Influencer Marketing and Consumer Engagement: The Role of Food Experts in Shaping Attitudes Towards Organic Products (Published)
The Covid-19 pandemic has spurred a consumer trend toward embracing healthier lifestyles and diets. Leveraging primary studies centered on influencer marketing and its influence on consumer behavior, this study aims to scrutinize and evaluate the effect of Food Expert Influencers on consumers’ attitudes towards organic products. Our conceptual model, utilizing the theory of social comparison, contributes to formulating hypotheses based on which specific characteristics of Food Expert Influencers are capable of influencing and impacting consumer behavior towards organic foods. On the basis of survey data collected from 306 respondents, structural equation modeling was employed to test our hypotheses and measure the proposed conceptual model. The results indicated that influencers’ sexual orientation, appealing lifestyle, specialized knowledge in a particular domain, personal traits like beauty or sex appeal, and their follower count exert a considerable influence on consumer behavior, notably fostering positive attitudes towards organic products. These findings hold substantial theoretical implications, offering crucial insights for marketing strategies in the organic food products sector, as well as for corporate social responsibility. They underscore the importance of carefully selecting influencers who resonate with the target demographics and can forge authentic connections with them. Moreover, the results suggest that harnessing the credibility of Food Experts of Influence (FEIs) can influence consumer behavior and potentially bolster the sales of organic products.
Keywords: COVID-19, Consumer Behavior, biological products, influencer marketing, social comparison theory
Exploring Service Gratuity Motivations from a Cultural Context Aspect and the Moderating Role of Gender (Published)
The Saudi consumer, being the focus of this study, is driven by multiple forces and motivations that impact their consumption behavior, where the gender of consumer is another major determinant of those behaviors. While recent macroenvironmental changes were observed to justify the shifts in consumer behaviors, the cultural dimension and gender of consumer are the focus of our research. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between cultural context level and tipping motivations, and the moderating role of gender on this relationship. To assess this research, an SEM model is presented along six hypotheses to uncover the nature of relations among the said variables. With a sample size of 351 participants, respondent’s data confirmed that majority of sample do represent features of a high context culture, and the results are only similar with previous findings when assessing service as a dimension for tipping motivation. Social norms and peer pressure were not significant indicators of tipping behaviors for consumers in high context cultures. Furthermore, gender differences were clearly spotted, where females showed higher motivation to tip following motives of social norms and peer pressure. This study adds to the literature of cultural consumer behavior, and the findings represent handful information that can be applied by international managers to better understand and serve their global agenda.
Keywords: Consumer Behavior, Cultural Context, Saudi Arabia, Tipping
Conditional Effects of Consumer-Brand Relationships on Admired and Non-Admired Brands, and Its Impact on Schadenfreude (Published)
Extant literature on schadenfreude, a pleasure towards the misfortune of others, is concentrated on brand rivalry however is silent about situations when one own brand causes the schadenfreude. We advance knowledge on brand relationship by investigating how one brand’s bad malicious strategy leads to schadenfreude for admired and non-admired brands and is mitigated when admired brands interact with positive feelings elicited by brand-consumer relationship to protect against their own bad behavior. Firstly, we showed the phenomenon, then we point out the exact regions of moderation. The first study shows that schadenfreude is greater when the misfortune is due to a controlled action of the brand. The second study tests the mitigating effect of congruence between brand and Self. Study three tests higher-order affective levels such as brand love, as a negative moderating construct. Study four advances previous studies on consumers’ self-promoting feelings and their interaction with brands to produce schadenfreude.
Keywords: Consumer Behavior, brand affect, brand relationship, consumer vanity., schadenfreude
E-Food Commerce, Nutrition Economics and Consumer Behaviour: Before And After Covid-19 (Published)
Consumer behaviors and purchases are complex concepts and strongly influenced by personal, psychological, sociocultural and environmental factors. This paper proposed an innovative comprehensive consumer behavior framework for use as a logical tool that assists in planning for local and national food programs aimed at complex socioeconomic, environmental and public health problems such as COVID-19. The progress of the Internet of things and the social media reported here provides a platform for accelerated actions that could have major positive implications for public health nutrition in the post COVID-19 world.
Keywords: COVID-19, Consumer Behavior, digital food systems, e-food commerce, nutrition economics, public health nutrition
Factors Determining Purchase Intention and Behaviour of Consumers towards Luxury Fashion Brands In India: An Empirical Evidence (Published)
The Luxury consumer goods market has enjoyed a significant rise during the last decade, predominantly in the emerging markets such as India. This research exhibits the adaptation and incorporation of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) along with an external variable brand image to examine the determinants that influence Indian consumers’ purchase intention towards luxury fashion brands. The luxury goods of interest in this study are high-end personal fashion products including apparel, perfume, and accessories like handbags, shoes, watches. Data was collected in the form of a survey from 815 luxury goods users in Delhi-NCR and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the framework. Results revealed that all the four variables brand image, attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control were found to have a positive relationship with purchase intention. Moreover positive influence of purchase intention is also found on actual purchase behaviour. Furthermore, both attitude and purchase behaviour are positively influenced by brand image. The findings of this research provides meaningful insights to marketers and managers to understand consumer behavior towards luxury and formulate marketing strategies to successfully market their products in India.
