕地投入要素配置及耕地利用结构的优化来增加其农业收入,而不需要通过扩大垦殖规模来实现农业收入增长目标.因此生态脆弱地区农户在耕地利用过程中应提高耕地利用程度,优化投入要素的配置结构,避免由于扩大垦殖规模而造成的生态环境的进一步破坏.