Factors influencing purchase intent in virtual worlds: a review of the literature

Previous empirical studies have identified several factors that seem to play a role in determining purchase intent in virtual worlds; three-dimensional online environments in which users interact while represented by their avatars. So far however, a clear overview of these factors is lacking, and the question that remains is what factors affect purchase intent most. Therefore, this study aims to create an overview of factors that influence users’ purchase intent in virtual worlds, and to subsequently identify the most influential factors. To conduct this review, relevant literature was gathered using a variety of search engines and keywords. An article had to explicitly study factors influencing purchase intent in virtual worlds in order to be included in this review. This search method resulted in a selection of twelve relevant articles that were used for further analysis. Results show that perceived enjoyment, social influence, customization and ease of use are important factors that influence purchase intent in virtual worlds. Enjoyment of the virtual world, beliefs and attitudes of others, avatar customization, and easy-to-use virtual world applications can thus increase users’ willingness to purchase products in the virtual world. Practical implications as well as limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Cultural distance in international business and management: from mean-based to variance-based measures

Extant practice in international management is to measure cultural distance as a nation-to-nation comparison of country means on cultural values, thereby ignoring the cultural variation that exists within countries. We argue that these traditional mean-based measures of cultural distance should take within-country cultural variation into account. Therefore, we propose the use of variance-based measures of cultural distance. To illustrate our argument, we examine total US foreign affiliate sales in more than 40 host countries over the 1983–2008 period, complemented with data from the World Values Survey. We analyze the effects of three cultural distance measures: the Kogut and Singh (1988 Kogut, B., and Singh, H. (1988), ‘The Effect of National Culture on the Choice of Entry Mode,’ Journal of International Business Studies, 19, 411–432.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) mean-based index of cultural distance, the Kogut and Singh (1988 Kogut, B., and Singh, H. (1988), ‘The Effect of National Culture on the Choice of Entry Mode,’ Journal of International Business Studies, 19, 411–432.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) index conditioned by host-country cultural variation and a variance-based measure that takes into account both home- and host-country cultural variation. Our findings indicate that, when within-country cultural variation is taken into account, the explanatory power of the Kogut and Singh (1988 Kogut, B., and Singh, H. (1988), ‘The Effect of National Culture on the Choice of Entry Mode,’ Journal of International Business Studies, 19, 411–432.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) index is substantially decreased. In addition, our variance-based measure of cultural distance outperforms the Kogut and Singh (1988 Kogut, B., and Singh, H. (1988), ‘The Effect of National Culture on the Choice of Entry Mode,’ Journal of International Business Studies, 19, 411–432.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) measure in the explanation of foreign US sales. We therefore suggest to move from mean-based to variance-based measures of cultural distance, thereby taking the cultural variation within countries into account.     

The impact of corporate social responsibility on customer attitudes and retention—the moderating role of brand success indicators

Although many studies report positive effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on customer attitudes, recent literature shows that the effectiveness of CSR initiatives critically varies among consumers, brands, and companies. Using 1375 customer responses about 93 brands in 18 industries, we examine how perceived CSR relates to customer attitudes and actual retention 2 years later, and specifically how this relationship may be contingent on brand characteristics. Our results indicate that perceived CSR can indeed compensate for the absence of a strong brand or smaller advertising budgets, but not for lack of innovativeness. Companies that simultaneously do good and innovate are rewarded with more positive customer attitudes and higher levels of customer retention.     

The impact of home–host cultural distance on foreign affiliate sales: The moderating role of cultural variation within host countries

Research on how multinational firms deal with home–host cultural differences argues that cultural differences are minimized and assumes that foreign cultures are homogenous. In this paper we relax the cultural homogeneity assumption. In the presence of cultural variation in host countries the minimization of cultural differences leads existing mean-based indices of cultural differences to overestimate the actual cultural differences these firms have to deal with. We test this argument in a 25-year panel analysis of total US multinationals' foreign sales in 54 host countries. At the sample average of cultural variation, the use of mean cultural difference indices yields a 74% overestimate of the actual cultural difference effect. This suggests that home–host cultural differences are a substantially smaller barrier to multinational sales than hitherto assumed. The assumption of cultural homogeneity leads to conclusions in which a too large role is attributed to cultural differences.     

Like or dislike? Adolescents’ responses to personalized social network site advertising

Increasingly, personal data posted by users of social network sites (SNSs) can be used to personalize advertising. The present study investigates how adolescents respond to personalized ads in terms of attitude toward the ad, brand engagement and intention to forward, and whether privacy concerns moderate their responses. According to pretest results, a medium level of personalization was expected to be optimal in terms of advertising effectiveness. A within-subjects experiment involving 40 participants aged 14–18 years was performed. Three conditions of personalized advertising were designed with, respectively, low, medium, and high levels of personalization. The study found that the highest personalization condition generated the most positive response and that privacy concerns did not moderate the effects of personalization. The privacy paradox is discussed as an alternative explanation, along with other implications of the results.