Australasian Marketing Journal

This study uses an experiment with 102 Singaporean working adults to examine the effects of salespersons’ retail service quality (SRSQ) and consumers’ mood on impulse buying (IB) and store-revisit intentions. The results show that consumers receiving good SRSQ exhibit greater IB and store-revisit intentions than do those receiving poor SRSQ, and consumers in a positive mood show greater IB than do those in a negative mood. Mood fully mediates the effect of SRSQ on IB in terms of purchase quantity and partially/complementarily mediates the effect of SRSQ on IB in terms of purchase intentions and store-revisit intentions. This research offers insights into the affective and cognitive mechanisms of IB and store-revisit intentions in a specific retail context. The findings help retailers facilitate purchase behavior and improve customer satisfaction in services. Ethical consumption policies and practices could also incorporate the IB mechanism reported in this study. Future research opportunities are discussed.

This paper is concerned with the way in which positive word of mouth (PWOM) about brands spreads their usage. We find that brand users, who have heard positive comments on their brand, offer nearly twice as much PWOM as users who have not heard such comments. We identify a transmission mechanism that underpins the production of PWOM; specifically, that social amplification underlies this effect.

While brands are at the core of our investigation, background theory comes from the literature on diffusion and the adoption of new products. We explain the social basis of new product adoption and argue that social amplification works alongside the classic infectious disease model of diffusion and results in further adoptions when the extra WOM reaches non-users. We support this account with evidence using data from studies on branded mobile phones, movies, vacation destinations, hotels, restaurants and fashion stores. It is proposed that recommendation received from others stimulates more PWOM because it provides a script which the receiver of the recommendation can use in subsequent conversations, and we offer empirical support for this proposal.

Nonconscious mimicry is a salient behaviour in many social interactions, such as the imitation of accent over the phone or the tendency to return a smile from another smiling person. However, existing research has yet to consider the importance of individuals’ social intentions when entering into a social interaction in a customer service setting. This paper extends current managerial leadership theory into the novel setting of nonconscious mimicry to explain the critical role of social intentions in relationship building in customer service encounters. This research consists of a 3 × 2 between-subjects factorial design to evaluate the hypothesised relationships between nonconscious mimicry, social intentions, and product choice behaviour. The findings indicate that social intentions play a critical role influencing the relationship between nonconscious mimicry and product consumption, purchase intentions, and product liking in service encounters. Further, it is suggested that individuals identified as task-oriented should not be behaviourally imitated, as this will not positively increase product liking, purchase intentions, or product consumption. Instead, consumers should be primed to be relationship-oriented prior to nonconscious mimicry.

Several researchers emphasize the importance of consumer self-confidence in the production of word of mouth (WOM). However, most focus has been on consumer self-confidence as a positive WOM predictor, and a possible negative relationship between consumer self-confidence and WOM remains largely unexplained. Here, we aimed to elucidate the possibility of both a positive and a negative effect of consumer self-confidence on WOM production, attributed to different dimensions of consumer self-confidence. Our results support this idea, demonstrating a positive effect of social consumer confidence on WOM and a negative effect of personal consumer confidence on WOM. Furthermore, we identify unique personality roots for each of the two dimensions of consumer self-confidence that provide explanations for their differential effects on WOM. In addition, this study shows that the dual effects of social and personal consumer confidence on WOM happen due to a suppression effect. Hence, we provide a statistical explanation that could be crucial in understanding the relationship between the multiple dimensions of consumer self-confidence and WOM. The findings have implications for the targeting of consumers for WOM marketing campaigns.

While word-of-mouth (WOM) activities may be planned by marketers, customers have to execute them. And although marketers may attempt to encourage customers to do so by providing either unconditional or conditional incentives, customers have the ultimate control whether or not they execute WOM-related activities. WOM senders’ actions might be somewhat aligned with a company's objectives, but marketers have even less control over the responses of WOM receivers. Thus, from the receivers’ perspective, this paper examines how incentivized WOM should be designed to boost the success of a marketing program. The theory of planned behavior serves as a framework to explain both the internal and the external drivers that determine receivers’ reactions to WOM stimuli. An experimental design is applied to investigate different modes of mobile coupons as a novel tool of WOM. Gender is identified as a major source of heterogeneity in receivers’ responses. Results show that incentives’ conditionality exerts a negative impact on receivers’ responses. The inequality of incentives does significant harm to WOM campaigns that are aimed at male consumers. By contrast, external drivers exert a particularly strong influence on females’ reaction to WOM stimuli. Situations of reciprocity reduce women's perceived behavioral control and thereby increase their likelihood to execute the desired WOM action. Research findings hint at the need to design gender-specific incentive schemes to foster WOM.

Virality or the viral phenomenon refers to the rapid growth and adoption pattern of a product, akin to a biological virus. Whilst evidence of viral success exists in the literature, the measurement of viral success remains underexplored. The exponential growth measurement approach, although popular, has limitations of being a single measure technique. This paper develops a comprehensive methodological framework to empirically measure the viral phenomenon and thereby to identify and differentiate a viral phenomenon from popularity. The concept of spike and peak is introduced to understand the viral diffusion pattern. The high performers are tested for viral growth rate using the curve fitting method. Process mapping to a considerable time-period characterizes the phenomenon at different life stages. Data from TED talk videos test the framework, and Twitter data validate the TED talk results. The paper concludes with a discussion on the significance of the results for product managers and the marketing industry.

This research expands dialogue on the dynamic consumer–product relationship within the under-researched, albeit sensitive, context of intimate wear. Drawing on involvement theory alongside specific product and service attributes, this study delineates and profiles segments within the highly engendered consumption of the bra. Data gathered from 221 Australian females unveiled three distinct segments of female bra shoppers: Enthusiasts who derive significant hedonic value in purchasing bras, Dilettantes who portray high interest in lingerie but exhibit the lowest levels of competency in bra-shopping, and Pragmatists who hold the lowest score in terms of hedonic value but perceive themselves as highly competent bra shoppers. Demographic and attribute profiling further captures differences between segments on factors including age, brand importance, lingerie servicescape ambience, and professional fitting advice. Findings provide relevant insights for lingerie retailers and suggestions for future research.

Marketing, consumer, and organizational behavior researchers interested in studying the mechanisms by which effects operate and the conditions that enhance or inhibit such effects often rely on statistical mediation and conditional process analysis (also known as the analysis of “moderated mediation”). Model estimation is typically undertaken with ordinary least squares regression-based path analysis, such as implemented in the popular PROCESS macro for SPSS and SAS (Hayes, 2013), or using a structural equation modeling program. In this paper we answer a few frequently-asked questions about the difference between PROCESS and structural equation modeling and show by way of example that, for observed variable models, the choice of which to use is inconsequential, as the results are largely identical. We end by discussing considerations to ponder when making the choice between PROCESS and structural equation modeling.