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The internationalization of retailing is increasing throughout the global service markets. Among many retail formats, the discount store is one of the fastest growing formats actively engaging internationalization. In managing retail firms in other cultures, understanding of local customers’ perceptions toward the retail formats is especially important. Shopping motives may be a function of retail format, cultural, economic and social environment. Prior studies on shopping motives, however, have focused on Western cultures and on a shopping mall format. This study provides an exploratory examination of Korean discount shoppers’ shopping motives and their shopping typologies based on their shopping motives. A total of 624 questionnaires were administered to married female discount shoppers in Korea using the intercept survey method, and 467 completed questionnaires were available for data analysis. Factor analysis identified three shopping motives for patronizing discount stores: socialization, diversion and utilitarian. Four groups were identified using cluster analysis and labeled as leisurely‐motivated shoppers (n =152, 34.1 percent), socially‐motivated shoppers (n=49, 11.0 percent), utilitarian shoppers (n=132, 29.6 percent) and shopping‐apathetic shoppers (n=113, 25.3 percent). The four groups significantly differ in their appraisals of patronized store in some of store attributes, repatronage intention, and money spent in a shopping trip. Typologies of each cluster, discount retailing environments and managerial implications are discussed based on findings.

The purpose of this study was to develop a synthesized retail brand personality scale (RBPS) framework across retail formats. This research also addresses cultural differences by applying an emic-etic approach to scale development with United States (US) and Taiwanese samples.

After two focus group interviews and a pretest were conducted in both Taiwan and the US, a main test was conducted on consumer samples in Taiwan (N = 412) and in the US (N = 411). Confirmatory factor analysis was used to develop a valid, reliable RBPS.

The results revealed that sincerity and sophistication are comparable dimensions to those in the brand personality scale (BPS), and unpleasantness, traditionalism, enthusiasm, antagonism and innovativeness were found to be unique dimensions for retail brands. The findings also indicated that sincerity, unpleasantness and traditionalism are common dimensions across cultures, whereas innovativeness, sophistication and antagonism are culture-specific dimensions in the US, whereas enthusiasm is a specific dimension in Taiwan.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to develop a synthesized scale of retail brand personality that compares the identified dimensions to Aaker's (1997) BPS and includes an emic-etic approach. This research contributes to the branding literature and international marketing field, and has implications for retail practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to gain some insight into the effectiveness of different types of tangible compensation strategies for two different types of services: utilitarian and hedonic.

The hypotheses are investigated using a 2×2 between‐subject experimental design and two factors: service type (utilitarian vs hedonic) and compensation type (utilitarian – a price reduction vs hedonic – a free gift).

The results show that customers prefer to receive a form of compensation that matches the type of service involved. For example, customers who receive a utilitarian compensation (e.g. a price reduction) after experiencing a failure in utilitarian service (e.g. at a bank) report higher levels of satisfaction and repurchase intention than they would after experiencing a failure in hedonic services (e.g. at a restaurant), but that the reverse is true for a hedonic‐type compensation (e.g. a free gift).

The offering of either a price reduction or a free gift cuts into company profits. Organizations should, therefore, tailor their service recovery efforts, focusing on those resources in the bundle that will have the greatest positive impact and create the most favorable customer response.

The primary contribution of this paper to the service marketing literature is that it provides empirical results, which shed light on the interplay between the type of compensation and the type of service on the customer's post‐recovery judgment of that service.

The purpose of this research is to test the importance of the discounting attribute in the two-sided communication from a retail salesperson as a boundary condition that eliminates the trade-off between trustworthiness and purchase intentions.

The hypotheses are tested by three experimental studies in three different retail contexts. Two lab studies manipulate the importance of the attribute and the type of message: one-sided vs two-sided. A field study improves the external validity of the findings.

A two-sided message from a salesperson reduces the use of persuasion knowledge and, therefore, enhances the consumer’s perception of the salesperson’s trustworthiness; this positive effect remains significant across different levels of importance of the discounting attribute. A two-sided message decreases the consumer’s probability of purchase only when an important attribute is disclaimed, through the consumer’s beliefs regarding the product’s attributes.

For the appropriate use of two-sided appeals, retailers should identify the importance of product attributes from the consumers’ perspective. A negative remark from a salesperson when referred to an unimportant attribute makes no harm to purchase intentions while leading to stronger intentions to return to the store and to recommend the store by enhancing trustworthiness.

This paper shows that it is possible to enhance trustworthiness through a two-sided message without mitigating the intentions of buying by discounting an attribute at low importance in the two-sided message.

Social media brand platforms have become a popular means for engaged customers to share information and experiences with brands and other customers. However, empirical research on how customer engagement (CE) relates to customers’ sharing intentions with the brand is limited. This study aims to investigate causal patterns of four CE dimensions – focused attention, absorption, enthusiasm and interaction – together with two cognitive structure properties in stimulating sharing intentions with the brand.

