Revisiting Sproles and Kendall’s Consumer Styles Inventory (CSI) in the 21st Century: A Case of Australian Consumers Decision-Making Styles in the Context of High and Low-Involvement Purchases

There has been considerable research on the investigation of Consumer Decision-Making Styles (CDMS). However, research designs suggested to date mainly replicate the original study by Sproles and Kendall (1986) proposing eight mental characteristics, the Consumer Styles Inventory (CSI). The research aims to develop this approach further and apply the CSI to different product involvement (e.g., high and low) and compare the relationship between product involvement and consumer decision-making styles. Data were collected from 208 Australian respondents using a self-administered questionnaire. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on the CSI adapted for high and low involvement purchases. The generalisability of the CSI was tested within this context. Results found significant differences between the two product categories and demonstrated a relationship between products and CDMS and that CDMS are governed by consumers’ perceived product involvement. Furthermore, the original CSI can still be a valuable measure to low involvement purchases; however, it is questionable and requires further modification in relation to high involvement purchases. For instance, the addition of new factors such as “environmental sustainability”, “innovation consciousness”, “corporate social responsibility”, etc. with the original scale would help understand CDMS effectively. The findings of this research will expand the scientific literature on the relationship between product involvement and CDMS. Knowing that Australians are ‘rational’ and ‘quality conscious’ buyers, managers can employ CDMS to analyse consumers’ needs and develop segmented marketing messages and strategies.

Economizing Behavior During the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic that has been going on in Indonesia for more than a year has had a major impact on the Indonesian economy. This condition makes consumers make various savings, namely strategies to save money. Consumer behavior related to savings is interesting to study because it is influenced by customer confidence, product involvement and social factors. The approach in this study is quantitative by analyzing the phenomena that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic. Non-probability sampling will be used in this study with 305 respondents, but valid data to be processed amounted to 291 respondents. The questionnaire was distributed online using a google form. The data is processed using SEM via Amos. The results showed that consumer trust, product involvement influence social factors. While social factors affect the economy during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, customer confidence does not affect economizing behavior. We conclude that consumer trust and product involvement of young people (generation Z and millennials) tend to be influenced by peers, family, and people around them (social factors), including economizing behavior. Meanwhile, during the COVID-19 pandemic, this does not reduce economizing behavior among the younger generation (generation Z and millennials) in Indonesia.

The Moderating Role of Anticipated Regret and Product Involvement on Online Impulsive Buying Behavior

Online impulsive buying behavior has drawn an increasing amount of attention from researchers and marketers as well; however, little research has explored how cognitive aspect and emotional aspect effect online impulsive buying together. The study examines the role of product involvement (cognitive aspect) and anticipated regret (emotional aspect) on the online impulsive buying behavior of the consumer. The results indicate that consumers who experienced downward anticipated regret showed more online impulsive buying behavior than those who experienced upward anticipated regret. Moreover, anticipated regret moderates the relationship between product involvement and online impulsive buying behavior, for participants who experienced downward anticipated regret showing more online impulsive buying behavior than those who experienced upward anticipated regret in the low product involvement group, but there is no differential between downward and upward anticipated regret in the high involvement product group. These findings suggest that anticipated regret helps consumers make more deliberative online shopping choices. The implications for both future research and online consumers are discussed.

Message Sidedness in Health Claims: Roles of Mood State, Product Involvement, and Self-Rated Health Status

Most of the previous studies with respect to message sidedness mainly focus on the effect of message sidedness in advertising on behavior of consumers and it is unknown how consumers respond to different message sidedness when a one-sided or two-sided message in claims shown on the package of a healthy food product. This study explores the underlying mechanisms how consumers respond to different message sidedness in claims. The results indicate that two-sided messages in claims are more persuasive than one-sided messages because they pass the “sufficiency threshold.” In addition, the results of this article show that mood state, product involvement, and self-rated health of individuals moderate the relationship between message sidedness in claims and product evaluation.

