The study applies the concept of consumer innovativeness to predict Indian consumers’ purchase intention of electric car and wood fibre-based clothing. Consumers with high novelty seeking attitudes appear to be early adopters of these two eco-innovations suggesting that marketers need to highlight the novelty attributes of these sustainable products.

Despite growing research interest in consumer health, well-being and beauty, little is known about factors influencing consumer purchase decisions for female fitness devices. This study focuses on Kegel exercises – exercise routines developed by Dr. Kegel to strengthen pelvic floor muscles – that are recommended by health professionals for patients experiencing health ailments such as urinary incontinence, sexual dysfunction, and dissatisfaction. Despite the benefits, women are not well aware of the role of pelvic floor muscles. The diffusion and acceptance of Kegel exercise and devices among women are likely determined by how comfortable women are about obtaining such benefits. For this reason, feminism should play an important role in shaping women’s desire to engage in Kegel exercises. Thus, this research investigates how feminism is related to Millennial women’s engagement with fitness products, particularly Kegel devices. Drawing on the literatures about sexuality, health, and marketing, we propose that feminism positively influences women’s health-related attitudes (i.e., attitudes towards fitness, fitness opinion leadership, attitude toward core strength, and desire to control sex life), which in turn positively impacts women’s fitness engagement. Fitness engagement, in turn, is expected to predict attitudes towards Kegel exercise and Kegel device purchase intentions. On the other hand, women’s attitudes toward core strength and desire to control sex life are proposed to have a direct, positive impact on attitude towards Kegel exercise. Analysis of PLS-SEM shows general support for the hypotheses. We discuss how interest in Kegel devices could, in turn, lead to positive effects on overall physical and psychological health and provide implications for marketing practitioners.

The concept of „Sustainability‟ has become as major concern and it used by consumers and corporations to convey the concept of taking care of the environment. Environmental concern has led to sustainable consumption in a variety of product categories, such as electricity, textiles, apparel, food, and grocery products (Chan, 2001; Harrison, Newholm, & Shaw, 2005; Vermeir & Verbeke, 2006a, 2006b). Interest of the negative environmental impacts are rapidly increasing in present fashion business and consumer behavior has become a rising concern of the consumption and fashion supply chain to apply sustainable consumption (Birtwistle & Moore, 2007; Fineman, 2001). The environmental and social concern recognized in fashion industry from 1990‟s. However, the complexity of conceptual definition of sustainability and ecologically responsible consumer generates different and mistaken perception to consumer. In addition, in fashion industry, the terms of „eco-fashion‟, „environmentally friendly fashion‟,„green fashion‟, „ethical fashion‟, and „sustainable fashion‟ are frequently used interchangeably to describe the same concept. These interchangeable terminology is leading to confusion of the readers by the non-unified terminology (Choi et al., 2012). Also, consumers seem to have narrow scope and little understanding of sustainable fashion. In general, consumers focuses on environmental aspect not the wide-range of complexity of environment, social, and economical concern (Cervellon, Hjerth, Ricard, & Carey, 2010). The growing number of fashion brands are leveraging on green branding initiatives. Green marketing is increasing rapidly in corporate aspects and for a consumer perspective, global consumers are recognizing a personal accountability to take responsibility for social and environmental issues. Despite the fact many of individuals‟ willingness to purchase green products has increased in the last few years, however, there is limited studies suggest that purchase of green or sustainable products. Consumer research on sustainable fashion has mainly focused on consumer behaviors towards sustainable fashion products (SFPs); however, relevant studies that examined the whole process of the predicting proenvironmental behavior cross nationally value and the eWOM are still scarce. The purposes of research model are 1) to identify the determinants of eWOM intention on consumers' purchase intentions, 2) to examine the information adoption process as precursors of purchase intention of sustainable fashion, and 3) to testify different message types effects to information adoption process.

This research study was conducted to explore the association between consumer attitudes and adoption of mobile payment in South Africa. Students of University of Witwatersrand were interviewed to identify their attitudes regarding usefulness, ease of use and risk. The results revealed majority of consumers found mobile payment systems as convenient and saved significant amount of time. Consumer perception of usefulness was found to be significantly associated with adoption. Perceived risk was weakly associated with adoption and perceived ease of use was not associated with adoption. However, introduction of income to moderate the effects of perceived ease of use led to significant positive association with adoption. Similarly when awareness was introduced to moderate the influence of perceived risk, the interaction had a significant positive association with adoption. The outcome of study resulted in improve understanding of consumer adoption of MPS in South Africa.

