Search results
1 – 10 of over 12000Nima Ravi, Suresh Subramoniam, Hareendrakumar VR and Ravi Chinta
Social enterprises are organizations striving to address social issues. These enterprises sell products to be self-sustainable. Social entrepreneurial success depends on the…
Abstract
Purpose
Social enterprises are organizations striving to address social issues. These enterprises sell products to be self-sustainable. Social entrepreneurial success depends on the intention of consumers to purchase social enterprise products. This study aims to assess and understand the consumer intention to buy social enterprise products.
Design/methodology/approach
This descriptive study integrates consumers’ emotional values with the theory of planned behaviour as a framework. The intention is to investigate the role of customer emotion in mediating the relationship between predictor and predicted variables. A mixed sampling technique is adopted to select sample units from the consumers with a consideration for regional balance. Data from 336 respondents were collected using a survey instrument administered online.
Findings
Structural equation modelling shows that among the three predictor variables, only attitude has a direct impact on consumer’s purchase intention, while subjective norms have an indirect impact through the mediating variable (emotional value). Behavioural control showed no effect on consumer’s purchase intention of products sold by social enterprises.
Originality/value
The results of this study have theoretical as well as practical implications. The success of social enterprises depends on the acceptance of their products by consumers. The social enterprise can strategize its marketing communications to strengthen the emotional values, attitudes and subjective norms of the consumers so that the market acceptance for these products can be increased.
Details
Keywords
With the rapid increase in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in many firms and the development of social enterprises (SE), questions regarding the ways in which CSR…
Abstract
Purpose
With the rapid increase in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in many firms and the development of social enterprises (SE), questions regarding the ways in which CSR affects consumers’ attitudes and behaviours have become crucial. This study aims to investigate how consumers’ CSR expectations and knowledge relate to their attitudes and purchase intentions regarding SE products.
Design/methodology/approach
This study investigates how consumer expectations of CSR and their own social responsibility affects purchase intention of SE products. The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 397 individuals recruited through snowball sampling online. The research hypotheses are tested by structural equation modelling. Most of the hypotheses are supported by the data analysis.
Findings
The results show that consumers’ CSR expectations, subjective knowledge and consumer’s perceived social responsibility (CPSR) have positive effects on their attitudes and purchase intentions concerning SE products. The results contribute to the literature on marketing of SE products and demonstrate that consumer CSR expectation and their CPSR are important antecedents of intention to purchase SE products.
Originality/value
There is limited empirical study on the purchase intention of SE products. The findings provide the empirical evidence that individual-level antecedents, including consumer’s CSR expectations, perceived social responsibility and subjective knowledge, have a significant relationship to their intentions to SE products. This study also supports the view that the general rise in CSR expectations and CPSR creates a favourable context for the marketing of SE products.
Details
Keywords
Sri Rahayu Hijrah Hati and Aida Idris
The purpose of this study is to examine the role of leader and organisational credibility in influencing customers’ intention to support Islamic social enterprises.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the role of leader and organisational credibility in influencing customers’ intention to support Islamic social enterprises.
Design/methodology/approach
The credibility of the leader and that of the social enterprise are exposed through advertising. Ads portraying the six largest Islamic social enterprises in Indonesia and their social entrepreneur leaders were shown to 221 existing customers via online and offline surveys.
Findings
The findings indicate that organisational credibility and organisational branding have much greater influence than leaders’ personal credibility on customers’ intention to support Islamic social enterprises.
Research limitations/implications
The study has highlighted the greater role of organisational credibility and branding over advertising in attracting support for Islamic social entrepreneurship.
Practical implications
Islamic social enterprises need to develop a trusted brand and establish a more effective way to communicate with their stakeholders besides advertising, as the impact of ads on customer support intention is not significant.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the field of marketing and social entrepreneurship by providing empirical results on the Islamic social entrepreneurship phenomenon.
Details
Keywords
Li Cui, Haiyang Jiang, Hepu Deng and Tao Zhang
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the diffusion of food safety information through social media affects customers’ purchase intentions in China. This leads to the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the diffusion of food safety information through social media affects customers’ purchase intentions in China. This leads to the identification of the critical factors that impact the purchase intention of individual consumer through the diffusion of food safety information using social media in China.
Design/methodology/approach
A research model is proposed based on a comprehensive review of the related studies. Such a model is then tested and validated using structural equation modeling based on the survey of 199 individuals who have experience in purchasing food products online while having social media accounts.
Findings
The study reveals that friend recommendation and perceived risk directly affect consumers’ purchase intentions and opinion leader recommendation, quality of information, credibility of information and demand for information indirectly affect consumers’ purchase intentions through the diffusion of food safety information using social media in China.
