Search results

Since nearly all types of consumer products end up in retail stores, the retail scene affects a wide range of businesses. However, retailers are competing in a marketplace characterized by maturity, overcapacity, intense price competition, and an essential “sameness” among stores. Retailers will need new strategies to be successful.

While previous research underscored self-presentation desire as an important motivator of digital item purchase, user needs for digital items may become increasingly inner-focused with the maturation of virtual communities (VCs). The purpose of this paper is to posit that self-discrepancy and self-gratification are key to explaining user purchase of digital items.

A survey of 310 users of a social media-based VC well supports the hypotheses.

The tenet of this study is that individuals purchase digital items in VCs not only for self-presentation purpose per se, but more importantly for reasons of more inner-focused, such as due to their self-discrepancy that motivates them to purchase digital items to enhance self-esteem, and also for self-gratification. Furthermore, self-discrepancy arising from comparing ones’ current self against how they perceive others expect them to ideally be (i.e. self-other discrepancy) increases their self-presentation desire.

Overall the findings enrich the current view that individuals purchase digital items mainly to present themselves to others (Kim et al., 2012), thus affording a more complete understanding of this behavior that has both important research and practical implications.

This chapter deals with family/household relevance as a stakeholder institution in rural (farm) communities. The data collection approach is qualitative. Families in Japan and the Philippines’ rice-cultivating communities were the subjects of the study. Results revealed that households in the two sites were experiencing a unique ontological crisis vis-á-vis farming communities. The crisis pointed to the problem of farm families’ relegation as secondary stakeholders in the farming sector. Despite the struggle for survival in the farm sector, farm families were differently adaptive and enduring in dealing with the modern development – that is, selective technology adoption, farmland redefinition, struggle and resistance against farm policies, and community group accommodation, to name a few. This endurance contributes to farm family persistence as a relevant institution in Japan and the Philippines.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of perceived control on product preferences of consumers under self-threat.

By conducting four experiments, this paper manipulated the participants’ self-threat and three sources of perceived control – namely, the controllability of the threat itself, the internal and external locus of control of the individual and priming the existing positive or negative experience of the individuals. After the manipulations, the participants’ product preferences for self-growth goods or hedonic goods were measured.

The findings of this research indicated that when consumers have a higher perceived control of the threats they are facing, they are more likely to adopt problem-focused coping strategies and show a preference for self-growth goods, which can help them resolve their threats. However, when consumers have a lower perceived control on the threats they are facing, they are more likely to adopt emotion-focused coping strategies and show a preference for hedonic goods, which can help them adjust their emotions.

This paper systematically confirms the interactive effect of perceived control and self-threat on consumers’ product preferences, as well as the meditation role of problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. It also provides insights for marketers to know what factors may affect consumers’ preferences for products in self-threat situations, thus contributing to marketing practices.

This paper aims to identify the effect of social structure variables on the purchase of virtual goods. Using field data, it also tests whether their effects on a social networking service are dynamic.

To achieve the research objectives, the authors have applied the random effects panel Tobit model with actual time-series corporate data to explain a link between network structure factors and actual behavior on social networking services.

The authors have found that various network structure variables such as in-degree, in-closeness centrality, out-closeness centrality and clustering coefficients are significant predictors of virtual item sales; while the constraint is marginally significant, out-degree is not significant. Furthermore, these variables are time-varying, and the dynamic model performs better in a model fit than the static one.

The findings will help social networking service (SNS) operators realize the importance of understanding network structure variables and personal motivations or the behavior of consumers.

This study provides implications in that it uses various and dynamic network structure variables with panel data.

The purpose of this paper is to examine motivational research (MR) – the most maligned and misunderstood branch of market research. It argues that MR has been too easily dismissed by researchers. In so doing, they have ignored a potentially significant insight into the post World War II consumer's motivations and domestic life.

This paper utilises previously unexamined primary source material to examine David T. Bottomley's construction of MR.

