Search results

Customers often want to learn about a product/service, and companies can benefit from such a learning desire. While prior research has shed light on firm-beneficial outcomes of customer learning and explored the motivational factors of business partners’ learning behavior, less is known about the critical antecedents of individual customers’ learning behavior. This study aims to explore the key drivers of individual customers’ learning desires and identified customers with a stronger learning desire.

This research used both a lab experiment (Study 1, N = 148) and surveys (Study 2, N = 553; Study 3, N = 703) across different participant populations and product contexts.

This study indicated that both involvement and knowledge-sharing intention drove customer learning desire. Customer expertise further strengthened these main effects. Moreover, a stronger learning desire led to greater customer satisfaction.

This study identified key factors involved in customer learning desire and its potential benefits for companies. Additional research to investigate customer learning in specific environments and forms and regarding specific brands is warranted.

This study emphasizes the importance of supporting customer learning and encourages businesses to manage customer learning proactively. It also provides suggestions for effective learning support for targeted customer groups.

This study contributes to the customer learning literature by exploring key influencing factors of individual customers’ learning desires, based on self-determination theory. It also identified the role of customer expertise in shaping customers’ learning processes. Moreover, this study examined customer learning as a novel way to enhance customer satisfaction.

This paper aims to explore how and when a business’ transparency leads to greater willingness to engage in sustainable and responsible consumption by consumers.

Data were collected in two studies. Study 1 collected data from 219 consumers in a large shopping mall. Study 2 followed an experimental approach and used data from 327 participants.

The current research contributes to theory by hypothesizing and demonstrating when transparency is associated with higher willingness for sustainable and responsible consumption. Critically, the positive benefits of transparency vary according to a business’ future orientation, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and levels of customer involvement.

An important societal and practical implication of the current research is that business should not be expected to only focus on transparency in isolation but rather also needs to consider levels of perceived future orientation, CSR and levels of customer involvement to strengthen sustainable and responsible behavior effectively.

This research builds on and extends current knowledge by exploring the key role of business’ transparency in influencing sustainable and responsible customer behavior and examines critical boundary conditions for the observed effects.

The main object of this research paper is to analyse the dynamic internationalisation process in small retailing firms, achieved on the basis of electronic commerce – a combination that has seldom been investigated. An analysis of dynamic internationalisation in companies presumes that the businesses concerned are observed over a longer period of time, which is why the paper focuses on the case of one specific company.

The basis of the analysis is a theory‐based framework which refers to two opposing approaches in international management, namely the incremental, experiential learning perspective, and the revolutionary perspective. The framework and the case study look specifically at market‐oriented, supply side‐oriented, and management processes. Based on an extended case study on a small, born‐global firm, the many facets of increasing professionalisation have been documented.

The paper shows that small, niche‐oriented companies can be successful internationally and achieve growth. The process of dynamic internationalisation is both incremental and revolutionary. The special feature in the present case lies in the fact that the small company was able to internationalise via electronic commerce, which was possible without capital investments and in‐depth foreign activities, unlike other forms of internationalisation, which is already evident from other small retailers on the web. Blue Tomato succeeded in reaching cross‐national market segments, with a specific scene orientation and which also share snowboarders' attitude to life, by means of inter‐active scene relationship management. This focused scene orientation is one of the key differences compared with other catalogue retailers, especially larger ones.

The originality of the paper lies in the fact that the subject of internationalisation is investigated particularly from the point of view of small retail companies. This contrasts with many other papers focusing on large retailing companies. In addition, the paper looks at the dynamic perspective of internationalisation and change processes. The present paper could be a small step towards gaining an understanding of international change based on electronic commerce.

This exploratory study seeks to explore the link between the choices of payment mode to customer satisfaction. It examines the Austrian market in relation to its choice and usage of debit cards versus credit cards and its impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Furthermore, the study aims to identify the key drivers of customer satisfaction for these two modes of electronic payment.

