This study examined whether and how consumers who seek a bargain in their shopping for luxury fashion brands differ from traditional luxury consumers or non-luxury consumers on their market-related attitudes. To do so, this study compared multi-dimensional perceived values, fairness price perceptions, satisfaction with purchase, brand loyalty, and future purchase intention among luxury consumers, luxury-bargain seekers, and non-luxury consumers. Data was obtained from online surveys and the market-related attitudes were compared using an ANOVA test. The comparion of three types of consumers revealed that luxury-bargain seekers and regular luxury consumers are distinct consumer markets. Overall, luxury consumers displayed high perceived values and brand loyalty and were fairly satisfied with the purchase at full-prices. On the other hand, luxury-bargain seekers showed significantly low perceived social value, perceived fairness toward the original price of the brands, and brand loyalty. They were satisfied with the bargain purchase but not likely to purchase the luxury at full-prices in the future. Understanding these distinct types of consumers and targeting them with different product and pricing strategies are important for luxury brands and retailers to expand luxury consumer base without diluting their brands’ prestige image. Potential marketing strategies based on the findings of this study were suggested.

This paper examines the impact of thanks from the sellers on consumer satisfaction in the tourism industry. Study 1 shows that thanks from the sellers (vs. no thank from the sellers) will decrease consumer satisfaction. In this process, perceived fairness and perceived value play a serial mediation role. Study 2 shows that the pricing type (the fixed price vs. the flexible price) plays a moderate role on the impact of thanks from the sellers at the end of a transaction on consumer satisfaction. This paper introduces transaction utility theory and culture difference to explain the seemingly inconsistent phenomenon. Introduction The present studies focus on retailers expressing gratitude and, especially, how the communication of retailer expressing gratitude or not affects consumer satisfaction under the tourism purchase environment. Image that you encounter a seller is selling the souvenirs in the tourist spot you just visit, you would like to buy one of the souvenirs, such as a special cup with the souvenirs logo, you conclude a deal with the seller eventually, after that, the seller thanks for your purchasing and you leave. One question arises, will consumers feel less satisfaction when sellers say nothing than when they say “Thank you” at the end of a transaction? Theoretical Background Thanking is one of the speech acts or communicative acts frequently and abundantly utilized in human interactions, even though, most of these studies have focused on a western perspective, little is known about the experience of tourists from Asia. In western countries, people are accustomed to saying "thank you" after the benefit of others. Some behavioral responses may resemble the expression of gratitude (e.g., saying thank you to a waiter in a restaurant), but may instead be an automatic polite response not grounded in emotion (Buck 2004; Emmons and McCullough 2003; Fazalehasan et al 2017). However, in Somali and China culture, people are not used to expressing thanks, which makes many Americans or Australian feel rude or impolite (Chiu and Hong 2013; Robertson 2014). Here we test the prediction that gratitude from retailers may affect consumer satisfaction in a potentially counterintuitive manner. In other words, we hypothesize that gratitude from the retailer may lead to lower consumer satisfaction. This prediction draws from both the existing literature on gratitude as well as from research on culture difference and transaction utility theory from the response to gratitude. Research Design Two experiments have been conducted to test the hypotheses. Study 1 will provide support for the three central hypotheses regarding perceived fairness inference (hypothesis 1), perceived value inferences (hypothesis 2), and consumer satisfaction (hypothesis 3). Study 2 will test an important boundary condition. This study shows that the proposed negative effect of saying thank you (vs. saying nothing) holds only if the price of product is fixed. Result and Conclusion In the study 1, we found that sellers saying thank you after the transaction leads to less consumer satisfaction. Therefore, an important contribution of our work emerges from our melding of the literature on perceived fairness and value and demonstrating that gratitude from the sellers dictates which literature is more applicable in relationship marketing. Furthermore, we also examined the mechanism in study 2 and explore a boundary condition. We discovered that when the price of a souvenir is fixed, consumers feel more satisfaction when sellers say nothing than when they say “Thank you” at the end of a transaction. Conversely, when the price of a souvenir is not fixed, which is to say when consumers can bargain in the store, consumers feel less satisfaction when sellers say nothing than when they say “Thank you” after the transaction