FLOW EXPERIENCE AND CONSUMERS’ WILLINGNESS TO PAY IN ONLINE MASS CUSTOMIZATION PROCESSES

This research aims to identify the effects of perceived product value and flow experience during product design on willingness to pay (WTP) and purchase probability in online mass customization. The participants were asked to design shoes to their taste in a custom shoe website. After the design experience, the participants were asked to complete the questionnaire. The analyses suggest that flow experience has a direct effect on consumers’ WTP and an indirect effect on purchase probability through the mediating role of perceived value of mass customized products. Furthermore, perceived value of a mass customized product has a significant effect on purchase probability and no effect on WTP found in the analyses.

Determinants of Online Purchase Intention of Apparel Products in Lebanon

This study investigates factors (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, privacy concerns, trust, innovativeness, and perceived benefits) affecting Lebanese consumers’ attitude toward online purchasing and their intention to purchase online. Data collected from 416 online shoppers were analyzed using regression analysis. All the factors affect attitude towards online purchasing except trust and privacy concerns which were not supported. In addition, results show that attitude toward online purchasing affect online purchase intention. This study is the first to empirically examine factors influencing online purchase intention towards apparel products in Lebanon. The study provides insight from an overlooked emerging country, Lebanon.

Online Retail Store Community Engagement and Its Impact on Purchase Intentions in the Context of Online Reviews

Consumers want to engage with the retail store community in the shopping context. This study examines how consumers’ perceptions of source credibility and perceived usefulness of online reviews impact an intention to engage with the online retail store community and purchase intentions. The study also identifies differences when reviews are posted by customers versus store employees. Results show that the proposed relationships within the structural model are significant and reviews posted by store employees are seen as more credible, whereas reviews posted by other customers are perceived to be more useful. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Understanding the Intention to Use Virtual Currency in a Gamified E-Commerce Context

Gamification is all about using game features in a serious context to encourage people to use products or services. E-commerce has used gamification for marketing determinations to strengthen intent to use. Technology Acceptance Model is employed in the current study to investigate the intention to use gamified virtual currency in the Indian context. A survey was used to accumulate records from a random sample of relevant virtual currency users in an e-commerce context using a quantitative approach. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is expended for data analysis in this research. This empirical research shows the incremental impact of the users' perceptions of the ease of use and usefulness on intention to use virtual currency. The variable attitude seems to be not mediating significantly. There are also discussions, restrictions, and future research directions mentioned in this study

Skepticism Toward Online Advertising

Despite the enormous spending on digital advertising, consumers are skeptical toward online advertising (STA). We integrated advertising value and stimulus-organism- response (SOR) frameworks to develop a model of STA's causes and consequences. Product knowledge and perceived ethics of online seller (ETH) were proposed as moderators. For study 1, moderated-moderated mediation technique was applied on the time-lagged data of 411 consumers. For study 2, a between-subject experiment (n = 179) compared the effects of skepticism across video and picture ads. The results indicate that ETH and product knowledge moderated the relationships between stimulus-organism and organism-response states, respectively. Moreover, consumers showed favorable attitudes toward video ads. This study made novel contributions to research on STA by filling multiple voids (a) integration of advertising value and SOR (b) infotainment and puffery as predictors (c) product knowledge and perceived ethics of online seller as moderators (d), and comparison across advertisement type (video vs. picture).

An Islamic Bank's Customers' Approach to Gamify Mobile Banking

Making customers adopt mobile banking is a great challenge for banks, and especially for Islamic banks. This study investigates the factors that could predict the customers' use intention of the mobile banking services of Islamic banks by applying the conceptual model of UTAUT2. The model was further extended with gamification, as a promising tool to ease the adoption, while discussing the moderating effect of age and gender for all variables. The applied questionnaire to collect data has resulted in 205 respondents. The findings implied that facilitating conditions, habit, price value, and performance expectancy are effective variables in Islamic banking customers' behavioral intention to use m-banking. Gamification has a positive effect only when customers are younger than 30. It is further discovered that only the customers 30 and older had performance expectancy. Regarding gender differences, the only finding is the men's greater interest in the price value.

E-Mail Marketing

Email marketing is a considerable development and includes direct emails, transactional emails, and email newsletters to attract new customers and retain existing ones. This research paper aims to identify and synthesize literature on the effectiveness of email marketing and potential challenges affecting its proper implementation. The research establishes that businesses in the current business environment recognize email marketing's capacity to produce a higher return on investment and generate more sales than traditional marketing channels, such as television. The adoption of permission-based email marketing enables establishing strong relationships between companies and their target audiences, developing emotional, conative, and cognitive responses to the distributed messages. Therefore, salespersons should ensure compliance with legal requirements in email marketing and develop effective strategies of reducing spam emails to avoid negative impressions and increase response rates.

Examining the Trust-Based Consumer Decision-Making Model for Online Purchases in Pakistan

This paper empirically examines the trust-based consumer decision-making model in the context of a collectivist country (i.e., Pakistan). The target population of the study was the general retail consumers recruited through online survey. A total of 396 valid responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling in Smart PLS. The study reports average variance extracted, composite reliability, Cronbach alpha, and path coefficients. The results confirm that trust and benefits are positively associated with purchase intention while perceived risk is negatively associated with consumer trust. The study also reports some unique findings like information quality is found positively associated with both trust and perceived risk. Also perceived privacy protection is found negatively associated with trust and positively with risk. The study lays down a foundation for subsequent studies to further explore the phenomena. The study is the first of its kind that has examined this model in Pakistan and proposes some useful theoretical, practical, and policy-making implications.

Decomposing Customer Engagement Effect Between Marketer- and User-Generated Content and Repurchase Intention in the Online Airline Service Community

This research is mainly concerned with identifying the mediating role of customer engagement (CE) between marketer and user-generated content and repurchase intentions in online airline service communities. Additionally, this research explores the significance of differences between the customers' perceptions towards the generated content evaluation according to content generator (marketer/user) and identifies the relatively importance of both marketer and user-generated content influence on CE in online airline service communities. To accomplish these objectives, a random cluster sample of 351 valid internet users was selected. The research findings indicated that user-generated content (UGC) is more influential than marketer-generated content (MGC) on CE and its dimensions. The findings also reveal that CE significantly mediates the relationship between both marketer and user-generated content and repurchase intentions. The findings improve both academicians' studies and marketers' practices within the online airline service community.

A Study of Online Purchasing Intention During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Lebanese Context

This study aims to investigate the impact of selected factors (website quality, website brand, trust, SNS usage through mobile application, eWOM, and mobile phone addiction) on online purchase intention during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also investigates the mediating impact of trust on the association between website quality, website brand, and online purchase intention. Data were collected from 226 Facebook users in Lebanon. The hierarchical regression analysis was used to evaluate the impact of these factors on online purchase intention. The results show that only website brand and mobile phone addiction were significantly related to online purchase intention. It was also found that trust does not have a mediation effect on the relationship between website brand and online purchase intention. However, trust can be considered as a partial mediator of the relationship between website quality and online purchase intention. Finally, practical implications are discussed. Then directions for future research are presented.