Marketers are faced with informed and highly complex consumers. The consumer market is becoming more competitive and more difficult to predict as consumers make purchase decisions in their everyday life. An ongoing need exists for information and an examination of purchasing behaviour for marketers to succeed in their pursuit of business endeavours. This study examines the influence of selected variables on motor vehicle-related purchasing behaviour. Five independent variables, namely branding, price, promotion, safety features and colour were investigated and the dependent variable (purchasing behaviour) was examined. In doing so, various stages which consumers undergo when making purchasing decisions were discussed. These stages were outlined as need recognition, information search, and evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post-purchase behaviour. The primary research objective of this study was to determine the influence of selected variables on motor vehicle-related purchasing behaviour. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, an empirical investigation was undertaken. The quantitative (positivistic) paradigm was used in this study, as the aim was to test the hypotheses and conceptualmodel of the study using statistical analysis. In gathering primary data, 192 self-administered questionnaires were issued to respondents for completion by means of convenience and quota non-probability sampling. Upon completion of all the questionnaires, data was analysed in order to arrive at the conclusions regarding the research questions. The empirical findings and analysis followed a systematic and statistical process, where exploratory factor analysis using target rotation was used to test the validity of the measuring instrument. Cronbach alpha correlation coefficients were used to confirm the reliability of the measuring instrument, while multiple regression analysis was carried out to test the hypothesised relationships between the independent variables and the dependent variable of the study. ANOVA was applied to determine differences in the demographic characteristics of respondents. The main findings on the validity and reliability of the measuring instrument proved to be statistically satisfactory. The main findings which emerged from the multiple regression analysis suggested that price and colour had statistically significant influence on motor vehicle-related purchasing behaviour. Findings revealed that branding, promotion and safety conditions had no significant effects on motor vehicle related purchasing behaviour. Accordingly, the hypotheses for price and colour were accepted and those for branding, promotion and safety conditions were rejected. Therefore according to respondents, price and colour of a motor vehicle are the most important considerations when undertaking purchasing decisions regarding motor vehicles. Additionally, the empirical investigation revealed that significant differences exist between age groups of respondents, meaning that different age groups of respondents had different perceptions and opinions with regard to their purchasing patterns relating to price. Furthermore, significant differences were also found between male and female respondents in terms of price and colour, meaning that the two genders had different perceptions and opinions with regard to their purchasing patterns in these areas. The empirical findings of this study are relevant for motor vehicle retailers and original equipment manufacturers, as the findings provide important information regarding the influence of selected variables on motor vehicle-related purchasing behaviour. Secondly the findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge regarding purchasing behaviour.

No description available.

Researchers in marketing have concluded that behavior intentions are not a very good predictor of behavior. It has been suggested that unexpected situations may be causing much of the inconsistency between intentions and behavior. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which unexpected situations affect behavior intention - behavior inconsistency. Fifty seven housholds from Tucson, Arizona were studied. For each household, information concerning intended consumption of fifteen foods and beverages was collected. This information included: attitudes toward the foods, social norm effects, past behavior, and intended consumption over the next seven days. In addition, the expectation of thirteen situations occurring and their expected influence on consumption was measured. Seven days later, the subjects were asked to report their actual consumption of the fifteen food products and the actual occurrence and influence of the thirteen situations. In addition to self-reports, garbage analysis was used to measure past behavior and consumption during the seven day experimental period. Correlation and regression analyses were used to assess the extent to which unexpected situations influenced the inconsistency in behavior. The results indicated that unexpected situations do explain some of the inconsistency between intentions and behavior. Unexpected situations explained an average (across products) of between 5.8% and 14.1%, and as much as 53.5% of the variance in behavior inconsistency. However, the influence of situational variables was quite different for each product. In addition, it was found that the amount of inconsistency explained by the situational variables. An interesting findings was that the simple unexpected occurrence or nonoccurrence of a situation also exlained behavior inconsistency, indicating subjective effects of situations are not required to explain behavior. These results have several important implications. First, objectively based measures of situations can be used to explain some types of consumer behavior. This makes situational variables much easier for managers to monitor and control. Situational variables were also found to have generalizable effects across individuals, again indicating that situational variables may be easier for managers to use than was previously supposed. Finally, this research indicates that it would be useful to include situational variables into behavior intentions models, especially when intentions and behavior are not closely related.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the saleability judgements of retail store buyers of women's and men's wear. A sample of 81 women's and men's wear buyers, representing two specialty stores and one mass merchandiser, was sent questionnaires. Principal Components Factor Analysis with Varimax Rotation was used to reduce the number of product, vendor and information source variables to eight factors. Three significant differences existed between the women's wear and men's wear buyers, verifying that not all retail buyers are alike. Results will benefit educators in preparing students to become more effective buyers, retail management can incorporate this same information into a buyer training program and apparel manufacturers can use the study in planning product strategies to retailers.