A structured questionnaire was administered in person to 360 Austrian bank customers. These customers were selected using quota sampling based on Austrian census data for a particular Austrian province. However, while the quota sampling was used to determine the categories, selection of the actual respondents was done through systematic sampling. This ensured that the sample was representative of the population of that Austrian province who had credit and debit cards. One group, women who were 65 and older, were not considered as there were relatively few women in this age range who had debit and credit cards.

Five hypotheses were proposed. Four of the five hypotheses were supported while one, H4, had partial support. Essentially, the results indicate that a person's preference for a particular payment method is dependent on his/her personal characteristics. Additionally, the payment method's features and characteristics influenced its desirability and acceptance. Furthermore, a person's expectations had an impact on his/her attitude toward the payment method. The study also found that positive expectations, performance, and desires led to customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction, in turn, leads to a higher degree of intent to use the payment method and higher degree of intent to recommend the payment method. These results are consistent with the literature on customer satisfaction that identifies expectations, performance and desires as the drivers of customer satisfaction.

Multiple payment modes have emerged but there has been scant attention paid to the effects of payment modes on customer behavior and by extension, customer satisfaction and loyalty. This paper addresses these issues.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the differences among the different subgroups of the youth market in the context of their financial interests and usage. The study examines what determined their choice of banks. It also looked at what factors influence their satisfaction, loyalty, and behavioral intentions with regard to their banking needs.

Using a multiple‐item survey instrument, 242 Austrian respondents were queried on what factors affect their choice of banks, their choice of financial services, usage patterns, satisfaction, loyalty, and behavioral intentions. Descriptive analysis, factor analysis and cluster analysis were employed in the study. Different tests such as chi‐square tests, discriminant analysis and ANOVA were used to validate the chosen cluster solution.

Differences were found among the four clusters in terms of their interest in financial services, their usage, and their likelihood of switching. In addition, determinants of satisfaction, loyalty, and behavioral intention were primarily affected by satisfaction with employees and services rendered. The results indicate that as young people reach certain milestones, their needs become more multifaceted. Consequently, banks should be aware of these changing needs.

This paper treats the youth market as a heterogeneous group rather than homogenous as many studies usually treat this age cohort. Moreover, given that many banks are trying to “grow” markets, the paper looks at how the determinant factors change from one stage to another. Financial institutions will benefit from the insight derived from this paper in crafting their marketing strategies. It indicates what seems to be important to each age group in increasing their satisfaction level.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how cultural differences affect the perception of a brand.

A study was carried out in six countries among different involvement groups. The study uses Hofstede's cultural dimensions and Aaker's brand personality dimensions to see if brand perceptions of a product are similar among all six countries.

This study provides clear evidence that a same brand is perceived differently in different cultures in spite of its identical positioning. This means that if a firm wishes to achieve the same brand perception in different countries, the firm needs to create brand positioning strategies that emphasize the characteristics that enable consumers to perceive the product in a similar way.

This paper examines the perception of a single brand in the context of cultural dimensions in a global setting – in particular in six countries on three continents.

Relatively scant attention thus far has been accorded in the marketing literature to the examination and explanation of return behaviour of consumers, especially within the mail order industry. The issues examined here consist of the nature and influence of such factors as “buying experience”, “perceived risk”, and “return frequency”. The aim of this paper is to analyse four groups of returners (“heavy returners”, “medium returners”, “light returners”, and “occasional returners”).

This paper details an empirical study of return behaviour based on a field survey that was conducted specifically focusing on the apparel category. Exploratory factor analyses and analyses of variance (ANOVA) have been employed to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results show that there exist different reasons for returns among the four groups of returners. In particular, they differ in their initial shopping motivation for mail order purchases, their group‐specific reasons for product returns, and also in their spending patterns.

These are discussed within the body of the paper.

A number of meaningful implications for mail‐order firms are developed from the empirical findings. While product returners have been thought to be an amorphous category (akin to a “black box”) in the past, this paper highlights the disparate motives for making returns. Specific prescriptions are provided regarding the management of product description, consumer return policy, and the handling of consumer perceived risk.

This paper contributes toward the evolving literature of consumer return behaviour in the context of distance purchasing and also by taking into consideration the heterogeneity of return groups. It looks at the characteristics of the return groups and how they differ in their prior motives of making their purchase decisions.

