Understanding consumer behavior in an evolving context: from single channel to omnichannel use

La presente tesis doctoral tiene como principal objetivo avanzar en el conocimiento del comportamiento del consumidor en el actual contexto, caracterizado por el uso de múltiples canales durante todo el proceso de decisión de compra. Dicho objetivo general se desagrega en cuatro objetivos específicos que, a partir de cuatro investigaciones independientes, buscan entender desde diferentes enfoques teóricos y empíricos dicha cuestión. Para testar empíricamente las propuestas realizadas en cada una de las investigaciones, la tesis se sirve principalmente dos metodologías de investigación, la encuesta y el diseño experimental. Las cuatro investigaciones ofrecen resultados que enriquecen la literatura del comportamiento del consumidor. Los hallazgos de esta tesis doctoral también se traducen en distintas implicaciones para las empresas en el actual contexto cambiante. Particularmente, los resultados ayudan a los profesionales del marketing a adoptar estrategias útiles tanto en el contexto de compra móvil como en el contexto de compra omnicanal

Factors Influencing Consumers' Acceptance of Mobile Marketing Services

The research of mobile marketing services is still at the early stage and the reason to explain the acceptance as well as the understanding of the actual usage level of mobile marketing services still remains unclear. To investigate this issue, this study has examined the acceptance of mobile marketing services by measuring the consumer's intention and actual usage of mobile marketing services. Grounded by the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour (DTPB), this study proposes a framework by decomposing attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and perceived risk. A total of 334 full-time university students from four public universities in the Northern Region, Malaysia have participated in this study. Data for all the study variables have been collected through self-administered survey questionnaires. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is the main statistical technique used in this study. The study has shown that the level of the actual usage is at the lower level. The study also reveals that all the main beliefs (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and perceived risk) are found to have significant effect on consumer‟s intention to use mobile marketing services. With regard to antecedents‟ effect on the main beliefs, there are only four factors which are found insignificant namely perceived ease of use, personal innovativeness, media and technology facilitating condition. Whereas, another ten antecedent factors significantly influence the main beliefs. Overall, the results indicate that the model provides a good understanding of the factors that influence intention to use and the actual usage of mobile marketing services. As predicted, decomposition of the main beliefs provides more specific factors that influence the behaviour. Based on the findings, the theoretical and practical implications of the study as well as limitations and suggestions for future studies are also discussed

Assessing the Impacts of Crowdsourcing in Logistics and Supply Chain Operations

Crowdsourcing models, whereby firms start to delegate supply chain operations activities to a mass of actors in the marketplace, have grown drastically in recent years. 85% of the top global brands have reported to use crowdsourcing in the last ten year with top names such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Nestle. These emergent business models, however, have remained unexplored in extant SCM literature. Drawing on various theoretical underpinnings, this dissertation aims to investigate and develop a holistic understanding of the importance and impacts of crowdsourcing in SCM from multiple perspectives. Three individual studies implementing a range of methodological approaches (archival data, netnography, and field and scenario-based experiments) are conducted to examine potential impacts of crowdsourcing in different supply chain processes from the customer’s, the crowdsourcing firm’s, and the supply chain partner’s perspectives. Essay 1 employs a mixed method approach to investigate “how, when, and why” crowdsourced delivery may affect customer satisfaction and behavioral intention in online retailing. Essay 2 uses a field experiment to address how the framing of motivation messages could enhance crowdsourced agents’ participation and performance level in crowdsourced inventory audit tasks. Lastly, Essay 3 explores the impact of crowdsourcing activities by the manufacturers on the relationship dynamics within the manufacturer-consumers-retailer triads

The Influences Of Atmospheric Cues On Consumer Behavioral Intentions: An Affordance Perspective

