The main subject of this study is about Taiwanese girls and ladies clothing brand called Scottish House, and to discuss the consumer whether or not be influenced by extrinsic cues such as image of the country of origin, brand image and prices when purchasing clothing, thereby affecting the perceived quality and purchase intention. The main conclusions of the study are as follows: 1. Image of COO and COD will indeed have a positive impact on perceived quality, indicating that female consumers of Scottish House think the image of COO and COD make them feel that the clothing has high quality. And the impact of image of COD on perceived quality is more than image of COO. 2. Brand image will also have a positive impact on perceived quality and the influence of brand image of the Scottish House on perceived quality is the strongest over image of COO and COD. 3. Perceived price will have a positive impact on perceived quality, and the female customer regards Scottish House as high price. However, the influence of perceived price on perceived quality is far lower than the image of COO and COD. 4. Perceived quality will have a positive impact on purchase intention, customers thinks Scottish House has high quality and thus increase their willingness to buy. The conclusions above are significant to the management in the following aspects. 1. COD is relatively important. 2. Brand image is a key extrinsic cue for judging product quality. 3. Price has a limitation to explain product quality. 4. High product quality leads to high purchase intention.

Word of mouth has been playing an essential role while consumers make their purchase decision since ever, and its diffusion is becoming much faster via the internet nowadays. Surfing the internet gathering information before making the purchase, the so-called ¡uWisdom of Crowds¡vshopping pattern is taking its shape and possibly going to become the main trend in the future. Thus, electronic word of mouth does play an important part during the process of consumers¡¦ decision making, and more and more consumers start to ponder what to believe on the internet. As a result, trust is becoming the key factor if the consumers can take electronic word of mouth into their consideration or not. This research discusses how message sideness appeal and emotion in electronic word of mouth affect consumers¡¦ trust under a positively framed message and a negative framed message. This research adopts experimental method, distributes questionnaire and analyze the data with SPSS12.0. The results present message sideness appeal and emotion have impacts on consumers¡¦ trust. Two-sided appeal can cause higher consumers¡¦ trust than one-sided appeal whether under a positively framed message or a negative framed message. Emotion also plays an important part between message sideness and consumers¡¦ trust during the process of diffusion of electronic word of mouth. The results can not only help the word-of-mouth senders to develop an appropriate writing pattern to make electronic word of mouth more credible and effective, but also provide the business a brand-new point of view and some practical suggestions to develop a new marketing strategy.

Traditionally speaking, some firms believe that great brand awareness will affect consumers¡¦ purchasing intention and bring much more profit in returns. Hence, a large number of entrepreneurs are spending a tremendous amount of capital on enhancing their brands and brand awareness but they often ignore the importance of word-of-mouth communication on internet. Recently, the internet has become much more popular and common than decades ago and such channel has changed consumers¡¦ purchasing habits. In fact, there are more consumers who share their experience on those products and services that they have used through internet. Furthermore, there are also more consumers who use internet to receive the information that they need for specific products and services. Thus, the importance and effectiveness of ¡§word-of-month of communication¡¨ on internet are much more important than the traditional ¡§word-of-mouth communication¡¨. This research study will be focused on hotels in Kenting area to discuss the effectiveness of purchasing intentions based on the brand awareness of that hotel and messages from the word-of-mouth communication on internet. More importantly, this research study will use customers¡¦ involvement as moderators to further understand the relationships between brand awareness & purchasing intentions, and word-of-mouth communication on internet & purchasing intentions. This research study has chosen two hotels in Kenting area. One hotel has high brand awareness while the other one has low brand awareness. This dissertation has also conducted on-line research based on their word-of-mouth communication on internet and the questionnaire participants are customers who have been to Kenting hotels. After collecting all data, this research has discovered that a hotel¡¦s brand awareness will affect customers¡¦ purchasing intentions. In other words, higher the brand awareness, more purchasing intentions from consumers. In addition, messages from word-of-mouth communication on internet will also affect customers¡¦ purchasing intentions. When the word-of-mouth communication on internet is negative, there will be fewer customers with lower purchasing intentions. Yet, the messages from word-of-mouth communication on internet will have higher effectiveness than the brand awareness of that specific hotel. Nevertheless, consumers¡¦ involvement will not affect the brand awareness, word-of-mouth communication on internet, and purchasing intentions. Last, the conclusion of this research study will provide some practical recommendations for hotel owners. Key words: brand awareness, word-of-mouth on internet, customers¡¦ involvement, and purchasing intentions.