By looking at in‐depth market research studies, a greater, more rounded picture of the postwar consumer can be gained. Throughout the 1960s, some market researchers turned to consumer motivations to uncover the psychological dimensions of purchasing behaviour by determining the symbolic meanings goods had to their consumers. Rather than viewing consumer behaviour as predictable by factors such as economic class, motivational researchers held that consumers are multi‐faceted subjects and life‐stage and attitudes to colour are important factors influencing consumer behaviour.

Research that considers consumer motivations should not be so easily dismissed as deceptive or corruptive research without genuine merit for historical research. Nor should Dichter's style of research be considered to be the only version of MR.

Previous scholars have largely ignored the significance of market research to the development of the consumer market and the construction of the postwar consumer. Given the dearth of scholarly examinations, the paper is based almost entirely on primary research data.

This work aims to analyze the relationship between a tourist destination and the success of luxury stores. The main objective is to examine whether there is any relationship between different features of a tourist destination and the number of years that a store has been operating there.

The paper analyzes a sample of stores located in Venice. A survey was carried out on luxury goods stores in Venice by personally interviewing their managers.

The paper identifies a significant relationship between the number of years that the stores have been operating in the tourist destination and their nationality.

Despite the favorable connotations that location in a tourist destination would appear to offer, companies seem to base their general strategy on intangible aspects such as image and brand capital. A number of conclusions and recommendations for managers of luxury stores were obtained from the study. In the light of the minimal impact that contact with other stores and the efforts of local authorities have had so far on the success of these establishments, it may be necessary to make greater efforts in these directions in order to increase their impact. In this respect, both public authorities and private businesses should cooperate in order to provide a coordinated response of town centre management through which the town centre could be better managed and developed.

On the educational level, this paper aims to show a practical case of dialogic web‐based learning. It has provided a consensus during a web‐based negotiation game between four different parties on poverty and inequality. On a multicultural level, this paper seeks to offer diverse cultures of argumentation on global poverty.

The methodology is a web‐based and real life negotiation game, namely “Surfing Global Change” which includes structured online review processes on literature‐based research and reflection.

The paper provides the consensus of four different parties on global development and poverty, and a new system of scaling development based on democratic decisions through a round table for all countries from the global north and the global south.

The presented dialog and consensus‐finding process concentrates on poverty and inequality from the point of view of the G‐8, NGOs, the global rich and the global poor.

This research, based on literature, is formed through a dialog and consensus finding between four different parties (G‐8, NGOs, the rich and the poor).

While country image consists of two hierarchical images – macro country image at the country level and micro country image at the specific product level – previous studies have largely failed to detail its varying effects by product category and by the level of a country’s economic development. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the macro and micro country images of four countries (USA, Italy, Korea, and Malaysia) on Saudi consumers’ purchase intentions in two product categories (symbolic and functional product).

Data were collected from shoppers older than 20 years of age at several shopping malls in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia via mall intercept method.

Analyses of 496 data revealed that the effects of macro and micro country images differ by product category. In particular, both macro and micro country images were equally relevant to the purchase intention of symbolic goods (i.e. handbags), while micro country image played a greater role in the purchase intention of functional goods (i.e. cell phones). A partial country moderating effect was found. The effects of micro country image on the purchase intention of handbags were valid only in Italy, where product-country match is high.

This study advances country image research by highlighting how the effects of macro and micro country images on purchase intention differ by product category and by country. The findings suggest which aspect of country image (i.e. macro vs micro) should be actively communicated in the marketing of symbolic and functional goods.

Self‐esteem is an important motivational drive for consumption involving both the acceptance and rejection/avoidance of symbolic goods. This paper examines the relationship between self‐esteem and the rejection of goods and brands within the context of fashion consumption by young professionals. A conceptualisation which accounts for consumers’ use of various strategies in their efforts to maintain or enhance their self‐esteem is suggested. A small‐scale exploratory study is used to examine first, how consumers invest products and brands with negative symbolic meanings; and second, how this leads consumers to reject products and brands. The importance of understanding negative symbolic consumption when marketing high involvement products such as fashion goods is identified; and the implications for fashion retailers and marketing management are discussed.