Keywords: Consumer Behavior, Luxury fashion brands, Purchase Intention, Theory of Planned Behavior
The Impact of National Culture on International Marketing and Consumer Behavior in Iraqi Kurdistan, Focusing on Hofstede’s Model (Published)
In order to investigate the influence of national culture on international marketing and consumer behavior and answer the research questions in Iraqi Kurdistan, this paper tend to identify Hofstede cultural dimensions and explain how these dimensions may impact the global marketing management. The first section of this study focuses on international marketing and national culture in order to investigate the past research on how national culture can impact international marketing and consumer behavior as dependent variable. Thereafter, some questions were asked and a quantitative self-respond questionnaire was used to measure the Iraqi Kurds cultural values. This research used convenience sample method and it is based on the population of 272 professional managers at different organizational levels. Then, it was combined with the past research results by the same author to bring consistency and reliability to the research and also reduce sample error. In the last section, data were analyzed and at the end a deep discussion was created to respond the questions. The findings explain the relationship between both variables and support the past works by De Mooij and Hofstede as concrete works that can be applied by international managers. Therefore, researcher concludes that this paper provide strong argument that there is positive relationship between national culture and international marketing. At the end some suggestions were made.
Keywords: Consumer Behavior, Context Model., Culture, Hofstde Model, International Marketing, Kurds
Clearing the Conceptual and Measurement Confusion between Enduring Product Involvement and Product Importance: A Critical Review and Empirical Evidence (Published)
Consumers’ arousal and concern in the product is a reflection of its perceived self expressive and hedonic values, which are the main components of enduring product involvement. Many previous studies have confirmed the existence of these two components of enduring involvement and pointed out that most of the other components that were mentioned in past studies were either confused with involvement antecedents and behavioural outcomes, or were implied and included in the hedonic and self expressive dimensions of enduring involvement. Other misconceptions of the components of enduring involvement included the consideration of some situational and purchase decision factors as components of enduring involvement, as well as the adoption of the product importance concept as an equivalent or a component of enduring product involvement. The present study provides the theoretical and empirical evidences to prove that product importance is an outcome, rather than a component, of enduring product involvement.
Keywords: Consumer Behavior, Discriminant Validity, Enduring Involvement, Hedonic Consumption, Measurement Scale, Product Importance, Self-Expression.
Cognitive Innovativeness and Decision-Making Styles in Iranian Shopping (Published)
Cognitive innovative consumers are an important segment of market for many firms, the revenues from sale of new products to these consumers and advertising by them, play an important role for firms. Hence having a correct understanding from their shopping style helps the firms to create and implement effective marketing plans for the new products. The current study investigates the shopping styles of cognitive innovative consumers. A structural equation model is used to test the relationship between cognitive innovativeness and various shopping approaches. The research is based on a sample of university student consumers in Iran. Generalizability of the results would depend on future research conducted in other cultures and consumers of other groups. The resulted findings from this research show that the shopping style of these consumers follows the quality consciousness style. Results point that firms should target the cognitive innovative customers in order to have a successful marketing in regards with attracting customers and increasing the revenues from selling their products
Keywords: Cognitive Innovativeness, Consumer Behavior, Shopping Styles
The Buying Pattern of Energy Drink and its Use among the Young Generation of Saudi Arabia (Published)
Energy drink intake has to turn into a favorite exercise around the world, in particular among the younger generation. In Saudi Arabia, there are significant limitations in energy drinks – in abstract, tastes, advertising, the attention of sponsorship, are not permitted,” however, it is not limited to the use of social media. The core purpose of this study is to investigate the consumption patterns of energy drinks among young people in Saudi Arabia even after partial restrictions on the promotion of energy drinks. This method of the research was used an exploratory approach in nature with the data collection through survey method (Maxim, 1999) were gathered from the respondents. A self-administered structured questionnaire was developed using survey monkey online services. After getting the responses, the data were edited, tabulated and analyzed using descriptive statistics (Frequency distribution) through the excel sheet and the result was explained accordingly. The result reveals that there is a trend of widespread use of energy drinks among young people, especially students in the age group 23-27 (72.10%). It also indicates that there is a high level of social acceptance of energy drink consumption in the region. The respondents showed a tendency towards buying decisions of it, but between the choice of brands, a certain degree of loyalty was shown. There is a call of some awareness program to increase the knowledge among the youth about the consumption of energy drinks and their effects on health.
Keywords: : Energy Drinks, Buying Pattern, Consumer Behavior, Power Drink, Saudi Arabia, Youth
The Influence of National Culture on International Marketing & Consumer Behavior in Iraqi Kurdistan, Using Hofstede’s Model At Individual Level (Published)
There are growing interest in the consequences of culture for global marketing and advertising and many recent researches urged companies to consider the necessity of adapting their international marketing strategies to the culture of the consumer (De Mooij and Hofstede, 2010). In order to investigate the influence of national culture on international marketing and consumer behavior and answer the research questions in Iraqi Kurdistan, this paper tend to identify Hofstede cultural dimensions and explain how these dimensions may impact the global marketing management. This paper was divided into three main parts. The first part of this research concentrates on international marketing as well as national culture and tries to investigate the past research on how national culture as an independent variable may influence international marketing and consumer behavior as dependent variable. In the second part of this study, two main questions were raised and a quantitative self-respond questionnaire was used to measure the cultural values at individual level. This research used convenience sample method and it is based on the sample of 272 professionals mostly managers at different levels and combined with the previous research sample of 441 students to bring consistency and reliability to the research and also reduce sample error. In the third part, data were measured and analyzed and at the end a discussion was developed to answer the questions. The findings explain the relationship between both variables and support the past works by De Mooij and Hofstede as concrete works that can be applied by international managers. Therefore, this author can conclude that this paper provide strong argument that there is positive relationship between national culture and international marketing and consumer behavior. There are some suggestions for more cross-cultural research in this part of the world.
Keywords: Consumer Behavior, Context Model., Culture, Hofstde Model, International Marketing, Kurds