Purpose
This study investigates how perceptions associated with corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives influence customers’ preference and loyalty in a controversial consumer market. The ...mediating effect of brand preference between perceived CSR initiatives and customer loyalty is also examined.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology in the current study involves use of questionnaire surveys delivered to a convenience sample in the city of Macau in 2012. A total of 616 valid samples were collected among casino players in a high bet limit area in six major casinos. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses formulated for carrying the study forward.
Findings
The findings indicated that customers’ brand preference can be enhanced by their perceptions on CSR. Two CSR initiatives (stakeholders and society) significantly increase loyalty intention, although to varying degrees. The impact of CSR on stakeholders has the stronger influence on customers’ brand preference Another important finding of the current study is the fact that brand preference is a partial mediator of perceived CSR initiatives and customer loyalty.
Research limitations/implications
This study verified the relationship among CSR initiatives perception, brand preference, and loyalty intention in the context of the Macau gaming industry. Perceived CSR initiatives enhance customer loyalty. Additionally, this study found a partial mediating effect of brand preference between CSR perception and customer loyalty.
Practical implications
Customer loyalty can be enhanced with companies’ appropriate investments in social responsibilities. Although a socially responsible brand image of a company is not guaranteed to be a competitive advantage that attracts more premium customers, there is a general consensus that it may result in the latter with appropriate CSR strategies involving the greatest attention directed towards improving stakeholders’ interests. From the marketing perspective, retaining premium customers with a higher brand preference level is a key to both long-term competitiveness and profitability.
Originality/value
This study investigates how premium customers' perceived CSR initiatives of a casino influences their loyalty intention, and also examines how brand preference, as a mediator, influences the relationship between perceived CSR and loyalty intention. Extending the realm of CSR study to understand the linkage between CSR and customer behaviors is also important because multiple theories predict different benefits, and assessing the value of CSR therefore requires multiple approaches. Lastly, evidence from the research is significant for researchers and practitioners especially when working on conflicting issues.
Generation Z (born 1995-2010) members are digital residents who use technology and the internet more frequently than any previous generation to learn about their health. They are increasingly moving ...away from conventional methods of seeking health information as technology advances quickly and becomes more widely available, resulting in a more digitalized health care system. Similar to all groups, Generation Z has specific health care requirements and preferences, and their use of technology influences how they look for health information. However, they have often been overlooked in scholarly research. First, we aimed to identify the information-seeking preferences of older individuals and Generation Z (those between the ages of 18 and 26 years); second, we aimed to predict the effects of digital health literacy and health empowerment in both groups. We also aimed to identify factors that impact how both groups engage in digital health and remain in control of their own health. The Health Information National Trends Survey was adopted for further use in 2022. We analyzed 1862 valid data points by conducting a survey among Chinese respondents to address the research gap. A descriptive analysis, 2-tailed t test, and multiple linear regression were applied to the results. When compared with previous generations, Generation Z respondents (995/1862, 53.44%) were more likely to use the internet to find out about health-related topics, whereas earlier generations relied more on traditional media and interpersonal contact. Web-based information-seeking behavior is predicted by digital health literacy (Generation Z: β=.192, P<.001; older population: β=.337, P<.001). While this was happening, only seeking health information from physicians positively predicted health empowerment (Generation Z: β=.070, P=.002; older population: β=.089, P<.001). Despite more frequent use of the internet to learn about their health, Generation Z showed lower levels of health empowerment and less desire to look for health information, overall. This study examined and compared the health information–seeking behaviors of Generation Z and older individuals to improve their digital health literacy and health empowerment. The 2 groups demonstrated distinct preferences regarding their choice of information sources. Health empowerment and digital health literacy were both significantly related to information-seeking behaviors.
Purpose
– This paper aims to investigate how corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance (i.e. to the environment, society and stakeholders) and perceived brand quality influence brand ...preference. The mediating effect of perceived brand quality on the relationship between CSR performance and brand preference is also studied.
Design/methodology/approach
– In 2011, 243 valid responses to questionnaire surveys were collected from a convenience sample in China. Regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
– Customers’ brand preference can be enhanced by CSR performance. Performance in each of the three CSR domains (i.e. environment, society and stakeholders) positively impacts brand preference, although to different degrees. The impact of CSR on stakeholders has the strongest influence on Chinese customers’ brand preference among the three CSR domains. Perceived brand quality was found to be a mediator of the relationship between CSR performance and brand preference.