A common assumption holds that retailers generally contribute to customer life satisfaction – retailers offer products and services that solve consumer problems – large and small. However, some retail experiences have been found to generate dissatisfaction, stress and unhappiness for some customers but not for others. Research is needed to not only demonstrate how retail experiences impact customer life satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to address the question: why does satisfaction with various store types impact customer life satisfaction differently?

The research context of this study is grocery retailers (neighbourhood convenience stores, super markets, and grocery discounters) in Austria. Using stratified random sampling across store types, a total of 379 personal interviews with grocery store customers were conducted. OLS regression analysis was conducted to test the research model.

The study results suggest that satisfaction with a store type impacts customer life satisfaction depending on store-type congruity with shoppers’ identity. That is, satisfaction with a store type (e.g. neighbourhood convenience stores, super markets, and grocery discounters) is found to influence life satisfaction if the store type is congruent with the shoppers’ self-image and lifestyle.

An emphasis on store-type congruity with shopper’s identity allows retailers to shift their attention towards creating more meaningful shopping experiences. Such a shift in focus may not only benefit retailers due to increase in customer loyalty for that store format. It also benefits shoppers themselves – the shopping experience contributes to shoppers’ life satisfaction.

This research introduces store-type congruity with shopper’s identity as a key concept that connects shopping experiences to customer life satisfaction. This contributes towards building the hierarchical theory of shopping motivation. It demonstrates under what conditions shopping experiences impact consumer life satisfaction – a research topic that has received little attention in the retailing literature to date.

This study seeks to examine differences in the signals of brand quality that consumers utilize in and across different countries. The approach is driven by the practical goal of helping international firms understand how they could tailor their marketing mix to target consumers based on the particular signals of brand quality that they use in different countries.

Survey data are collected from Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Russia, Singapore, Thailand and the USA and analyzed using factor analysis to identify the signals that are used as extrinsic and intrinsic cues of brand quality in different clusters of countries. Two major dimensions of signals of quality are identified and used to generate four clusters of countries representing different beliefs in signals of brand quality.

Two major dimensions of signals of quality are identified and used to generate four clusters of countries representing different beliefs in signals of brand quality. These dimensions broadly fall in to those that can be characterized as external signals (brand popularity, retailer's name and volume of advertising) and internal signals (brand name, price and country of origin) with the eight countries clustering in terms of these signals. Thus, Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong and the USA form one cluster with Thailand and Russia forming another cluster while Indonesia and Singapore show differences in their signal preferences.

Practical implications in terms of standardization versus differentiation of marketing mix strategies are discussed. The most important implication is that differentiation of marketing strategies would seem to be advantageous contrary to the commonly held view that international firms need to standardize their marketing strategies in the face of increasing globalization and alleged consumer convergence.

This study seeks to examine differences in the signals of brand quality that consumers utilize in and across different countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role played by both, self-brand connection and reference groups, in attributing symbolic meaning to a brand. Current studies focus either on the influence of reference groups or on the role of self-brand connection. We demonstrate that both interact in attributing symbolic meaning. To explain interactions between the consumer, the brand and the reference groups, we draw on Heider’s balance theory.

A questionnaire was developed which included scales on self-brand connection, reference group belonging and symbolic brand meaning. Data were collected through an online survey and analyzed with factor analyses, analyses of variance and correlation analyses.

Our findings suggest that consumers may alter their beliefs about a brand depending on both, their self-brand connection and the influence of reference groups. If a consumer feels a strong connection with a brand and this brand is used by a dissociative reference group, the consumer will not attribute high symbolic meaning to that brand. The same is valid if the consumer’s in-group uses a brand which the consumer does not feel connected to.

The present study introduces Heider’s balance theory to the fields of reference group research and self-brand connection research. Balance theory has proved to be a valuable framework for analyzing the relationships of consumers, their brands and their reference groups in the context of attributing symbolic brand meaning. Building on these insights, researchers and practitioners may better understand the emergence of symbolic brand meaning hereafter.