Search results

The advent of media and technology has led to growing inclination among Generation Y (Gen-Y) consumers towards diverse fashion influences and they tend to dress either to fit in with their peers or to articulate self-identity and conform to the society. This trend has become a fashion dilemma and the purpose of this paper is to leverage on this matter by investigating the factors influencing the Gen-Y consumers’ attitude and purchase intention towards fashion apparel.

A sample of 250 respondents is used to assess the measurement and structural models, by applying a partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach.

The results indicate that brand and self-identity are the factors that most shape Gen-Y consumers’ attitudes towards fashion apparel. Furthermore, brand, style, price, and social identity are the most influential factors of Gen-Y consumers’ purchase intention for fashion apparels. The findings also show that style, price, country of origin, and social identity are not relevant to Gen-Y consumers’ attitudes towards fashion apparel, and that country of origin and self-identity do not have any relationship with the Gen-Y consumers’ purchase intention.

This study is among the few attempts to investigate the Gen-Y consumers’ buying behaviour of fashion apparel based on the theory of planned behaviour, optimal distinctiveness theory, and social identity theory. PLS-multi-group analysis reveals that age, gender, and income are moderating variables of several proposed structural relationships.

This study investigates the role of an augmented reality (AR)-based tool in customers' shopping processes.

Using the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) and consumer decision-making models, this study builds a comprehensive theoretical model that investigates the mechanism sequentially connected AR-enabled shopping tool and customer responses. Décor Matters was chosen as the AR-enabled mobile application for this study. Qualtrics, which conducted the survey, collected 150 responses in the USA. The authors used structural equation model to test the hypotheses.

This study enriches the retail-related AR theory by offering a holistic and structural view of the factors that connect customers' cognitive and affective internal processes with customers' shopping task. However, having used only one type of AR-enabled app in the study, the findings remain limited.

This research advances the understanding of AR's role in the customer shopping process by validating the positive effect of immersion on purchase intention, as well as revealing the mediating effect of decision-making quality and the moderating effect of privacy concerns. However, as only one type of AR-enabled app was used in the study, the findings are still limited.

The findings can help retailers to understand why and how firms can benefit from investing in AR-enabled apps (i.e. by focussing on customer perceived immersion and decision-making quality with AR).

This study's originality lies in the SOR model's extension, which integrates the customer decision-making model, allowing for connecting customers' cognitive and affective internal experiences with their shopping task. The findings can help retail managers to understand more clearly and in-depth why and how AR works in customers' shopping process.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of knowledge management (KM) enablers on KM activities in the context of Malaysian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The effects of organizational culture, transformational leadership, organizational structure, and technology utilization as infrastructural KM enablers are examined on KM activities as knowledge acquisition, knowledge conversion, application, and protection.

A total of 227 responses from SMEs’ top management are used to assess the measurement and structural models applying partial least squares-structural equation modeling.

The results show that technology utilization and organizational structure are two main factors in KM activities (all structural relationships are supported). Surprisingly, organizational culture is only associated with knowledge conversion and protection and the findings indicate no relationships between organizational culture and knowledge acquisition and application. The results also indicate a positive relationship between transformational leadership and knowledge acquisition and the hypotheses on the association between transformational leadership and knowledge conversion, application, and protection are rejected.

The results of importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) imply that technology utilization has the highest importance on knowledge acquisition, conversion, and protection while organizational structure has the highest importance on knowledge application. The results of IPMA also show that organizational culture has the highest performance on all KM activities.

This study is amongst the few that examines the structural relationships between organizational factors and KM activities in a SME context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine (a)symmetric features of task-technology-performance characteristics that are most relevant to fit, satisfaction and continuance intention of using apps in mobile banking transactions.

Exploratory factor analysis was used with maximum likelihood extraction and Varimax rotation on a separate sample of 183 mobile banking apps users prior to the main data collection. The theoretical model was tested applying a factor-based structural equation modelling approach to a sample of 250 experienced mobile banking apps users.