Research limitations/implications
– This research studies the relationship between CSR performance and brand preference. Results show CSR performance is not the strongest predictor of branding outcomes, its explanatory power is comparatively weaker than that of perceived brand quality. Additionally, we found a mediating effect of perceived brand quality on the relationship between CSR performance and brand preference.
Practical implications
– Brands can be more attractive to Chinese consumers when brands take appropriate investments in CSR activities. A socially responsible brand is not guaranteed to yield a competitive advantage. Instead a competitive advantage will more likely result through the employment of the appropriate CSR strategies, with a focus on stakeholders’ interests.
Originality/value
– The current research contributes to the literature by finding that not all CSR activities are equally effective. Customers in emerging markets still appear to be focused more on the quality of brands and, to some extent, stakeholder CSR practice, as these provide direct benefits to customers. Findings of this study also support the notion that Chinese consumers are beginning to use CSR information to evaluate brands.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global public health emergency, increasing the prevalence of emotional distress, and potentially leading to altered diet behavior. Self-efficacy measures various ...aspects of perceiving and understanding emotions. The present study was carried out with the objective of understanding the effect of emotional self-efficacy on dietary behavior and quality. It also shed light on which elements contributed to the link between food-related behavior and perceived dietary quality during the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the factor analysis of nineteen food groups, choices, consumption, and socioeconomic status were examined in a sample of 441 Chinese participants. Multiple linear regression examined the association between food consumption, dietary quality, and self-efficacy. Contrary to prior research, the intake of salty snacks and alcoholic beverages dropped by 3.3% and 2.8%, respectively, during the first lockdown. Emotional self-efficacy negatively mediated the relationship between socioeconomic status and dietary quality. In conclusion, emotional self-efficacy is a well-established tool for evaluating how Chinese people cope with negative emotions. As an individual’s dietary quality was affected during the imposed lockdown, the present study offers valuable insight into psychosocial factors that may contribute to health disparities by advocating for organized nutritional support in future epidemic-related quarantines.
Understanding factors that influence healthy or unhealthy eating can inform intervention strategies. This study ascertained whether and how unintentional exposure to food and nutrition information ...influenced healthy eating concerns. The study tested body comparison, body satisfaction, and body mass index as three mechanisms that potentially link food information encounter, commonly known as information scanning, to healthy eating concerns.
A sample of 440 online participants (mean age = 29.15 years) was used to investigate: (1) how unintentional exposure to food and nutrition information, i.e., information encounter (IE), affects healthy eating concerns (HEC); (2) how the effect of IE on HEC is mediated by body comparison (BC); (3) how the paths of the mediation model are moderated by body satisfaction (BS) or body mass index (BMI).
The findings show a positive and sizable total effect of IE on HEC - a whole-scale increase in information encounter is associated with a substantial increase in healthy eating concerns by 15 percentage points (b
= 0.150). BC is found to mediate the effect of IE on HEC in an all-positive complementary mediation. Both the indirect and the direct-and-remainder paths show sizable effects. The mediated path contributes about 20% of the total effect between IE and HEC (c
= 20%), while the direct-and-remainder path contributes the rest (c
= 80%). BS was found to moderate the relationship between IE and BC, the first leg of the mediation. The moderation effect is large - the effect of IE on BC is much smaller on the highly and the moderately satisfied than on the lowly satisfied (slope differential b
= -.60). BMI was found to moderate the direct-and-remainder effect of IE on HEC, controlling BC. That is, the effect of IE on HEC, after filtering out the mediated effect through BC, is much larger for those with high or low BMI than those with healthy BMI (slope differential b
= .32).
Exposure, even if unintentional, to food and nutrition information is an important predictor of HEC. BC, BS, and BMI are important factors that help to explain the process through which information affects behaviors.
The fact that the number of individuals with obesity has increased worldwide calls into question media efforts for informing the public. This study attempts to determine the ways in which the ...mainstream digital news covers the etiology of obesity and diseases associated with the burden of obesity.
The dual objectives of this study are to obtain an understanding of what the news reports on obesity and to explore meaning in data by extending the preconceived grounded theory.