Originality/value
This study is the first of this kind in China for exploring the critical factors that affect consumers’ purchase intentions through the diffusion of food safety information using social media. The findings of the study are significant for the government and food enterprises to make a full use of the advantages of social media to improve the communication of food safety information in ensuring the safety of the food supply in China.
Details
Keywords
Jinghua Huang, Yue Jin, Xinyao Wang and Jing Zhang
This paper aims to explore how enterprise microblogging can influence consumer loyalty and thus generate business value for firms. The study aims to expand traditional brand…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how enterprise microblogging can influence consumer loyalty and thus generate business value for firms. The study aims to expand traditional brand community theory.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on brand community theory, social identity theory and usage and gratifications theory. Using a pre-survey of the fans of an enterprise microblog and a random sample survey of such fans on Sina Weibo, the authors tested the structural equation model with LISREL, which includes multiple fit indices.
Findings
The paper provides empirical insights about how enterprise microblogging can influence consumer loyalty and thus generate business value for firms. It suggests that consumers’ perceived value could strengthen their microblog identification, which will influence their perceived relationship with the enterprise and its products directly and indirectly through the mediation of enterprise identification. Perceived relationship can further influence purchase and recommendation intentions.
Research limitations/implications
Because of the chosen data collecting approach, the research results may be still subjective. Moreover, the study overlooks the effects of the different types of enterprise microblogging and consumers.
Practical implications
Enterprises should operate their official microblogging from the perspective of maintaining brand community to improve consumer loyalty. They can generate more value for consumers through their microblogging and predict the operating performance by evaluating the degree of consumers’ relationship perception.
Originality/value
This paper considers enterprise microblogging as a new form of virtual brand community and identifies its features, and expands theories of brand community, and social media/IT business value, social identity theory and gratifications theory.
Details
Keywords
Zhaoyi Xu, Yingtong Li and Liuchang Hao
The purpose of this paper is to ensure the sustainability of the competitive advantages of internet financial enterprises. In recent years, driven by the two wheels of financial…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to ensure the sustainability of the competitive advantages of internet financial enterprises. In recent years, driven by the two wheels of financial market and information technology, the internet finance has experienced an extremely rapid development.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the performance expectation, effort expectation, social influence and purchase intention of UTAUT model, an empirical examination was conducted. Specifically, the authors made the user purchasing behavior as the dependent variable and added some new factors such as perceived risk, individual innovation and product cognition as the independent variables in the model, and they also added user gender and experience as regulated variables, so as to study the impact factors that affect the purchasing behavior. In addition, the authors also studied the impact of social network friend recommendations on consumers’ willingness to purchase.
Findings
The research results showed that effort expectation, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, purchase intention, awareness and individual innovation have a positive effect on the behavior of buying financial products, whereas the perceived risk has a negative effect on the behavior of buying internet financial products. Additionally, in the context of social networking, social network friend recommendations have a positive impact on consumers’ willingness to purchase.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is based on the integrated technology acceptance model, which makes the user purchasing behavior as the dependent variable and adds some new factors such as perceived risk, individual innovation and product cognition as the independent variables. However, the research on recommendation between social network friends is not deep enough, so further improvement is needed.
Practical implications
This study can enrich the existing theories on the interpretation of the intention of using internet financial products, help internet financial enterprises understand user behavior and demands better, and improve service quality and customer satisfaction.
Originality/value
This study provides an empirical examination of UTAUT model and social network analysis.
Details
Keywords
Hsueh Ling Wu, Tser Yieth Chen and Bo Heng Chen
This paper aims to use utilitarian benefits, hedonic benefits and corporate social responsibility to influence the consumer’s sense of brand identity and brand trust in social…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to use utilitarian benefits, hedonic benefits and corporate social responsibility to influence the consumer’s sense of brand identity and brand trust in social enterprise products and, thus, favourably affect repurchase intention.
Design/methodology/approach
This study dispatched 430 questionnaires in Taiwan. The top six social enterprises in the organic food industry in Taiwan that accounted for 84.0% of total green organic stores and they were selected for field investigation. This study used structural equation modelling.
Findings
The main path indicates that corporate social responsibility has a largely positive effect going through brand identity and brand trust, and then affecting the decision to repurchase. Therefore, the image of` corporate social responsibility was the greatest driving force. The secondary path indicated that utilitarian benefits positively affected brand identity and brand trust, which, in turn, positively affected repurchase intention. Therefore, utilitarian benefits were the secondary driving force of repurchasing social enterprise products.