The study unveiled that the task and performance characteristics are more relevant compared to technology characteristics when doing transactions via apps. In addition, the findings uncovered that user satisfaction and continuous intention to use apps stem from the degree of fit in online transactions. The findings of moderation analysis highlighted that users in the lower income group are more concerned about the performance characteristics of banking apps, and there are no differences across age and gender groups. Surprisingly, technology characteristic has a nonlinear nature and this study shows potential boundary conditions of technology characteristics in degree of fit, user satisfaction and continuance intention to use apps.

Findings from the conditional probabilistic queries reveal that with 83.3 per cent of probability, user satisfaction is high when using apps for banking transactions, if the levels of fit, task, performance and technology characteristics are high. Furthermore, with 72 per cent of probability, continuance intention to use apps is high, if the levels of performance and task characteristics are high.

Contributing to task-technology fit theory, this study shows that performance characteristics need to be aligned with task and technology characteristics in order to have better fit when using apps for online banking transactions.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the impacts of brand personality and functional congruity on various components of brand loyalty (i.e. cognitive, affective, and conative) by examining the moderating role of gender.

The proposed model is examined by considering car as a product brand stimulus. Using a self-structured questionnaire, 263 usable responses are considered for data analysis by applying the structural equation modelling method.

The findings indicate that all hypotheses on the relationships between brand personality, functional congruity, and stages of brand loyalty are supported except for the relationship between brand personality and conative loyalty, whereby brand personality indirectly have impacts on conative brand loyalty via functional congruity. The outcome of the multi-group analysis shows that the impact of brand personality and functional congruity on cognitive, affective, and conative brand loyalty varies across gender groups.

The results indicate that if marketing managers are willing to create cognitive, affective as well as conative brand loyalty among consumers, they ought to tally their consumers’ purchasing and evaluation criteria with the functional and symbolic attributes. If the target consumers were motivated to purchase the product based on the symbolic attributes (as preferred by females in the present study), more attention should be focussed on communicating and delivering the symbolic attributes during their marketing campaign; on the other hand, if the consumers were inclined to buy product based on the utilitarian functions (as preferred by males in the current study), more emphasis should be placed on the functional values and attributes.

This study is the first to utilise self-congruity and the elaboration likelihood model to explain the influence of brand personality and functional congruity on each component of brand loyalty within the automobile industry’s context. This study on the moderating role of gender shows that the effect of brand personality and functional congruity is different across gender groups. The findings can help marketers to design an effective brand positioning and marketing strategies in order to stay competitive.

Having Middle Eastern tourism industry as the context, this study aims to examine the impact of the four main dimensions within service innovation (i.e. product, process, organizational and marketing innovations) on tourist satisfaction; subsequently, towards the development of destination loyalty. Realized that religiosity prevails as an important social force that shapes individual behaviours, this study, hence, placed further assessment upon its moderating role, specifically in the relationships between tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty.

With adopting the approach of self-structured questionnaire, 214 usable responses had been collected for this study. Obtained data was then analyzed by conducting exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and multiple linear regression analysis through the usage of structural equation modelling.

Analysis of obtained data has revealed all the investigated dimensions within service innovation as active predictors to tourist satisfaction, with the exception of product innovation, while having marketing innovation being of highest significance. In turn, tourist satisfaction is found to greatly influence the formation of destination loyalty. Findings then provide notable indication on religiosity as a moderating factor to the proposed relationships within the investigated framework, between service innovation and tourist satisfaction, as well as tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty.

This study, thus, revealed the level of religiosity, particularly from the standpoint of Islamic perspectives, in playing a critical role towards predicting capability of service innovation on tourist satisfaction, and further, destination loyalty. Contributions hereby lie on theoretical and pragmatic insights concerning aspects of service and Islamic marketing within today’s tourism front.

This paper aims to examine small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) strategic capabilities in terms of their marketing and management capabilities, their sources of environmental uncertainty and their organizational capabilities. Additionally, to what extent the effect differs across two sectors (manufacturing and service).

Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to conduct multigroup analysis for the two sectors. Data was collected from a sample of 315 Omani SMEs, 166 from manufacturing and 149 from services.

The results show that strategic capabilities have a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. However, the effect differs between manufacturing and service SMEs; the effect is greater in service than in manufacturing SMEs. Furthermore, the effect of organizational capabilities on customer satisfaction was found to be positive. However, the effect is higher in manufacturing as the difference is statistically significant.

