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Strong evidence suggests that word‐of‐mouth (WOM) communication varies in its influence according to product type; however, empirical research remains deficient. The purpose of this paper is to propose a procedural model to examine the influence of product type on both the effect and spread of related WOM information at the same time.

Using a self‐administered questionnaire, a sample of 895 consumers across 16 different products was collected; results were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

WOM was found to be more influential and more widely spread for services than for goods. In addition, although the level of receivers' perceived risk (PR) is generally assumed to be a significant antecedent of WOM influence (WI), the results of the study indicate that PR is not a direct function of WI. Instead, WOM request (WR) mediates the effect of PR on WI.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relationship between product type and WOM from a dyadic perspective. Moreover, the authors introduced two important mediators – namely, PR and WR – in the model in order to identify different potential effects of WOM in a seeker‐initiated context. The results of this study will enhance knowledge about the influences of WOM information.

This research attempts to investigate the differences of consumer perceptions on product quality, price, brand leadership and brand personality among national brands, international private labels and local private labels. It aims to use product categories as the moderator of the preceding perceptions.

Data were collected outside the entrances of the main rail station of Taipei, Taiwan. A systematic sampling was adopted and 254 questionnaires were eventually collected.

The findings revealed that on the whole national brands were perceived as significantly superior to international private labels, while international private labels were perceived as being superior to local private labels in terms of all perceptions except price perception. The findings also revealed that product categories moderated price and brand personality perceptions across the three brand types, while product categories failed to moderate the effect of the three brands types on quality and brand leadership perceptions.

This research represents one of the few pioneer works that empirically investigate the aforementioned issues.

This study aims to determine and discuss relevant factors and relationship models affecting consumers’ purchase intention towards the extended product, PC for Microsoft. The results are to serve as a reference for managers when implementing brand extension strategies.

The two major factors, “core‐brand attitude” and “consumer perception fit”, have been included in studying their influence on consumer purchase intention towards extended products. Of the questionnaire surveys distributed to PC users in Taiwan, 667 valid samples were returned. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to establish the relationship model.

The results indicate that consumers in Taiwan show a relatively high purchase intention towards virtually extended products, Microsoft PC. The relational structure shows that brand awareness has a significant influence on core‐brand image (parent‐brand image), thus indirectly affecting core‐brand attitude and causing impacts on consumer purchase intention towards extended products. On the other hand, consumer perception fit has greater influence than core‐brand attitude, denoting that both the brand association and product connection have a remarkable influence on consumer purchase intention towards extended products.

The study proposes an effective structural model and notes significant influence factors for consumers’ purchase intention towards extended products.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of consumers’ perceptions of convenience retailer innovativeness on their perceived value (PV) and store patronage intentions (PIs).

A three-step PCRI-PV-PI model that integrates perceived convenience retailer innovativeness (PCRI), PV, and PIs is proposed. The moderating effect of consumer innovativeness on the relationship between PCRI and PIs is also examined.

Modeling results confirm that PCRI is an important antecedent of PV among consumers that further influences their PIs toward specific convenience retailers. Moreover, PCRI significantly and indirectly affects the PIs of less innovative consumers via PV. However, no such indirect association is identified among highly innovative consumers.

The proposed PCRI-PV-PI model may be useful to other consumer behavior and retail studies, particularly in this era of increased market competition in which innovation has become a critical strategic tool for market differentiation.

The current research is the first empirical study that examines the effects of PCRI on PV and PIs in the context of convenience retailing.

Driven by the needs of global marketers, a new programme is assessing the beginnings of consumer behaviour among young people of all industrialised nations of the world. The initial effort reported here was a study conducted among Taiwanese children. It measured the children′s income, savings, expenditures, frequency of store visits for purchasing, and determined the objects of their spending. These data were compared with similar data for US children in order to provide global marketers with a relative measure of Taiwanese children′s consumer maturity. Overall, the study showed that children of Taiwan behave very much like American children as consumers. They spend less, save more, and shop as often as American youngsters. Differences in the two groups are explained by cultural differences that are centuries old. Global and domestic marketing implications of these findings are presented.

This study aims to examine the consumption patterns of fresh milk, yogurt drinks, and flavoured milk along with the product attributes that consumers perceived.

Over 300 samples were collected from the three most populated metropolitan areas in Taiwan. The cluster analysis is applied in the study to segment respondents in order to reveal different consumption patterns.

Consumers who purchase larger quantities of fluid milk are those who have relatively higher household incomes. The taste and flavour of fluid milk products are the attributes that consumers value. Consumers who purchase more fresh milk products pay more attention to the fat content, calcium content, and whether the products have the certified labels. Consumers who consume large quantities of yogurt drinks value overall beneficial bacterium attributes of the products.

