Religiosity and Spatial Demographic Differences in the Netherlands

This paper investigates whether current differences in religiosity between the Dutch regions are also manifested in spatial demographic patterns. We use cluster analysis to distinguish relatively homogeneous clusters of regions, specified by religious affiliation and the frequency of churchgoing among their populations. Although the regional demographic differences are relatively modest in the Netherlands, between-clusters contrasts are consistent with the expected influence of religiosity. The cluster including the most conservative region, the so-called Bible Belt, also displays the most traditional demographic patterns. In order to differentiate the impact of religiosity from the social and economic factors, we perform stepwise regression of selected indicators of fertility, union formation and living arrangements. The frequency of churchgoing rather than the fact of belonging to a certain denomination manifested the strongest impact on the regional demographic contrasts. In case of fertility of parity four and higher, marriage rate and the proportion of young women cohabiting, churchgoing turned out to be the most important predictor of regional differentiation

Comparing Advertising Effectiveness: Successful versus Attractive Male Spokesperson: An Abstract

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Cultural Aspects of Compulsive Buying in Emerging and Developed Economies: A cross cultural study in compulsive buying

Although several studies focused on understanding of compulsive buying in developed countries, this phenomenon remains understudied in other parts of the world. This is rather surprising since there is an increasing interest in understanding shopping behavior of consumers in emergent markets due to the growing importance of these markets. The main reason for the limited attention to compulsive buying in emerging countries is the lack of cross-culturally validated scales. In response to these calls, this paper tests measurement invariance of two prominent compulsive buying scales—the Compulsive Buying Scale (CBS) and the Compulsive Buying Index (CBI) in Western (Spain and the Netherlands) and emerging (Russia and Turkey) economies. In case of lack of invariance the reasons in terms of socio-cultural factors and country conditions are explained. The results establish the partial measurement invariance of the CBI but not the CBS. So, to study the antecedents and consequences of compulsive buying in cross-cultural contexts, the CBI is sufficient. The varying credit card ownership and usage, and different gender roles of women across countries appear to be the main reasons for lack of measurement invariance of the CBS. The percentages of compulsive buyers in emerging countries are lower than those in developed countries

Essays on Customization Applications in Marketing

The primary objective of this thesis is to develop and validate new methodologies to improve the collection of data and the effectiveness of promotion customization. This thesis contains two essays. In these essays, we search for optimal combinations of components of questionnaires to design split questionnaires and product categories to offer promotions. The first essay deals with how to improve collection of data. We focus on split questionnaires to collect data instead of using the more typical long questionnaires (i.e. more than 20 minutes) in marketing. In split questionnaires, different respondents respond different parts of the questionnaire. After generating different split questionnaires and administrating them to respondents, we impute data for the missing parts using the other people’s responses to those missing parts. In the end, we obtain almost the same information with split questionnaires as with complete questionnaires, but in a shorter time with less cost and obtaining better quality responses (less item nonresponse, higher response and more accurate responses). The second essay is a cross-category promotion customization problem. Currently, many multicategory models are restricted to a smaller number of categories, and the main purpose in these studies is to understand any type of demand relationship across product categories. Retailers can use cross-category relatedness for delivery of point-of-purchase materials, cross-category coupons, creative store layout, and online feature ad design. Based on previous purchases of customers, we model customers’ decision of which categories to purchase and how much to spend and later search for the optimal categories to promote.

Impulsive buying and shopping motivations in emergent and mature markets

This research examines the influence of shopping motivations on impulse buying behaviour and compares these effects in emergent and mature markets. Shopping is becoming a gradually hedonic activity worldwide with an increasing number of multichannel buying opportunities. Unexpectedly, the research on the relations between shopping motivations and impulse buying does not exit, yet. Impulsive buying behaviour is a widely recognized phenomenon in mature markets. It is even estimated that 40 percent of all money spent is through impulse buying. While impulse buying has been much studied in mature markets, especially in the U.S., there have been a few studies in emergent markets. Data were collected from 520 female shopping mall visitors in four countries representing two mature markets (the Netherlands and Germany) and two emerging markets (Turkey and Russia) and analysed with structural equation modelling. There were significant differences in the effect of gratification, adventure, value, and quality seeking motivation on impulse buying, but not the ones of role play, social and idea. Adventure and gratification motivation influenced positively impulse buying both markets. Value motivation negatively influenced impulsive buying in mature markets, but opposite of it in emerging markets. Value motivation was not hedonic in mature markets; however it was both hedonic and utilitarian value in emerging markets. The effect of quality seeking motivation on utilitarian value was only significant in emerging markets. We additionally discuss several implications for marketers

Identifying Non-adopter Consumer Segments: An Empirical Study on Earthquake Insurance Adoption in Turkey

In recent years, steadily climbing natural disaster losses have increased the need to promote new financial risk transfer mechanisms, including insurance, as a mitigation tool to build resilient communities to recover faster after disaster occurrence. However, while the societal need for such policies is high, demand for natural disaster insurances typically is still low. While there is ample research on positive adoption decisions, reasons for non-adoption has not yet received the attention it deserves. Using the case of earthquake insurance in Turkey, this study investigates how public policy makers and insurance companies can differentiate non-adopter segments and consequently develop targeted strategies to stimulate the uptake of disaster insurance. Our study develops a non-adopter typology consisting of four segments\u2014state reliant positivist, dependers, adversaries and uninformed loners. Differences among segments provide policy makers and insurance companies with meaningful insights to design and consequently introduce affordable natural disaster insurance to the market