Framed within the Theory of Reasoned Action, the current work aims to further our knowledge of how social commitment is engendered and what volunteers’ determinants are. Findings to emerge from the empirical study conducted amongst a sample of 488 youngsters aged between 16 and 18 evidence that youngsters’ intention to cooperate with non-government organisations is determined directly by the attitudes they display towards these organisations and towards social issues, and by their immediate environment, and indirectly by their beliefs concerning social conflicts. We highlight the twin role played by attitudes towards non-government organisations (NGOs) throughout the whole process as it proves to be the major determinant of commitment, transforming part of the attitude towards problems into an intention to cooperate, making it a core variable and underscoring the power an organisation's image has to attract volunteers.
The purpose of this study is threefold. First, to test the experience economy framework in the context of a small island destination (SID) in order to determine if a music festival may be used as an experiential product to lure a cohort replacement. Second, to examine a music festival’s experiential domains that may influence the overall experience of Generation Y (Gen Y) tourists. And, third to determine if the overall experience of Gen Y tourists who attend a music festival may predict their behavioral intentions to return to and recommend a SID. The study investigates whether a music festival may be used as an experiential attraction to draw the Gen Y market segment to a SID as a cohort replacement for the baby boomer generation. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to test the application of the experience economy framework to a generational cohort’s behavioral intentions after the consumption of an experiential product in the context of a SID. The study suggests that in the case of Gen Y it may be necessary to reference economic value as part of the second order construct for overall experience in order to predict future intentions.
This study analyses the interaction of Chinese adolescents with commercial brands on the popular Chinese social networking site, Qzone, based on a Uses and Gratifications Theory. Structural equation analysis was employed to verify the proposed framework within a sample of 220 adolescent Qzone users resident in Shanghai. From the three gratifications proposed by the theory, only entertainment had a significant positive influence on the likelihood of interacting with brands on the social networking site. Gratifications derived from socializing and information-seeking did not enhance brand interaction of Chinese adolescents in this social network. The results support the view of some researchers who suggest that brand communication strategies directed at the adolescent segment in SNSs should not concentrate on providing information about product and brand characteristics, but on creating contents that help to satisfy the entertainment needs of young people.
Citizen trust in the public administration has been reduced worldwide due to recent events such as the current economic situation, corruption cases or disclosure of classified information. This work analyzes whether e-government related actions could be strategically employed to increase citizen trust in the public administration. This research confirms that perceived quality of public e-services has a positive effect on trust in the public administration. In turn, public administration communication (i.e., campaigns to promote the benefits and use of e-government) only influence trust in the public administration for citizens with a favorable attitude towards e-government. These results have interesting implications suggesting in which ways public administration should invest their limited resources in order to recover the levels of citizen trust.
Research on tourism has been enormously benefited from the marketing of services literature in the understanding of satisfaction, its antecedents and its consequent factors. Recent emphasis on customers’ experiences has shifted the focus to a redefinition of the antecedents of satisfaction. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is currently no comparative analysis set out to determine whether experiences under this new framework may suggest a more significant influence on satisfaction among city travelers. Our study delves into these phenomena for the specific case of short lasting touristic city trips, a type of tourism not sufficiently studied for its relevance in terms of growth and turnover. From a survey of a sample of 136 British city travelers, using Structural Equation Modeling, we compare the Quality and Value of Services frameworks and the Experience Economy framework in a series of three regression models in order to determine which one shows higher explanatory power, measured by means of the resulting regression coefficient. The experiential factor seems to show slightly better explanatory power on both value and satisfaction opinions.
This study analyzes whether experienced and new Internet users react differently to online discounts and gifts. The results obtained in a multi-group SEM analysis show that experienced users are more influenced by online sales promotions and have a greater purchase intention than new users. However, although both groups of Internet users show a predisposition to purchase the promoted service, experts form an opinion about the Web advertisements when they see an online discount and they change their attitude toward the brand when they see an online gift, while no significant differences are observed in the novice users’ response to promotional incentives. The findings of this research help us understand better the way Internet users process different types of promotional incentives communicated through banners, and to what extent the experience in the use of Internet affects that process.