Based on the results of this study, appropriated marketing strategies are suggested and can be useful for firms to target customers.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the impact of customer loyalty programs on relationship quality, relationship commitment, and loyalty.

A survey with 480 qualified observations from department store customers in Taiwan was conducted. A structural equation modeling approach was used.

Customer loyalty programs have a partially supported positive impact on relationship quality; service quality has a positive impact on relationship quality; customers with a positive relationship quality impact their relationship commitment; the higher the relationship commitment, the higher the loyalty; and a customer loyalty program partially supports a positive impact on loyalty.

The paper shows that customer loyalty programs have positive influences on loyalty. However, short‐term customer loyalty programs, namely, Minimum Purchase Gift Cards, displayed no significant influence on loyalty. The incentive of short‐term customer loyalty programs is not sufficient for loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to be the first to explicate the determinants of customers’ cross‐buying intentions in the banking services of Korea and Taiwan, and then explore the influence of cross‐cultural values, such as “Collectivism”, to the relationships between these determinants and customers’ cross‐buying intentions.

The authors employed a triangulation approach of structured surveys to 700 actual customers, and six interviews with professional senior managers engaged in customers’ cross‐buying activities of banking services in two countries – Korea and Taiwan. Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchal multiple regression were conducted on these data using AMOS 10.1 and SPSS 12.0.

“Perceived value”, “Trust”, “Image”, and “Satisfaction” were found to be the determinants of customers’ cross‐buying intentions in the banking services of Korea and Taiwan, out of which “Trust” and “Satisfaction” were significantly influenced by “Collectivism”. The research also confirms that, even between countries with similar level of “Collectivism”, its influence can differ according to the determinants of cross‐buying intentions in banking services.

The conceptual model presented in this paper could be extended and tested on customers in an “Individualistic” culture, in future research. The analysis in the research could also be further elaborated for specific segments of customers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the predicting roles of extension naming strategies and categorical fit on the transfer of brand personality from a parent brand to its extension brand. Extension naming strategies include direct and indirect naming, while categorical fit is the similarity between an extended product and its parent brand's cognitive category. Further, the interaction effect and the relative effectiveness of various combinations of the two predictors when determining brand personality transfer are also explored.

A 2×2 factorial between‐subject experimental design with one covariate is used to test the proposed hypotheses. The experiment involves 242 participants from a university in Taiwan.

The findings show that consumers perceive higher brand personality transfer when a direct naming strategy is applied or when the parent brand extends to a high perceived fit product. The former is the dominant predictor of brand personality transfer. There also exists an interaction effect between extension naming strategies and categorical fit. Specifically, consumers perceive the highest brand personality transfer when a direct naming strategy is applied for a high fit extended product. Moreover, the use of a direct naming strategy for an extended product with a low categorical fit still leads to a higher degree of parent brand personality than both the other cases in which an indirect naming strategy is applied for either high or low fit extended products. Furthermore, irrespective of the degree of categorical fit, the transfer of brand personality is low when an indirect naming strategy is applied.

The current research is pioneer work in identifying the determinants of brand personality transfer. It also notes the interaction effect and the relative effectiveness of the determinants.

This study aims to probe into the effect of tourists’ novelty-seeking on situation involvement and satisfaction for the Yanshuei Fireworks Festival in Taiwan.

This study investigated 302 tourists participating in the Fireworks Festival and constructed causal relations among variables by structural equation modeling.

The results suggested that when tourists’ novelty-seeking in fireworks festival is stronger, their situation involvement in the activity will be immediately enhanced. When fireworks festival participants’ situation involvement is higher, their satisfaction is also higher. Situation involvement has a complete mediating effect between novelty-seeking and satisfaction.

Because the fireworks festival only lasts for 48 hours, and the subjects must be tourists who have just experienced fireworks, it can only adopt convenience sampling instead of random sampling. However, to avoid homogeneity, in each group, this study only selected one person for the questionnaire survey.

First, they should enhance the designed activities to create novelty; for instance, design the instruction and practice of the manufacturing of fireworks. By explanation, they enhance tourists’ learning about the display of fireworks and folk religion to satisfy participants with different degrees of novelty-seeking. Second, they can enhance the construction of situations for playfulness. For instance, upon the condition of security, the units can allow tourists to arrange fireworks independently or by group to have more fun. In addition, every year, they can display fireworks according to the Chinese Zodiac symbols to satisfy tourists’ desire of novelty-seeking and enhance their satisfaction.

From the perspective of theoretical development, this study explores and validates the mediating effects of tourists’ situation involvement in festivals between novelty-seeking and satisfaction to fill the gap of previous research.