Psychological elements explaining the consumer's adoption and use of a website recommendation system: A theoretical framework proposal

The purpose of this paper is to understand, with an emphasis on the psychological perspective of the research problem, the consumer's adoption and use of a certain web site recommendation system as well as the main psychological outcomes involved. The approach takes the form of theoretical modelling. Findings: A conceptual model is proposed and discussed. A total of 20 research propositions are theoretically analyzed and justified. Research limitations/implications: The theoretical discussion developed here is not empirically validated. This represents an opportunity for future research. Practical implications: The ideas extracted from the discussion of the conceptual model should be a help for recommendation systems designers and web site managers, so that they may be more aware, when working with such systems, of the psychological process consumers undergo when interacting with them. In this regard, numerous practical reflections and suggestions are presented

It’s all about who you are: Four papers on the role of individual personality differences in cosumer marketing

PhD thesis in EconomicsImagine two young Norwegian women, Marie and Dina, who are enjoying a Saturday evening visit to a down town ethnic restaurant. They are of equal age, have an equal level of experience and interest in tasteful restaurant meals, their economic resources are about the same, they are both anthropology grad students, and they also have pretty common interests on a number of other areas like music, boys, fashion clothing and alpine mountaineering, to name a few. A few days later, their friend Hilde, who is a psychology student at the university, asks them about their restaurant evening, and they both agree that it was a very nice Saturday, and that the restaurant is one they can absolutely recommend. When tapping into the underlying reasons to their satisfaction, their friend learns that they are both equally satisfied with the meal, the wine, the atmosphere, and the cute Brazilian waiter. However, whereas Marie would love to visit the restaurant again in the near future, Dina would rather not. While this may come as a surprise to restaurant manager Richard, who is trained to seek customer satisfaction because repurchase is generally determined by satisfaction (Oliver, 1997), the psychology student Hilde knows exactly why Marie’s and Dina’s repurchase intentions differ; Dina is a variety seeker, who visits different restaurants for no other reason than being fond of variation (Homburg and Giering, 2001). Marie, on the other hand, is not. Hence, if Richard surveyed a number of Dina’s variety seeking companions about their satisfaction level and their intention to re-visit the restaurant, he would probably be puzzled by finding no link between the two concepts. On the contrary, if his sample consisted of Marie’s equals only, he would probably find a strong relationship between their satisfaction and their repurchase intention. Finally, if the unfortunate manager had a sample consisting of both Dina and Marie, he might end up with data telling him that there is a significant relationship between the two concepts, but that the relationship is somewhat weak. Consider then, that the same survey was conducted by a psychologist, who knew that a number of people are variety seekers, and that these customers are somewhat less likely to visit the same restaurant twice no matter how satisfied they are. Her questionnaire would include items covering the variety seeking continuum, and she would include this in her analysis. She might then find that there is a strong and significant relationship between Marie’s level of customer satisfaction and her repurchase intentions, while there is no such relationship in the data supplied by Dina. What the psychologist has done is to introduce the moderating effect of personality differences, and she would conclude that the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty was moderated by the consumers’ variety seeking tendency (Homburg and Giering, 2001). The moderating effect of personality traits in models of consumer marketing is what this thesis is all about. Or stated differently, the thesis introduces the typical personality psychologists’ viewpoint to the study of marketing phenomena; “There are few differences between people, but what differences there are really matter” (Burger, 2008). In other words - It’s all about who you are

Investigating antecedents and consequences of exploratory consumer behavior in the context of online fashion product rentailers

