Usually, consumers will collect market information about the product before they decide to buy it or not. In other words, the market information is a critical factor to affect consumers¡¦ purchasing intensions and behavior. Previous research points out that when consumers encounter a wider dispersion of price, they will expect to find cheaper stores. Besides, future price is often considered by consumers too. Kauffman et al. (2002) mentioned that the market price information might affect the recruiting of group buying. In a competitive market, if consumers are unable to perceive the utility of discounts provided by group-buying mechanism, they may shop at other retailers¡¦ stores. Further, because the final price of group buying will not be known until the transaction is closed, consumers¡¦ decisions might be up to their prediction about the final price. This study explores how price dispersion and price volatility affect consumers¡¦ internal reference price and expectation of final price of group buying. The difference between the internal reference and expectation of final price of group-buying indicates the consumers¡¦ transaction utility. How transaction utility affects consumers¡¦ intentions to join group buying is another issue being studied. In addition, if there is interference effect of consumers¡¦ risk attitude on final price forecast of group-buying, it¡¦s investigated, too. The result indicates that price dispersion has significant effects on consumers¡¦ all kinds of internal reference prices and predictions about the final price of group buying. However, the price volatility only has significant effects on consumers¡¦ perceived fair price, aspiration price, and reservation price. Neither significant effect of price volatility on consumers¡¦ price prediction of group buying nor interference effect of risk attitude is found. As expected, there is a significant positive causal relationship between transaction utility and intention to join group-buying. It shows that the transaction utility resulting from the comparison between the lowest market price and the most possible final price of group buying has the most explanatory power to predict consumers¡¦ participating intension to join group-buying.

The feature of group buying is that the price will go down as the accumulated orders are increasing. However, consumers will not know the final price until the end. As a result, consumers can only make decision based on the final price forecast of group buying. The final price forecast might be different depending on different pricing strategies of group-buying models and if there are competitions from posted-price stores. The purpose of this research is to understand how consumers¡¦ internal reference price and final price prediction of group buying would be influenced when facing different price curves in different market competition environment. The difference between the internal reference price and final price prediction of group-buying indicates the consumers¡¦ transaction utility. In addition, if consumers¡¦ perceived transaction utilities affect their intentions and behavior of joining group buying is another research purpose. In this research, there are three different pricing strategies, decreasing, neutral, and increasing based on the initial price, discount size and final price. For the market competition environment, it manipulated by if there are other posted-price stores to be chosen or not. The research result indicates that increasing price curve, which has higher final price, make consumers¡¦ final price prediction of group buying higher than the others under the best condition. On the other hand, it indicates that decreasing price curve, which has higher initial price, make consumers¡¦ final price prediction of group buying higher than the others under the worst condition. Consumers¡¦ internal reference prices are mainly influenced by market price information. When there are other posted-price stores to be chosen, consumers¡¦ internal reference price are higher averagely. In addition, the higher consumers¡¦ perceived transaction utilities are, the higher consumers¡¦ intentions to join group buying are. Finally, it shows consumers¡¦ intentions to join group buying have significant effect on their actual behavior.

It¡¦s common to see sex indicated advertisements on TV. Some of them have overemphasized the element of sex attraction. It¡¦s interesting to find out how receivers response to such kinds of advertisements. This thesis studied the relationship among advertising cognition, advertising attitude and buying desire in sex indicated TV advertisement. Research result shows advertising cognition apparently affects advertising attitude. Advertising attitude apparently affects buying desire. Population characteristic partially affects advertising attitude. Within relationship between advertising cognition and advertising attitude, advertisement acceptance and ethic were discussed. For advertisement acceptance, product related to sex or not doesn¡¦t apparently affect acceptance. Lower product involvement gets higher acceptance. Higher sex indication gets lower acceptance. More graceful advertisement has better acceptance. For ethic influence, no matter high product sexual relationship, high product involvement, or high sexual indication, receivers think they will have worse impact to ethic. However, more graceful advertisement has less ethic impact. Within relationship between advertising attitude and buying desire, receivers have higher buying desire while they have higher advertisement acceptance, but ethic impact doesn¡¦t affect their buying desire. From population point of view, there is no difference in advertisement acceptance no matter the receiver is male or female, also no matter whether the receiver has child or hasn¡¦t. However, female receivers think sex indicated advertisement affect ethic more than male receivers. Receivers who have child also think it affects ethic more than the one who have no child.

Abstract The main idea of group buying is to recruit larger number of orders in order to cut down price. In order words, the larger the number of orders is, the more consumers will join due to the resulted lower price. This positive feedback is as the phenomenon of demand externalities found by Kauffman and Wand (2001, 2002). However, from the other viewpoint, there is a phenomenon of death spiral at the beginning of group buying. It indicates that, due to the few orders in the beginning of group buying, consumers are inclined to wait until the price is acceptable. Unfortunately, it results in that consumers will wait for each other¡¦s joining and therefore, the orders will not increase quickly. In order to solve the problem of death spiral, Lai and Zhuang (2004) proposed three incentive mechanisms, sequential-based, time-based and quantity-based models, on purpose of encouraging consumer to participate in group-buying. The experimental result demonstrated the expected performance of the three incentive mechanisms in terms of removing the phenomenon of death spiral. However, we find these incentive mechanisms didn¡¦t stimulate the phenomenon of demand externalities. Based on previous literature and practical experience, price differentiation usually causes customers¡¦ negative emotion and unfairness cognition. The incentive mechanisms designed for solving the problem of death spiral make consumers pay different price. We wonder if it causes unfairness cognition and therefore could not result in the phenomenon of demand externality. The purpose of this research is to understand whether the incentive mechanisms cause consumers unfairness cognition via experiment. The result shows consumers having opportunity to have extra discounts have higher cognition of price fairness than the consumers without chance to have extra discounts. Further, compared with other incentive mechanisms, sequential-based incentive mechanism makes consumers perceive lower cognition of procedural fairness. Finally, we also found that consumers¡¦ fairness cognition has positive effect on their price satisfaction and purchase intention as well. Keywords: Group buying, Fairness cognition, Consumer behavior, Consumer satisfaction

