The influence of online store characteristics on consumer impulsive decision-making: A model and empirical application

This study is one of the first to provide insight into the relationships between the online store and consumer impulsive decision-making. We develop a model and show how online store merchandise, ease of use (high task-relevant cues), enjoyment and style (low task relevant cues) relate to online impulse buying. The model is tested using survey data from 532 customers of a Dutch online store. The results show significant effects of merchandise, enjoyment and online store style, mediated by consumers’ emotions and browsing behavior. The study adds to the literature by enhancing our understanding of online impulse buying and by assessing the impact of the online store beyond rational decision-making settings. Keywords: impulsive decision-making, emotions, online store, high task-relevant cues, low task-relevant cues

Microfoundations of partnerships: exploring the role of employees in trickle effects

The growing body of literature on partnerships has paid most attention to their implications at the macro level, for society, as well as the meso level, for the partnering organisations. While generating many valuable insights, what has remained underexposed is the micro level, i.e. the role of managers and employees in partnerships, and how their actions and interactions can have an effect on the spread and potential effectiveness of collaborative efforts. This article uses a case-study approach to empirically explore the patterns and potential boundary conditions of so-called ‘trickle effects’ of partnerships among individual actors within and outside partnering companies, which have thus far only been proposed conceptually. Based on interviews with employees from three different companies, we found evidence of trickle-down and trickle-up effects with higher and lower management, as well as trickle-round effects with colleagues, family, friends and customers. The article discusses several partnership characteristics that seem to play a role, and notes implications for research and practice

The Champion of Images: Understanding the role of images in the decision-making process of online hotel bookings

Images are vitally important in interesting consumers and helping them to make decisions. Images of a hotel are particularly important and were used to sell hotels even before the Internet, when travel agencies would often have brochures about hotel properties that they used to entice travelers. On many online travel agency (OTA) websites, the hotel\u27s image can take up 33% of the space on the hotel property page, but the importance of this image in the decision-making process has yet to be studied. For many OTAs, there are currently no quantitative analytic methods that help determine which image to display in this critical location. In this research, we use deep learning to extract information directly from hotel images and we apply image analytics to understand the importance of this information in the online hotel booking process. To provide managerial insights, we will combine a prediction model, with the t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) to classify and understand the types of images hotels generally use as their thumbnail or champion image and what aspects of these images elicit consumers to consider and book a hotel

Micro-Level Interactions in Business-Nonprofit Partnerships

While most research on business-nonprofit partnerships has focused on macro and meso perspectives, this paper pays attention to the micro level. Drawing on various theoretical perspectives from both marketing and management, we conceptually relate the outcomes of active employee participation in such partnerships to consumer self-interest. We also explore empirically whether and when self-interest affects consumers’ responses towards firms in relation to business-nonprofit partnerships. The study reveals that self-interest can directly influence consumers’ behavioral responses towards firms (i.e. switching and buying intentions, and word of mouth), whereas the impact on evaluative responses in terms of attitude and trust is only weak. The fit between the firm and the nonprofit partner (company-cause fit) turns out to moderate this effect, with consumer self-interest only playing a role if fit is high. Implications for research and practice are discussed