Search results

The purpose of this paper is to develop, test, and validate a model in a specialty retail environment to assess the influence of a salesperson’s sales- or customer-orientation and customer characteristics related to buy/no-buy decisions.

Backward stepwise discriminant analysis was used to identify variables that most differentiated buyers from non-buyers. The discriminant model was estimated with survey data provided by a judgment sample of consumers asked to recall details about a recent in-store purchase experience (n=240). One significant discriminant function emerged. The model correctly classified 87.5 percent of buy/no-buy decisions by consumers in a separate validation sample (n=40).

Customers who believe a salesperson is sales oriented (i.e. only interested in closing) are more likely to make a no-buy decision even when retailer-related attributes – such as positive prior experience with the retailer, susceptibility to normative interpersonal influence, and positive attitude toward retailing – suggest otherwise. Surprisingly, neither customer orientation nor susceptibility to interpersonal informational influence relates significantly to making a buy/no-buy decision.

Specialty retailers should avoid a sales-outcome-based orientation. To add value in a competitive marketplace where buyers can avoid salespeople, the focus of a sales interaction should be on identifying customer needs and characteristics.

Adaptations of sales people’s personas and selling efforts – fostered by new managerial training practices – and the need for specialty retailers to adopt behavior-based control systems are suggested. In addition, sales or customer orientation typically is reported by the salesperson. Here, customers’ belief – which is more germane to modeling buy/no-buy decisions – designates the salesperson’s orientation.

Online consumer reviews play an important role in influencing consumers' purchasing decisions by providing a wealth of information about products and services. Framed by uncertainty reduction theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine consumer perceptions of online consumer reviews and effects on consumer attitudes and usage behaviors in relation to individual characteristics.

Data were randomly collected from 1,930 US online consumer review users using an online survey.

The researchers found that consumers perceived both benefits and costs from online consumer reviews and that both benefits and costs influenced consumer attitudes toward, and usage behaviors of, online consumer reviews. Individual characteristics – confidence in the information process and consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence – were shown to determine how online consumer reviews were perceived.

The results provide insight to retailers and marketers as to how they can use consumer reviews for their products or services to improve business performance.

The purpose of this study is to examine the roles that social cues play in affecting patronage behavior and how consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence would moderate the influence of social cues on store image.

A two (high vs low socially‐oriented in‐store graphics) by two (high vs low personalized customer service) between subject experimental design was conducted to achieve the research objective. A total of 193 surveys were used for data analysis.

Consumers had a more favorable attitude toward merchandise and service quality and felt more aroused or pleased with a store where more social cues were present. They also had a more favorable perception of store image when high‐personalized service was provided. Consumers perceived that they would be more likely to shop in a store that had more in‐store displays of graphics with social meaning. Consumer susceptibility to informational influence (SII) played a moderating role in some cases.

Retail service needs to be reinvented to create excitement. Consumers may use social cues embedded in the store environment as an information source. Sales skills of staff and in‐store graphics should be especially appealing to low‐SII customer.

This study has added to the retail literature by demonstrating that the social cues in store environment can affect consumers' perception of store image and patronage intention. It provides interesting insights on how retailers can use a socially meaningful environment as a source of competitive advantage.

This paper aims to define the niche market concept and to investigate the extent to which purchasing niche products represents a form of conspicuous consumption. Consumers increasingly seek products that differ from the mainstream, and companies regard niche markets as a promising opportunity beyond saturated mass markets.

Based on survey data that combines self-report scales and actual purchase decisions, the effects of different dimensions of conspicuous consumption on niche product choice are investigated using binary logistic regression.

Choosing niche products over mass market products is mainly influenced by differentiation tendencies. Moreover, consumers use niche products to strengthen their role as opinion leaders. Choice of mass market products, on the other hand, is influenced by assimilation tendencies. In contrast to common assumptions, status-seeking consumers are more likely to choose a mass market alternative over niche products.

Based on the conceptualization of niche markets, this study reveals that niche products are a means for consumers to distinguish themselves. Limitations include the focus on a single product domain and country. Future research should replicate the study for other types of niche products and in other cultural settings.