Practical implications
This study indicates that social enterprises need to carry out effective corporate social responsibility to create a sense of strong brand trust in consumers’ minds. Empirical results can benefit social marketers for their product launches and promotions. Social enterprises can realize consumer differentiation preferences. With the effective grasp the information of consumer perception, the social marketers can turn passive into active and catch the marketing opportunities by the brand identity and trust to the content of the marketing programs design.
Originality/value
The novelty of this study is to propose an identity-repurchase intention (IRI) model, based on consumer information processing lens and self-congruency theory, to investigate the social enterprise perspective.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to observe consumers’ attitudes toward and intentions to purchase green products on social media and to explore the relationships among social media…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to observe consumers’ attitudes toward and intentions to purchase green products on social media and to explore the relationships among social media marketing, perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE), product knowledge, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, price consciousness and attitudes toward and intentions to purchase green products. In addition, this research attempts to further understand these relationships in different consumer groups.
Design/methodology/approach
A questionnaire survey method was used to collect data from consumers in China. The Amos 22.0 software package was used to conduct the data analysis.
Findings
The empirical results suggest that attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control positively affect purchase intentions, while price consciousness negatively affects purchase intentions. Product knowledge positively affects consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions, and PCE positively affects consumers’ attitudes. As expected, social media marketing positively affects subjective norms, product knowledge and PCE and negatively affects price consciousness. However, there is no significant relationship between PCE and purchase intentions. According to the results of multigroup structural equation modeling analysis, the effects differ significantly among different consumer groups.
Originality/value
This study enriches the research about the factors that influence consumers’ purchases of green products in emerging countries in the social media marketing context.
Details
Keywords
Xiaoping Liu, Shiyu Wang and Yingqian Liang
Based on the construal level theory, this research study examines the interactive effect between social crowding and corporate social responsibility (CSR) statement type on…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on the construal level theory, this research study examines the interactive effect between social crowding and corporate social responsibility (CSR) statement type on consumers' purchase intention.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted two empirical experiments on a total of 508 subjects.
Findings
There is an interactive effect between social crowding and CSR statement type on consumers' purchase intention. Specifically, in high social crowding situations, concrete CSR statements lead to consumers' higher purchase intention, while in low social crowding situations, abstract CSR statements lead to consumers' higher purchase intention. Self-construal and processing fluency play a moderating and mediating role in the mechanism.
Originality/value
This research study contributes to the theoretical understanding of the interaction between social crowding and CSR statements, enriching the field of consumer behavior research on social crowding. Additionally, it offers practical insights for enterprises on how to present CSR information in crowded situations.
Details
Keywords
Harry Jay Cavite, Panya Mankeb and Suneeporn Suwanmaneepong
Organic rice forms the largest portion of the Thai organic food market. Because of its increasing popularity, marketers need to better understand consumer behaviour to address…
Abstract
Purpose
Organic rice forms the largest portion of the Thai organic food market. Because of its increasing popularity, marketers need to better understand consumer behaviour to address emerging concerns regarding product safety and quality and to tailor better marketing strategies relevant to the development of organic rice. As such, this study aims to examine consumers' purchase intention towards organic rice, using traceability information, and to investigate the direct and moderating roles of product traceability knowledge, using the theory of planned behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
Responses were collected from 243 organic rice consumers in a farmers' market in Chachoengsao Province, Thailand, following a convenience sampling approach. The gathered data were analysed using structural equation modelling to evaluate the strength of the relationship between the constructs.
Findings
The findings reveal that subjective norms, health consciousness and product traceability knowledge have a significant positive influence on consumers’ intention to purchase organic rice. This study also establishes the moderating role of product traceability knowledge in perceived behavioural control and purchase intention, indicating that elaborated product information through traceability is essential for consumers who feel capable of buying the product. However, the direct effects of attitude and perceived behavioural control are insignificant, indicating the presence of external barriers to the purchase of organic rice, and that people may have a negative attitude towards the product. In addition, the cost perception result reveals that consumers consider price as an indicator of organic product quality, thereby increasing their desirability.
Social implications
The findings of this study will help community enterprises in Thailand develop a more effective marketing strategy based on the identified motivators of organic rice purchase intention.
Originality/value
This study develops a model that integrates important factors related to organic food consumption to generate a more comprehensive analysis of this mainstream research. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is also the first study to investigate the moderating role of product traceability knowledge to obtain a new and more focused understanding of how this factor influences purchase intention when applied explicitly to organic food. Finally, the findings provide theoretical contributions and implications for both the community enterprise and policymakers on developing strategies for organic rice marketing among community enterprises in Thailand.
Details