The purposes of this study were to investigate the influences of need for cognition (NFC) and fashion leadership on regret after purchasing fashion goods in female consumers and examine the relationships between regret and its dependent variables (i.e., dissatisfaction, regret resolution, and rebuying intentions). Data collection was conducted through a survey for females in their 20s~40s, and 642 questionnaires were used for final data analyses in which frequency analysis, factor analysis, reliability analysis, and regression were applied using SPSS 14.0. The results were as follows. The higher NFC was or the lower fashion leadership was, the higher the degree of regret, as NFC and fashion leadership both had a significant influence on regret. In terms of the dependent variables, the higher the degree of regret, the higher the degree of dissatisfaction and ultimately the lower the rebuying intentions. In addition, the influence of regret on regret resolution and the influence of regret resolution on rebuying intentions were significant. This study verified that consumers’ characteristics and feelings of regret had a significant influence on their buying behavior of fashion goods. The results suggest that consumers’ feelings of regret (which influence consumer satisfaction and rebuying intentions) should be considered in terms of competitive marketing strategies at fashion companies.

Subjective knowledge (SK thereafter) is defined as what consumers think they know, or their perceived level of knowledge (Brucks, 1985). SK influences what consumers search for, the effort that they put into searching, and the purchasing decision and choice of brands they finally make (Hadar, Sood, & Fox, 2013; Moorman, Diehl, Brinberg, & Kidwell, 2004). The existing literature on consumer knowledge development mainly argues that SK development is associated with consumers’ product related experience, such as product ownership and experience from usage (Alba & Hutchinson, 2000; Park, Mothersbaugh, & Feick, 1994). This study contributes to the literature as follows. We consider a broad market segmentation where the market consists of product owners and non-owners, The literature suggests that these two groups of consumers should have different levels of perceived knowledge due to their different product-specific experience (Park et al., 1994). Our research specifically contends that it is important to distinguish, within the group of non-owners, between those who intend to buy and those who do not intend to buy the product. Thus, this study examines how previous ownership and intention to buy, which is the goal motivation, influence the SK levels of consumers, which in turn impacts on consumers’ heterogeneous preferences for different attributes within a product category. It is contended that the motivation to learn about a product category of non-car owners who have strong intentions to buy influences what this group learns compared to those non-owners who do not intend to buy. More specifically, the research proposes to uncover how learning influences how different groups of consumers perceive their subjective knowledge and how this relationship in turn shapes their preferences, especially when we compare owners and non-owners who have strong intentions of buying a product. Therefore, we develop following research hypotheses: H1: The SK level is positively associated with the product ownership experience. H2: The SK level is positively associated with purchase intention. H3: The relationship between purchase intention and SK level is moderated by the ownership of the product. H4: Preference heterogeneity for different types of brand attributes of the product between owners and non-owners is moderated by the SK level. The empirical context that illustrates the importance of this research is the Chinese car market where the majority of consumers are first time buyers. Our research shows that the SK level is positively associated with both car ownership and purchase intention. Furthermore, the segmentation analysis finds that purchase intention has a significant effect only on non-car owners’ SK level, while the effect on car owners’ SK level is insignificant. An interesting finding is that SK development, in turn, influences consumer’s preferences for different types of brand attributes of a product. We demonstrate the role of SK in forming consumer preference heterogeneity by comparing preferences for a tangible and a non-tangible brand attribute respectively across different consumer segments. We further show how this preference heterogeneity across two consumer segments (car owners versus non-car owners) depends on their SK level. The results of this study can be generalized beyond the specific context of the empirical study of the Chinese car market when marketers are considering new products launch or launching products where the majority of consumers may be unfamiliar with the product.

In this study, consumers who have experience of visiting Jeongsun Arirang Market has been selected as samples to understand the characteristics of agricultural products purchase. For this, double hurdle model was used in order to resolve sample selection problem and obtain consistent estimator. The key points are the following. First, as the age increases(up to 59.8 years), chances of purchasing the products at traditional market increase as income increases. Second, when the residence area is outside of Gangwon-province, the purchase amount of the products increased compared to those from visitors within the Gangwon province. Also, visitors who use public transportations purchase less products compared to those who use their own car. Third, probability of agricultural products increase as the visitors consider positive effect the product purchase leads to the local farmers. Fourth, if the visitors consider the quality of the agricultural products, probability of purchasing agricultural product at the site increases. However, if the visitors consider the freshness of the agricultural products, the purchase amount rather drops. Fifth, the probability of purchase increases as visitors consider the brand of traditional market.