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This work addresses how consumer perceptions of quality may be influenced by the composition of competition. I develop a theoretical framework that explains how consumer evaluations of quality can be negatively impacted by a product's stylistic similarity to popular competitors. These issues are examined empirically using more than 75,000 online consumer evaluations, from the evaluation aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, of 123 feature films released in the United States during 2007. Results suggest that during a movie's opening week, movies that are stylistically similar to the top-performing box office movie are evaluated less favorably. Additional analyses indicate that this negative effect may persist in later periods due to social conformity pressures, and that there is reduced demand for those movies that are stylistically similar to the top box office performer. This article contributes to the broader literature in strategic management by depicting how stylistic features of competitors can affect consumer behaviour and perceptions of quality in markets. This work also suggests managerial implications for entry-timing decisions and positioning choices.

Introduction – In today’s intense competitive environment, businesses that want to have a sustainable competitive advantage must put the customer at the centre of all their activities and create customer loyalty by offering products and services that will provide customer satisfaction. One of the key elements of ensuring customer satisfaction is the effective handling of customer complaints, which is defined as the customers expressing their dissatisfaction with unmet expectations and unsatisfied needs verbally or in writing. The concept of a complaint as a response of customers’ dissatisfaction with the products and services they experience is an invaluable feedback mechanism for businesses to resolve issues relating to their products and services.

Aim – The aim of this chapter is to emphasise the importance of the concept of complaint as an important part of customer relations management and an effective marketing tool for the tourism sector. As a service sub-sector, the simultaneous production and consumption of services in the tourism sector ensures customer satisfaction more than concrete products, due to their inseparable nature. For this reason, handling, evaluating and finalising customer complaints has an important function and value in providing the necessary information for tourism enterprises to become aware of their deficiencies and mistakes. Complaint management has started to play an even more critical role for the tourism industry in preventing customer losses due to dissatisfaction, especially considering the shrinkage in demand in the sector due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method – Firstly the concept of complaint and the importance of complaints for businesses were explained, customer complaint behaviour and the factors affecting this behaviour were examined in detail, the concept of online complaint was mentioned and the subject was evaluated in terms of tourism businesses.

Results – While the effective management and resolution of complaints should be seen as a goal by every tourism business, it is vital that they understand customer complaint behaviours, the factors affecting this behaviour and how complaints should be managed in a way that will result in favour of the business.

Conclusion – A complaint management process that enables customers to easily report their complaints to businesses and produces solutions as soon as possible will positively affect customer satisfaction. In this context, in order to reduce the negative effects on tourism enterprises, especially through the pandemic, business need to have clear and easy-to-access procedures, provide a quick response, show reliability and consistency in providing a solution, keeping the complainant informed of progress, have employees who can communicate with empathy and courtesy, have enough employees to deal with the situation, and adopt proactive approaches to prevent complaints rather than reducing the volume of complaints.

Originality/Value – This research contributes to the literature in terms of complaining behaviour, examining the factors affecting this behaviour and emphasising the importance of the concept of complaints in the tourism sector. In addition, the research is important in terms of examining the contributions of an effective complaint management system in reducing the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism sector, which is one of the sectors mostly affected on a global scale.

The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the attitudes and behaviors of digital consumers in omnichannel world. For this purpose, in order to understand the behavior of digital consumers, literature review has been made. The transformation of traditional consumers into digital consumers has been examined within the framework of marketing periods. What are the new types of consumers and demographic and psychographic characteristics of these, and how they are segmented in the market are important issues. Another important issue is how digital environmental factors affect digital consumers when shopping online. Purchasing processes of digital consumers and their behaviors, which channels they use and how they make purchasing decisions play an important role in understanding digital consumer behaviors. After the purchasing decision, it is examined whether digital consumers will transfer their experiences to other consumers, satisfaction and loyalty experiences, and whether they will buy again in digital environmental.

