The effects of price and brand on consumers' perceptions of service quality, service value and behavioral intentions: Pre-purchase versus post-purchase

This dissertation synthesizes previous research from consumer research, psychology and applied economics to develop a conceptual model explaining the effects of perceived price and perceived brand on consumers' pre-purchase service expectations. This research also addresses the extent consumers' perceptions of value mediate the relationship between consumers' perceived service quality (i.e., pre-purchase expectations of service and post-purchase evaluations of actual service) and their behavioral intentions (e.g., willingness to buy and search intentions).The objective of this dissertation was to develop and test a conceptual model which: (1) helps explain the effects of perceived price and perceived brand on consumers' pre-purchase expected service quality and (2) addresses the extent consumers' perceptions of value mediate the relationship between consumers' perceived service quality (i.e., pre-purchase expectations of service or post-purchase evaluations of actual service) and their behavior intentions (e.g., willingness to buy and search intentions).To test this model and its propositions, an experiment was conducted. Respondents evaluated a hotel service given variations in advertised price, brand name and actual service performance. A confirmatory factor analytic computer program was used to assess the measurement properties of the scales. Manipulation effects were tested using analysis of variance techniques and certain relationships were tested using correlation and regression analyses.Twelve of the fourteen hypothesized effects and relationships were supported by the empirical results. The results of the brand and price manipulations in the pre-purchase stage were very robust. The results also suggest that consumers rely more on information provided in the pre-purchase stage (i.e., price and brand name) to make evaluations in the pre-purchase. Conversely, post-purchase evaluations were dominated more by experience. Support was also found for a mediating role of service value in consumers' evaluations of willingness to buy and search intentions in both pre-purchase and post-purchase stages. Finally, the results also suggest a moderating role for actual service performance in consumers' evaluation of post-purchase perceived monetary sacrifice.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio

Journal of theoretical physics and cryptography : JTPC

To provide a future vision of alternative viewpoints moving forward in creativity research, four different perspectives are offered. The first perspective, Wildfire 2008: Creativity with a Human Touch, offers surprising humanistic and individualistic practitioner insights from breakthrough campaigns. The second viewpoint, Creative and Effective Advertising: Balancing Spontaneity and Discipline, emphasizes the role of discipline in developing creative advertising that is effective while still being spontaneous. The third perspective, Defining the Necessary Components of Creative, Effective Ads, provides a functional model of how creativity works in ads. In the last viewpoint, The Concept of \u27Imaginative Intensity\u27 in Advertising, an imaginative intensity concept is offered for future research consideration as the role of the consumer, agency, and clients change

Non-pneumococcal mitis-group streptococci confound detection of pneumococcal capsular serotype-specific loci in upper respiratory tract

We performed culture-based and PCR-based tests for pneumococcal identification and serotyping from carriage specimens collected in rural and urban Kenya. Nasopharyngeal specimens from 237 healthy children 98.7%) with the reference cmPCR amplicon for the st, while cmPCR amplicons from lytA-negative specimens were generally more divergent. Separate testing of 56 A-OPs and 56 A-NPs revealed that ∼94% of the positive cmPCR results from A-NP/OPs were from OP microbiota. In contrast, A-NPs yielded >2-fold more pneumococcal isolates than A-OPs. Verified and suspected non-pneumococcal cmPCR serotypes/serogroups appeared to be relatively rare in C-NPs and A-NPs compared to A-OPs. Our findings indicate that non-pneumococcal species can confound serotype-specific PCR and other sequence-based assays due to evolutionarily conserved genes most likely involved in biosynthesis of surface polysaccharide structures