Niche firms should explicitly consider the social effects of conspicuous consumption as a key driver of demand. Specifically, the unique nature of a niche product should be highlighted and recognizable to increase the acceptance among potential customers. Moreover, instead of focussing the status of niche products, marketing activities should address opinion leaders’ desire to maintain their standing among the social group by providing in-depth information and enhanced customer experience.

This paper addresses the call for a conceptual definition of niche markets. Moreover, while previous work focussed on the company perspective, this study allows for an improved understanding of consumer behaviour with regard to niche markets.

The increasing adoption of digital technologies such as social media have changed the way consumers share knowledge about products and services among each other. The aim of this paper is to test what factors drive customers to share knowledge about products and services on social media pages.

A quantitative survey design was employed for this study. Empirical data were drawn from 358 consumers in Italy, using a purposive sampling technique. The hypothesised relationships were tested using ordinary least squares regression modelling.

The results of this study reveal that the usage frequency of online reviews (UFORs), social bonds (SBs), subjective happiness (SH) and reciprocity positively impact on customer knowledge sharing (CKS). By contrast, the perceived usefulness of online reviews (PUORs), helping others, customer susceptibility to interpersonal influence (CSII) and informational (INFO) do not impact CKS.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is amongst the first to empirically test the antecedents of knowledge-sharing behaviours about products and services on online social media. The present work offers relevant implications for theory. First, the work enriches the customer knowledge management (CKM) theory by providing empirical evidence on factors leading to the higher sharing of knowledge amongst customers. Second, the work adds to the literature on social media, demonstrating the individual determinants on knowledge-sharing behaviours about products and services in online communities. Practically speaking, this paper identifies some key elements driving CKS in social media conversations. Thus, building upon the findings of this study, the authors provide some guidelines for social media managers and retailers for promoting CKS on social media pages.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the extent of susceptibility to interpersonal influence and price sensitivity prevalent among Indian youth, to test if there is a relationship between these two constructs and identify the reason for the same.

In order to empirically test the given objectives, instruments to measure susceptibility to interpersonal influence as well as price sensitivity were developed by using inputs from the literature. Responses were elicited from a sample of Indian youth (between 16 to 25 years) residing in various Indian cities. Relevant statistical tools were used to analyze the data.

Indian youth showed high scores on their traditional consumer behavioral traits of susceptibility to interpersonal influence and price sensitivity. It was shown that susceptibility to interpersonal influence had a significant impact on the level of price sensitivity among Indian youth. Gender played a significant role in this relationship.

The results provide many interesting insights with respect to the consumer behavioral traits of Indian youth. These insights will enable managers to develop effective marketing‐mix strategies, which would cater to the requirements of the Indian youth population.

This is the only contemporary paper in the extant literature which measures the level of susceptibility to interpersonal influence and price sensitivity prevalent among Indian youth and which attempts to identify an empirical relationship among these important constructs.

Interpersonal influences play a major role in shaping consumer choice decisions. This is particularly evident in the case of services, where intangibility and variability add to the decision difficulty. While all consumers are susceptible to interpersonal influence, people differ in the extent of their susceptibility to interpersonal influence, with some individuals being chronically more susceptible to social influence than others. Seeks to speculate in this paper that, in addition to individual differences, susceptibility to interpersonal influence also varies systematically across cultures with varying degrees of individualism‐collectivism.

Hypothesis is tested by investigating and comparing the structure, properties, and mean levels of the susceptibility to interpersonal influence scale across samples of French and English Canadian consumers.

It is found that: French Canadians are significantly more susceptible to normative influence than English Canadians; French Canadians score significantly lower than English Canadians on measures of individualism; and individualism has a significant negative effect on consumer susceptibility to normative influence.

By showing that French Canadians were indeed less individualistic than English Canadians, and that individualistic orientation had a significant negative effect on both the utilitarian and the value‐expressive dimensions of consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence, hopefully it has been demonstrated that differences in susceptibility to normative influence between French and English Canadians are partly driven by cultural differences in individualistic orientation.

This study explores consumers' motivations to purchase luxury and counterfeit products using an international sample. In addition, it also examines the moderating role of interpersonal influence on this process. This study seeks to examine if the consumers who demand the highest quality express a preference for luxury goods over counterfeit goods.

