Online consumer reviews have become a substantial part of consumers’ decision-making process as they provide consumers abundant information on products and services. Some individuals will pay attention to certain components (e.g. price), whereas some will focus on other components such as images.

The present study explores two relationships: first, between number of payment and payment option preference, and second, total sum and payment option preference, with pain of payment as a mediator variable. The analyses revealed that consumers who feel higher pain of payment preferred the pennies-a-day pricing to the aggregate pricing when the per-payment price is low. Consumers who experience higher pain of payment prefer to pay in small frequent installments because they feel the small per-payment price can be comparable to daily expense. Consumers who experienced higher pain of payment preferred aggregate pricing to pennies-a-day pricing when the per-payment price was high. When the per-payment price is high, it is no longer comparable to daily expense, thus leading to greater pain of payment among consumers. The study discusses the implications for mechanism of pain of payment on payment option preference.

As Korea has approached the aging society, older Koreans have become an important force in restaurant sales today. To succeed with this silver market, it is important for restaurant managers to know who they are and what factors influence older Koreans' eating-out decision making process. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the silver consumers' education level on eating-out decision making process. Data were collected from 178 older consumers above 55 years old and analyzed using the descriptive statistic analysis, MANOVA, and one-way ANOVA. The results showed that the elderly consumers' education level significantly influenced the decision making process in determining where to eat out. Significant differences were found in the Problem Recognition Step(Wilks' Lambda=0.817, F=2.991), Information Search Step(Wilks' Lambda=0828, F=2.218), Alternative Evaluation Step II(Wilks' Lambda=0.741, F=3.596), Purchase Decision Step(Wilks' Lambda=0.859, F=2.223), and the Post-Purchase Behavior(Wilks' Lambda=0.885, F=1.780). The higher education level was, the more directly involved in the eating out decision process. The elderly consumers with university education were likely to 'propose to eat out by themselves'(F=9.346), to obtain restaurant information from the 'printed materials'(F=7.452), to go to 'family restaurant'(F=9.057), 'Japanese restaurant'(F=8.7891) and 'fine dining restaurants'(F=3.936), and to directly express their emotion when they had complaints about restaurant service(F=3.206). In conclusion, older Koreans will become more healthy and wealthy which means the dining out activity will be an important part of their life to socialize with people. Therefore, food service operations should consider the elderly consumers' needs and expectation of restaurant services and actively position themselves for this new market segment.

Purpose: Prior studies rarely investigated the effects of the Word of Mouse (WoM) information on consumers’ motivation and willingness to purchase a product. Furthermore, few scholars have studied how word-of-mouth information works and they fail to find consistent results. Research design, data and methodology: This study uses a multivariate regression model to investigate the influence of WoM on consumer attitudes and consumer decision-making. It categorizes the quality of WoM into source level and acceptance level, to analyze its influence from a new perspective. A total of 400 surveys were completed, resulting in 336 usable questionnaires for analysis. It was collected in 14 cities from all regions in China. This study constructs a theoretical model of WoM influence on consumers' purchase willingness based on a systematic review of the related literature on WoM quality, perceived value, customer trust, and consumers' purchase willingness. Results: Empirical results reveal that the Internet WoM (consumer's source level and acceptance level) indirectly affects consumer behavior by influencing consumer attitudes. Conclusions: This study provides practical significance and value for merchants to develop better WoM marketing and to establish the reliability of WoM websites. Companies should consider online WoM from the perspective of consumers, thereby improving existing marketing strategies.