The 10 years of news text from 2010 to 2019 compared the development of obesity-related coverage and its potential impact on its perception in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Digital news stories on obesity along with affliction and inferences in 9 Chinese mainstream newspapers were sampled. An automatic content analysis tool, DiVoMiner was proposed. This computer-aided platform is designed to organize and filter large sets of data on the basis of the patterns of word occurrence and term discovery. Another programming language, Python 3, was used to explore connections and patterns created by the aggregated interactions.
A total of 30,968 news stories were identified with increasing attention since 2016. The highest intensity of newspaper coverage of obesity communication was observed in Taiwan. Overall, a stronger focus on 2 shared causative attributes of obesity is on stress (n=4483, 33.0%) and tobacco use (n=3148, 23.2%). The burdens of obesity and cardiovascular diseases are implied to be the most, despite the aggregated interaction of edge centrality showing the highest link between the "cancer" and obesity. This study goes beyond traditional journalism studies by extending the framework of computational and customizable web-based text analysis. This could set a norm for researchers and practitioners who work on data projects largely for an innovative attempt.
Similar to previous studies, the discourse between the obesity epidemic and personal afflictions is the most emphasized approach. Our study also indicates that the inclination of blaming personal attributes for health afflictions potentially limits social and governmental responsibility for addressing this issue.
Moral norm is the key Liu, Matthew Tingchi; Liu, Yongdan; Mo, Ziying
Asia Pacific journal of marketing and logistics,
10/2020, Volume:
32, Issue:
8
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
PurposeThis research extends the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and aims to study the underlying factors that influence Chinese consumers' purchase intentions towards green products. The ...conceptual model encompasses four elements (subjective norms, perceived behaviour control, moral norms and attitude) and one consumer response (purchase intention).Design/methodology/approachThe current research employs a questionnaire survey and two experiments. In Study 1, the hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling with 485 consumers in China. Study 2 employed a single-factor, two-condition (morally engaged vs control), between-subject design.FindingsThe findings reveal that the morally extended TPB framework is more applicable in predicting Chinese consumers' green purchase intentions than the original TPB model. Attitude plays the most significant role in predicting purchase intentions, and moral norms prove to be a mediator of the relationship between the original construct of subjective norms and purchase intentions. The findings further revealed that moral norms comprise the underlying mechanism of the relationship between subjective norms and attitude.Originality/valueThis study therefore expands the TPB theory by including moral norms. Moreover, it contributes to the literature by clarifying the direct, indirect and total effects of each TPB element on the purchase intentions towards green products. Finally, managerial implications are given.
PurposeThis study extends the commitment-trust theory from the perspective of relationship marketing and explores its effect on purchase intention under the moderation of trust by investigating ...vloggers' relationship marketing in the context of social media.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs a survey investigation with online questionnaires in China, and the hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analyses, with 319 valid consumer responses.FindingsThe findings reveal that the extended commitment-trust theory is applicable in the context of social media. Perceived relationship commitment, expertise, physical attractiveness, social attractiveness and self-disclosure play a significant role in predicting purchase intention. Relationship commitment proves to be a mediator between the antecedents and purchase intention. Trust shows a moderating effect on the antecedents and relationship commitment.Originality/valueThe study provides evidence of the importance of the above-mentioned antecedents in influencing viewers' relationship commitment to vloggers in the context of social media. The results contribute to the development of the commitment-trust theory and an understanding of the theory's underlying mechanisms. The result also provides further evidence of the effect of trust on relationship commitment.
This study investigates how the presentation order of information may affect the evaluation of utilitarian products. Three experiments with different conditions (hedonic/utilitarian product; ...experience/search advertisement; unattractive/attractive packaging) were conducted with a total of 334 participants in Macau. This study tests both the affective and cognitive product evaluation. The findings indicate that assimilation effect occurs if the search advertisement of a utilitarian product is presented before and if the consumers have better cognitive evaluation. When an experience advertisement is presented before, contrast effect occurs and affective evaluation is reduced. However, when unattractive packaging is presented before, assimilation effect occurs, and cognitive evaluation is increased. When attractive packaging is presented before, the consumers demonstrate a positive cognitive and affective evaluation for the utilitarian product. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of presentation order on the consumers’ evaluation of utilitarian products from theoretical and managerial perspectives.
•This paper contributes to a better understanding of the role of assimilation effect on evaluation of consumer products leading to purchase decision.•This has implications for effects related to the order of presentation of information to the consumers and will help resolve apparent inconsistencies in prior research on order effects in the context of choices for sequentially utilitarian products.
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