Consumer complainants amongst internet users: an exploratory study with an agenda for further research

The Internet has had a greater impact on consumer behaviour than any other innovation in recent years. Previous research has identified certain demographic traits of consumer who complain yet these demographic triggers are markedly different to the demographic profile of Internet users. This leads to the generation of several research questions that need to be considered to enable the development of effective strategies that need to be implemented to deal with the issues raised by this most important group of stakeholders - the users.

Consumer choice, information product quality, and market implications

The paper concerns with the peculiarities of consumer choice in information product markets. This is a multidisciplinary study based on both information system research and microeconomic theory. An extension is introduced to the conventional general theory of consumer choice for explicitly taking into account the impact of information product quality on consumer behaviour. Multiple quality characteristics, considered against the price of product, are an essential reason for consumer choice of high tech product in general and information product in particular. We assume that consumers are able to aggregate their preferences of multiple product characteristics into a product preference order. On the supply side, the product quality characteristics incur costs. In the case of information product, those costs are the costs of the first copy, and marginal costs are near zero. All of the above constitute the distinctive characteristics of the competitive mechanism in the digital economy and in information product markets. A model, based on the game theory is used to consider two special cases. The first one deals with monopolistic competition for a share of the market with a limited number of customers. Conditions are derived for IT firm survival. The second one considers conditions at which a monopoly is able to successfully introduce a new version if its information product.

Consumer construction of sport consumption experiences through role play : a literature review

Evidence exists in the literature that many traditional consumer behaviours have fundamentally different meanings when considered in an experiential context. This paper posits that voicing during the experiential consumption of sport may in fact be a factor of experiential consumption rather than an expression of dissatisfaction as in the traditional complaint behaviour model. This is significant in the interpretation of experiential sport consumption where vocalising appears to serve purposes other than complaining. This paper revises the traditional complaint behaviour literature for explanations about vocalising and then offers some alternate conceptual propositions using experiential consumption literature.

Green decisions : demographics and consumer understanding of environmental labels

This research examined the demographic profiles of Australian green consumers in relation to their satisfaction of environmental labelling. It examined consumers’ understanding of labelling and empirically investigated the association of demographic profile of consumers with their attitudes towards such labels. The results indicated that some of the demographic variables were significant, which is largely consistent with earlier findings by other researchers in this area. Label dissatisfaction was higher in the older and middle age respondents. However, some respondents disagreed that labels were accurate while commenting that labels were easy to understand. The key issue arising from the findings is that in order to provide perception of accuracy in labels, it is an option to use Type I or Type III labelling on products. These labels are, arguably, more credible because they are endorsed by third party labelling experts. This would come at a cost and for green products that use third party labelling, they will also have to bear in mind to keep the prices competitive.

A defection analysis of lapsed season ticket holders : a consumer and organizational study

This paper reports on a four-stage study that investigated the motivations and future intentions of recently lapsed members (season-ticket holders) of professional sports organizations, and the marketing responses of those organizations to the issue of customer retention. Survey responses from over 1,000 recently lapsed members across five large sporting clubs were collected. A further study on one club was then conducted to compare attitudes and demographics of lapsed members to those who renewed. The responses suggests that although these lapsed members report that they joined to financially support and feel more involved with the club, they let their membership lapse primarily due to an inability to attend games. Despite joining for intangible, altruistic reasons, it seems that if these members could not get to games, they believed that the membership was not worth maintaining. These members were satisfied with the membership; however, measures of overall level of satisfaction had only a weak positive relationship with the likelihood of members rejoining in the future. These sport organizations were greatly concerned by lapsed members but have only ad hoc relationship marketing strategies in place to either prevent members lapsing or renew lapsed members.

A cross-cultural study of consumer purchase intention and planned behaviour

This study investigates for two cultures differences in consumers’ purchase intention formation and their association with planned behaviour using the model of reasoned action. It also seeks evidence of exposure to a new dominant culture influencing change in behavioural intentions. Australian and Malaysian students are used as participants in the study. The results indicate that there is an association between intention and planned behaviour for Australian students, while no association exists for the Malaysian students. Additionally, the Malaysian students living in Australia for more than two years do not show a tendency to adopt the Australian students’ intention formation in an ‘individualistic’ culture.