Online fashion product rentailer describes a retailer that offers fashion products for rental using an Internet website as the main shopping channel, which is deemed as one of retail activities given the new retail landscape of the 21st century. While cognitive motivations drive renting behavior towards freedom from ownership burdens, hedonic benefits also motivate consumers to rent as a means to explore high-priced or trend-based products, such as fashion clothing. Despite the emergence of apparel renting behavior and the success of such business, no published research has examined the antecedents and consequences of the online fashion product rentailing environment in one study. Thus, the purpose of this study was to propose and empirically investigate an integrative model of online consumer behavior in the context of online fashion product rentailers. Specifically, the relationships that may exist among characteristics of online fashion product rentailers (i.e., perceived product uncertainty, perceived transaction uncertainty, perceived brand assortment, perceived price, eWOM) and personality traits of potential renters (i.e., optimum stimulation level (OSL), risk-taking tendency, variety-seeking tendency, curiosity-motivated tendency) in order to understand consumer behavior (i.e., exploratory consumer behaviors, intent to visit and patronize online fashion product rentailers’ website) associated to online fashion product renting contexts were examined. Data were collected from the Amazon Mechanical Turk’s (mturk) online panel members. The final sample consisted of 352 participants who had visited and engaged in online shopping activities (e.g., browsing, renting) at an online fashion product rentailer’s website in the past six months. Of these, approximately 72% were female and 50% of participants were aged between 18 and 29 years old. In addition, approximately 52% of the participants had rented a product from one of the online fashion product rentailers. To assess the proposed hypothesized model consisted of 66-item 12-construct, the two-step approach was performed to establish measurement and structural model via LISREL 9.2. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with the maximum likelihood technique was employed. The CFA results revealed a satisfactory goodness-of-fit index. After the structural model was established, the structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed. The model fit statistics indicated ?2= 4523.176, df = 2,053, p < .001, ?2/df = 2.20, RMSEA = 0.058, CFI = 0.94, NFI = 0.90, TLI = 0.94, and PNFI = 0.85, suggesting that the hypothesized structural relationships fit the data satisfactorily. In terms of the relationships between the characteristics of online fashion product rentailers and optimum stimulation level (OSL), SEM results revealed that perceived brand assortment, perceived price, and eWOM had a positive relationship with OSL. In addition, we found that OSL were related to risk-taking, variety-seeking, and curiosity-motivated tendencies. In regards to the relationship between personality traits and exploratory consumer behavior, a significant relationship between risk-taking, variety-seeking, and curiosity-motivated tendencies and exploratory acquisition of product (EAP) was found. Additionally, curiosity-motivated tendency was positively related to exploratory information seeking (EIS). Lastly, results revealed that intent to shop and patronize online fashion product rentailers’ website was positively influenced by EIS and EAP. Implications are provided. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed

Direct regulation is an efficient approach to industrial environmental improvement: empirical evidence and perceptions from chemical manufacturers in Ireland and Italy.

Industrial production is a major source of global pollution, and it is widely recognised that regulation is required to reduce this pollution for the benefit of society. However, there is considerable debate about the most effective approach to environmental regulation with respect to both environmental and competitive performance. This paper integrates complementary empirical evidence from two entirely separate projects with different approaches (scientific and econometric), from different countries (Ireland and Italy), in order to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of direct environmental regulation in practice. Quantitative pollution avoidance and compliance cost data from Ireland’s pharmaceutical-manufacturing sector were combined with questionnaire responses from 20 Irish pharmaceutical manufacturers and 25 Italian manufacturers of chemicals for building products. We conclude that direct command-and-control regulation is a highly effective approach, and that the efficiency of such regulation is often underestimated.environmental regulation, environmental performance, competitiveness.

Empirical Evidence on the Use of Credit Scoring for Predicting Insurance Losses with Psycho-social and Biochemical Explanations

