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This paper aims to investigate the causal relationships between constructs related to consumer–brand engagement (CBE), including consumers’ enduring involvement, ongoing information search behaviour, online engagement behaviour and brand attitude in Hong Kong.

The theoretical framework is tested using data from 302 customers of a durable technology product, a smartphone, in Hong Kong, collected using a self-administered online survey. Partial least squares-structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The results reveal that consumers’ enduring involvement and ongoing information search behaviour are key drivers of CBE, ultimately enhancing customers’ brand attitude. The importance of enduring involvement in strengthening ongoing search behaviour, online engagement behaviour and CBE is confirmed, together with the importance of ongoing search behaviour in strengthening CBE. Further analysis demonstrated the full mediating role of ongoing search behaviour in the relationship between enduring involvement and online engagement behaviour, such that CBE fully mediates the impact of ongoing search behaviour on brand attitude.

The research contributes to the extant literature by providing an understanding of how to strengthen CBE for durable technology products, such as smartphones. However, this study is cross-sectional in nature, focusing on smartphones in Hong Kong only. Thus, future research should consider comparisons between countries with diverse cultures as well as other industries, such as the service sector, to enhance the generalisability of the study’s findings.

Marketers should seek to heighten customers’ involvement levels by encouraging customer–brand interactions, which is not only useful in encouraging customers’ ongoing search and online engagement behaviour but also critical in strengthening CBE. Additionally, marketers are recommended to encourage customers’ ongoing search behaviour (at the category level), which is useful in encouraging consumers’ online engagement behaviour as well as strengthening CBE.

The role of ongoing search behaviour in brand building has received little attention in the branding literature. This paper makes a noteworthy contribution to CBE research by empirically testing a holistic framework, confirming that enduring involvement and ongoing search behaviour are critical drivers in the process of strengthening CBE. This paper also demonstrates the mediation roles of ongoing search behaviour and CBE in the holistic framework.

This paper intends to examine the antecedents of perceived creativity and flow experience in order to understand how consumers' advertisement keywords browsing influences their searching intentions and/or behaviours regarding purchase. In addition, it aims to consider two kinds of intentions in the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to facilitate the translation of intentions into behaviour.

Research constructs were drawn from pre‐validated measurement items. An online survey was conducted at my3q.com. A total of 368 surveys were returned. The results were analysed using structural equation modelling with Smart PLS 2.0.

The results show that flow experience positively affects the users' attitude toward keyword searching, the intention to search keywords, controllability, and self‐efficacy. The antecedent belief of perceived creativity also positively influences the attitude toward keyword searching. The overall TPB model is effective in terms of predicting consumers' online keyword search behaviours; the intention to purchase a product especially affects a consumer's intention to search keywords online.

To attract consumers companies have to use combined marketing strategies to provide creative advertisements to make their products look appealing. Moreover, advertisements that are fun and make people feel curious would also be appealing and make the consumers feel that they are able or resourceful enough to find the keywords.

Two kinds of intentions – intention to purchase a product and intention to search keywords online – are simultaneously considered in this study. Moreover, the combination of flow theory, perceived creativity and TPB demonstrates an appropriate theoretical basis to examine consumers' online keyword search behaviours.

While prior research has investigated factors that predict consumers’ information search behaviors as they relate to automobiles, such studies were conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that the pandemic has necessitated lockdowns, social distancing, business closures and other disruptions to normal shopping activities, consumer information search behaviors have also been substantially altered as the psychological distance between consumers and marketers has increased. Thus, this study aims to examine these changes and identify patterns of search behavior for a major durable product: automobiles.

Using survey data from before and during the pandemic, the study implements Finite Mixture Modeling to unveil latent segments of U.S. consumers’ search behaviors and choices for Japanese automobiles. This analytic method enables capturing consumer unobserved heterogeneity through mixing probabilities guided by individual characteristics. These segments are determined based on consumers’ information search for online and offline marketer-controlled and nonmarketer-controlled sources.

The study identifies that two segments of consumers emerge both prior to the pandemic and during the pandemic. These empirically validated findings indicate that the pandemic has led to shifts in consumers’ information search behaviors for Japanese automobiles by relying more on nonmarketer-controlled sources of information.