With traditional boundaries among culture, technology, finance, politics, and ecology are disappearing (Friedman, 1999), the need of businesses to deliver unusual experiences to the consumers have increased in order to survive and thrive. With consumer’s need diversifying and getting more complex, capturing receiver’s attention is becoming the key issue for brands (Jung & Shin, 2010). Resultantly, the traditional operators are feeling the necessity to co-operate with those in other fields to obtain differentiation. Hence, even without one consensus meaning existing, the emphasis on the word 'convergence' is consistently growing. Its popularity of use reflects the era we live in, where boundaries are fading and unaccustomed ideas are brought together (Lord & Velez, 2013). However, despite its importance increasing, researches on convergence marketing are very limited. Most of the studies focus only on qualitative research, especially on case studies or defining conceptual definition of term convergence. Thus, not much is known of how consumers perceive this new way of approach. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to first, understand how the consumers perceive marketing of technology and marketing of culture, and second, how the convergence of these two influence on brand perception. The concept of convergence holds meaning in all sorts of fields from telecommunications, computer sciences, mathematics, logic, to economics, sociology, accounting and others (Lord & Velez, 2013). Although it seems that the word convergence is more or only related to the information technology discourse, however in large, although it is true that it was mainly based on the advance of information technology, the concept of convergence is frequently used both in the media industry and the other academic fields. From media industry, it denotes the ongoing restructuring of media companies as well as to describe the various intersections between media technologies, industries, content and audiences. Yet, in academic fields, in the same context of convergence several other terms are frequently used in the literatures, for example as alliance, partnership, sponsorship, and collaboration (Appelgren, 2004) which is all based on the same ‘coming together’ yet differs in specific goal. The convergence marketing that emerged from the intensified competition among brands co-operates with those in other fields in order to create differentiating point. The convergence in fashion industry is found with two main streams of technology convergence and cultural convergence (Wi, 2013). In line with the fact that convergence in everyday life bases from the improvement of technology, the application of technology in fashion industry is also found throughout the production process, from design to production and distribution. Unlike 2000s where fast fashion changed the fashion system, the impact of technology seems to be the largest in the turn of 2010 (Choo et al., 2012; Ko, Kim, & Lee, 2009). As the convergence of marketing and IT can create rich, technologically enabled digital experiences that engage, delight, and serve the consumer, now it plays a part as a source of innovation (Lord & Velez, 2013). Accordingly, with pioneering advantages that technology appliance can deliver, many luxury brands have adopted new technology in its marketing strategies, including QR code in the magazine ad, hologram technique replacing the plastic mannequin, motion reacting interactive show window are to name a few. Similarly, culture for marketing is found with consumers pursuing more and more cultural and intellectual activities with the improvement of the standard of living. As concept of art exemplified from the marketing standpoint evoke general connotations of sophistication, culture, luxury and prestige (Martorella, 1996), many luxury brands are applying cultural contents to improve brand images (Hagtvedt & Patrick, 2008). In sum, to satisfy consumers’ diverse need, brands are trying to incorporate not only using the novel digital devices, but also conveying the cultural contents to provide emotional stimulus. Thus, this study focuses on the marketing communication using convergence of technology and culture that aims to gain consumers’ evaluation. This study applies complex model of Technology acceptance model to Pleasure-arousal-dominance theory to better understand how consumers perceived and adopt the new type of marketing strategy. TAM is a widely employed in various studies to predict users’ behavior intentions (Hsu & Lu, 2004). Technology acceptance model suggested by Davis (1989) is agreed as the theoretical background useful to explain individual adoption behavior with the introduction of such relatively new medium like this make users to experience new ways (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988). Yet, in the model application stage, it was suggested that TAM model focuses only on the judgment of the system of technology and lacks the ability to explain other potentially important factors that can influence on users’ acceptance process. Thus, similar to the other previous researches, this study also linked the emotion response to the