The online consumer engagement is becoming very significant for companies striving to build their relationship with their consumers. Social media gives an opportunity not only to reach consumers in a passive way, but to engage them in active communication and to upload content that is consequently updated and drawing followers´ attention. Successful online consumer engagement can improve consumers’ loyalty and trust in the brand. Therefore, it is important for a company to be aware of actions that can encourage consumer engagement on social media. The goal of this study is to help marketers achieve higher consumer engagement that will consequently lead to more loyal customers.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine what kind of factors that can influence consumers’ intention and how do Swedish consumers evaluate these factors to purchase grocery products through the Internet. Background: E-commerce has been a widespread environment for consumers and online shopping also becomes more and more popular nowadays. However, in Sweden, although there is huge amount of online users, online grocery shopping is still in an early stage. Theory: For this paper the Theory of Planned Behavior was used, as well as a range of factors that are commonly used in existing literature on this field of research. Method: Both quantitative and Qualitative method were used to collect primary data and semi- structured interviews were conducted with participants with similar demographics. Conclusion: Combined with previous literature, questionnaire and interviews conducted, relevant factors are brought up to be analyzed. Situational factors which include perceived product quality, perceived product price, weather, perceived potential risks, delivery cost, delivery time, types of product, and time saving. The study shows that above factors all have impact on online consumers’ purchasing intention with different levels.

In recent decades, the growth of international trade and delocalisation been increasing with the advent of globalisation and nationalisation. Consequently, a proliferation of hybrid or bi-national products has emerged in the research of international marketing. A large body of studies agree that country of origin (COO) plays an important role on product evaluation, since a product consists of an array of information cues, and intrinsic (physical appearance) and extrinsic (price, brand or COO) compositions. There is a strong evidence that consumers usually use COO as one of the most important cues when making a judgement about a product. However, bi-national products raise a particular issue because they are associated to both country of manufacture (COM) and country of design (COD) constructs. The interaction effects between both cues are found to have a more powerlful effect than when only cue is presented (Bertoli and Resciniti, 2012). This study intends to decompose the COO construct into COM and COD constructs. Moreover, the roles of COM and COD on customers’ purchase intentions are investigated in order to provides practical implications for the sportswear industry, as well as consumption insights relating to the emerging market, Thailand. This research provides an in-depth examination of COM, COD and product involvement on consumers’ purchase intentions and customer perceived value (CPV). Thus, the research measures the effects of product familiarity in order to infer how consumers use country-related information in purchase decision-making. In addition, the research clarifies the role of CPV, which remains unclear regarding how consumers develop a product’s value through informational cues (COM and COD). Moreover, the previous research have only examined the outcomes of perceived quality as influenced by COO. Hence, this research intends to bring all dimensions of CPV to investigate whether the combined effects of COM and COD can have either a positive or a negative impact on customer’s value. A model of CPV is developed by Sweeney and Soutat (2001), which consists of quality, social, price and emotional values. A quantitative approach using experimental research design was conducted in Bangkok, Thailand for the purposes of this study, with a pilot test to ascertain the variables used in the main experiment: product involvement, favourable/least favourable COM and COD images. The experiment was designed to measure the relationship between constructs, of a high involvement product, namely sports trainers, and a low involvement product, namely sports t-shirt. The US and China were selected as the most and the least favourite COD, resepectively. Meanwhile, Japan and China were selected as the most and least favourite COM, respectively. Data analysis techniques such as analysis of varaince (ANOVA), multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and t-test were employed for hypothesis testing. The results of this research demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the interaction effects of country image and product involvement. The study confirms that COD is the salient cue for the evaluation of sportswear products in emerging countries. However, the level of product involvement does not influence the consumer’s decisions when COD and COM are both presented. Thus, the roles of COM, COD and product invovlement play an important role in evaluating overall CPV. The key contribution of this research is in its practical, theoretical and methodological implications to international marketing communications toward the sportswear industry. It offers the insights of two informational cues (COM and COD) to explain the phenomenon of bi-national products for unknown or new products.