Trends in consumer segmentation

This paper reviews academic and practitioner literature to identify some of the emerging trends in consumer segmentation. Our review suggests that a number of specialised segmentations have recently emerged, each utilising different techniques, methodologies and data inputs relevant to their respective strategic intent.

Sport consumer typologies : a critical review

The desire to understand the behavior of sport consumers has been a long-standing goal for sport marketers. This paper critically examines models of sport consumption by undertaking a comparative analysis of the major works completed to the present time. It is suggested that while past works have identified important motivational and behavioral differences, they frequently provide only partial explanations of sport consumer behavior. They are often constrained by an overemphasis on social-psychological traits, and give only limited attention to the cultural and economic context in which behaviors take place. Moreover, they rarely explain how fans might move between different segments, or how relationships with sport teams are formed in the first place. Sport consumer research will be enhanced by a more holistic analysis of values and beliefs that illuminates some of the more shadowy aspects of sport consumer formation, commitment, identity, and game attendance patterns.

Consumer participation in acute care settings : an Australian experience

Consumer partnerships have been embraced as an important component of building high quality health care services. While nurses have the greatest contact with clients in hospital, little is known of their views about consumer participation or how they facilitate that participation at the bedside. Using focus group interviews and participant observation methods, this project explored nurses' approaches to working with consumers to support their participation in health care delivery. Findings indicate a sharp contrast between the ideas that nurses expressed and the actions observed in practice. It was clear from the interviews that nurses had adopted the rhetoric surrounding consumer participation, yet observational data revealed nursing practices that excluded active participation by consumers. Factors influencing nurses' facilitation of consumer participation were identified as the division of nursing labour in the setting, limited communication between nurses and patients and environmental constraints.

Cross-cultural differences in consumer decision-making styles

This article compares consumer decision-making styles between Singaporeans and Australians. Utilising Hofstede’s framework, the paper argues that cultural dimensions influence consumer decision making styles. It is essential that managers understand cross-cultural consumer decision-making styles to make strategic decisions or effectively handle members of these nationalities. Marked differences were found between the two populations for: brand consciousness, innovativeness and overchoice confusion. The results suggest that some consumer decision-making styles differ due to consumers’ cultural values. Managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.

Decomposing Consumer Wealth Effects: Evidence on the Role of Real Estate Assets Following the Wealth Cycle of 1990-2002

During the period of 1990-2002 US households experienced a dramatic wealth cycle, induced by a 369% appreciation in the value of real per capita liquid stock market assets followed by a 55% decline. However, consumer spending in real terms continued to rise throughout this period. Using data from 1990-2005, traditional life-cycle approaches to estimating macroeconomic wealth effects confront two puzzles: (i) econometric evidence of a stable cointegrating relationship among consumption, income, and wealth is weak at best; and (ii) life-cycle models that rely on aggregate measures of wealth cannot explain why consumption did not collapse when the value of stock market assets declined so dramatically. We address both puzzles by decomposing wealth according to the liquidity of household assets. We find that the significant appreciation in the value of real estate assets that occurred after the peak of the wealth cycle helped sustain consumer spending from 2001 to 2005.

Non-Participatory Poverty

In a capitalistic market society, all individuals should have an equal opportunity to participate, with varying extents, in consumerism. Democracy entitles one to political participation but people have come to value consumer participation as having more importance as shopping and the exchange of goods and services have become an important part of everyday living. Yet not everyone can participate in consumerism and they end up suffering, especially the children living in poverty. These children internalize the message that since they cannot participate in a society based on material consumption, they cannot belong. Poverty not only causes individuals to experience their lives differently, but also affects the development of one’s physical, cognitive, social, and emotional identity. Many of the consequences of poverty have been scrutinized and studied to try to explain the experiences of such children. What has not been closely examined however is the relationship between the inability to participate in a consumer society and the bodily being, thoughts, actions, and feelings of impoverished children. I will discuss how these effects of poverty result in the inability of children to participate in society.

Intelligent consumer purchase intention prediction system for green products

In this paper the authors model green behaviour by predicting consumers’ purchase intention using Kohonen’s LVQ technique. It is envisaged that such a model may facilitate better understanding of green consumers’ market segments. The model employs cognitive, affective, and situational attributes of consumers to predict their purchase intention. The model can, potentially, provide a more direct method for companies to gauge consumers’ intention to purchase green products. The results indicate that consumers are more strongly resistant to lower quality than higher prices of green products in comparison to other alternative non-green products.