SOCIAL COGNITION AND THE EFFECT OF PRODUCT QUALITY ON ONLINE REPURCHASE INTENTION

An electronic commerce marketing channel is fully mediated by information technology, creating information asymmetry (i.e., limited information). Such asymmetry may impede consumers’ ability to effectively assess certain types of products, thus creating challenges for online sellers. Signaling theory can aid in the understanding of how extrinsic cues—signals—can be used by sellers to convey product quality information to consumers, reducing uncertainty and facilitating a purchase or exchange. This study proposes a model to investigate website quality as a potential signal of product quality and consider the moderating effects of product information asymmetries and signal credibility. The study also finds that perceived value and cognitive lock-in can predict consumer purchase intentions. Furthermore, personalized product recommendation (PPR) services offered by online retailers are found to influence consumer store loyalty. The results indicate that website quality influences consumers’ perceptions of product quality, and affects online purchase intentions. Website quality is found to have a greater influence on perceived product quality when consumers have higher information asymmetry. Signal credibility is found to strengthen the relationship between website quality and product quality perceptions for a high quality website. The implications of cognitive lock-in and product cues for increasing purchase intentions are discussed. Retailer learning reflected in higher quality PPRs is associated with both lower product screening cost and higher product evaluation cost. We also discuss which PPRs influence consumer repurchase intentions in electronic markets

Website Service Quality and Shopping Website Stickiness: The Mediating Effect of Website Involvement

Website service quality has been considered to be important to increase users’ stickiness toward website in online shopping context. However, the underlying mechanism through which website service quality can influence shopping website stickiness remains unclear. In this study, the concept of website involvement was introduced to explain why people tend to favor sticking a shopping website. Also, four dimensions of website service quality (i.e. recovery , reliability, personalization, and responsiveness) were identified from existing related literature to influence consumers’ website involvement. Unlike prior studies, the “Stimulus-Organism- Response” model and an integrated framework combining the transactional view and the relational view of consumer-website interaction were used to test the relationship among website service quality , website involvement (cognitive involvement and affective involvement), and website stickiness. Empirical result shows that website service quality has no significant direct impact on website stickiness. However, it has significantly positive effects on both cognitive involvement and affective involvement, which in turn significantly correlate to website stickiness, indicating that website involvement plays full mediating role in the relation between website service quality and website stickiness. The results also indicate that consumer affective involvement strongly influences their cognitive involvement toward a shopping website

Antecedents of User Stickiness and Loyalty and Their Effects on Users’ Group-Buying Repurchase Intention

Intense competition among a vast number of group-buying websites leads to higher product homogeneity, which allows customers to switch to alternative websites easily and reduce their website stickiness and loyalty. This study explores the antecedents of user stickiness and loyalty and their effects on consumers’ group-buying repurchase intention. Results indicate that systems quality, information quality, service quality, and alternative system quality each has a positive relationship with user loyalty through user stickiness. Meanwhile, information quality directly impacts user loyalty. Thereafter, user stickiness and loyalty each has a positive relationship with consumers’ repurchase intention. Theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed

An Exploratory Study on Customer Responses to Personalized Banner Messages in the Online Banking Context

In the 21st century the quantity of research on personalization has grown exponentially. New technologies enable efficient interaction with customers, even on one-to-one basis, providing the right content in the right format to the right person at the right time. The latest developments with “big data” analytics promise unprecedented opportunities for personalization, even in real-time. Although the technological advances allow fancy enhancements in personalization, it is imperative that the context-specific customer attitudes towards online personalization are taken into account by businesses. Customers are increasingly aware of their privacy, which improper personalization may intrude. This article presents the results of a two-phase study. Focus group interviews uncovered first the perceptions of bank customers regarding personalized marketing communication on online bank. A subsequent exploratory study investigated the online behaviour of customers, that is, their genuine responses to personalized messages. In this phase, bank customers were shown personalized banner advertisements when they logged in to their bank service. We studied, among others, the click-through rates and navigational behaviour and compared the effectiveness of personalized banners to default banners, and to traditional direct-mail messages. The personalized banners attracted more attention than default banners. In two of the three cases, the actual sales were also higher than in the case of direct-mail promotion. The results offer implications both for research and practice

Dynamics of hotel website browsing activity: the power of informatics and data analytics