Using data from 782 Chinese customers of brand pages on the social media platform Weibo, this paper is the first to use both finite mixture partial least squares (FIMIX-PLS) analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to empirically assess the impact of CE configurations on sharing intentions.

The findings imply that not all of the CE dimensions co-occur necessarily and that different configurations of them can produce superior sharing intentions, conditional on the cognitive structure of customers, including their level of brand knowledge and avant-gardism.

Although restricted to customers on Weibo, the results inform practice about how social media technology can facilitate different CE configurations and customer sharing intentions.

The results inform brand managers’ segmentation efforts and CE content marketing initiatives that can induce different CE configurations and customer sharing intentions with customers that possess high avant-gard and brand knowledge characteristics.

This study is the first to substantiate how different CE configurations (as gestalts) affect sharing intentions in social media and to challenge conventional net-effects thinking about CE dimensions. Understanding how such conditional configurations foster sharing via a social media platform is advantageous because it can improve segmentation efforts to strengthen brand relationships.

The purpose of this study is to validate the Retail Service Quality Scale (RSQS) developed by Dabholkar et al. in the Malaysian business setting, specifically in the context of apparel specialty stores.

Two well‐known retail clothing store chains were selected for this study. Purposive sampling method was used, with a total of 211 responses collected from customers of all X and Y's chain stores in the northern region of Malaysia.

The paper finds that all the five dimensions: physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, problem solving, and policy, are highly suited for measuring retail service quality in clothing stores, also proving that the instrument is applicable in the Malaysian setting. Retail service quality is furthermore associated with future consumption behaviour in terms of the customers' intention to visit, purchase and recommend the stores to others.

The instrument is proven to be valid, reliable and appropriate for studying retail businesses that offer a mix of services and merchandise. The instrument is also applicable in another culture other than the USA, namely Malaysia.

Retailers can utilize the instrument for benchmarking current levels of retail service quality, carrying out periodic inspections to measure service performance and improvement, as well as to detect problematic areas of service quality within the stores that are in need of attention.

This research contributes to the somewhat limited studies carried out on instrument validation in Malaysia. Furthermore, the RSQS is tested in Malaysia – a country with a vibrant, dynamic retail environment and heightened consumer awareness for fashion and retail.

This study sets out to replicate Garbarino and Johnson's paper, where the effects of trust, commitment and satisfaction towards service provider loyalty were examined. However, whereby Garbarino and Johnson tested their model in a relationship prone environment, i.e. a theatre company, this study was set in a retail context where transactional customers are more likely. Personality traits as a means to identify customers who are prone to forming relationships with their service providers were also investigated.

In total, customers of two fast food independent stores in Melbourne, Australia completed 202 questionnaires.

The findings in the paper showed that in this transactional context, only trust and commitment had a significant direct effect on store behavioral loyalty. Satisfaction did not offer any unique explanatory power but was a significant predictor of both trust and commitment. Further, trust, commitment and satisfaction all had significant direct effects on store attitudinal loyalty, with satisfaction displaying the strongest effect. There was little evidence to support the claim that certain consumer personality traits are more conducive to relationship formation in this low involvement retail context.

The paper shows that retailers need to be aware that even in a transaction prone retail environment, trust and commitment and not just satisfaction, play a significant role in both store behavioral and attitudinal customer loyalty.

This study investigates the impact of tourists’ perception of consumer-generated content (CGC) on their travel behaviors. Online questionnaire survey was conducted on the clients of travel agency along with onsite interviews of visitors at several busy tourist destinations/spots in Taiwan including Alishan, Sun-Moon Lake, and airports. In total 316 responses were generated. The findings indicate that usability of social media is the strongest factor that contributes to respondents’ perceived functional and hedonic quality. Functional quality of social media then draw respondents’ awareness that eventually increases their intention to visit a destination of interest. The results also indicate that functional quality is more important than hedonic in terms of increasing the propensity of using social media.

Superior functionality of smartphones makes them a potential retailing channel, despite their slow adoption. The purpose of this paper is to identify convenience factors that influence consumption experience and intention to continue shopping on a mobile phone.

This study was carried out on students using a survey method. This study was conducted in the National Capital Region of India due to its large and diverse population. A purposive sampling technique was used to contact 380 respondents.

The data were analysed using a structural equation model. The results indicate search and possession convenience to be positively related to consumption experience while search, evaluation and post-purchase convenience are positively related to continuance usage intention. The findings of this study provide evidence that mobile phone is an effective channel for shopping due to search, evaluation, possession and post-purchase convenience.

This study used student population between the age group of 20 and 30 years, thereby limiting the generality of the results.

This study provides insights to retailers and brand managers for crafting their mobile marketing strategies.

This study explores and uncovers, for the first time, convenience dimensions of a mobile shopping channel across various stages of consumers’ purchase cycle.