An important development in personal lines of insurance in the United States is the use of credit history data for insurance risk classification to predict losses. This research presents the results of collaboration with industry conducted by a university at the request of its state legislature. The purpose was to see the viability and validity of the use of credit scoring to predict insurance losses given its controversial nature and criticism as redundant of other predictive variables currently used. Working with industry and government, this study analyzed more than 175,000 policyholders’ information for the relationship between credit score and claims. Credit scores were significantly related to incurred losses, evidencing both statistical and practical significance. We investigate whether the revealed relationship between credit score and incurred losses was explainable by overlap with existing underwriting variables or whether the credit score adds new information about losses not contained in existing underwriting variables. The results show that credit scores contain significant information not already incorporated into other traditional rating variables (e.g., age, sex, driving history). We discuss how sensation seeking and self-control theory provide a partial explanation of why credit scoring works (the psycho-social perspective). This article also presents an overview of biological and chemical correlates of risk taking that helps explain why knowing risk-taking behavior in one realm (e.g., risky financial behavior and poor credit history) transits to predicting risk-taking behavior in other realms (e.g., automobile insurance incurred losses). Additional research is needed to advance new nontraditional loss prediction variables from social media consumer information to using information provided by technological advances. The evolving and dynamic nature of the insurance marketplace makes it imperative that professionals continue to evolve predictive variables and for academics to assist with understanding the whys of the relationships through theory development.IC2 Institut

Music listening in everyday life: Devices, selection methods, and digital technology

Two studies considered whether psychological variables could predict everyday music listening practices more than those demographic and technology-related variables studied predominantly hitherto. Study 1 focused on music-listening devices, while Study 2 focused on music selection strategies (e.g. playlists). Study 1 indicated the existence of a one-dimensional identity based on music technology. Further, psychological variables (such as innovativeness and self-efficacy) predicted whether individuals possess such an identity. Moreover, while psychological variables predicted whether individuals preferred ‘familiarized’ advantages inherent to listening devices, a preference for ‘progressive’ advantages was predicted by technological behaviors. Study 2 supported the first study in terms of identity, and demonstrated that a different pattern of variables predicted playlist listening from listening to music via shuffle. More generally, the findings suggest the utility of applying constructs from consumer psychology to everyday music-listening behaviors

Understanding the determinants of evaluation, adoption and routinisation of ERP technology (Enterprise Resource Planning) in the context of agricultural farms

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Information Management, specialization in Information and Decision SystemsThe purpose of this thesis is to investigate the determinants of the adoption of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) technology in agricultural farms in Brazil. The data were collected in 502 personal interviews with farmers of soy, corn, cotton, coffee, beans, wheat, peanuts, fruits, sugarcane and cattle raising, The data gathering instrument used for the quantitative research was built based on the result of the qualitative study in combination with three theories: Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DOI), Technology-Organization-Environment Framework (TOE), and Interorganizational Relations (IORs). Structural Equations (SEM) methodology was used to analyze the data and hypothesis. The results indicate the significant drivers for Evaluation, Adoption, and Routinisation. Also, we analyzed the ERP impact on farm performance based on resource-based view (RBV). We hope this work can bring a theoretical and practical contribution for the agribusiness field and also increase debates about the platforms on cloud computer based on ERP, Enterprise 2,0 and Industry 4.0. The results this thesis provide information to agribusiness owners, managers and administrators to promote and incentivize the use of ERP

Webrooming or showrooming, that is the question: explaining omnichannel behavioural intention through the technology acceptance model and exploratory behaviour

Purpose: This paper evaluates how the intention to develop webrooming or showrooming behaviour is affected by both the perceived usefulness and the perceived ease-of-use, as well as by the consumer's personal predisposition to exploratory information seeking and acquisition. Design/methodology/approach: The fashion retailing environment is more omni-channel than ever before. The two predominant omni-channel behaviours are webrooming and showrooming. Taking as its basis the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the concept of exploratory consumer behaviour. Findings: The results obtained from a sample of 847 apparel shoppers (462 webroomers and 385 showroomers) show that the higher perception of the usefulness and ease-of-use of omni-channel buying processes, the higher the intention to develop both webrooming and showrooming behaviours. Additionally, the perceived ease-of-use exerts an additional indirect effect on the intention of developing these omni-channel behaviours through perceived usefulness. Finally, exploratory information seeking and acquisition have a relevant influence on webrooming intentions, but not on showrooming. Originality/value: The authors' research contributes to the literature on consumer behaviour in the fashion sector by testing a model to explain the intentions of individuals to adopt webrooming and showrooming, incorporating different psychographic variables linked to the use of ICT and the development of an exploratory consumer behaviour