The present study analyses the creation of customer satisfaction and loyalty, along with the influence of switching costs in the mobile services’ market, by analyzing network mobile services – the so-called traditional operators – and virtual mobile services, in order to empirically and conceptually investigate the difference between these mobile services’ operators. A conceptual model is tested by developing structural equation modeling, in the context of a European mature market – the Spanish market, gathering a sample of 524 mobile services’ users. The analysis highlights that mobile service value exerts the strongest influence on customer satisfaction for both type of mobile companies, while the attractiveness of alternatives is the more relevant switching costs; despite some interesting differences were found between the virtual and the traditional companies. Considering our findings mobile companies should seek to improve their customers’ perceptions of the core services offered, stressing the importance of the prices charged for the services and the functional benefits provided. Moreover, we suggest to personalize mobile services in order to provide with higher value to customers, since value-added services make consumers more satisfied.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of orientation towards international markets (OIM) for born global firms (BG) and present a measurement scale of OIM specifically designed for these firms. We propose a scale of OIM based on the literature review and a qualitative study. This proposal is then tested by means of a quantitative research design. The final scale not only considers three constructs of the market orientation concept: customer orientation, competitor orientation and interfunctional coordination; but also incorporates another construct related to the innovation capability of the firm (innovativeness and technological capability). This proposed measurement scale shows invariance across younger and older BG firms and, therefore, constitutes a useful measurement tool to be considered by future research analyzing the impact of OIM of BG firms on their performance.
National brand (NB) delistings are not uncommon in food retailing; however, retailer boycotts of individual brands may have negative consequences, particularly in terms of store switching intentions. This paper analyses which kind of assortment (‘store brand-only’ or mixed) is more profitable in terms of store loyalty. It also analyses the influence of assortment composition and consumer attitude variables on store loyalty using a controlled, online experiment on an established large consumer panel consisting of 1400 individuals in the Spanish market. Four product categories were evaluated: yoghurt, fresh bread and rolls, toilet tissue and laundry detergent. Our results suggest that mixed assortments – particularly those including a large number of NBs – are associated with greater store loyalty.
This study develops an integrative model to explain the influence on behavior, as perceived by users, of the content posted by other users on social network sites. In particular, empirical research was carried out in the hotel sector, where social network sites are widely used by individuals in the pre-purchase stage (i.e. information search and choice). The results, obtained from a sample of 776 social network users in Spain and Portugal, indicated that the influence on behavior, as perceived by the individuals, of the content about hotels published by other users on the main social network site used by those individuals, is determined by the information value, the source credibility, and the interaction between both variables, but not by the similarity between the user and the generators of content on the social network sites.
Buscar información en Internet y visitar posteriormente la tienda física es uno de los comportamientos de compra más comunes de los usuarios online. El consumidor lleva consigo a la tienda ciertas particularidades que influyen en su experiencia de compra. Esta investigación examina el impacto de la vivacidad de la experiencia virtual previa y de las características del consumidor (necesidad de tocar) en dicha experiencia de búsqueda. Los resultados muestran que la necesidad de tocar determina el impacto de la vivacidad de la información en la interacción online con el producto. Además, tanto la necesidad de tocar como la vivacidad de la información determinan los cambios en la experiencia de búsqueda después de tocar el producto. Finalmente, la auto-confianza del consumidor se revela como una variable clave del comportamiento de búsqueda de información multicanal.
The current competitive climate paves the way for a change in the management of the customer portfolio by attempting to improve the efficiency and profitability of the relational approach. Accordingly, the study of the company–customer relationship incorporates the concept of customer engagement. This new concept suggests that transactional criteria (repurchasing, cross-selling, level of use) are insufficient to assess the profitability of each customer. Therefore, it is necessary to consider customers’ non-transactional behaviour, including word of mouth and blogging, in order to gain a more accurate idea of the current and future worth of each customer.
Compararnos con otras personas forma parte de nuestra rutina diaria. Muchas veces lo hacemos casi sin darnos cuenta. La comparación social constituye una herramienta útil para obtener información, para autoevaluarnos y para determinar qué emociones y comportamiento adoptar. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar cómo varía la percepción de justicia de un consumidor en un escenario de fallo y recuperación del servicio de una compañía aérea, no solo basándose en lo que este obtiene, sino también en lo que obtienen otros consumidores. En concreto, se investiga la comparación social mediante la metodología de experimentación a través de 8 escenarios que abarcan elementos de justicia interpersonal, justicia procedimental y justicia distributiva. A partir de los resultados obtenidos, concluimos que aunque durante el proceso de recuperación el resultado del consumidor no cambie, su percepción varía al compararse con otro consumidor que ha recibido un mejor o peor resultado en cada una de las 3 dimensiones de justicia.