This work is among the first comprehensive empirical analyses of consumer search for a major durable product by comparing pre- and during pandemic patterns. Using analytics and econometrics, the first-hand analysis findings offer meaningful implications for marketers and product managers in the automotive industry.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of consumers' shopping orientation on their satisfaction level with the product search and purchase behavior using multi‐channels.

A total of 181 students in a large US mid‐western university provided usable responses to the survey. Exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analyses were employed to examine the research questions.

The results showed that more than three quarters of the respondents shopped via the internet and catalogs, and about 95 percent shopped at non‐local retailers. About 60 percent reported that they never shopped from TV shopping channels. Confident/fashion‐conscious shopping orientation and catalog/internet shopping orientation were found to be key predictors of customer satisfaction level with information search via multi‐channels. Both confident/fashion‐conscious consumers and mall shopping‐oriented shoppers were more satisfied with store‐based retail channels for apparel purchases, whereas non‐local store‐oriented shoppers and catalog/internet‐oriented shoppers were more satisfied with non‐store‐based retail channels for their apparel purchases.

The sample of this study was biased by gender and age. For the apparel retail industry, this paper offers practical knowledge about the relationships between shopping orientation and consumer search and purchase behavior in a multi‐channel retailing context.

No study has utilized the shopping orientation framework to explain consumer behavior in a multi‐channel environment. This study provides understanding of consumer product information search behavior on four dimensions (price, promotion, style/trends, and merchandise availability) via multi‐channels.

The purpose of this research is to propose and validate a theoretical framework explaining web-rooming and showrooming as a multi-stage decision-making process. The authors have used consumer purchase decision-making theories to propose a model that identifies showrooming and webrooming as a combination of two decisions, channel choice during information search and channel choice during actual purchase. Further, the authors explored how various antecedents of showrooming and webrooming have differential effects on various stages of a purchase decision-making process and how product type moderates the relationships.

The authors have conducted empirical research, whereby 243 responses were obtained from a cross-sectional survey. The authors have used structural equation modeling and multiple regression analysis to validate our theoretical model.

Webrooming or showrooming is a multi-stage decision-making process for the consumers. First, consumers decide whether to search online or offline and then whether to buy online and offline. Different individual, purchase context-related and channel related factors impact these decisions. Product type governs which variables will be more important than others.

The research looks to enhance the understanding of the consumer's decision-making process during showrooming and webrooming while also helping retailers design and implement appropriate strategies that could affect consumers during information search and actual purchase.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between the dimensions of the pre-purchase information search (PS) such as direction (reliance on the information sources-RIS) and pattern (reliance on the utilitarian value-RUV), moderating role of the online shopping experience (OSE), and their influence on the behavior of the socialization agents (family communication (FC), peer communication (PC), TV advertising-TVAdv, social media communication (SMC)) for buying branded apparel.

This study used a questionnaire, and a total of 458 responses were obtained. A measurement model with the dimensions of the pre-purchase information search and socialization agents was analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis. The conceptual model with hypotheses (direct and moderated effects) was analyzed using a moderated approach using Hayes Macros.

The findings confirm the significant influence of the dimensions of the PS (RIS and RUV) on the behavior of socialization agents for buying branded apparel with the strongest influence of RIS on SMC. The moderated effects of OSE between the dimensions of PS and socialization agents are found to be significant except for the relationship between RIS and FC. The direct effects of the RIS and RUV on the socialization agents are higher for consumers having high OSE and lower for consumers having low OSE.

The findings contribute to the growing body of literature on the PS, highlighting the importance of consumer socialization for the purchase decision of consumers in emerging markets. No previous studies have applied a psychological approach to explain the variation in the external search incorporating the dimensions like direction (RIS) and pattern (RUV), which did not receive research attention so far. This study uniquely sets a new direction for the researchers by establishing a theoretical linkage between the dimensions of PS that can act as antecedents and can significantly influence the behavior of socialization agents using the consumer socialization approach based on the social learning theory. The results reveal the strongest influence of SMC and establish the moderating role of OSE for the buying decision of branded apparel. The findings are valuable for online marketers who must acknowledge that social media is the strongest platform for reaching customers and must create a formal page for displaying their latest updates about their products and services. Marketers must engage all the family members through online contests and feedback sessions for developing trust for online shopping platforms.

The purpose of this article is to review the consumer behavior and social network theory literature related to the online and e-commerce context.

To conduct the review, the authors draw on a sample of 942 articles published from 1993 to 2012 addressing consumer behavior or social network issues in the online or social media context. The sample is analyzed by both era (incubation, expansion and explosion) and primary topic.

