Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the drivers of the customers’ cross-buying intentions for retail banking services in Hong Kong.

The research model was developed based on literature and tested empirically among 269 customers of retail banks in Hong Kong. Structural equation modelling was used to test the system of relationships.

The results indicate that the customers’ cross-buying intentions are primarily associated with image conflicts about the provider’s abilities to deliver high quality financial services from different activities and high levels of customer loyalty.

The research is limited to a single country focus of Hong Kong retail banking. The generalizibility of these findings is therefore limited to this context.

The findings of the study have important implications for academicians in understanding what drives cross-buying behaviour as well as retail bank practitioners to help design more effective cross-buying strategies.

The authors show that perceived image conflict and customer loyalty directly influences cross-buying intentions and that cross-buying intentions is not affected by dimensions of relationship quality directly. However, relationship quality dimensions was found to influence customer loyalty and play an important indirect role in unlocking cross-buying intentions.

Investigates the issue of retail buying by focusing on the process rather than on any specific point in time. Considers the use of information and information technology (IT) during the buying process, building on case studies from three European countries. Analyses how buying processes in food retailing are structured in different buying contexts; what information is utilised in the process; and how IT is utilised throughout the buying process. Reveals that in all the case studies the activities of the retail buying process were quite similar. It was mainly the same sequence of activities that was performed (even though there were some differences related to what parts of the process the retailers emphasised). Concludes that it was not possible to detect any real process innovation but rather everybody follows basically the same routine processes.

Retail buying is an under‐researched activity which is of crucial importance to retailers. Conducts a survey of buyers in large UK retailers to investigate the range of activities in which buyers are involved and explore the interface between the buying function and other functional areas. Demonstrates the breadth and challenging nature of the buyer′s role and explores the qualities needed by individuals wishing to make a success of retail buying. Finally, suggests that buyers carry the main responsibility for implementing a company′s marketing activities and suggests areas for further research.

COVID-19 pandemic-related Government restrictions on the movement of people resulted in consumers moving away from retail outlets. However, sporadic instances of an unexpected surge in retail buying happened across the world immediately after the lifting of such restrictions. This uncommon phenomenon, termed revenge buying, offered an opportunity to revive retail businesses. This paper applies Reactance Theory (RCT) and Self-determination Theory (SDT) to model consumers' revenge buying intentions.

Data was collected from 384 respondents in India using validated scales. The study used structural equation modelling for model testing.

COVID-19 restrictions resulted in autonomy need frustration in consumers, which induced psychological reactance and perceived stress. Psychological reactance positively impacted, while perceived stress negatively impacted revenge buying intentions. Thus, revenge buying was observed only when the psychological reactance was more than perceived stress.

This study, conducted in only one country with a limited convenience sample, limits the generalizability of findings.

This research model the psychological consequences of need frustration to explain the sporadic incidences of revenge buying in retail outlets. Further, it proposes sales recovery strategies for retailers in the immediate post-pandemic market scenarios. Retailers' strategies should focus on alleviating stress and anxiety because of health concerns, highlighting the retail buying experience to stimulate the need to visit the outlet and positioning retail buying as a potential reactance response by consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the decision-making process used by luxury fashion retail buyers in Greece in order to assess the applicability of Sheth's (1981) model to the selection of brands and collections by retail buyers in luxury fashion resellers.

The study takes an interpretive approach, utilising participant observation and semi-structured interviews with retail buyers in five luxury fashion reseller companies in Greece, which boasts the world's highest proportion of luxury fashion consumers. Qualitative data were analysed thematically according to the theoretical constructs in Sheth's (1981) model of merchandise buyer behaviour.

Brand reputation, quality, appropriateness for the market and exclusive distribution were the most important criteria for supplier selection. For evaluating merchandise, the most important criteria were design, style, fashionability and quality. The most relevant influencer of decision making in supplier selection was the competitive structure in terms of the power balance between retailer and brand. For merchandise selection, the most relevant influencing factors were retailer size, management mentality, product positioning and type of decision (re-buy or new task).

Due to the exploratory nature of the study and its focus on the context of a particular geographical marketplace, the findings may not be generalised to other countries.

This paper provides an insight into the decision-making practice of retail buyers in Greek luxury fashion retailers, where the buying task involves balancing the retailer's commercial interests with a more cultural role in terms of shaping fashion trends and generating PR and publicity for the retailer. The task is further complicated by the power imbalance between retailer and brand, enabling brands to impose limitations on the buyer's decision. Additionally, the combined influence of shortening product life cycles, increasing product variety and the emergence of a new and younger luxury fashion consumer requires a shift from intuitive to scientific, data-driven decision making.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of psychological traits and shopping environmental factors on impulse buying tendency via television shopping programs and to reflect the inherent nature of the impulsive television shopping environment in the USA as well as the traditional retail channel.

A total of 154 questionnaires were returned from multichannel customers who purchased apparel from television shopping programs and traditional retail stores.

Five causal relationships among impulse buying and interaction tendencies in both television and retail settings and TV shopping program browsing duration proposed in this study were confirmed through structural equation modeling.