El comercio móvil en España está en un estado incipiente y es un medio que se puede caracterizar por la impulsividad en las compras, por lo que resulta interesante analizar algunos de los factores que influyen en esa impulsividad en la compra por móvil. Nuestro trabajo analiza como determinantes de la compra por móvil la confianza y la satisfacción, la implicación con esta compra y la propensión a las nuevas tecnologías y exploramos además el efecto del sexo. Con información de 447 compradores por móvil, la implicación, propensión a tecnologías y confianza aumentan la impulsividad y existen diferencias por sexo.
El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la influencia, como variables moderadoras, del nivel educativo y la actividad laboral desarrollada por los mayores de 50 años en su proceso de aceptación de Internet, dentro del marco del modelo TAM (Technology Acceptance Model). Proponemos un modelo basado en TAM, testado mediante PLS y multi-grupo para comprobar el cumplimiento de las hipótesis de moderación propuestas. Los resultados apoyan la idoneidad del modelo aunque el poder moderador de la actividad laboral no es significativo mientras que el nivel educativo tiene mayor capacidad explicativa en el caso de los mayores sin estudios universitarios. A su vez el TAM se muestra como una herramienta apropiada para explicar la heterogeneidad de los mayores con respecto a Internet.
El análisis conjunto es una técnica utilizada para estudiar las preferencias de los consumidores en estudios de mercado. Uno de los aspectos más importantes relacionados con el desarrollo de dicha técnica, se centra en fijar el conjunto de elección que deben evaluar los entrevistados. De forma tradicional, se utilizan diseños factoriales para estimar los valores parciales de los factores. Sin embargo, si el investigador, además, está interesado en estimar las interacciones entre dos o más factores, estos diseños requieren un número tan elevado de alternativas que se hace difícil su evaluación, provocando que los entrevistados no utilicen criterios compensatorios. La utilización de diseños Box-Behnken agrupados en bloques permite reducir el esfuerzo cognitivo de los entrevistados y, a la vez, ajustar un modelo de segundo grado. Este trabajo ilustra, mediante un experimento, el uso y las ventajas de utilizar diseños Box-Behnken en estudios de mercado. Los resultados obtenidos muestran el mayor rendimiento de estos modelos en comparación con los diseños factoriales habituales.
The need to study the differences among consumers due to their behavioural heterogeneity and the highly competitive consumer markets is recognized. In this paper, we analyse the potential heterogeneous shopping assessment in retail and how that experience may influence on consequent customer loyalty in a different way. The effects of satisfaction on attitudinal and behavioural loyalty and positive word of mouth are estimated by a finite-mixture structural equation model, and unobserved heterogeneity is analysed simultaneously. The results show that there are three latent segments where the strength of causal relationships differs which mean that there is an overestimation of the impact of customer on loyalty when heterogeneity is ignored.
El presente estudio plantea una aplicación del marketing de relaciones en el ámbito de la educación superior, específicamente la relación egresado-universidad. El modelo propuesto aporta variables poco estudiadas en este ámbito y tiene como objetivo estudiar el papel de la confianza en la relación egresado-universidad, sus posibles antecedentes y sus consecuencias. Los resultados muestran cómo la imagen de la universidad, la satisfacción y los valores compartidos de los egresados influyen positivamente en la confianza, la cual, a su vez, afecta al valor percibido y a los niveles de lealtad. Las conclusiones e implicaciones aportan conocimientos innovadores con relación al mantenimiento de relaciones de la universidad con sus egresados.
La información que recibe un consumidor puede ir en contra de su opinión o actitud inicial generando un estado de ambivalencia. Sin embargo, existe una carencia en la literatura acerca de lo resistente que es la actitud inicial al cambio en ese estado. En este trabajo se analiza si las emociones experimentadas durante el proceso de formación de las actitudes influyen en la resistencia del individuo a modificar su actitud inicial. Se propone que algunas emociones, debido a su naturaleza específica, son capaces de generar actitudes más difíciles de cambiar.