existing technology acceptance model (Igbaria, Zinatelli, Cragg, & Cavaye, 1997; Venkatesh, 2000). This was due to the fact that the usage of technology is extending throughout the industry, and emotional factors are found to work as an important factor in such work. Many other approaches have been made in order to explain the emotional side of the adoption, yet in this study, pleasure-arousal-dominance theory which is often used to explain in marketing communication discourse and is supported in application for experiential aspect (Holbrook & Batra, 1987). Pleasure-arousal-dominance theory (PAD; Mehrabian & Russell (1974)) suggested by Mehrabian & Russell (1974) explains the three basic emotion status to mediate approach-avoidance behaviors in any environment based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response(S-O-R) paradigm. It explains that individual’s emotional status is aroused by the mediating environment (Donovan, Rossiter, Marcoolyn, & Nesdale, 1994). Yet, interpreting the recent studies arguing that in consumption related emotions situation, dominance is not necessary (Donovan et al., 1994), this study was adopted as a two-dimensional construct that can impact the user’s behavior intention. In sum, this study applies perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, pleasure, and arousal as the determinants of adoption. In addition, not simply examining the adoption process of the convergence marketing, but this study relates to the actual effect on consumers’ brand evaluation. The appliance of TAM as the part of individual dimension variable was found in recent studies that investigated the effect of adverting with interactive medium (Han & Park, 2010; Shim, 2009). Previous literatures have suggested the perceived usefulness significantly influences on the attitude toward the retailer that provides such experience (Lee et al, 2006). Especially, such studies were made within the e-commerce conditions, such as investigation of consumer behavior towards a non-profit organization’s virtual store (Chen et al, 2002), influence of perceived usefulness positively influencing on attitude towards the online retailer and intentions to use from such retailer (Vijayasarathy, 2004), and determinants of adoption (usefulness, ease of use, and enjoyment) on the attitude toward the online retailer (Lee et al, 2006). On this account, brand attitude, and purchase intention was examined. In this study, survey method in order to investigate how consumers perceive the convergence marketing in the marketing communication context, and further, how they evaluated the brand performing convergence marketing. Preliminary study was first proceed to understand how marketing of technology and marketing of culture is recognized by consumers, and further, manipulate each stimuli. The adoption process was investigated using technology acceptance model combined with pleasure-arousal-dominance theory, as a part of the individual variables. With mediating effect of consumer characteristics found to be important in convergence marketing (Kim, 2007), personal innovativeness, art involvement, and need for uniqueness was applied to see the mediating effect. Therefore, a survey was conducted to see the differences in the degree of convergence. The preliminary research with 183 samples indicated that convergence marketing method was preferred over the dedicated marketing of technology or culture. Thus, the experimental design that was designed in a form of 2 by 2 between subjects factorial design with factors of innovation of technology and classiness of culture, the 513 samples collected a total of 485 samples being used. The analysis indicated that as the convergence traits of novelty and classic increase, determinant of intentions were strongly generated, followed by the increasing intention to accept, continued to building positive brand attitude and purchase intention. Yet, in specific, novelty trait had direct influences on making emotional feeling, including pleasure and arousal, rather than on generating cognitive reaction. It was the classic trait that had relationship in between cognitive and emotional reaction. Additionally, it was also found that in case of emotional feeling were evoked, pleasure and arousal, it influenced on building positive brand attitude continued to purchase intention even if adoption intention was not made. Moreover, when adoption intention was made, the direct influence on positive brand attitude was found to be significant. Meanwhile, determinants of adoption were found to have the significant influence on adoption intention and on brand attitude. The positive influence of determinants of adoption on adoption intention is in line with a number of researches on ETAM. When perceived to be higher, all resulted in higher adoption intention (Tzou et al., 2009). In terms of brand attitude, it was found that only the emotional variables of pleasure and arousal that had direct influence to have marketing effectance, which coincides with the result of Childers et al. (2001). This study indicates that compared to the perceived usefulness and ease of use, enjoyment was a stronger driver to predict the attitude. In