Eight categories of online consumer behavior research are described. In the order from largest to smallest, these are: cognitive issues, user-generated content, Internet demographics and segmentation, online usage, cross cultural, online communities and networks, strategic use and outcomes and consumer Internet search.

The literature has been summarized in each category and research opportunities have been offered for consumer behavior and social network scholars interested in exploring the online context.

Recent statistics on increasing webrooming customers make it topical in the multi-channel retailing domain. The purpose of this paper is to offer an enhanced understanding on “Webrooming behaviour”, an area of concern for e-retailers by proposing an integrated framework grounded on the Theory of planned behaviour and Technology acceptance model.

The conceptual model presented develops a number of propositions applicable to webrooming behaviour utilizing the rich literature on channel choice behaviour in the multi-channel retailing environment. The propositions are open for verification and can serve the basis for future line of research.

The model proposed provides basis for understanding the webrooming sequence via search attitude towards online channels, purchase attitude towards offline channels, perceived ease of online search and perceived usefulness of webrooming behaviour. The impact of online risk perceptions and mediating role of (lack of) “trust” have been proposed along with the direct impact of product type and category which offers an holistic view towards understanding the webrooming conduct.

The model proposed lacks empirical verification. There is a need to test the model empirically to validate the model and to find out the suitability of integrated TPB-TAM model.

Webrooming substantially erodes online profits. Before retailers’ strategies to defend webroomers, it is imperative to understand the phenomenon from the consumer’s side. The model proposed is a step in this direction and provides the basis for formulating strategies for holding back the webroomers.

This paper adds to the body of knowledge in retailing by proposing a conceptual model on webrooming behaviour which is an emerging area of research in the present retail landscape.

Online web searches have played crucial roles in influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions. Web search traffic information enables researchers and practitioners to better understand consumers in terms of their preferences and interests, among other things. The purpose of this paper is to use web search traffic information provided by Google Trends to derive relationships among product brands as well as those between product brands and product attributes to propose a method to enhance the visibility of consumer brand positioning.

This study builds upon the interesting observation that consumers’ behavior in performing simultaneous searches, or searches including two or more keywords, can be converted into data indicating relationships among brands as well as those between brands and their attributes. The study focuses on the cases of hybrid cars and tablet PCs, and applies a social network analysis method to identify these relationships. Time series information on web search traffic is used because it can track these two product groups from the early stages to the present. This step is completed to verify the changes in the status of each brand and in their relationships that occurred in consumers’ minds over time.

Results show that consumers’ web search behaviors reveal the brand positioning and brand-attribute associations in their minds. Specifically, using consumers’ simultaneous search data, the authors derived relationships among brands (brand-brand network) from consumers’ behaviors of searching simultaneously for two brands and the relationships between brands and attributes (brand-product attributes network) from consumers’ behavior of searching simultaneously for a specific brand and certain product attributes.

Theoretically, this study verifies that consumers’ web search traffic information can be used to microscopically identify the positions of individual brands and their relationships in the minds of consumers. Regarding practical applications, this study proposes a method that can be used by companies to track how consumers perceive their brands by performing a simple and cost-effective analysis using the free search traffic information provided by Google.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence on search behavior of gender, purchase confidence, and internal knowledge in different purchase situations. It is expected that there will be gender differences on search behavior, particularly given different purchase situations.

Multivariate analysis of variance was used to analyze the main and interaction effects of the independent categorical variables on multiple dependent interval variables. An online survey was distributed to employees in different geographic locations in the USA.

The results of situational use indicate that sources of information are perceived differently by males and females depending on their levels of purchase confidence and internal knowledge, suggesting that, when consumers consider sources of information, such as retail clerk, family/friends or themselves, the purchase situation influences that decision.

The measure of the situational influence through brief descriptions of hypothetical consumption situations was required. Such descriptions could not include every possible feature of a natural setting, resulting in subjective interpretation by respondents of what are socially acceptable, possibly confounding results.

Consumers bring to the buying decision different types of experiences and expectations. Understanding how males and females seek varied sources of external information is relevant to the service industry in designing promotional plans, whether the product of choice is a restaurant, vacation resort, and hotel or tourism destination such as a winery.

The contribution of the research is to broaden the understanding of search behavior and the role gender plays, particularly in different purchase situations.