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are converging world cultures by creating common consumer lifestyles across countries through standardized products. However, little is known about how consumers’ exposure to foreign cultures affects their purchase experience from the country. This study explores this gap in the literature by investigating how consumers’ exposure to foreign cultural source (e.g., entertainment) shapes their attitude toward its country. This attitude is conceptualized to influence the perceived product quality and corporate ability of the country’s MNCs, which are further hypothesized to influence consumers’ purchase experience with products offered by the MNCs. Furthermore, the impact of product quality and corporate ability on consumer purchase experience is expected to be moderated by consumer ethnocentrism. The study framework is tested in the context of the Korean Wave (or “Hallyu”) using data consisting of 533 Indonesian consumers. The results support most of the study hypotheses. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.

Consumption is a way of communication whereby consumers express, position or/and differentiate themselves within their society or affiliated groups. A great part of consumers’ lives are spent on various purchase activities, and many would be eager to understand the factors underlying those behaviours.

This chapter primarily deals with the cultural, social, psychological and personal factors that affect consumer behaviour. Each of these factors in relation to consumer behaviour is discussed in detail. The types of consumer buying behaviours and the consumer decision-making processes then provide the fundamentals of the topic along with their relevance to Turkish consumers.

Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to test the effect of consumers’ readiness level to use new technology on their intention to use mobile payment applications based on the technology readiness and acceptance model (TRAM). In detail, it examines how the dimensions of TR as ‘optimism, innovativeness, discomfort, and insecurity’ affect consumers’ intention to utilise mobile payment applications. Moreover, the effect of the technology-accepting behaviour measured by two major factors as ‘perceived usefulness’ and ‘perceived ease of use’ on the intention to use mobile payment applications is also examined.

Need for the study: The existence of a mobile system alone is not enough to attract consumers with no user experience to these applications. The user-centred attribute in the usage of these applications, which involves the influence of technology readiness (TR), has been largely ignored especially in developing countries. By focussing on this area, it is expected to fill the gap that has not been sufficiently handled in the developing country settings and, particularly in Turkey.

Methodology: The study population consists of the consumers who live in İstanbul who is aged 18 and over and use mobile payment technology at least once. After collecting data, confirmatory factor analysis was applied to validate the measurement model. Afterward, the structural model was tested by the Maximum Likelihood-MI estimation method, and the bootstrap samples were stated as 5,000.

Findings: When the results of the study are examined, it is seen that optimism has a significant influence on the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use dimensions of the technology acceptance model, while innovativeness is significant only on the perceived ease of use. This study results also show that discomfort and insecurity don’t significantly influence the perception of usefulness and easy-to-use mobile payment applications as perceived by individuals. Perceived ease of use is to positively affect the perceived usefulness. Additionally, the perceived ease of use and the perceived usefulness are strong predictors of intention to use mobile payment applications.

Practical implications: Findings of this study demonstrate the validity of the technology readiness and acceptance model for explaining the intention of using mobile payment applications in Turkey. To improve consumers’ intent in the usage of m-payment apps, their level of technological readiness towards technology should be determined and the factors that affect the formation of insecurity and discomfort attitudes of individuals should be emphasised.

This chapter aims to shed light on the role that a sustainable orientation plays in strengthening the relationships between global consumers and online brands. Despite many previous studies about the importance of sustainability considerations for national consumers’ brand commitments and purchase intentions, there is a lack of empirical studies focussing on this relationship from a global consumer perspective. A pre-study (consisting of focus group discussions) and a widely distributed international survey with responses from 74 countries show mixed results. Whereas the results from the focus groups imply that a sustainable orientation influences both global consumers’ purchase intentions and brand commitments towards online brands, the survey results imply that global consumers’ sustainable orientations do not affect purchase intentions directly, even though they influence brand commitments. An implication of these results is that an international online brand’s possibility to portray a sustainable orientation plays an important role in strengthening the relationship with global consumers, especially regarding brand commitment.