sum, the result implies that convergence marketing can work to satisfy both the cognition dimension as well as the emotional facet. When drivers of determinants of adoption is generated, it strongly influence on the adoption intention. Yet, in order to have the marketing communication effect on brand attitude and purchase intention, it is necessary to consider the emotional aspect, either pleasure or arousal. Such relationship is not only related to the cultural contents, but technology itself can now deliver emotional feelings to the consumers. Thus, the marketing director should focus on the usage of technology to involve emotional facets. In addition, all individual characteristics were found to be significantly moderating. Result of the effect of personal innovativeness implies that those of highly innovated tends to not only have strongly influence on adoption intention, but also had significant effect of advertising effect compared to the less innovated groups. The moderating effects of art involvement turned out that those highly involved in art, novelty did not matter much compared to the less involved group. In case of need for uniqueness, the significant relationship of perceived pleasure on brand attitude was found, yet unlike expected, those low in need for uniqueness had significantly stronger adoption intention. Thus, this can be perceived as due to the marketing activity targeting the mass audience, lacking the attractiveness towards those in higher need for uniqueness. Thus, in order to attract both those in high and low need of uniqueness, delivering both usefulness as well as pleasure is important. The result of this study contributes to understanding on status and recent trend of convergence marketing activities. Further, it is meaningful in that it is in line with the recent studies of applying TAM in combination with PAD theory as well as within the context of marketing communication. Thus, the result of this study is expected to be helpful in understanding the new hybrid consumers and give suggests useful information for establishing future brand communication plans. Yet, to further understand the interpretation process of consumer studies that incorporate variables suggested from the interview should be incorporated in the study.

The explosion of new technologies is transforming the retail industry. In particular, a range of smart technologies (e.g., tablets, smartphones, WiFi, augmented reality, apps, video, virtual catalogs, smart tags) are providing fashion retailers with innovative ways to capitalize on strategic opportunities (Anderson & Exkstein, 2013). Due to the growth of smart in-store technology (SIST) applications in the retailing environment, it is critical for academic researchers to understand consumer responses to these technologies. The technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis et al., 1989; Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1992) is one framework for investigating consumer adoption of SIST. However, research has been equivocal concerning the belief-attitude-intention linkage, especially the mediating role of attitude in TAM. As an attempt to address this issue, this study examines how well TAM explains consumer adoption of SIST. Online survey data were collected from three different SIST settings (i.e., Virtual Mirror vs. Socially Interactive Dressing Room vs. RFID Music Tag). A total of 657 individuals completed the questionnaires resulting in a 27.56% response rate. Excluding participants with incomplete data, responses from 625 individuals (203 for Virtual Mirror; 209 for Socially Interactive Dressing Room; 213 for RFID Music Tag) were included for data analysis. A series of hierarchical multiple regressions was used to analyze the data. Our major findings include: (a) perceived ease of use was found to be a suppressor variable and thus dropped from the model; (b) perceived usefulness was significant in Virtual Mirror (β = .33, p < .01), Socially Interactive Dressing Room (β = .26, p < .01) and RFID Music Tag (β = .18, p < .01); (c) perceived enjoyment was found to be the best predictor of adoption intention of: Virtual Mirror (β = .46, p < .001); Socially Interactive Dressing Room (β = .61, p < .001); and RFID Music Tag (β = .67, p < .001); (d) attitude has a small effect above and beyond the effects of perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment; and (e) attitude partially mediated the belief-intention linkage in Virtual Mirror. In Socially Interactive Dressing Room and RFID Music Tag, attitude fully mediated the usefulness-intention linkage while it partially mediated the enjoyment-intention relationship. Our findings have implications for improving consumer adoption of SIST. Our data indicate that, although perceived usefulness is clearly important, perceived enjoyment is even more important and should not be overlooked in SIST execution and management. Our results imply that consumers may be willing to tolerate a SIST that does not do a useful task in order to enjoy the SIST experience itself. This finding also suggests that no amount of usefulness will be able to compensate for a SIST that does not provide enjoyment.

