Impact of customers' assessment of website attributes on e-relationship in the securities brokerage industry: A multichannel perspective

The paper focuses on the comparison between pure e-retailers and multichannel retailers' customers and how they differ in their evaluations of functional and relational attributes of the website, as well as how these attributes impact online relationships. An online survey among online securities investors was conducted. Subjects were self-selected from blogs and forums dedicated to personal finance. A total of 326 questionnaires formed the final sample of this study. By using a series of univariate analyses of variance, structural equation modeling, and multi-group analysis, this research empirically demonstrates that the e-service quality evaluation and determinants of online relationship are different in multichannel contexts versus pure online ones. Results show that customers of multichannel retailers are not more loyal than those of pure online retailers. However, multichannel retailers exceed pure online retailers at achieving a higher level of online trust and a higher assessment of website features. The paper concludes with managerial implications that may be useful in multichannel retailing.     

A comparison of online and offline consumer behaviour: An empirical study on a cinema shopping context

The main objective of this study is to analyse online vs. offline differences in consumer behaviour. To this end, through a proposal applied to cinemas in shopping centres, this study considers values and lifestyles as major factors that influence behaviours and intentions. The partial least squares (PLS) approach is used to evaluate the model. A multi-group analysis is conducted to compare consumers who buy tickets online with those who do so at a box office. We consider 391 valid cases. The results obtained show a link between the use of technology and its effects on behaviour. The relationships between values and behaviour as well as between behaviour and future intent are stronger among online consumers than the effects of lifestyles on behaviour. We consider relevant theoretical and empirical perspectives and offer critical recommendations of use to shopping centre managers, movie theatres, and intermediaries of this sector.     

Responding to negative online reviews: The effects of hotel responses on customer inferences of trust and concern

Our research examines the perceptions and evaluations of prospective customers toward an online negative review and any accompanying hotel response. The study explores two main issues: whether the presence (versus absence) of an organizational response to negative customer reviews affects the inferences potential consumers draw about the target business, and which aspects of responses affect their impressions. We test the effects of four variables associated with a response: source of response, voice of responder, speed of response, and action frame on two outcomes variables (i.e., customer concern and trust inferences). The provision of an online response (versus no response) enhanced inferences that potential consumers draw regarding the business's trustworthiness and the extent to which it cares about its customers. Using a human voice and a timely response yielded favorable customer inferences. Inferences did not vary with response source or action frame. Implications are drawn for effective management of negative online reviews.     

Et tu,Brute? How unfair!

Marketing literature has consistently suggested that retailers should invest in building trust, as customers’ trust in the retailer results in a number of benefits for the retailer. The objective of this article is to understand the impact of buyers’ prior trust in retailers on their price unfairness perceptions. To investigate this, we conduct three experiments; the findings of the first experiment suggest that buyers’ prior trust in retailer has a dual impact (forgiveness and betrayal) on their perception of price unfairness. Trust helps to reduce price unfairness perceptions when the magnitude of the price increase is small, but accentuates this when the price increase is large. Moreover, forgiveness acts as a mediator between price increase and perceived price unfairness. This mediation effect of forgiveness depends upon a shopper's prior trust in the store. The second experiment replicates these findings in a real life experimental setting and thus establishes the robustness of the findings in real life contexts. The third experiment extends the boundaries of this research by demonstrating that the effect of trust on price unfairness perception depends on the nature of comparisons, i.e., whether the price comparison is made with one's own past price or with a price paid by someone else.     

How much do online consumers really value free product returns? Evidence from eBay