Online social shopping emerges from the idea of using social networking features to benefit traditional e-commerce activities. Technology-driven shopping environments not only support shopping task completion and self-entertainment, more importantly, these new shopping environments become alternate outlets for consumers to interact with others. This dissertation aims to understand the effects of atmospheric cues on consumers\u27 behavioral intentions in online social shopping environments. This dissertation study proposes and validates a research model that predicts consumers\u27 diverse behavioral intentions (approach and avoidance) toward using online shopping environments due to website atmospheric cues. This research model is constructed based on theoretical perspectives including stimulus-organism-response framework, the technology acceptance model, the theory of affordances, and activity theory. The empirical study used a three-factorial between-subject field experiment approach to validate the research model and hypotheses. A total of 360 valid responses were collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Each of the subjects was randomly assigned to one of the eight experimental conditions. Data was analyzed using three-way MANOVA and PLS-SEM techniques. Analysis results largely supported the research model. Three path coefficients surprisingly had different signs from their correlation coefficients, and further mediation analysis indicated that: perceived usefulness fully mediated the effects of perceived utilitarian affordances, perceived sociability of use fully mediated the effects of perceived social affordances, and that perceived usefulness and perceived fun fully mediated the effects of perceived sociability of use on behavioral intentions. This dissertation theoretically contributes to online social shopping research by building a well-grounded research model that integrates several theories from different disciplines. The instrument for measuring perceived affordances provides an operationalized solution to understand interaction mechanism between technology-driven environments and users. Practically, investigating the effects of atmospheric cues and decomposing process-based and outcome-based evaluations suggest different aspects that online merchants can work on to improve consumer experiences

Empirical Studies on Online Information Privacy Concerns: Literature Review and an Integrative Framework

In the e-commerce environment, individuals’ concerns for online information privacy play critical roles in determining their intention to use the Internet to provide personal information for services and transactions. Understanding this relationship has important implications for e-commerce. Despite much research in this area, an overarching picture of the relationship between information privacy concerns and the antecedent and consequence factors is yet to be drawn. Based on a review on empirical studies in this area, this research summarizes the conceptualizations of privacy concerns and the antecedents and consequences. An integrative framework is developed to illustrate the relationships between the factors. In this framework, a person’s concern for information privacy regarding a specific e-commerce website is distinguished from his/her concern for information privacy regarding the general e-commerce environment. These two forms of privacy concerns have distinct impacts on a person’s online behavior. Their relationships with multiple antecedent and consequence factors are analyzed

A Classification and Investigation of Trustees in B-to-C e-Commerce: General vs. Specific Trust

Existing literature lacks a common taxonomy and systematic integration necessary for building cumulative knowledge on the nature of trust in an information systems context. Hence, this article explores online trust’s multidimensional nature within the context of online stores. This article develops a framework for classifying trust dimensions and to investigate their influences on behaviors in new and familiar business-to-consumer (B-to-C) e-commerce environments. Specifically, we classify trust dimensions into two levels: general trust (beliefs toward the general e-commerce environment and infrastructure) and specific trust (beliefs regarding a specific e-commerce shopping experience). Specific trust is further delineated into trust in the merchant and trust in the technology artifact, i.e., the website. The integrative framework was tested in two separate empirical studies using e-commerce stores that were either new or familiar to the subjects. The results show that general trust mechanisms are important to consumers in a new e-commerce environment. In contrast, when shopping in a familiar e-commerce store, consumers pay more attention to the current Web experience, diminishing the salience of general trust. This article contributes to the literature by developing an integrative framework of trust and by providing insights into the influences of trust dimensions on purchase decisions in new and familiar e-commerce environments