Personal Culture Orientation and Consumer Cosmopolitanism: The Moderating Effects of Product Involvement

<p>Cosmopolitan consumers generally refer to individuals who are open and unbiased towards foreign products and identify as citizens of the world. Despite growing relevance of understanding consumer cosmopolitanism (COS) in today’s changing international landscape, both the construct itself is still not that well understood and operationalized, as well as its social and psychographic antecedent. In terms of culture studies, recent culture studies within the IB discipline continue to debate over the appropriate definitions of culture, as well as its conceptualization, operationalization, and especially measurement. This research aims to explore the impact of personal cultural orientations (PCOs), as individual-level culture value concepts, on COS, as well as the potential moderating role of product involvement (e.g., high- vs low-involvement products). Young-adult consumers in Taiwan and New Zealand were chosen to provide a contrast between a typical Western, Anglo-Saxon-based perspective and a typical Eastern, Asian, Confucian-based cultural context. Overall, this study could not fully support PCOs as having a significant impact on COS, nor product involvement as a moderator. However, COS could not be tested as a second-order reflective latent construct as originally intended in the seminal paper by Riefler et al. (2012). Compared to Riefler et al. (2012)’s paper, differences can be observed in the sampling where Riefler et al. (2012) sampled respondents aged 19 to 93 years (mean=46.6). This suggests that young adults a generational cohort hold significantly different perspectives and dispositions to other generations and the overall population. This finding aligns with recent IB literature in looking for smaller ‘containers’ of culture. Of the three PCOs tested, two displayed significant effects to COS in both country samples, but only to one dimension of the COS construct (Open-mindedness) and not the other (Diversity appreciation). Hence it is highly likely the PCOs tested in this study have significant effects on COS, if only COS could be operationalized as originally intended as discussed above. This points towards potential issues in appropriateness of the scales used for studies on young adults, as both the PCO and COS scales were developed on a wide range (age diverse) of respondents. This study also showed that within-country differences appear to be smaller than across-country differences. This is not consistent with previous cross-cultural research in the IB literature, which suggest cultural values differ significantly at the individual level due to differences in individuals’ experiences. Again, such research was done on more diverse respondent populations, not a specific demographic cohort with distinct social experiences. This finding has implications for the general assumption that within-country differences are considerably larger than across-country differences, when it comes to cultural value studies. Thus, when focusing on a specific demographic generational cohort, it seems that even when it comes to representatives from two very diverse cultural backgrounds, one grounded in a more Western and Protestant-based cultural context with more independent identity construal and the other in a more Eastern and Confucian-based cultural context with more interdependent identity construal, my evidence shows grater tendency towards a generational archetype understanding of young adults.</p>

Personal Culture Orientation and Consumer Cosmopolitanism: The Moderating Effects of Product Involvement

