Shopping motives as antecedents of e-satisfaction and e-loyalty

Customer loyalty is fundamental to the profitability and survival of e-tailers. Yet research on antecedents of e-loyalty is relatively limited. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the effect of motives for online shopping on e-satisfaction and e-loyalty. A structural equations model is developed and tested through data from an online survey involving 797 customers of two UK-based e-tailers focussing on hedonic products. The results suggest that convenience, variety seeking, and social interaction help predict e-satisfaction, and that social interaction is the only shopping motive examined with a direct relationship to e-loyalty. Data also show that e-satisfaction is a strong determinant of e-loyalty. These findings are discussed in the light of previous research and avenues of future research are proposed.

A framework of brand value in B2B markets: the contributing role of functional and emotional components

The creation of value is admittedly a critical task for marketers regardless of industry. This paper focuses on a type of value that has traditionally been perceived as irrelevant to industrial markets and argues that brand value facilitates the progression from goods and services value to relationship value. To address the limited amount of research on B2B branding from the suppliers' point of view, we complement insights gained from a literature review with ten exploratory interviews with B2B supplier managers, and develop a framework of brand value applicable to industrial markets. This identifies both the functional (i.e., quality, technology, capacity, infrastructure, after sales service, capabilities, reliability, innovation) and emotional qualities (i.e., risk reduction, reassurance, trust) important for the development of industrial brand equity. Situational (e.g. nature of the purchase) and environmental factors (e.g. the economic situation) affecting suppliers' perceptions of the importance of brand in a B2B context and the role of functional versus emotional brand qualities are discussed. The value of the brand as a driver for the development of business to business relationships is also highlighted. The framework provides a basis for B2B practitioners to build their brands in such a way as to make a functional as well as an emotional connection with buyers that is more likely to lead to a supplier–buyer relationship.

Emotional well-being and adjustment to vision loss in later life: a meta-synthesis of qualitative studies.

Purpose: To review perceived emotional well-being in older people with visual impairment and perceived factors that inhibit/facilitate psychosocial adjustment to vision loss. Method: The databases of MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO and CINAHL were searched for studies published from January 1980 to December 2010, which recruited older people with irreversible vision loss, and used qualitative methods for both data collection and analysis. Results sections of the papers were synthesised using a thematic-style analysis to identify the emergent and dominant themes. Results: Seventeen qualitative papers were included in the review, and five main themes emerged from the synthesis: 1) the trauma of an ophthalmic diagnosis, 2) impact of vision loss on daily life, 3) negative impact of visual impairment on psychosocial well-being, 4) factors that inhibit social well-being, and 5) factors that facilitate psychological well-being. We found the response shift model useful for explaining our synthesis. Conclusions: Acquired visual impairment can have a significant impact on older people's well-being and make psychosocial adjustment to the condition a major challenge. Acceptance of the condition and a positive attitude facilitate successful psychosocial adjustment to vision loss as well as social support from family, friends and peers who have successfully adjusted to the condition. [Box: see text].

Psychophysics of emotion: the QUEST for emotional attention

To investigate the mechanisms involved in automatic processing of facial expressions, we used the QUEST procedure to measure the display durations needed to make a gender decision on emotional faces portraying fearful, happy, or neutral facial expressions. In line with predictions of appraisal theories of emotion, our results showed greater processing priority of emotional stimuli regardless of their valence. Whereas all experimental conditions led to an averaged threshold of about 50 ms, fearful and happy facial expressions led to significantly less variability in the responses than neutral faces. Results suggest that attention may have been automatically drawn by the emotion portrayed by face targets, yielding more informative perceptions and less variable responses. The temporal resolution of the perceptual system (expressed by the thresholds) and the processing priority of the stimuli (expressed by the variability in the responses) may influence subjective and objective measures of awareness, respectively.

Temporal dynamics of emotional responding: amygdala recovery predicts emotional traits

An individual’s affective style is influenced by many things, including the manner in which an individual responds to an emotional challenge. Emotional response is composed of a number of factors, two of which are the initial reactivity to an emotional stimulus and the subsequent recovery once the stimulus terminates or ceases to be relevant. However, most neuroimaging studies examining emotional processing in humans focus on the magnitude of initial reactivity to a stimulus rather than the prolonged response. In this study, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the time course of amygdala activity in healthy adults in response to presentation of negative images. We split the amygdala time course into an initial reactivity period and a recovery period beginning after the offset of the stimulus. We find that initial reactivity in the amygdala does not predict trait measures of affective style. Conversely, amygdala recovery shows predictive power such that slower amygdala recovery from negative images predicts greater trait neuroticism, in addition to lower levels of likability of a set of social stimuli (neutral faces). These data underscore the importance of taking into account temporal dynamics when studying affective processing using neuroimaging.