Trust and risk in consumer acceptance of e-services

Thesis (Ph.D. (Information Systems))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law & Management, School of Economic and Business Sciences, 2015Electronic services (or e-services) are defined as any service whose delivery is based on Internet, IT and communications technology, and which incorporates a large self-service component. They offer consumers the promise of increased convenience, lower-cost of transacting, greater choice and accessibility by eliminating space and time constraints to their interactions with service providers. Benefits of e-services cannot however materialize without consumer acceptance. Unfortunately, uncertainty and fears of opportunism still characterize the online context and varying degrees of consumer acceptance and engagement in use of e-services has thus been observed. The extant literature considers consumer perceptions of risk and their trust beliefs amongst the most important psychological states influencing their online behavior. However, despite the number of empirical studies that have explored the effects of trust and risk perceptions on consumer acceptance of e-services, the field remains fragmented and the posited research models are contradictory. For example, the trust-risk relationship has been modeled differently in past studies and the causal relationship between trust and risk perceptions has not been clarified. In addition, research into the antecedents of trust has not been integrated to provide an answer as to which are the most significant antecedents. Furthermore, past research has paid more attention to initial trust or risk perceptions and has not adequately examined whether these perceptions change over time or how they come to influence later stage acceptance of e-services. To address these gaps in our understanding of trust and risk in consumer acceptance of e-services, this thesis adopted three research designs, namely meta-analytic approaches, cross-sectional surveys and longitudinal designs. First, a meta-analytic study1 was used to aggregate empirical findings from across prior studies in e-service. This allowed the nature of the relationship between trust, perceived risk, and acceptance of e-services to be synthesized and for competing nomological models of the trust-risk-acceptance relationship to be compared. 52 studies were examined and it was found that trust is most important to form consumer positive attitude for acceptance. By comparing competing models, it found that trust and risk are significantly related and trust may influence risk in consumer acceptance of e-services. 1 Presented at 34th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2013), Milano, Italy. iv Moderator analysis within the meta-analysis was also carried out to determine if different types of consumer cultures (e.g., Western versus Eastern), different types of e-services (e.g., commercial versus non-commercial), or different objects of trust (e.g., trust in vendor versus trust in website technology) influence the relationships between trust, risk and acceptance of e-services. Furthermore, the antecedents of trust as suggested by past research were examined via a second meta-analysis of 59 prior studies2. The antecedents of trust were classified as vendor and institution-based antecedents, technological-based antecedents, knowledge-based antecedents, and consumer characteristics-based antecedents. Technological-based antecedents were found the most significant antecedents of trust. For all antecedents, studies classified as having been carried out in Eastern cultures reported on average stronger effect sizes than those carried out in Western cultures. In addition to the meta-analytical studies, this thesis also carried out cross-sectional and longitudinal investigations to study trust and risk in an understudied context of e-services, namely consumer acceptance of online health information services. The motivation to adopt this context is because previous studies of e-services were mostly focused on commercial (e.g., e-commerce, e-shopping and e-banking, etc) and mostly on non-commercial context such as e-government. However, e-health services are relatively under-explored. Moreover, the Web has become an important health information dissemination channel. People are increasingly searching for health information online and engaging in the self-management of their health. Trust and risk are considered important to the online health context, and it therefore served as an appropriate e-service context for empirical analysis. Two cross-sectional studies3,4 were carried out to explain user acceptance of online health information services. This cross-sectional work was underpinned by multiple theoretical perspectives namely Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Health Belief Model (HBM) and Extended Valence Framework (EVF). Findings showed that multiple dimensions of trust (trust in provider, trust in website and trust in institutional structures) have both direct and indirect effects, via perceived usefulness, on consumer acceptance. 2 Presented at 18th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2014), Chengdu, China. 3 Forthcoming at 35th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2014), Auckland, New Zealand. 4 Forthcoming at 25th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS 2014), Auckland, New Zealand. v One-dimensional risk was not found to have a significant influence on consumer acceptance. However, multi-dimensional risk (performance risk, psychological risk and time risk) did combine with health belief variables such as perceived susceptibility and severity to influence consumer acceptance. Because cross-sectional data is limited in its ability to address causal connections amongst phenomena, two longitudinal investigations were also carried out. These investigations were used to explain whether trust beliefs and risk perceptions change over time in consumer acceptance of e-services, how early stage trust and risk perceptions influence later stage acceptance and usage behaviors, and whether there is reciprocal causality between trust and risk perceptions. This work was underpinned by TRA and Expectation-Confirmation Theory (ECT), and employed both path modeling and cross-lagged structural equation modeling techniques. The results showed that trust, risk perceptions and perceived usefulness are important to the prediction of consumer acceptance of online health services at both the early and later usage phases5. Furthermore, trust in provider and trust in website have reciprocal relations and empirical data supported the influence of risk perceptions on trust. Through the meta-analytic design, cross-sectional approaches and longitudinal designs, this thesis contributes to research on e-services in a number of ways. First, meta-analytic approaches integrated the available evidence from prior studies, which resulted in the generation of a dataset which was larger in scope and scale than could feasibly be achieved in any single research study. This dataset could then be used to compare competing nomological models found in the literature. In so doing, results have improved our understanding of how trust and risk are related, how they combine to influence consumer acceptance, as well as identifying the most important antecedents of trust. Results provide a benchmark against which future studies can compare their effect sizes. Moreover, by examining the heterogeneity of effect sizes, the meta-analysis has also identified moderators that can account for observed inconsistencies in the effect sizes reported by prior studies. Together, the findings have extended our understanding of how trust and risk relate to e-service acceptance in different e-service contexts, across 5 Presented at 18th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2014), Chengdu, China. vi different consumer cultures, and whether trust in the vendor or technology platform has relatively greater importance to consumers. Second, this thesis also integrated trust into HBM to examine online health information seeking as both a health behavior and online consumer behavior. Results help us better understand this specific case of e-service acceptance. Third, this study is also the first to develop and validate a dynamic trust and risk model in consumer acceptance of online health information services. The longitudinal design integrates trust into the theoretical framework of TRA and ECT to develop the dynamic research model. Tests of the model have made a key contribution to the development of a theory that explains the dynamic nature of e-service acceptance. Furthermore, the cross-lagged longitudinal design contributed to our understanding of the casual relationship between consumers’ trust and risk perceptions in the context of online health information services. Taken together this thesis illustrates how meta-analysis and structural equation modeling can be integrated together to approach the fragmented and contradictory nature of the field. Moreover, this thesis addresses the lack of longitudinal studies on acceptance, and presents a novel method, cross-lagged structural equation modeling, to examine controversial causal relationships within the field of Information Systems. This thesis also has important practical implications. It provides insights into the relative importance of trust and risk perceptions necessary to inform practitioners on risk reduction and trust-building mechanisms. The investigation into the antecedents of trust reveals especially important factors which are within the control of e-service providers. With this understanding, practitioners can be better positioned to establish their online service offerings. Website designers can also benefit from understanding the extent to which particular antecedents of trust (e.g., ease of use and system quality) are important for e-service acceptance. By studying the online health information services context, this thesis has also shed light on the general perceptions and attitudes of consumers towards this high-potential area of e-service