<p>Cosmopolitan consumers generally refer to individuals who are open and unbiased towards foreign products and identify as citizens of the world. Despite growing relevance of understanding consumer cosmopolitanism (COS) in today’s changing international landscape, both the construct itself is still not that well understood and operationalized, as well as its social and psychographic antecedent. In terms of culture studies, recent culture studies within the IB discipline continue to debate over the appropriate definitions of culture, as well as its conceptualization, operationalization, and especially measurement. This research aims to explore the impact of personal cultural orientations (PCOs), as individual-level culture value concepts, on COS, as well as the potential moderating role of product involvement (e.g., high- vs low-involvement products). Young-adult consumers in Taiwan and New Zealand were chosen to provide a contrast between a typical Western, Anglo-Saxon-based perspective and a typical Eastern, Asian, Confucian-based cultural context. Overall, this study could not fully support PCOs as having a significant impact on COS, nor product involvement as a moderator. However, COS could not be tested as a second-order reflective latent construct as originally intended in the seminal paper by Riefler et al. (2012). Compared to Riefler et al. (2012)’s paper, differences can be observed in the sampling where Riefler et al. (2012) sampled respondents aged 19 to 93 years (mean=46.6). This suggests that young adults a generational cohort hold significantly different perspectives and dispositions to other generations and the overall population. This finding aligns with recent IB literature in looking for smaller ‘containers’ of culture. Of the three PCOs tested, two displayed significant effects to COS in both country samples, but only to one dimension of the COS construct (Open-mindedness) and not the other (Diversity appreciation). Hence it is highly likely the PCOs tested in this study have significant effects on COS, if only COS could be operationalized as originally intended as discussed above. This points towards potential issues in appropriateness of the scales used for studies on young adults, as both the PCO and COS scales were developed on a wide range (age diverse) of respondents. This study also showed that within-country differences appear to be smaller than across-country differences. This is not consistent with previous cross-cultural research in the IB literature, which suggest cultural values differ significantly at the individual level due to differences in individuals’ experiences. Again, such research was done on more diverse respondent populations, not a specific demographic cohort with distinct social experiences. This finding has implications for the general assumption that within-country differences are considerably larger than across-country differences, when it comes to cultural value studies. Thus, when focusing on a specific demographic generational cohort, it seems that even when it comes to representatives from two very diverse cultural backgrounds, one grounded in a more Western and Protestant-based cultural context with more independent identity construal and the other in a more Eastern and Confucian-based cultural context with more interdependent identity construal, my evidence shows grater tendency towards a generational archetype understanding of young adults.</p>

The influence of multiple combinations of celebrity endorsers on consumers' intentions to purchase a sports-related product

PurposeEndorsement research has focused primarily on determining the effectiveness of single endorsers, whereas marketing practice shows that companies usually engage multiple endorsers to promote their brands and products. As academic evidence for multiple endorsers is limited and extant findings are ambiguous, the purpose of this study is to determine the influence of different multiple endorser combinations on consumers' purchase intentions for a sports-related product endorsement and to identify whether endorser-product congruence and consumers' involvement with the endorsed product moderate endorsers' influences.Design/methodology/approachTwo-hundred thirty-three useful responses were collected to an online experiment, and endorsers' direct and indirect influences on consumers' purchase intentions were analyzed in serial mediation analyses. Potential moderating effects of endorser-product congruence and consumers' involvement with the endorsed product were tested in moderated regression analyses.FindingsThe study's findings show that using multiple endorsers has an overall positive influence on consumers' purchase intentions, which is mediated by their attitudes toward the advertisements and the endorsed brand. Endorser-product congruence moderates an endorsement's effectiveness, whereas a moderating effect of consumers' product involvement was not supported.Originality/valueThis study adds to the extant body of endorsement research by confirming the overall effectiveness of using multiple endorsers to influence consumers' intentions to purchase the endorsed product. In addition, by showing that endorser-product congruence determines endorsers' effectiveness in a multiple endorser context, the study extends the current research perspective and provides practical implications for marketing professionals on how to combine multiple endorsers.

Impact of ethical certifications and product involvement on consumers decision to purchase ethical products at price premiums in an emerging market context

In emerging markets, instances of increasing consumers focus on ethical aspects of the product are observed. To this end, we aim to examine the influence of two ethical certifications and two product involvement types on consumers willingness to purchase ethical products at price premiums in the Indian market. No animal cruelty certification and no child labor certification are chosen as the ethical certifications, and a shirt and a bar of soap are chosen as high and low involvement product categories. Data is collected from 206 respondents for the experiment, in which consumers willingness to purchase a product is evaluated for different product scenarios. The results of the study indicate that individuals show highest willingness to purchase products (a shirt or a soap) when both certifications (no animal cruelty, no child labor) are present. However, in comparing individual certifications, individuals prefer no animal cruelty certification for a shirt and no child labor certification for a bar of soap. The study provides insights to practitioners regarding consumers present perception of ethical aspects in the product and directions to increase sales of ethical products in the Indian market.