Consumer return rates have been steadily rising in recent years, resulting in growing costs for retailers who must manage the returns process and the disposition of returned products. This cost pressure is driven in part by extremely generous return policies, such as giving consumers a full refund upon return. Interestingly, this common retail practice of full refunds is inconsistent with the recommendations of many analytical models of returns, which nearly always show that a partial refund is optimal. Such inconsistencies between theory and practice might arise when the decision drivers included in the analytical models do not match the decision drivers in practice. It might also be the case that retailers are overly optimistic about the value that consumers assign to a full refund, and thus assume that the value of such a policy outweighs its costs. In this paper, we use data collected from eBay, where identical products are sold with different return policies, to investigate these open questions in the literature. We analyze both the return policy drivers from the retailer's perspective and the return policy value from the consumer's perspective. Our results suggest that the value of a full refund policy to consumers may not be as large as one might expect, and it also exhibits a large heterogeneity across buyers with different levels of online purchase experience. In addition, we provide empirical evidence for what has long been suspected by online retailers – that a non-refundable forward shipping charge quickly erodes any value that consumers assign to return policies. The generality of our results is limited by the fact that eBay differs from traditional retail contexts in many respects, including the fact that eBay buyers may not be representative of the general buyer population. However, our study of how eBay consumers value free returns provides new insights into an understudied area, and it can serve as a starting point for future studies of the value of return policies in other retail contexts.     

Web users’ behavioural patterns of tourism information search: From online to offline

This paper presents a conceptual framework of Web users’ engagement in tourism information search for a comprehensive understanding of their integrated online and offline search behaviour. The information search experiences are characterised as a process constituting some common elements: prior knowledge and searching experiences, online searching strategies, processing and recording information, barriers to online searching, reasons for ending an online search, summarising information, exchanging information and searching for more information through other sources. Such behaviour goes beyond the scope of information searching and captures the other activities, including information processing, utilising and disseminating. The grounded theory research method is employed as an inductive investigative process in which the authors construct the framework by systematically collecting and analysing data. The aim of this research method is to build a theory. The data sets consist of both semi-structured in-depth interviews with subjects and their field observations based on online searching. A theoretical model incorporating 10 propositions is proposed for future testing.     

Exploring the core factors of online purchase decisions by building an E-Commerce network evolution model

With the continuous development of the Internet and information technology, online shopping has become a popular purchase mode. The in-depth analysis of consumer decision-making in online shopping is an important issue. Our purpose is to study how the factors of the shopping web pages corporately affect online purchase decisions and determine which are the core factors that affect consumer purchase decisions. We screen the influencing factors on the shopping webpage and deploy e-commerce network evolution based on various weight combinations of these factors to generate sales distributions of online products. By comparing these simulated sales distributions to the real data, the optimal weight of each factor is obtained. The results show that sales volume and the number of high-quality negative comments are the most important factors influencing consumers' decision-making, the number of comments and the number of comments with pictures are relatively minor factors, store type and video presentation of the products have the least impact. The optimal simulated sales distribution is very close to the real case and verifies that the introduced network evolution technology is applicable. The proposed model can be used as a uniform evaluation platform for correlational study, which is an important link in the purchase research chain.     

Understanding the role of situational factors on online grocery shopping among older adults

This paper seeks to identify the situational factors that drive the adoption of online grocery shopping among older adults. A two-step research process is employed. First, exploratory qualitative research is carried out to identify situational factors that older adults take into account when deciding whether to buy groceries online. This is followed by a conjoint experiment to determine which situational factors are considered most important when making such a decision. The sample consisted of 9 participants in the in-depth individual interviews and 206 respondents in the conjoint experiment. The findings indicate that health, mobility issues, and distance to a store are the most important situational factors driving older adults to buy groceries online. Moreover, the findings confirm that the adoption of online grocery shopping among older adults is a result of a complex trade-off of situational variables. The findings contribute to managerial practice by providing online grocery retailers with insight that can be applied when designing promotional programs targeted at older adults.     

政府补助、社会责任与流通企业效率

文章从流通视角出发,理论层面分析政府补助对流通企业效率的影响,探讨企业履行社会责任在政府补助与流通企业效率间可能存在的中介机制,并考察国有企业的调节效应。进一步利用我国沪深两市A股241家上市流通企业2010-2020年的非平衡面板数据进行经验检验,研究发现：(1)政府补助会促进流通企业效率的提升;(2)社会责任在政府补助与流通企业效率的关系中存在中介效应,即政府补助能够使流通企业履行更多的社会责任,并由此推动流通企业效率的提升;(3)国有企业存在直接调节效应和间接调节效应。相较于非国有流通企业,国有流通企业所获政府补助以及履行社会责任对企业效率的提升作用更低。研究为深化流通体制改革,提升流通效率提供了新的经验证据。