A cross-cultural analysis of perceived product quality, perceived risk and purchase intention in e-commerce platforms

How traditional cultural load affects tourists' purchasing intention of tourist souvenirs

Based on the previous studies on the impact of traditional culture on tourists' purchasing intentions, this study aims to further explore the mechanism and boundary conditions regarding the traditional cultural load in tourist souvenir packaging. Through seven simulated experiments (N = 3203), the impact of different degrees of traditional cultural load on tourists' purchasing intentions has been examined, with value perception, cultural identity, and purchase purpose, advancing the research in the field of traditional culture and tourism marketing. The findings provide insights for managers in the industry of tourism and souvenir marketing for their package design.

Perceived transaction cost and its antecedents associated with fintech users' intention: Evidence from Pakistan

Researches depict a considerable degree of acknowledgment of financial technology improvement in Pakistan. However, the costs blocking clients' intention to utilize financial technology remain dubious. Building upon Transaction Cost Economics and Innovation diffusion theory, this paper hypothesizes that consumers' transaction cost of fintech is affected by nine antecedents: perceived asset specificity, complexity, product uncertainty, behavioral uncertainty, transaction frequency, dependability, limitations, convenience, and economic utility. Transaction cost has a negative relationship with consumers' intentions to use fintech for online buying or availing services. We tested the model using data gathered from the individuals. The results show that factors that are positively related to consumers' perceived transaction cost, among them product uncertainty (β = 0.231) is the greatest of factors, followed by behavior uncertainty (β = 0.209) and asset specificity (β = 0.17), those that are negatively associated are dependability (β = 0.11), and convenience (β = 0.224). The study is limited in scope, focusing primarily on cost factors. Future research may analyze additional cost-related elements and the actual use of financial technology by using samples from different countries.

Predicting Athlete Intentions for Using Sports Complexes in the Post-Pandemic Era

In recent years, the concept of health has gradually fit into people's lives through the government's promotion. The indoor sports complex is becoming more and more popular, offering people the opportunity to engage in physical and recreational activities regardless of weather conditions. Psychological and social abundance is the key to improving happiness, and the most important thing is to treat and care for yourself. Many fitness venues have emerged to provide athletes with a wide range of choices. However, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is caused by a virus mainly transmitted through direct contact or air droplets, has had a severe impact on indoor gym users. Therefore, based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Health-Promoting Lifestyle (HPL), this research investigated athletes' behavioral intentions regarding sports halls and perceived risks as interfering variables. For data collection, we collected data samples from sports complexes athletes in Taiwan. A total of 263 responses were analyzed via SPSS 20.0 (IBM Corporation, New York, NY, USA) and AMOS 20.0 (IBM Corporation, New York, NY, USA) seis tests. The study's results indicate that health-promoting lifestyle cognition has a positive and significant effect on behavioral intention; athletes' attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control significantly affects the behavioral intention of using the facilities in a sports complex. Athletes' risk perceptions have an interference effect between HPL, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and behavioral intentions of using the facilities in a sports complex. Sports venue managers can refer to the results of this project to develop marketing strategies and promoting.

Expectation and Complaint: Online Consumer Complaint Behavior in COVID-19 Isolation

Purpose

This study aims to articulate the nature of consumer complaining behavior (CCB) by analyzing the mechanism and characteristics of online CCB in COVID-19 isolated environment.

Patients and Methods

For the purpose, this study collected data via a web-based questionnaire survey from 408 consumers in Shanghai, China during COVID-19 isolation. Through building and analyzing a structural equation model that consists of six latent variables such as perceived service quality, perceived product quality, customer satisfaction, negative emotion, customer complaint; the study analyzed the basic characteristics of CCB, and focused on the moderation test of consumer expectation to validate its important role in consumer decision-making behavior.

Results

First, compared to perceived service quality, perceived product quality has a stronger influence on customer satisfaction and has a weaker influence on negative emotions in the COVID-19 isolated environment. Second, the total influence of perceived product quality on customer complaints is stronger than that of perceived service quality. Third, the direct impact of negative emotions on customer complaints was much stronger than the effect of customer satisfaction on customer complaints. Meanwhile, it can also act as a mediating variable to make customer satisfaction have an additional indirect effect on complaints. Finally, the study also found that consumer expectation can reinforce the influences of customer satisfaction on negative emotions and customer complaints, while it weakens the effect of negative emotions on customer complaints.

Conclusion

This study suggests that the classic CCB factors still exert a stable influence on customer complaints through cognitive and emotional response pathways, but the influence difference is obvious in the COVID-19 isolated environment. And the influence processes are significantly moderated by consumer expectation level. Enterprises should conduct more targeted marketing interactions, according to these CCB characteristics.

