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To examine whether the country of origin (COO) effect actually exists in an e-commerce context, the authors intend to contribute to the ongoing debate by measuring the COO effect through a series of connected studies.

Drawing on cue utilization theory, the authors emphasize the urge to investigate the COO effect in multiple cue settings in order to reveal a more realistic picture of its actual effect size. In contrast to most prior research, which often does not analyze COO using methodological plurality and neglects important contextual factors, the authors employed a four-staged research design in an attempt to trigger and measure the COO’s implicit effect size in today’s pervasive context of online shopping. The importance of brands (inhering the COO) is decompositionally calculated relative to other extrinsic cues by applying a Hierarchical Bayes estimation, with the COO impact being extracted subsequently.

The results deepen concerns that the COO effect actually does not exist, particularly in the more contemporary context of online shopping. Specifically, preferences for previously favored German products faded when controlling for brand attitude for both high-involvement (p = 0.003) and low-involvement products (p = 0.024).

The study focused on consumers of Generation Y, as they represent one of the most important segments in online shopping. Findings might be replicated for other consumer generations. The study focused on Chinese consumers, as the Chinese e-commerce market represents the world’s largest one. Future studies might investigate other markets.

As brands, rather than a COO effect, impacted consumer preferences, companies selling their products to Chinese consumers online need to establish a reputation for quality early on. Chinese companies should emphasize their COO to make use of the ethnocentrism detected. Companies profit from the Best-Worst Scaling investigation revealing which product categories Chinese consumers most preferably buy online from German companies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to capture the importance of COO in the contemporary context of ubiquitous online shopping. Moreover, a more realistic and less biased way of measuring the importance of COO is enabled by building upon three pre-connected studies. The findings allow to develop a generalization for both high- and low-involvement products.

Applying the institutional logics perspective to applicant attraction, this study investigates the level of uniformity among preferences for consulting job attributes associated with the institutional logics of the corporation, the profession and the family, and tests for the influence of anticipatory socialization differences.

The study uses a discrete choice experiment with 232 business students. A hierarchical Bayes approach to conjoint analysis uncovers part-worth heterogeneity and allows for subsequent cluster and regression analysis of the choice data.

The findings identify a dominant job-oriented preference type and a minor career-oriented preference type. Anticipatory socialization through personal prior work experience and the occupation of friends decreases adherence to the logic of profession and increases the relevance of the family logic. The parents' occupation has only a minimal influence on preferences.

The study provides attribute-based recommendations on how professional service firms can effectively address the complex expectations of potential applicants in their job ads for an entry position and underlines the role of intra-generational reference groups as important anticipatory socializers.

By testing individual socialization effects at the pre-hire stage and beyond the organizational level, the study fills a void in both the recruitment and the institutional literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences in preferred supplier choice criteria between food purchasing agents who focus on supplier security and those that do not. Specifically, this research determines the relationship between purchasing agents’ supplier security preferences and their preferences for product quality, delivery reliability, price, and supplier location. The influence of international sourcing on demand for increased supplier security is also explored.

Choice-based conjoint analysis with hierarchical Bayes (HB) estimation and t-tests are used to assess and compare the utility food purchasing managers derive from different supplier attributes.

Purchasing managers that place a higher priority on security when choosing suppliers were willing to pay suppliers a higher price and receive lower levels of delivery reliability in return for higher security but placed less emphasis on suppliers’ product quality. Firms that source internationally do not have a significantly greater preference for advanced supplier security. However, purchasing managers that value supplier security were more likely to source internationally, potentially indicating that security allows for global sourcing by mitigating the increased vulnerability inherent to sourcing abroad.

This research was limited by its focus on the food industry and a relatively small sample size.

This work illustrated that food purchasing managers can be segmented by the emphasis they place on security. Food industry managers will find results useful in formulating their future service offerings with respect to security and other supplier choice criteria.

This is one of few works investigating security as a supplier choice criterion and utilizing HB estimation of choice-based conjoint data.

The purpose of the study was to examine the relative importance of corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) in comparison to standard, price, duration, destination, brand and disruption using choice-based conjoint analysis (CBC).

CBC was used as the data collection survey technique, and counts analysis for preference and hierarchical Bayes estimation (HB) for importance levels data analysis methods, from Sawtooth Software Inc.

Results show that 2:1 Royal Caribbean Cruise Line cruise consumers prefer companies with CSER policies and practices. However, their actual product choice selection of cruise package attributes revealed that consumers overall placed less importance on CSER when choosing cruises. Experienced consumers were more brand image-conscious than those new to cruising, and consumers who were less price-sensitive were most willing to choose companies with CSER policies and practices.