There is an unresolved paradox concerning the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in consumer behavior. On the one hand, consumers demand more and more CSR information from corporations. On the other hand, research indicates a considerable gap between consumers' apparent interest in CSR and the limited role of CSR in purchase behavior. This paper attempts to shed light on this paradox by drawing on qualitative data from in-depth interviews. The findings show that the evaluation of CSR initiatives is a complex and hierarchically-structured process, where consumers distinguish between core, central, and peripheral factors. This paper describes these factors in detail and explains the complexity of consumers' assessment of CSR. These insights then serve as a basis for discussing the theoretical and managerial implications of the research findings. To this end, the paper contributes to a better understanding of the role of CSR in consumption decisions.

Background: This research focused on sport sponsorship related to six sponsors from different industries that are affiliated with a South African football club, namely Kaizer Chiefs; and has drawn from the perceptions and experience of Kaizer Chiefs supporters at in their ability to identify and assess the six sponsors. Results: This research has provided a framework to investigate the interrelationships between sport sponsorship, sponsor awareness, corporate image and intention to purchase sponsors' products. The main findings of the research were that category sport sponsorship awareness has a positive effect on sponsor awareness; and that corporate image has a positive effect on intention to purchase sponsors' products. No significant positive relationship was found between sponsor awareness and corporate image. Furthermore, no conclusive evidence was found to support the hypothesis that sponsor awareness has a positive effect on intention to purchase sponsors' products. Conclusion: The framework proposed within this research has highlighted the supporting role that sponsor awareness plays in achieving media coverage objectives, as well as the role that corporate image plays in achieving sales objectives. The results have further emphasised that corporate image is the more dominant indicator of sponsorship effectiveness as it ultimately leads to increased sales. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Many researchers have studied the interaction between choice overload and purchase intention resulting in mixed and sometimes contradictory results. This study extended the current knowledge and examined how rurality (rural vs. urban/suburban) among millennial consumers influences choice overload and purchase intention when presented with extensive or limited options. Using both quantitative survey data and qualitative interviews, the author studied consumer experiences to understand choice overload and purchase intention better. Overall, some of the results suggest a statistical difference between rural and urban/suburban participants in their feelings of choice overload. However, many of the results were small and unlikely to be of practical significance. Additionally, the interviews were analyzed and multiple themes emerged, including possible factors that may support prior meta-analytic conclusions about the nuance of choice overload.

Background: The emergence and growth of the green economy has prompted companies to take more steps towards becoming environmentally conscious, but this is not always done in an honest way, from which cases of greenwashing has emerged. Cases of greenwashing can be recognized in all areas of business, and most of the research at the moment only recognizes the effect of a greenwashing case on consumer behavior, missing the link of consumer perceptions. The existing case study research also focuses on the attitudes after the fact, not investigating how a consumer reacts to the information during the revelation of a company’s misconduct.   Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the connection between the concept of greenwashing and consumer perceptions, and thus the decisions consumers take based on the level of information they possess.   Method: The research is conducted as an interpretivist qualitative case study based on a single imaginary case, where the data is gathered through triangulation of previous existing literature and observations from semi-structured interviews, analyzed through abductive reasoning.   Conclusion: The research found that when a consumer is presented with information about a company and their initiatives, the perceptions that the consumer has change accordingly. The perceptions are dependent on the level of interest the consumer has in sustainability issues. Some findings that were not expected considered the partial effect of the sustainability initiatives, showing that consumers are only interested in green initiatives up to their personal constraints or preferences. The consumers largely see the motivations of a company to be attributed to profits, however, some more optimistic consumers seem to be less affected by greenwashing.