Survey research was employed to subjects from the USA, India, China and Russia. Responses from US and India consumers were collected using online software, whereas responses from China and Russia were collected with the help of a local market research firm.

The findings of the study indicate that consumers tend to show similar reactions based on the luxury and counterfeit consumption process examined here. In terms of interpersonal influence as a moderator, however, the study found it significantly impacts status seekers' attitude toward luxury and how a perfectionist shopper perceives counterfeit consumption.

This study is one of the first in the literature to empirically address both luxury and counterfeit consumption. Further it considers consumers from multiple countries with high levels of luxury good purchases.

Set in an emerging economy context, the purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of green consumers’ purchase behavior on organic food by analyzing the impact of word-of-mouth (WOM) effects (i.e. tie strength, sender’s green expertise, receiver’s green expertise), conformity behaviors (i.e. normative interpersonal influence and informational interpersonal influence) on green purchase intention, and the relationship between green purchase intention and green purchase behavior.

Data were collected by self-administered questionnaire completed by respondents who had purchase experience of organic food in the last six months. The specific context of this study is green consumption for organic food in Taiwan. Data collection was implemented in a convenience sampling method. Among the 578 consumers who had filled the questionnaire, 147 did not have any purchase history of organic food, resulting in a final usable sample of 431 (response rate 74.57 percent) in Taiwan. The data were collected during a five-week period in late 2015.

Through structural equation modeling analysis, data were analyzed and the empirical results indicate that tie strength, sender’s green expertise, and receiver’s green expertise have a positive influence on green consumer’s susceptibility to informational interpersonal influences and normative interpersonal influences, separately. In addition, informational interpersonal influences and normative interpersonal influences both have a positive relationship on green purchase intention, which will further positively influence the green purchase behavior.

This study reminds marketers of the impact of WOM effects as well as interpersonal influences on consumers. It examines the impact of tie strength, senders’ green expertise, and receivers’ green expertise on green purchase intention and green purchase behavior. This study also explores the mediation effects of green consumers’ susceptibility to interpersonal influences. Consumers’ susceptibility to interpersonal influence is discussed in the marketing literature. However, few prior studies have explored its effect in the green setting. Last, few attempts have discussed the relationship between green purchase intention and green purchase behavior. This study contributes to the literature by examine the relationship between green purchase intentions and green purchase behavior.

India has undergone dramatic change in its retail markets since economic liberalization in 1992. The authors aim to use the framework of consumer decision making styles to investigate longitudinally how these styles have changed from 1994 to 2009. They also conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the 2009 data to determine whether decision making styles are shaped by psychological variables: perceived time pressure, shopping opinion leadership, shopping self-confidence, consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence, and materialism.

The eight different consumer decision making styles were measured with instrument by Sproles and Kendall. The psychological variables were measured with established instruments with adequate reliabilities. The survey was administered to young adults. The Indian samples from 1994 and 2009 were matched allowing for comparisons.

The longitudinal analysis showed that four of the eight decision making styles changed statistically between 1994 and 2009; there were increases for brand consciousness, novelty-fashion consciousness, and impulsive-careless shopping while perfectionist-quality consciousness decreased. The cross sectional analysis of the psychological variables showed that perceived time pressure had minimal impact while shopping opinion leadership and shopping self confidence had a major impact. Materialism and consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence had a moderate impact.

The authors used an urban sample; a rural sample would also be useful. Future research could examine other emerging markets such as Brazil and Vietnam to identify the impact of the psychological variables on decision making styles in those countries.

The study shows that decision making styles do change as an emerging economy becomes more developed. The study also shows that psychological variables can explain some of the differences in decision making styles among consumers. Retailers and marketers can use this information to be more strategic in the way they develop their planning.

Changes in decision making styles show that consumers are now more brand and fashion conscious while being more impulsive and careless in their shopping. These changes may signal that Indians are becoming more materialistic and more focused on brands and fashion which can lead to excessive buying and debt.

The paper offers a longitudinal view of changes in decision making and a cross sectional analysis of how psychological variables affect decision making styles. This study focuses on issues not presently discussed in the literature.