Exploring online brand choice at the SKU level : the effects of internet-specific attributes

E-Commerce research shows that existing studies on online consumer choice behavior has focused on comparative studies of channel or store choice (online or offline), or online store choice (different e-tailers). Relatively less effort has been devoted to consumers’ online brand choice behavior within a single e-tailer. The goal of this research is to model online brand choice, including generating loyalty variables, setting up base model, and exploring the effects of Internet-specific attributes, i.e., order delivery, webpage display and order confirmation, on online brand choice at the SKU level. Specifically, this research adopts the Multinomial Logit Model (MNL) as the estimation methods. To minimize the model bias, the refined smoothing constants for loyalty variables (brand loyalty, size loyalty, and SKU loyalty) are generated using the Nonlinear Estimation Algorithm (NEA). The findings suggest that SKU loyalty is a better predictor of online brand choice than brand loyalty and size loyalty. While webpage display has little effect on the brand choice, order delivery has positive effect on the choice. Online order confirmation turns out to be helpful in choice estimation. Moreover, online consumers are not sensitive to net price of the alternatives, but quite sensitive to price promotion. These results have meaningful implications for marketing promotions in the online environment and suggestions for future research

Collections for people: museums' stored collections as a public resource

Collections in UK museums grew enormously in the latter half of the 20th century yet museum collections, mostly maintained at public expense, are perceived as an underused resource. The Museums Association’s 2005 report, Collections for the Future1, together with press comments and books such as Treasures on Earth (2002)2 and Fragments of the World (2005)3, brought this issue into sharp focus. Collections for People set out to understand the scale of museum stored collections, and the main parameters of their access and use: • What is the size and nature of collections as a resource? How are they distributed, geographically and among different types of museum? • How much are different types of collection used by people other than museum staff? What sort of people use collections? What do they use them for: research, teaching and learning, creative activities, visits for enjoyment such as store tours? • How do users perceive this service? Do museums actively market collections access? Do they publicise what is in their collections? • How do museums facilitate collections use? What are the factors associated with greater use of collections? What do museums see as the barriers to more use

Recreation, tourism and nature in a changing world : proceedings of the fifth international conference on monitoring and management of visitor flows in recreational and protected areas : Wageningen, the Netherlands, May 30-June 3, 2010

Proceedings of the fifth international conference on monitoring and management of visitor flows in recreational and protected areas : Wageningen, the Netherlands, May 30-June 3, 201

Grappling with grapes : wine tourism of the Western Cape

Word processed copy.|Bibliography: leaves 64-66.This thesis acts as a series of 'snapshots' into the meaning of 'wine tourism'. Each chapter of my main body of work looks at a different segment of wine tourism in the Western Cape: a fast growing industry that inherits attributes from both the wine and tourism industries. Themes of landscape and the tourist experience track through these separate snapshots, linking them together. A passion for wine and the drinking of wine would seem to have been an enjoyable pastime passed down from epochs of wine lovers and producers that stood before us in the 'winescapes' of time. While this conception of the wine drinking tradition may be presented to us today, it should be remembered that this might not have been the case in times gone by. Looking back to South Africa and the wine industry in the 1950s where 'wine consciousness' was a real concern for the marketers and makers of wine, we find no such traditions in place. Obstacles to the integration of wine into everyday living came in the form of an avid temperance movement concerned with drunkenness and alcoholism. Over time these obstacles heeded to the power of the wine industry so that increasing emphasis was placed on the role of publicity and marketing of wine. It was perhaps a natural development that wine tourism came to hold particular potential and interest for South African wine producers. The history of wine tourism of the Western Cape is inherently connected to the establishment of our first wine route in Stellenbosch. With a concern for the superiority of the European wine making tradition and landscape, it was only in 1970 that we saw a change in interest to the wine regions and heritage landscapes of our own country. The SteHenbosch wine route was a concept inspired by European example but grounded in local landscape. The significance of the mapping out of this landscape of space into place was a real concern for the wine makers of the regions whose freedom to market and export their wine overseas was severely restricted by legal prohibitions established by the KWV in the 1960s. With the defining of distinct wine regions, came the emphasis of difference of place within the winelands of the Western Cape. Each region has a formula for difference based on some combination of breathtaking scenery, quality wines, first class cuisine, and with increasing frequency the heritage of European roots. The construction of place and landscape identities gives us a sense of the perspective of the marketer and promoter of the wine region. I found it important to explore how this construction of identity of place came to be experienced by and presented to tourists in the present day

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Examining the Impact of Nostalgic Feelings on Sport Consumer Preferences Towards Team Apparel

Retro marketing has become a heavily relied upon practice by sport marketers (Scola & Gordon, 2018). Many contributed the uptick in retro marketing overall to the fin de siècle effect, which is the concept of “endism.” Scholars suggested people may look more fondly towards their past as they were approaching the end of an era as we did when the 2000’s began (Brown, 2013; Stern, 1992). Despite this assumption, we are now nearly 20 years beyond the turn of the century and marketers continue to heavily implement retro marketing and sport teams are no exception. Although there appears to be a reliance on retro marketing in sport, we have minimal knowledge regarding what emotions these practices elicit or how they impact consumer behavior. The purpose of this study was two-fold. First, the author examined how nostalgic feelings influenced consumer’s feelings and intentions towards their favorite team’s merchandise as well as the author sought to compare how consumers responded to retro and modern merchandise differently. The author created a model that examined how Cho et al.’s (2017) nostalgic feelings towards a sport team construct influenced perceived value, purchase intentions and willingness to pay a price premium. A theoretical model was created and tested among two participant pools, one exposed to merchandise with a modern logo and the other containing a retro logo. Data were collected from two fan bases, the Denver Broncos and Houston Rockets with participants (N = 419) completing a survey through Amazon Mechanical Turk where participants were randomly assigned a retro (n = 201) or modern (n = 218) prompt. To analyze these results, Kline’s (2016) two-step approach was utilized on each pool. First, a confirmatory factor analysis was run to test validity and reliability, this process determines if the items loaded correctly on each measure. Second structural equation modeling was conducted to examine the relationships between variables, test hypotheses, and examine overall model fit. It is important to examine the psychometric properties first through a factor analysis to then refine the model for structural assessment (Kline, 2016). The results of this study added credence to the importance of nostalgic feelings towards sport merchandise and shed light on many future avenues of research regarding retro marketing in sport. First, the author found that nostalgic feelings led to increased perceived value towards both pieces of merchandise. Additionally, the results demonstrated that as a participants’ perceived value increased so did their behavioral intentions towards the shirt, regardless of which t-shirt they were presented. Most interestingly, the author found that nostalgic feelings only led to increased purchase intentions and willingness to pay a price premium when the participant was presented the retro t-shirt. Considering how nostalgic feelings may impact consumer behavior is extremely important when examining retro marketing in sport. As nostalgia is often considered a positive emotion, (Cattaneo & Guerini, 2012; Pascal et al., 2002) it should come as no surprised that it increased perceived value in each context. Yet, it appeared to only influence behavioral intentions when the participants were given the retro t-shirt; this was the most novel finding of the study and is extremely important as this may suggest increasing nostalgic feelings of fans may only prove beneficial towards a team’s retro merchandise. Other scholars have similarly found that a retro marketing practice may elicit more positive feelings overall than a modern practice (Muehling et al., 2014), but it is important to take this further and examine consumers intentions and behaviors. If nostalgic feelings can prove to be impactful, future researchers should investigate how they influence the many different aspects of retro marketing in sport. This study and framework should be crucial to future research on retro marketing in sport