Assuming that all unmet demand is fully lost, we begin our study by confining the sales lever to be price only, that is, z = p , and ignoring the cost for executing the sales lever. Given a stationary (s, S, p) policy, we find that the profit function for the lost-sales case exhibits the same structure as the one for the backlogging case. We further show that the relaxed assumption on the news-vendor type profit function can also be satisfied by a broad class of demand function. We can therefore extend the optimizing algorithm and the optimality analysis developed earlier to the lost-sales case. We further demonstrate that the results can be extended to the general sales lever decisions. / Assuming that unmet demand is fully backlogged, a newsvendor-type profit function which is defined as the resulting expected one-period profit with sales lever being optimized for every inventory level, fails to be unimodal. By assuming the newsvendor-type profit function to have a finite number of local maxima, we develop an efficient algorithm for finding the optimal ( s, S, z) policy with the long-run average profit derived by the renewal theory. We further identify the conditions under which the (s, S, z) policy is globally optimal. / Issues on the interfaces between operations management and marketing research have attracted much attention recently. The developments integrating marketing decisions into inventory management are not only of academic interest, but also of practical importance. With uncertain demand, this research studies the joint determination of inventory and sales lever decisions such as price, incentives to salesforce, and short-term promotions, or a combination of them. / We consider a single-item, periodic-review system with the objective of maximizing the long-run average profit over an infinite planning horizon. Demand in a period is a non-negative, discrete random variable with its distribution dependent on the sales lever chosen for the period. A replenishment order can be placed at the beginning of a period incurring both fixed and variable ordering costs. The sales lever is determined jointly, and its execution may incur possible cost, for example, promotion cost. For such a model, we take particular interest in a so-called (s, S, z) policy, which operates as follows: whenever the inventory level falls to or below s, an order is placed to bring it up to S; when the inventory level is above s, no order is issued; the choice of sales lever z depends on the inventory level. / We finally conduct an extensive numerical study for both the backlogging and lost-sales cases. We compare the benefits of the dynamic sales lever strategy with those of the semi-dynamic as well as the static sales lever strategy, and find that the profit gains are significant. By sensitivity analysis, we bring out the impact of cost parameters on the optimal solutions. / Wei Ying. / "December 2006." / Adviser: Youhua Frank Chen. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 3961. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-131). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

No description available.

Consumers make trade-offs in their purchase decision making between extending market knowledge from exploring a product market and maximizing purchase value based on exploiting their current knowledge. The value of these strategies can be enhanced opportunistically by taking advantage of promotions. In this research, a new and unique datamining model was developed to process store scanner data for quantifying the brand selection behaviour of an individual consumer in reaction to promotions. Selected consumers in each of Pittsfield’s salty snack, yogurt, and toilet tissue markets were then segmented into four behavioural segments using clustering analysis based on their Prevalence of Promotion and their Value of Information from Purchases. The behavioural segmentation was valid, as the four generated behavioural segments in each product market could be differentiated by using demographic variables. In a product market, the demographic profiles of behavioural segments can be generated andused for improving the performance in targeting consumers. The generated demographic profiles of a behavioural segment explain how consumers in the segment react to promotions,which can be used for predicting how consumers will react in the future. Complementing demographic profiles, dynamic behavioural evolvements in consumer purchase lifecycles can also help to predict the purchase behaviours of consumers in the future from the purchases that the consumers have made. The evolvements enable people to understand how consumers with a given amount of market experiences make their purchase decisions via making trade-offs between market knowledge extension and immediate purchase value maximization. Product markets differ in their available number of brands for selection. The findings generated in a product market, however, cannot be generalized to a different product market. Consumers have different demographic-related purchase behaviours across frequently purchased consumer goods markets. Based on the findings in the research, the dissertation discusses and provides suggestions forretail businesses to improve their performances for achieving a competitive edge.