The information provided is specifically on “what” cruise consumer preferences and importance attributes are but does not explicitly explain “why” the respondents made the choices they did. This was at the time a limitation of the software used to conduct the study.

The Conjoint Analysis CBC Sawtooth Software pre-2014 version choice simulators do not facilitate questions that provide answers as to “why” respondents make the choices they do in the market simulations.

The knowledge contribution is of value to both academia and industry, as the quantitative statistical data on the cruise consumers’ choice preferences are of value in understanding and identifying solutions/approaches towards “opening the bottleneck” that exists between private sector sustainable development practices and consumer lifestyle changes.

This was the first time that CBC/HB was applied within academia to examine the cruise consumers’ choice preferences in a UK context and also the first time that CSER was applied as a direct variable in a cruise package to determine the preference and important values of a brand in a consumer behaviour decision-making context.

Many companies focus considerable resources on managing and enhancing positive word of mouth (WOM). WOM management, however, has become increasingly complex given the rise of online channels and the corresponding increasing breadth of connections giving and receiving WOM. Given the generally believed importance of WOM to business outcomes, managers seek to leverage key drivers that they believe will enhance positive and minimize negative WOM.

Implicit in these actions is the belief that leveraging key drivers to enhance positive (or minimize negative) WOM results in generally positive outcomes across channels and connections. This research investigates whether this belief is correct. We examined WOM behaviors from over 15,000 consumers from 10 different countries in eight industry categories, as well as consumer attitudes toward the various brands investigated. Our findings indicate that efforts to enhance positive WOM typically have mixed effects – enhancing positive WOM in some channels while decreasing it (or even enhancing negative WOM) in other channels. Therefore, managers need to have a greater understanding of the complexity of leveraging attitudinal key drivers when seeking to enhance WOM to minimize potential negative outcomes.

Discrete choice models are widely used for estimating the effects of changes in attributes on a given product's likely market share. These models can be applied directly to situations in which the choice set is constant across the market of interest or in which the choice set varies systematically across the market. In both of these applications, the models are used to determine the effects of different attribute levels on market shares among the available alternatives, given predetermined choice sets, or of varying the choice set in a straightforward way.

Discrete choice models can also be used to identify the “optimal” configuration of a product or service in a given market. This can be computationally challenging when preferences vary with respect to the ordering of levels within an attribute as well the strengths of preferences across attributes. However, this type of optimization can be a relatively straightforward extension of the typical discrete choice model application.

In this paper, we describe two applications that use discrete choice methods to provide a more robust metric for use in Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency (TURF) applications: apparel and food products. Both applications involve products for which there is a high degree of heterogeneity in preferences among consumers.

We further discuss a significant challenge in using TURF — that with multi-attributed products the method can become computationally intractable — and describe a heuristic approach to support food and apparel applications. We conclude with a summary of the challenges in these applications, which are yet to be addressed.

This paper measures German customers' label-depending preference and willingness to pay for organic and local food.

The sample covers 325 survey respondents from 12 out of the 16 German federal states. Data was collected through convenience sampling in December 2019. A choice-based conjoint analysis was operated.

Customers value local food from their federal state most, thereby accepting a price premium of no less than 200%. The label moderates the influence of organic production conditions on price acceptance significantly.

Based on self-reported data from a convenience sample, the demographic distribution of the sample differs from that of the German population. Moreover, the willingness to pay was found to be product-specific, limiting general applicability.

Marketers should focus on local and local organic food in the assortment. Marketing strategies should include information campaigns. Producers may sell their products regionally or cooperate with local retailers. Introducing a separate official “local organic” label is suggested.

The study provides detailed evidence on the preference of German costumers and suggests a significantly higher willingness to pay for organic and local food than previous literatures.

This paper aims to formulate a hedonic pricing model for Japanese rice wine, sake, via hierarchical Bayesian modeling estimated using an efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method. Using the estimated model, the authors examine how producing regions, rice breeds and taste characteristics affect sake prices.

The datasets in the estimation consist of cross-sectional observations of 403 sake brands, which include sake prices, taste indicators, premium categories, rice breeds and regional dummy variables. Data were retrieved from Rakuten, Japan’s largest online shopping site. The authors used the Bayesian estimation of the hedonic pricing model and used an ancillarity–sufficiency interweaving strategy to improve the sampling efficiency of MCMC.

The estimation results indicate that Japanese consumers value sweeter sake more, and the price of sake reflects the cost of rice preprocessing only for the most-expensive category of sake. No distinctive differences were identified among rice breeds or producing regions in the hedonic pricing model.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to estimate a hedonic pricing model of sake, despite the rich literature on alcoholic beverages. The findings may contribute new insights into consumer preference and proper pricing for sake breweries and distributors venturing into the e-commerce market.