© 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the temporal dynamics of users browsing activity on a hotel website in order to derive effective marketing strategies and constantly improve website effectiveness. Users' activities on the hotel's website on yearly, monthly, daily and hourly basis are examined and compared, demonstrating the power of informatics and data analytics. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 29,976 hourly Weblog files from 1 August 2014 to 31 December 2017 were collected from a luxury hotel in Hong Kong. ANOVA and post-hoc comparisons were used to analyse the data. Findings: Users' browsing behaviours, particularly stickiness, on the hotel website differ on yearly, monthly, daily and weekly bases. Users' activities increased steadily from 2014 to 2016, but dropped in 2017. Users are most active from July to September, on weekdays, and from noon to evening time. The month-, day-, and hour-based behaviours changed through years. The analysis of big data determines strategic and operational management and marketing decision-making. Research limitations/implications: Understanding the usage patterns of their websites allow organisations to make a range of strategic, marketing, pricing and distribution decisions to optimise their performance. Fluctuation of website usage and level of customer engagement have implications on customer support and services, as well as strategic partnership decisions. Originality/value: Leveraging the power of big data analytics, this paper adds to the existing literature by performing a comprehensive analysis on the temporal dynamics of users' online browsing behaviours

Lock-Ins auf Netzeffektmärkten – Ergebnisse einer Simulationsstudie

Auf Märkten für Netzeffektgüter – wie beispielsweise Software – kommt es häufig zu so genannten Lock-Ins. Die Untersuchung von Zufallsnetzwerken sowie zwei sozialen Online-Netzwerken mithilfe eines agentenbasierten Simulationsprototypen zeigt, dass sowohl die Netzwerktopologie als auch die Netzeffektstärke einen wesentlichen Einfluss auf die Lock-In-Häufigkeit ausüben. Typischerweise steigt die Lock-In-Häufigkeit mit zunehmender Netzeffektstärke und Vermaschung der Netzwerke. In Topologien sozialer Netzwerke trifft dies jedoch nur teilweise zu

An Empirical Analysis of the Pageview and Visit Duration of Pornography Websites

A positive relationship between pageview and visit duration has been identified for several types of websites, including retail. However, pornography websites offer such explicitly sexual content that viewers might stay on one page so long that it could distort the positivity. Yet, no empirical work has investigated this matter and little has focused on visit behavior to adult websites. Based on 473,840 visit sessions to pornography websites targeting both (1) the public and (2) the homosexual viewers, the 0.771 correlation coefficient between the pageview and the visit duration is statistically significant. It confirms that these two variables are positively related in the online pornography context. We also found that the viewer’s sexual orientation may have a moderating effect on the relationship between them. In addition to extending the theoretical insights into online visit behavior to pornography websites, online practitioners may apply the findings in order to retain visitors to their websites

Telepresence in live-stream shopping: an experimental study comparing Instagram and the metaverse

Advances in digital platforms allow influencers to use live shows to showcase products, which has given rise to live-stream shopping. Moreover, new communication forms have emerged, such as the metaverse. The social interactions that occur in these immersive environments foster influencer-follower interactions. This research compares the impact of live-stream shopping on followers’ experiences and behaviors on two communication channels (live shows on Instagram and in the metaverse) and analyses the moderating role of content involvement in telepresence. Data were collected in a between-subjects quasi-field experiment. Two scenarios that differed in degree of telepresence were created, a live show on Instagram and a live show in the metaverse. The results showed that telepresence is an important part of the user experience and in the success of live shows. Telepresence was seen to have a major influence on experiential value, but not on instrumental value. Both values provided followers with satisfaction with the experience. This satisfaction generated stickiness intention and intention to recommend the influencers’ live shows. The effect of telepresence on experiential value was greater for followers less involved with the influencer’s content. This research is pioneering in comparing an established platform, Instagram, with the metaverse. Despite the greater experiential value provided by the metaverse, to increase its instrumental value metaverse spaces needs to be further developed

The impact of complimentary advertising strategies on sponsored search advertisement

The aim of this research was to find relationships between complimentary advertising strategies and sponsored search advertisement (SSA) in order to formulate a model to maximise return on investment achieved from online sponsored search advertisements. The results obtained from statistical analyses of SSA campaign data showed that complimentary online and offline advertisement campaigns have various different correlations to impressions, click-through rates, number of pages visited, time spent visiting a website, bounce rate of visitors to the website, cost-per-click and number of new registrations per keyword search from visitors gained through SSA campaigns. In particular, online display advertisements were found to have a slight positive correlation with new registrations made by customers gained through a simultaneously running SSA campaign. Offline radio adverts were found to have a positive correlation with impressions gained for SSA campaigns, whilst at the same time showing a negative correlation with the number of pages viewed by website visitors obtained through the SSA campaign. Some negative correlations to SSA campaign performance were also found, with the time visitors spent viewing the website decreasing, their bounce rate increasing and the cost-per-clicks for the keywords in the SSA campaign also increasing during periods when offline radio adverts were active. Offline television adverts were found to have a negative correlation with impressions gained for SSA campaigns, as well as the click-through rate for the keywords in these SSA campaigns. Offline television adverts did however also show a negative correlation with the cost-per-clicks for keywords in the SSA campaigns. Finally, a graphical model was developed to illustrate these correlations found between complimentary advertisement campaigns and SSA performance metrics.Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012.Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)unrestricte