The more the marketplace become competitive, the more clear and distinct market segments the marketers need to identify. A minority of consumers takes important roles in the marketplace as market influencers or diffusers of information to others, for instance, market maven or opinion leaders. Market mavens tend to have overall market-related knowledge, while opinion leader and fashion leader possess product class-specific information. Fashion leaders are more likely to adopt a product at the early stage, but opinion leaders or market mavens are not necessary. Despite significant roles as reference groups, limited research has examined the differences in the essential traits of three influential groups. The purpose of this research is to examine and compare the differences of psychological attributes in market maven, opinion leaders, and fashion leaders with respect to consumer self-confidence, clothing involvement(INV), status consumption(STATUS), and price consciousness(PRICE).
The instrument was modified based on the previous studies(Bearden, et al., 2001; Clark & Goldsmith, 2005; Feick& Price, 1987;Goldsmith, et al., 1991) and each item was measured by seven-point Liker type scales. A total of 857 data were collected through the internet survey method. About 50.3% of respondents were female, 39.2% were single, and age ranged from 20 to 59 years old. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed the differences of the measurement in three influential groups, explaining 70.76% of variances. Consumer self-confidence was generated into five factors, information acquisition & consideration-set formation (IA&CF), personal outcomes(PO), social outcomes (SO), persuasion knowledge(PKN), and marketplace interfaces(MI). Cronbach's alpha was ranged between .78 and .93.
In order to investigate the effects of psychological attributes on three influential groups, five factors of self-confidence (IA&CF, PO, SO, PKN, and MI), INV, STATUS, and PRICE were entered as the independent variables in the regression model respectively. In explaining market maven, IA&CF(β=.37) and SO(β=.35) showed the strong positive effects, and STATUS, PKN(-), MI(-), and PRICE were also significant in order (F=107, adj. R2=.498). Opinion leaders were significantly related with SO(β=.84), and PO, INV, and PRICE presented the minor effects(F=496.2, adj. R2=.822). SO(β=.38), STATUS(β=.37), INV(β=.34), and PKN were significant predictors for fashion leaders (F=289.3, adj. R2=.729). When analyzing the influence of market maven, opinion leader, and fashion leader on buying behaviors, market maven and fashion leaders were significantly, positively related with impulse buying behavior (F=69.28, adj. R2=.193), and overall satisfaction(F=38.21, adj. R2=.115). The implications were discussed.
Today, mobile advertising is an important tool as interactive communication has a great potential to promote market sales. This study is to examine the effect of price perception on behavioral intention to use mobile phone-based promotions, and compare the differences in choice heuristics between levels of the intention to use mobile promotions. Multi-item scales for price perception, choice heuristics and mobile-based promotions were either developed in our qualitative study or adopted from existing scales in literatures (Lichtenstein, et al., 1993; Bettman & Park, 1980). Based on behavioral intention to use, mobile promotions were classified into three types, such as sales promotion, reward program and brand ads. All items were measured on a seven point rating scale (1=very unlikely, 7=very likely). A pilot study was conducted in which 97 female consumers who had ever redeemed mobile promotions for purchasing fashion products. Respondents were aged from 18 to 35 years (average age=23.6 years).
Factor analysis revealed that price perception extracted three factors, such as price consciousness (items =4, Cronbach’s α=.90), coupon proneness (items =5, Cronbach’s α=.89), and sales proneness (items =4, Cronbach’s α=.89). Regression analysis was used to examine the effect of the price perceptional factors on use intentions for mobile promotions. For sales promotion, price consciousness (β=.27, p<.01) and coupon proneness had significant effects on intention to redeem for sales or coupon (F=13.59, p<.001, Adjusted R2=.29); price consciousness (β=.22, p<.05) and coupon proneness (β=.36, p<.01) significantly affected behavioral intention to participate in reward program (e.g., QR code events, point mileage, free gift, etc.) (F=10.34, p<.001, Adjusted R2=.23); and intention to use brand ads was significantly affected by sales proneness (β=.26, p<.05) and price consciousness (β=.24, p<.05; F=9.18, p<.001, Adjusted R2=.21).
For purchasing in mobile context, consumer choice heuristic was consisted of five rules: compensatory, lexicographic, price-based conjunctive, affect-referral heuristic and sequent elimination in the mobile context. It is found that consumer choice rule was differed by intention to use mobile promotions. There was a significant difference in lexicographic (MLow=3.89, MHigh=4.63, t=-3.54, p<.01), price-based conjunctive (MLow=3.64, MHigh=4.13, t=-2.12, p<.05), and affect-referral heuristic (MLow=3.31, MHigh=4.02, t=-2.95, p<.01) between high and low levels of use intention for redemption for sales or coupon; for reward program, there was significant difference in price-based conjunctive (MLow=3.45, MHigh=4.27, t=-3.72, p<.001) or sequent elimination (MLow=4.39, MHigh=5.00, t=-2.13, p<.05) between the high and low levels of use intention. Also, there was a significant difference in price-based conjunctive rule between high and low levels of use intention for brand ads (MLow=3.49, MHigh=4.30, t=-3.76, p<.001). The findings extended a consumer choice model under mobile promotional stimuli and discussed a managerial implication to build effective promotional strategy in the context of mobile commerce..
The online store attributes acts as an important trigger for e-impulse buying. Purchasing apparel products are often affected by irrational and emotional attraction making them one of the most frequent impulsively purchased items online. Triggered by ease access to products, easy purchasing, lack of social pressures and absence of delivery efforts, impulse buying occurs in approximately forty percent of all online expenditures. Impulse buying occurs when consumers experience an urge to buy a product, without thoughtful consideration why and for what reason one needs the product. However, few efforts have been made to identify the relationship among-store services attributes, emotions, browsing, urges to buy, and e-impulse buying of apparel products. The objectives of this study was to estimate a path model analysis for causative relationship among e-store service attributes, emotions, browsing, urges to buy, and e-impulse of apparel products.
The instrument was developed based on the previous literatures (Park, et al., 2012; Verhagen & Dolen, 2011; Yang & Peterson, 2004)and each item was measured by five-point Liker type scales. A total of 250 data were collected during a regularly scheduled class in universities. More than half of the respondents (65.5%) were 18 to 21 years old. Nearly 65.5 percent of the subjects were women, and more than half of the respondents (63.8%) were below the sophomore. The path model analysis was conducted by AMOS 18.0 using a correlation matrix with maximum likelihood approach. An exploratory factor analysis revealed three types of e-store service attributes: Accuracy, Reliability, and Ease of use. The path model, which was estimated to examine causal relationships among variables (i.e. three types of e-store service attributes, emotions, browsing, urges to buy, and e-impulse buying), was relatively acceptable (chi-square value = 34.40, df = 13, p = .001; GFI = .98, AGFI = .93, RMR = .03). Cronbach's alphas were ranged between .83 and .87.
This result suggests that emotions (e.g., positive and negative), browsing and urges to buy perceived by shoppers play important roles as mediators of the e-impulse buying of apparel products. Especially, the urge to buy apparel products was the most important mediator to trigger e-impulse buying. The consumers perceived the accuracy and reliability of e-store attributes were the more perceiving the urges to buy apparel products through the more positive emotions and then the more browsing at e-store. Also, the more ease to use of e-store perceived the more urges to buy apparel products. The more perceiving urges to buy at e-store were the more e-impulse buying of apparel products. This study provides retail managerial implications for stimulating e-shoppers' impulse buying of apparel products.