Three Research Essays on Online Users' Concerns and Web Assurance Mechanisms

Online users struggle with different concerns whenever they use information systems. According to Miyazaki and Fernandez (2001), there are three important categories of concerns for online users: privacy concern, third party fraudulent behavior concern ("system security"), and online website fraudulent behavior concern ("security"). Kim, Sivasailam, and Rao (2004) proposed a similar categorization for web assurance dimensions. They argue that online websites are supposed to address users' privacy, security, and business integrity concerns to decrease user concerns. Although several researchers tried to answer how different factors affect these concerns and how these concerns affect users' behavior, there are so many ambiguities and contradictions in this area. This Essay I in this work develops a comprehensive map of the role of online privacy concern to identify related factors and categorize them through an in-depth literature review and conducting meta-analysis on online privacy concern. Although users have concerns about their privacy and security, there is still growth in the number of internet users and electronic commerce market share. One possible reason is that websites are applying assurance mechanisms to ensure the privacy of their users. Therefore, it could be an interesting research topic to investigate how privacy assurance mechanisms affect users concern and, consequently, their behavior in different concerns such as e-commerce and social networking sites. Different types of web assurance mechanisms are used by websites. The most prevalent among these assurance mechanisms include web assurance seals and assurance statements and privacy customization features. Essay II and III aims to address how these mechanisms influence e-commerce and social networking sites users' behavior. Essay II applies the procedural fairness theory by Lind and Tyler (1988) to explain how and why the web assurance mechanisms affect consumers' perceived risks. Essay III addresses the issue of self-disclosure on social networking sites. Applying protection motivation theory, this study aims to evaluate the effect of web assurance mechanisms on online privacy concern and self-disclosure behavior on the social networking sites

The Impact of Chatbots on the Relationship between Integrated Marketing Communication and Online Purchasing Behavior in The Frontier Market

Artificial Intelligence (AI), applied in many fields, is the core of the fourth technological revolution. In business, AI is used for customer relationship management as applied in the autoresponder systems, i.e., chatbot. Chatbots were an essential tool in the marketing relationship as many companies applied this function to their website; hence, this study analyzed the influence of chatbots on the enterprise's integrated marketing communication (IMC) activities, resulting in impulse purchase behavior and repurchase intention behavior. The mixed research method was used, particularly the in-depth interview and the survey with 886 online consumers, who shop from the online websites with chatbots system in Vietnam as Tiki, Lazada, Sendo, excetera. The research results showed that the perceived usefulness and ease of use of chatbots have positively affected the attitude of online consumers to the IMC activities of businesses. Simultaneously, IMC leads to impulse buying as well as the repurchase intention behavior of customers. The study proposed some managerial implications for an online business to enhance the chatbot functions to consumer behaviors in the website.