Scale development of apparel customization brand value: From the perspectives of practitioners and consumers

China apparel customization brands (CACBs) have been recently growing in massive quantities despite being in their infancy stages of brand value building. Although scholars have proven brand value's importance in sustainable brand growth, studies on the specific context of CACBs are still limited. This research proposes a conceptual framework of CACBs' brand value measured dimension based on previous studies and divides brand value into both general and specific dimensions. Accordingly, qualitative (semi-structured interviews) and quantitative (online survey) studies were conducted from the perspectives of practitioners and consumers. Ultimately, a scale of 30 items with nine dimensions was generated. Results reveal that brand association in the general dimensions and brand service in the special dimensions were the largest promoters of CACB brand value. Hence, practitioners should pay more attention to dimensions of cognitive conflicts. Practical suggestions for apparel customization marketers are proposed to build and enhance brand value.

Influence of Multi-Role Interactions in Community Group-Buying on Consumers' Lock-In Purchasing Intention From a Fixed Leader Based on Role Theory and Trust Transfer Theory

Community group-buying platforms are increasingly relying on the interaction between the group-buying leader and consumers, thereby achieving the customer lock-in. In view of this, it is crucial to understand how the group-buying leader to establish a long-term transaction relationship with consumers. In this study, we construct a model based on the role theory and trust transfer theory, and identify two types of interactions of the group-buying leader (i.e., role interaction of merchant and role interaction of friend) and two types of consumer trust (i.e., community group-buying trust and interpersonal trust). Then, the mechanism that how different role interactions of the group-buying leader can be transformed into the lock-in purchasing intention of consumers is further clarified. By interviewing 430 consumers with community group-buying experience in the community through offline questionnaire, the research model has been proven to be effective. To be specific, both role interactions of the merchant and friend can impose a positive impact on interpersonal trust, which will also lead to the trust in community group-buying, and thus enhance the lock-in purchasing intension of consumers from a fixed leader. Overall, this study has made certain contributions to the study of customer relationship. In theory, this study further explains the explanation mechanism of the "acquaintance marketing" phenomenon. Moreover, this study adopts the role theory to analyze the differences of different role interactions of the group-buying leader in relationship quality and purchase decision making, and employs the trust transfer theory to expand the trust transfer effect from the interpersonal trust of the group-buying leader to the trust in community group-buying. In practice, this study provides a new perspective and practical reference for community group-buying enterprises and the group-buying leader on how to better manage customers and maintain a long-term and stable customer relationship.

Critical Conditions Identification for Online Purchase Intention of Fruits: A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

With the development of Internet technology, e-commerce platforms have emerged one after another, and the competition of the fruit e-commerce market is increasingly intensified. How to boost customer demand by improving their purchase intention has become a key issue. The study identified the critical conditions leading to high purchase intention of fruits through fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The empirical analysis was conducted based on an online questionnaire of 344 Internet users. The results reveal that high purchase intention comes from high fruit quality, high fruit price concessions and supply service, and low perceived risk (peripheral conditions). In addition, high purchase intention can also be realized from high fruit quality, high fruit price concessions, high supply service, and high website information quality (peripheral conditions). This study provides more nuanced thinking of how to improve online purchase intention of fruits.

The Impact of Remanufactured Products’ Similarity on Purchase Intention of New Products

The remanufacturing industry can realize sustainability by saving resources and protecting the environment. The remanufactured products have a high similarity with the new products, and how they affect consumers’ evaluation of the new products is an important issue. This paper discusses the relationship between the similarity of remanufactured products and consumers’ willingness to purchase new products, with a mediating effect of perceived quality and a moderating effect of brand reputation. The empirical analysis based on 498 valid samples shows our conclusions below. First, the similarity of remanufactured products has a significant negative impact on the purchase intention of new products. Second, the perceived quality of new products plays a partial mediating role between similarity and purchase intention. Third, brand reputation negatively moderates the relationship between the similarity of remanufactured products and the perceived quality of new products. Furthermore, brand reputation also moderates the mediating effect of the similarity of remanufactured products on the purchase intention of new products through the perceived quality of new products. This paper suggests a new perspective for the research of remanufactured products and provides an important reference for the healthy and sustainable development of recycling and remanufacturing industry.

Your reviews or mine? Exploring the determinants of "perceived helpfulness" of online reviews: a cross-cultural study

E-commerce platforms allow customers to post online reviews about their products, but many of these reviews remain non-voted by existing customers. Current literature on the perceived helpfulness of online reviews has overlooked the effect of these non-voted reviews. Additionally, current studies lack the cross-cultural perspective to help analyze the influence of cultural factors during an analysis of online reviews in an e-commerce platform. This study proposes a novel cross-cultural framework using online consumer reviews from a global e-commerce retailer to investigate these shortcomings. Our study has twofold contributions: firstly, we identified the significant predictors (such as review-title, review sentiments, star rating, social context, and temporal features) of the count of helpful votes received by online reviews - both voted and non-voted. Secondly, we identified a strong moderating effect of national culture on these predictors during the perception and evaluation of global consumers' reviews. We also performed a quantile regression across the entire distribution of the count of helpful votes. Findings from our study will guide reviewers who publish helpful and comprehensive reviews. Additionally, customers and sellers from global e-commerce firms will learn to account for cross-cultural differences on the provided features to prevent the distortion of the information content of online reviews.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12525-020-00452-1.