Self Service Technology (SST) refers to technological interfaces that enable customers to produce a service independently, without service employees’ direct involvement. Because of the recent technological evolution and rising labor cost, most companies in the retail and service industries tend to use more technology-based SST options. In this study, we tried to investigate the effects of technology readiness and consumer readiness on SST service quality, attitude toward using SST, and intention to use SST in franchise fast food restaurants. The study results showed a significant and positive influence on all six dimensions of SST service quality. This research found that consumer readiness has a stronger and statistically more significant influence on all of SST service quality’s six constructs than does TR. Within a setting in which a customer is using SST, consumer readiness is a concept that is composed of the following: customer’s own role clarity, ability to utilize SST, and self-efficacy about using SST. Shim & Han (2012) confirmed that Consumer Readiness is a strong variable that effects motivation to use SST. This research presents academic significance in that it verified that consumer readiness is a major leading variable that influences perceived SST service quality. This research confirmed the moderating effects of consumer traits (self-consciousness, need for interaction, technology anxiety) and situational factors (perceived crowding, perceived waiting time) within the relationship between SST service quality and attitudes and intentions toward using SST. Study results showed that all variables have moderating effects. Ease of SST use was shown to have a strong influence on developing attitudes and intentions toward using SST in people with high levels of technology anxiety. For people with low levels of technology anxiety, ease or difficulty of SST use did not affect their attitude toward using SST. The expectation of increased enjoyment through SST use had an impact on developing attitudes and intentions toward using SST. This implies that expectation of increased enjoyment does not affect the development of intention toward using SST for people with high technology anxiety, as their technology anxiety is greater than such expectation. In contrast, this expectation of increased enjoyment greatly affects the development of attitude toward using SST for people with low technology anxiety. As a result, when introducing SST, firms need to design the system to appeal to people with high technology anxiety. Results also revealed that innovativeness does not have statistically significant influences on enjoyment or convenience. Because our results confirmed that technology readiness is an important leading variable of SST service quality, our research supported the works of Lin & Hsieh (2006) and Zeithaml et al. (2002). Managerial implications and limitations of the study were also discussed.

The objective of this study is to test how five theory-driven adoption barriers and three key consumer demographics influence consumer adoption versus rejection decisions in two seemingly similar service innovations. The earlier literature on innovation diffusion recognizes two streams of research: one focusing on innovation adoption and acceptance of innovations, and the other stream, though less traveled, calling attention to innovation resistance. All innovations face a certain degree of resistance among consumers depending on consumer characteristics and the innovation itself. The literature argues that consumers can simultaneously express views that are both favorable and unfavorable towards the innovations (Ferreira, da Rocha, & da Silva, 2014) and thus both resistance and adoption can coexist during the lifetime of an innovation (Ram, 1987). Thus it is reasonable to explore how innovation resistance influences consumer decisions in different service innovations. Initially scholars explained resistance to innovations through two constructs, habit or satisfaction with an existing behavior and perceived risks associated with innovation adoption (Sheth, 1981). Ram and Sheth (1989) provide a more comprehensive view to the phenomenon by explaining consumer resistance through functional and psychological barriers that they further divide into five distinct barriers, namely usage, value, risk, tradition and image. This study tests how these five adoption barriers as well as three consumer demographics, gender, age, and income, influence consumer adoption versus rejection decisions in Internet and mobile banking. An effective total sample size of 1,736 consumer responses were collected from Finland. Logistic regression analysis finds that the value barrier is the strongest inhibitor of Internet and mobile banking adoption. In addition, while the image barrier slows down mobile banking adoption, the tradition barrier explains the rejection of Internet banking. In addition, age greatly explains this behavior and the results show that younger segments have a significantly greater likelihood of Internet banking adoption than their older counterparts. Contrary to Internet banking, it appears that gender significantly contributes to mobile banking adoption and the intention to use it. The results predict that males have nearly two times greater likelihood towards adoption compared to females.

Consumer awareness of current food labeling system and new nutrition labeling system which the government considers to adopt widely was assessed, from May to June in 1994, for 423 adults living in Seoul. Being highly conscious of food safety, they thought the current food label did not provide sufficient information. Dissatisfaction with the current system was shown higher in the female, young, or unmarried strata. The need for nutrition labeling system was widely recognized by 82% of total respondents regardless of sex, level of education, monthly income, and marital status. Although some expressed worries about proper management of the system, most of the respondents answered that the system would benefit them after all. In this connection, 59% of the respondents showed willingness to accept a price increase to be entailed by nutrition labeling. Nutrition informations that, they thought, should be covered were: calorie>minerals>cholesterol>protein>vitamins>fat>sodium. Additional labeling informations they called for were nutrient contents>RDA percentage>specific statement on reinforced or eliminated nutrients.