The current research aims to examine the relationship among emotional labor, job burnout, impulsive buying behavior, and self-monitoring, and designates job burnout as mediator and self-monitoring as moderator. The research chose convenience sampling and sent out 400 questionnaires. 387 effective questionnaires were received and used STATA 8.0 to analyze descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis, t-test, one way ANOVA, correlations and multiple regressions, and used LISREL8.8 to analyze confirmatory factor analysis. Verifying the model of this research institute inference with the structural equation model, the result shows the model mixes the degree rightly well. The findings of the study as followed: 1. First-line employees with different characters will lead to variance emotional labor, impulsive buying behavior. 2. There is a relationship between the emotional labor, job burnout and impulsive buying behavior. 3. There is a prediction between the emotional labor, job burnout and impulsive buying behavior. 4. There¡¦s a partial mediating effect for job burnout on the relationship between emotional labor and impulsive buying behavior. 5. Self-monitoring has moderating effects between the emotional labor of surface acting and impulsive buying behavior of compensatory impulsion.

<p>Environmental awareness has increased rapidly around the globe inrecent years, which has lead to consumer demands for sustainable products. Inreaction to this, companies try to keep up with consumer demands and green theirsupply chain, in hope to acquire a competitive advantage. This research willtherefore determine to what extent these green supply chain practices influence thebuying decision of consumers.Environmental awareness has increased rapidly around the globe inrecent years, which has lead to consumer demands for sustainable products. Inreaction to this, companies try to keep up with consumer demands and green theirsupply chain, in hope to acquire a competitive advantage. This research willtherefore determine to what extent these green supply chain practices influence thebuying decision of consumers.</p>

<p>Background: Today, advertising is a multi-billion industry, employing hundreds of thousands of people and affecting billions of people’s lives worldwide. Yet, seeing as advertising clutter has increased tremendously and is more intense than ever, it is vital that companies differentiate themselves from competitors by creating even more powerful, entertaining and innovative advertisement messages, as well as sponsoring different events. Examples of such companies that spend billion of dollars on marketing strategies in order to stay key players in their industry are The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo.</p><p>Purpose: The overall purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of different international and local factors affecting consumer preferences on a local market.</p><p>Method: A quantitative method was applied, and thus a questionnaire with 150 respondents on the local market was conducted. The respondents were divided into three different age groups: ≤ 18, 19-34, and ≥ 35, and represent a diverse set of people who are at different stages in their lives.</p><p>Conclusions: International advertising and international sponsorship respectively influence the local target group in different ways, but they also affect international brand in that they have an impact on brand image and brand equity. Moreover, depending on a person’s age, consumers view brands differently, and thus have an effect on international brand alone, but also in combination with international advertisement and international sponsorship. Together, these factors influence the way in which a brand is perceived, and consequently influence consumer preferences.</p>

Looking Good and Taking Care: Consumer Culture, Identity, and Poor, Minority, Urban Tweens is an ethnographic examination of how poor, minority, urban tweens (age 7-14) use consumer culture to create and perform their personal and social identities. Although portrayed in mass media as selfish and hedonistic, this work finds tweens creating profoundly social, giving, and caring identities and relationships through consumption. Their use of consumer culture is also a form of political resistance that subverts their place in the age, class, and race hierarchy. These tweens use “looking good” (attention to grooming, style, and behaving respectably), and not name brand goods, to show they have respect for themselves, that their families care about them, and that, by extension, society in general should care for and about them. Far from seeking status through consuming, the tweens largely seek belonging and care. They also utilize both consumption and denial of their consumer desires to show care for their families. Furthermore, the tweens use consumer culture to enact resistance against the most tangible form of social control in their lives—school—by employing products and consumer knowledge to subvert the rules of uniforms and structured school time.

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Business-to-business (B2B) marketing practitioners are increasingly relying on branding strategies though academic researchers have been slow to study branding in organizational contexts. By integrating existing conceptual models and research findings, this study examines the noteworthy differences between the B2B and the consumer market contexts and the implications of those differences on the formulation of B2B brand strategies. We introduce a conceptual model that suggests the conditions that are likely to increase or decrease organizations’ propensity to select branded products versus lesser-known or generic products when selecting suppliers, otherwise referred to as brand sensitivity. The proposed model is grounded in risk theory and posits that buying center, purchase situation, and product/relationship variables influence an organization’s brand sensitivity. Finally, we present the findings and implications of the multi-method research approach that was utilized to test the model of the determinants of brand sensitivity in organizational buying contexts. Results suggest that the level of intangibility is the key determinant of brand sensitivity in such settings.