This thesis consists of three essays in the theory of Industrial Organization. More specifically, the thesis focuses on the interaction of financial structure and market structure. The intellectual starting point of this thesis is the Modigliani-Miller theorem. Modigliani & Miller (1958) show that in the presence of perfect financial and output markets, financial structure has no effect on the value of the firm. This thesis departs from a Modigliani-Miller economic environment by assuming that firms have more information about their projects than financiers have. In imperfect output markets, this departure from Modigliani-Miller world implies that there may exist important strategic interactions between production and financial decisions. In the three essays of this thesis, we derive theoretical links between financial structure and output market competition. We show that in the presence of asymmetric information in output and financial markets, firms may affect the outcome of various oligopolistic and entry games by choosing an appropriate financial policy. We explicitly introduce financial variables in these types of games to show that they may have an important role to play in the resolution of the output competition. The presence of asymmetric information is usually a sufficient condition for financial structure relevance to the firm's market value. However, this is not necessary. It is shown elsewhere that taxes or bankruptcy costs may also affect financial decisions. Throughout this thesis, we abstract from these important determinants of financial structure to focus on asymmetric information in output and financial markets to show that a firm's financial policy may be used strategically in oligopolies. The three essays may be united under the common theme of asymmetric information and strategic financial decisions. In the first essay, the choice of a lender in a debt contract becomes a determinant of the extent of competition in downstream industries. We show that in the presence of imperfect output markets and asymmetric information in financial markets, members of an industry may achieve a partial collusion in the output market by borrowing from the same bank. In an oligopoly, debt is pro-competitive as it gives incentives to the borrowing firm to undertake an aggressive output strategy. This aggressiveness is translated into an increased output. As both firms borrow, the industry becomes more competitive. The industry also becomes riskier and firms' debt value is decreased. A common lender can better control these incentive effects and hence, limit the extent of competition in the output market. This model finds a natural interpretation in an international trade context. In this framework, the result shows that freeing financial markets from trade barriers may decrease the competitiveness of international oligopolies by allowing firms to borrow from the same lender. In the second essay, we develop a theoretical link between firms' financial structure and their output market structure. In the presence of asymmetric information about the incumbent's cost level, an incumbent's financial structure may constitute a signal of its efficiency and prevent potential entrants from coming into the market. A market, threatened by entry, is occupied by one of two possible types of incumbent. The firm's type is completely characterized by its cost level. Only the own firm knows with certainty its true type while the entrant and financiers are uncertain of it. Entry is profitable for the entrant if and only if the market is occupied by the high cost type incumbent. The low cost firm chooses a financial structure that credibly distinguishes itself from the high cost incumbent. From the observation of the incumbent's financial policy, the entrant can correctly infer the incumbent's type. If it observes a financial structure consistent with the low cost incumbent's financial strategy, it stays out of the market. Otherwise, it enters. In equilibrium, financial structure allows credible revelation of all private information and entry occurs in the same circumstances as with perfect information. In the third essay, we give a formal representation of Telser (1966)'s 'deep pocket' argument. We propose that entrants are financially vulnerable because they must signal their value to financiers before entering the market. We assume that there are two possible types of entrant threatening to enter a monopoly market. The entrant's type is parametrized by its cost level. This information is private to each entrant as other players are uncertain of the entrant's true type. Entry is profitable only for the low cost entrant. But if the high cost type can misrepresent as a low cost firm, there exist financial structures which yield positive equity value. The low cost firm must avoid these structures to credibly reveal its type to financiers, secure sufficient funds and finance its entry. In equilibrium, the low cost entrant must issue debt to signal its quality to investors. It enters the market heavily leveraged. This provides incentives for the incumbent to engage in a price war to financially exhaust the entrant and cause its bankruptcy. The price war may be interpreted as the incumbent's predatory response to the entrant's leveraged entry. We argue that a diversified pool of undistinguishable entrants is sufficient to justify the 'deep pocket' argument put forward by Telser (1966). We base our explanation on the presence of asymmetric information in financial and output markets. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

The supply chain management discipline suggests that information sharing is paramount when attempting to achieve cost reductions and quality improvements. In many cases, the traditional accounting data used to support strategic decisions reflect inaccurate supply chain costs. This research explores the applications of managerial costing techniques, and how they can be used to improve the decision making capabilities of firms in the aerospace and transportation industries. The methodology used to address the research questions consisted of a hybrid of the grounded theory and multiple-case study methods. The objective of this research was to present the antecedents and barriers associated with implementing supply chain costing, and the impact that costing approaches have on strategic decision making. The research identifies a theoretical model that can be used to explain the relationships and themes associated with supply chain costing and strategic decision making. Evidence suggests that there is some movement to implement managerial accounting techniques within these two industries to capture supply chain costing information. However, the reliance on traditional financial accounting suggests that the overarching principles of supply chain management and information sharing amongst of partner firms has yet to be realized.

This research develops hypotheses to explain temporal changes in the effectiveness of marketing mix variables. Three potential explanations for these changes in market response are explored: (1) changes in market response associated with industry evolution, (2) trends in market response which may be related to changes in consumer knowledge and familiarity with products over time, and (3) changes in market response associated with changes in consumer incomes. In addition, this research investigates (4) changes in the relative effectiveness of marketing mix variables over time. The hypotheses are tested on time series data from five U.S. industries as well as aggregate U.S. consumption data. To estimate temporal changes in market price sensitivity, advertising effectiveness, and distribution effectiveness, a structural time series modeling methodology is used, and numerical optimization procedures are used to perform maximum likelihood estimation. The results show mixed support for the hypothesis that market response is related to the level of industry maturity. Problems with the indicators of industry maturity were identified which may be partly responsible for the mixed results. Consistent with expectations, this study shows that advertising effectiveness does appear to decline over time, while market price sensitivity and distribution effectiveness increase. Consequently, price reduCtions and increases in distribution coverage appear to become relatively more effective than increases in advertising expenditures over time. There appears to be no relationship between marketing mix effectiveness and consumer incomes. / Ph. D.