A SEM-NCA Approach towards Social Networks Marketing: Evaluating Consumers' Sustainable Purchase Behavior with the Moderating Role of Eco-Friendly Attitude

Influence of diverse kinds of persuasive messages on intention to stay home during COVID-19 pandemic: Moderating role of media type

This study highlights the influence of diverse kinds of persuasive messages on intention to stay home during COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is believed to be the top modern societal challenge necessitating extensive collective action and collaboration. The statistical population included Iranian individuals by answering our online survey questionnaires at diverse phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. 406 completed questionnaires were gathered and analyzed. Note that, according to the official reports, Iran encountered COVID-19 disease since February 19, 2020. Data collection was started on July 18, 2020 (at the beginning of second wave of COVID-19 in Iran) and lasted until October 30, 2020. Various social network platforms including Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Telegram were used for distribution of the questionnaires. According to the results, perceived severity and perceived self-efficacy had an insignificant direct influence on intention to stay home. From another perspective, perceived vulnerability (β = 0.261, CI = 0.059; 0.242]) and perceived response efficacy (β = 0.502, CI = 0.347; 0.656]) positively and significantly affected the intention to stay home. Moreover, no significant difference was found between these two kinds of media messages in research sample. Our findings showed that “perceived response efficacy” has the highest importance score of 0.502; if the perceived response efficacy performance is boosted by one unit point by individuals during COVID-19 pandemic, its overall intention to stay home will increase by 0.502. Besides, our results showed that lowest performance (78.104) is associated with perceived vulnerability highlighting an excellent opportunity for improvement in this area.

Global Research Trends in Consumer Behavior and Sustainability in E-Commerce: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Knowledge Structure

Consumers are conscious of increasing online purchases and demand sustainable consumption friendly actions. Although there is increasing interest in this topic, the research status, development, and structure of consumer behavior and sustainability in e-commerce research is scarce. This study aims to analyze the intellectual, conceptual, and social knowledge of consumer behavior and sustainability in e-commerce research to generate new understandings. Data from 104 articles were collected from the Scopus database, and a bibliometric analysis was conducted. Results revealed a close relationship between the topic and city logistics, big data analysis, customer engagement, circular economy, online services, and omnichannel retail, showing the different research approaches and the transversal themes related to the topic. This study contributes to the sustainability academic research by identifying trends and suggesting future research topics.

Consumer Cognition and Management Perspective on Express Packaging Pollution

Consumer awareness of environmental protection is getting stronger. However, with the development of the logistics industry, the environmental pollution caused by express packaging has become increasingly severe. Therefore, it is of great importance to know consumer cognition and willingness about how to reduce the express packaging pollution. In this study, through the analysis of 561 questionnaires, we analyze the impact of consumer evaluation of recyclable express packaging and green express packaging on responsibility awareness of government, logistics enterprises, and e-commerce corporates, and analyze whether there is a positive correlation between consumer evaluation and reducing environmental pressure. We find that consumers are willing to use recyclable express packaging and green express packaging, especially the latter. Moreover, the government is supposed to play a central role in solving environmental pollution problems caused by express packaging. It is recommended that the government proposes some corresponding solutions, such as introducing a packaging tax policy, setting up an environmental fund, and developing environment-friendly packaging materials. Meanwhile, consumers expect logistics enterprises and e-commerce companies to cooperate with the government actively and switch to using environment-friendly express packaging in a timely manner.

Social Networks Marketing and Consumer Purchase Behavior: The Combination of SEM and Unsupervised Machine Learning Approaches

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how social network marketing (SNM) can affect consumers’ purchase behavior (CPB). We used the combination of structural equation modeling (SEM) and unsupervised machine learning approaches as an innovative method. The statistical population of the study concluded users who live in Hungary and use Facebook Marketplace. This research uses the convenience sampling approach to overcome bias. Out of 475 surveys distributed, a total of 466 respondents successfully filled out the entire survey with a response rate of 98.1%. The results showed that all dimensions of social network marketing, such as entertainment, customization, interaction, WoM and trend, had positively and significantly influenced consumer purchase behavior (CPB) in Facebook Marketplace. Furthermore, we used hierarchical clustering and K-means unsupervised algorithms to cluster consumers. The results show that respondents of this research can be clustered in nine different groups based on behavior regarding demographic attributes. It means that distinctive strategies can be used for different clusters. Meanwhile, marketing managers can provide different options, products and services for each group. This study is of high importance in that it has adopted and used plspm and Matrixpls packages in R to show the model predictive power. Meanwhile, we used unsupervised machine learning algorithms to cluster consumer behaviors.