Exploring online consumer reviews of wearable technology: The Owlet Smart Sock

Purpose The purpose of this research is to analyze consumers’ post-purchase reviews of the Owlet Smart Sock (OSS) and investigate the factors influencing continued use and product recommendation. Design/methodology/approach The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 and the privacy calculus model were used to focus both on technology and privacy aspects of OSS – a wearable technology product for baby monitoring. A sample of 450 online consumer review data was collected from Owletcare.com and Amazon.com. The data analysis was done by using NVivo 11. Findings Findings show that effort expectancy, price value and performance expectancy played the most striking role during adoption, continued future use and recommendation to others, whereas perceived privacy risk had the least importance. Research limitations/implications Consumer empowerment through online reviews plays a crucial role in conveying their specific needs and desires to both manufacturers and other prospective consumers. The research is also expected to contribute research and development of technology-integrated products. Practical implications The research findings will provide valuable insights for manufacturers and retailers to understand consumers’ actual preferences and acceptance during the use of wearable technology. Originality/value This study extends research work on consumer use behavior by evaluating online reviews that provide them the opportunity to express their satisfaction and concerns. Insights from experience consumers’ reviews facilitate designers, developers and manufacturers to have a strategic focus during wearable technology development.

The effects of digital marketing implementation on online consumer in Selangor during COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant changes in many aspects especially towards small medium entrepreneurs (SMEs) as many of SMEs need to shut down their business due to movement control order (MCO) conducted by Malaysia government as SMEs cannot reach their customers. Previous studies show that having an effective digital marketing strategy in place might leave businesses vulnerable to severe setbacks towards SMEs. This research proposal aims to carry out and prove the possible potential effects and factors that influence digital marketing implementation towards online consumers in Selangor during COVID-19 pandemic. The methodology of this paper uses a descriptive qualitative approach by analyzing various previous literature on digital marketing scope of study. The sample size of the study is 235 respondents who were selected based on convenience sampling. The finding has discovered that there is a significant relationship between customer loyalty with implementation of digital marketing towards online consumers in Selangor during COVID-19 pandemic and there is a significance relationship between brand awareness and the implementation of digital marketing towards online consumer in Selangor during COVID-19 pandemic.

A Look at the New Online Consumer Behavior on Social Media Platforms

Technological advances have caused great business changes. In this new business environment, the internet has become an indispensable technology tool in the creation of new business models, based on the exchange relations between customers/suppliers/distributors/partners, with a significant increase in online purchasing transactions. This virtual environment has provided the development of e-commerce and efficiency gains and influences changes in consumer habits, thus changing consumer behavior. The online purchase presents an important change in consumer behavior; thus, the understanding of online consumer behavior is essential to understand the impact of this behavior on business. This chapter follows a systematic analysis of the literature with a qualitative approach to online consumer behavior in the last 5 years (2015-2020) in order to verify research topics and development patterns. The aim is to identify trends in online consumer behavior and recognize research gaps by providing avenues for further research into online consumer behavior.

Online Consumer Behavior in Buying Samsung Smartphones

Purchasing decision is the culmination of consumer behavior, in which finally, the consumers will do purchase having passed through some stages of consumer behavior. In this research, consumer behaviors being the variable of research are price, brandtrust, and online service, while the variable affected is purchasing decision. Purchasing decision implemented online is, of course, more complex than the one implemented directly, in which buyers interact face to face with the sellers. The objective of research is to analyze the effect of price, brandtrust, and online service on purchasing decision made in online purchase in the students of Faculty of Economics and Business, Sebelas Maret University (Universitas Sebelas Maret). Questionnaire was used as an instrument of collecting data in this research and SPSS version 24 software was used to analyze data. Data analysis was carried out using a multiple linear regression. The result of research shows that price, brandtrust and online service quality affect the decision of purchasing Samsung smartphone positively and significantly, either partially or simultaneously.