This study adds valuable empirical findings to the literature on the distribution channel relationship by examining buying behavior of multichannel customers as well as some theoretical implications for impulse buying‐related theories.

This study provides insights for customer impulse buying behavior in the multiple shopping environments.

With the growing acceptance of organised retail in Central India, it is important to understand the impulse buying phenomenon and how it is influenced by consumer traits and situational factors. The purpose of this paper is to examine the combined effect of three consumer traits and four situational factors on impulsive buying.

Using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling (SmartPLS 2.0 software), responses from 417 hypermarket and supermarket consumers of Central India in the proposed research framework were analysed and validated.

The resulted values for the construct impulse buying tendency, shopping enjoyment tendency, materialism, person’s situation, motivational activities by retailers and product attributes show positive significant influences, whereas the construct store environment having relationship with impulse buying shows negative influence. Importantly, the findings also demonstrate that the gender moderates the relationship between various factors of consumer traits and situational factors with impulse buying.

The study develops a research framework with three specific variables of consumer traits and four variables of situational factors, triggers impulse buying. Therefore, there is a need to incorporate some other variables, such as interpersonal influence, consumer involvement and consumption patterns, so that more affluent insights can be obtained. The study presents useful insights to retailers, academicians and researchers, regarding impulse buying behaviour of Indian consumers in a still developing organised retail sector in Central India.

The study focussed on the combined effect of consumer traits and situational factors on impulse buying for the first time in Central India, as earlier studies focussed on impulse buying behaviour at the USA and metro cities of India.

Retailers act as assemblers of merchandise, selecting goods from among a wide range of available products in order to enhance customer value and loyalty. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Chinese retail buying system, focusing on the buying committee, which is defined as a group of individuals from different positions that have the authority to make final judgments and decisions regarding such matters as adding or eliminating new products.

This study uses a survey administered to retail buyers.

Results of independent t‐tests support the hypothesis that the influence of guanxi will be greater in the retail firms without a buying committee. State‐owned enterprises are more likely to use a buying committee than non‐state‐owned enterprises.

Although the sample represents buyers from many regions in China it is not a random sample; this limits the generalizing of results.

Suppliers wishing to sell to Chinese retailers need to know how selling to a retailer using a buying committee will affect their access to buyers.

This is the only paper describing research that focuses on the internal structure of a buying committee within a Chinese retail store. Data of this nature are extremely difficult to obtain.

The study here examines how business actors adapt to changes in networks by analyzing their perceptions or their network pictures. The study is exploratory or iterative in the sense that revisions occur to the research question, method, theory, and context as an integral part of the research process.

Changes within networks receive less research attention, although considerable research exists on explaining business network structures in different research traditions. This study analyzes changes in networks in terms of the industrial network approach. This approach sees networks as connected relationships between actors, where interdependent companies interact based on their sensemaking of their relevant network environment. The study develops a concept of network change as well as an operationalization for comparing perceptions of change, where the study introduces a template model of dottograms to systematically analyze differences in perceptions. The study then applies the model to analyze findings from a case study of Norwegian/Japanese seafood distribution, and the chapter provides a rich description of a complex system facing considerable pressure to change. In-depth personal interviews and cognitive mapping techniques are the main research tools applied, in addition to tracer studies and personal observation.

The dottogram method represents a valuable contribution to case study research as it enables systematic within-case and across-case analyses. A further theoretical contribution of the study is the suggestion that network change is about actors seeking to change their network position to gain access to resources. Thereby, the study also implies a close relationship between the concepts network position and the network change that has not been discussed within the network approach in great detail.

Another major contribution of the study is the analysis of the role that network pictures play in actors' efforts to change their network position. The study develops seven propositions in an attempt to describe the role of network pictures in network change. So far, the relevant literature discusses network pictures mainly as a theoretical concept. Finally, the chapter concludes with important implications for management practice.

During COVID-19 pandemic, the use of social media enhances information exchange at a global level; therefore, customers are more aware and make backup plans to take optimal decisions. This study explores the customer psychology of impulse buying during COVID-19 pandemic.

The researcher, being a social constructionist, aims at understanding social patterns in impulsive buying strategies during COVID-19 pandemic. Forty UK consumers were participated using the telephonic interview method with the purpose to maintain social distancing practices.

Results revealed that vulnerable group of people, fear of illness, fear of empty shelves, fear of price increase and social inclination to buy extra for staying at home, increased panic impulsive buying behaviour among customers. Many people socially interpreted the evidence of death rate and empty shelves, which led to more disinformation, rumours and sensationalism, which increased customers' impulsive buying behaviour. Finally, risk of going outside, COVID-19 outbreak among employees of local retail stores, and health professionals' recommendations to stay at home, led to impulsive buying behaviour.

This study has constructed a research framework of customer psychology of impulse buying based on the results of this study and fear and perceived risk theories. The study also explains how the fear of fear, risk perception and conformist tendency enhanced impulsive buying during COVID-19 pandemic. This study has discussed specific implications for retailers.