Due to the growing importance of the service and manufacturing SMEs in developing countries and their considerable involvement in economic development, it is important to understand the characteristics of the strategic capabilities in both sectors. Thus, according to the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to propose a comprehensive framework that measures collectively the direct impact of strategic capabilities, organizational capabilities and environmental uncertainties on SMEs customer satisfaction and effectiveness.

This study aims to explore the impact of store atmospherics on urban bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers’ behavioural intentions to purchase apparel in an emerging African market context. This study also considers purchase antecedents to attitude, perceived behavioural control and social norms as determinants of urban bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers’ apparel behavioural intentions.

Using non-probability sampling, specifically purposive and interlocking sampling, data collection was secured from 881 economically active Namibian urban bottom-of-the-pyramid respondents through interviewer-administered questionnaires. Covariance-based structural equation modelling assessed the significant relationships among all constructs in the conceptual model.

This study found that for favourable apparel behavioural intentions of urban bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers to occur, apparel retailers should emphasise trust, perceived awareness and self-identity through apparel assortment and groupings, easy-to-read visible signage, together with competent, friendly and respectful sales personnel in their store atmospherics.

The findings of this study may guide apparel retailers in other emerging African markets to develop regional integration, market-based solutions and inclusive economic growth focusing on “non-essential” products, such as apparel, among urban bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers.

This study expands the intellectual boundaries of urban bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers’ behavioural intentions towards “non-essential” products. The theoretical framework supports the integration of both the stimulus-organism-response model and the theory of planned behaviour into one single model for empirical investigation. Additionally, adopting a novel theoretical framework helped identify the impact of store atmospherics from a bottom-of-the-pyramid perspective in an emerging African market context, such as Namibia.

This study aims to investigate the complex relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions and customer loyalty. In particular, this study suggested an intervening process through customer perceived value, which makes banking customers more loyal.

Using a randomised sample of 261 respondents from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, this study empirically investigates the role of CSR in enhancing customer value and loyalty. The collected data, the study model and hypotheses were assessed by partial least squares structural equation modelling.

According to the results, CSR practices that are both strategic and stakeholder-driven have a positive effect on customer loyalty in the banking industry. Further, customer perceived-value positively impacts customer loyalty. Besides, customer perceived-value mediates the association between CSR practices and customer loyalty.

This study is limited to the banking industry. Thus, future studies can replicate the same research in different sectors like retail, tourism and hospitality, insurance and microcredit institutions, garments, textiles, etc.

This study suggests specific dimensions of CSR that need to be emphasised while the banking industry designs its loyalty programs.

The notion of customer value has been suggested as a mediating mechanism between diversified CSR perspectives and customer loyalty. Thus, this study proposes a comprehensive framework for enhancing customer loyalty to banks via CSR practices and customer value creation.

One of the most marginalized communities in India is the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community which commonly experiences discrimination. Many studies have countered that the LGBT community faces high discrimination in the banking and financing industry. As a result, this study concentrates on this marginalized community and its acceptance and continuation habit regarding mobile wallets. Consequently, this study has considered continuance intentions as a response to confirm the progress of the mobile-wallet industry. Also, this study tried to study the relationship between behavioral intention (BI) and continuous intention (CI) which is seriously lacks in the library of literature. The research operationalized the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) framework for the conceptual model and surveyed 100 self-proclaimed members of the LGBT community in India. The analysis has been done using the partial least structure (PLS). The findings demonstrate that variables like perceived trust (PT) directly influence the BI. On the other hand, variables like perceived ease of use (PEoU), social influence (SI), and satisfaction (S) doesn’t influence BI of the LGBT Community. The main outcome was a favorable association between BI and CI. It will help the stakeholders to understand how important this new market avenue is and how it can be explored. To ensure safe and secure transactions, a group think tank composed of important parties (financial institutions, mobile-wallet providers, the government, security specialists, etc.) should make recommendations. Mobile-wallet providers will attain benefit from this study’s understanding of user categories and ability to tailor their service offers as per the community.