THE ROLE OF ONLINE CONSUMER REVIEW, SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISEMENT AND INFLUENCER ENDORSEMENT ON PURCHASE INTENTION OF FASHION APPAREL DURING COVID-19

Recent marketing research focuses on social media marketing as an essential tool for companies to fully utilise particularly with the increase of online and home-based consumption during pandemic. In particular, the authors hypothesize that online consumer review, social media advertisement and influencers endorsement may affect online purchase intention. The investigation of the hypotheses utilizes a sample of 163 customers who shop for fashion apparel via online platforms during the pandemic. In order to assess the relationships between these variables, the current research used quantitative methods through an online self-administered questionnaire, in which the scale items were derived from existing literature. These results suggest that ‘Online Consumer Review’, ‘Social Media Advertisement’, and ‘Influencer Endorsement’ have a positive and significant correlation with online purchase intention of fashion apparel during pandemic (r = .25; r = .35; r = .48, respectively). The researcher deliberates the implications for marketing research and practice which include addressing the literature gap in understanding online purchase intention of fashion apparel during the pandemic and highlighting the importance of social media marketing for companies to survive in the 21st century of online-based consumption and consumer-oriented social media.

Air-Travelers’ Perceptions of Service Quality during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Tripadvisor Sites

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted both healthcare and the economy on a global scale. This pandemic has changed consumer habits and behaviors significantly, primarily because of confinement-related issues. While numerous research has been undertaken to study customer satisfaction using surveys and online passenger ratings, the effect of COVID-19 on passenger satisfaction has not been explored. It is vital to assess satisfaction indicators gathered from online consumer reviews to ascertain consumers’ preferences for airline services during the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of this study is to determine the primary themes that emerged from airline travelers’ internet reviews during the COVID-19 outbreak. Additionally, it attempts to determine which of these themes relate to higher and lower passenger satisfaction. The article uses qualitative (i.e., narratives) analyses to examine the main components of passengers’ subjective experiences of the airline. Data are represented by passenger reviews posted on the TripAdvisor website. The analyses revealed ten themes in descriptions of airline travel experiences. These include “flight”, “service”, “staff”, “food”, “check-in”, “cancellation”, “COVID-19”, “airport”, “class”, and “luggage”. Dissatisfying concepts are linked with the “cancellation”, “check-in”, “refund”, and “airport” concepts.

Consumer Ethnocentrism and Country of Origin: Effects on Online Consumer Purchase Behavior in Times of a Pandemic

Electronic commerce has shown exponential growth over the past decade, but the impact of COVID-19 has exceeded all expectations. Based on the theory of planned behavior, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and internet purchase behavior in times of pandemics. Data was collected from 294 online purchasers, and the analysis was conducted utilizing a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling approach. The results indicate no significant impact on the relationship between the planned online purchase behavior and the country of origin when consumers face a health crisis. Additionally, the outcomes show that attitude toward online shopping positively affects online purchase behavior.

Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) and Marketing Implications

This doctoral thesis studies various aspects related to a specific type of electronic word of mouth, also referred to as eWOM, which are online consumer reviews. On the one hand, this thesis studies how certain non-textual and textual characteristics of online reviews, together with the visibility of those reviews, influence various types of consumer behaviour, specifically the adoption of information and the purchasing behaviour. On the other hand, this research studies the textual content of online reviews to study the brand positioning and brand segmentation, and to analyse the positioning and associations with products. Prior to the empirical analysis, the literature on information processing, decision-making literature, branding and text mining are mainly reviewed.

Conducting product comparative analysis to outperform competitor’s product using Teardown JST Model

Due to the massive number of products being produced every year in every industry, firms have witnessed a tremendous growth in innovation of methods to create a sustainable competitive advantage. For the past decade and with the availability of online consumer reviews, companies and researchers have developed many approaches utilizing electronic Word-of-Mouth to improve and develop products and services to outperform competitors. The purpose of this study is to construct an effective method to perform a better product comparative analysis based on online consumer reviews. We propose a novel framework called Teardown Joint Sentiment-Topic analysis model consisting of a combination of text analytical approaches incorporated with a developed method of the traditional teardown analysis product comparative approach. The proposed approach is fully unsupervised model that employs Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling to form topics which are classified according to their sentiments. Topics are then analyzed against competitive products and critical topics are identified using a developed teardown method. A case study analyzing online customer reviews of competing products in two domains (i.e., mobile phones and surveillance cameras) is conducted. The identified critical topics are further analyzed in view of products’ specifications perspective. We found that the detected aspects of the selected products are indeed critical, and hence, they need to be improved in order to gain a competitive advantage. The significant result of this study shows that the proposed method is effective in conducting products comparative analysis and provides valuable insights into utilizing the consumer reviews for product development.