Food choice in the e-commerce era Wang, Ou; Somogyi, Simon; Charlebois, Sylvain
British food journal (1966),
02/2020, Letnik:
122, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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Purpose
This study associated consumers' food choice motives and socio-demographic characteristics with their attitudes and consumptions towards food shopping with four e-commerce modes: ...business-to-consumer (B2C), online-to-offline delivery (O2O Delivery), online-to-offline in-store (O2O In-store) and New Retail. It also explored consumer preferences for specific food categories within the four e-commerce modes.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey was administered to 954 participants from three Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Descriptive analysis and linear regression were used in the data analysis.
Findings
The following food choice motives (FCMs) and socio-demographic characteristics had a significant effect on food e-commerce attitudes and/or consumption, with some or all of the four e-commerce modes: Taste Appeal, Value for Money, Safety Concerns, Quality Concerns, Processed Convenience, Purchase Convenience, Others' Reviews, City, Gender, Household Size, Age, Income, Occupation and Marital Status. Consumers also have different consumption preferences for food categories in the four e-commerce modes.
Originality/value
This is the first study to associate consumer FCMs and socio-demographics with their e-commerce attitudes and consumption regarding food in four e-commerce modes: B2C, O2O Delivery, O2O In-store and New Retail.
Drawing from the mental ability framework and information processing theory, two studies embedded within the B2C retail setting investigate the role of the sales manager's ...ability-to-perceive-emotions in the complex non-linear relationships between salespeople's customer and selling orientations on one side, and its outcomes (sales performance and customer re-purchase intention) on the other. Using multilevel data from salespeople and their managers, Study 1 tests a theoretical model of salesperson orientation and performance, while Study 2 further verifies the results of Study 1 from the customer's perspective. Both studies find strong empirical support for a curvilinear, inverted U-shaped effect of a salesperson's customer orientation on sales performance and customer re-purchase intention. This effect is, however, reversed for the link between selling orientation and performance/re-purchase intention, where results indicate a U-shaped curvilinear relationship. Furthermore, we show that the sales manager's ability to perceive emotions facilitates the effect of salespeople's customer orientation on sales performance.
Digital marketing communication, that is, communication through digital or electronic media among businesses and consumers, is growing rapidly, especially during the COVID-19 era. We propose a ...framework for analyzing digital marketing communication along four major dyads, business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and consumer-to-business (C2B). We review and summarize, for researchers and practitioners, the literature during 2000–2021 in these dyads along four major components: goals; channels, media, and platforms; content; and responses. We find that extant research in digital marketing communication pertains mostly to a specific, national level rather than a global level, despite the porousness of national boundaries for digital marketing. We derive important insights, identify key research gaps and questions in each of the dyads along these dimensions. We suggest approaches to address these research questions under three major components: substantive issues, data, and methods. These approaches can offer the insights that managers need to better formulate digital marketing strategies in local and global contexts.
Decisions about expanding an existing product portfolio and capturing new markets are of critical importance to a firm's financial performance and growth. Yet, important questions remain in regard to ...the extent to which product and brand extensions contribute to a firm's profit in B2B and B2C markets, respectively, and how firms with corporate brands in these markets should pursue an extension strategy that provides maximum impact on firm profit. The authors theorize and empirically address these questions based on a study of firms listed in the U.S. Fortune 500 published ranking. Findings of this research have important prescriptive implications for the management of B2B and B2C firms' growth-based extension strategy and contribute to B2B theory.
•With a sharper definition of product extensions and three different types of brand extensions, in the present research, we theorize and empirically address the following questions: (1) what is the contribution of product extensions to a firm's profit in B2B versus B2C markets, and (2) what is the contribution of each brand extension type to a firm's profit in B2B versus B2C markets?•Based on a sample of firms from the published list of Fortune 500 companies, we find that product extensions have a strong, positive effect on the profit of firms that operate in B2B markets, while the effect takes the shape of an inverted-U for B2C firms.•A very different picture emerges for brand extensions.•Although the increasing number of complementary brand extensions positively affects the profit of both B2B and B2C firms, the substitutable brand extensions show a positive impact on firm profit only in the B2B market, but not in the B2C market.•The contribution of independent brand extensions is positive for a B2C firm's profit, but is in the shape of an inverted-U for a B2B firm's profit.•These findings should help firms to make important strategic decisions on how to use each extension strategy for the optimal contribution to firm profit.
With the emergence of a series of physical sharing platforms such as Uber and Airbnb, the business model of the sharing economy (SE) is rapidly developing globally. Existing research on the sharing ...economy mainly involves three main aspects: the connotation of the sharing economy, the business model of the sharing economy, and the impact of the sharing economy. We begin by introducing the reasons why the sharing economy is booming and why customers from different positions participate in the sharing economy. Then we summarize the basic mechanisms of the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) aspects of the sharing economy. Regarding the main causes of the sharing economy, we specifically focus on the impacts of the sharing economy on the environment, i.e., whether sharing economy is eco-friendly to the society. We consider product life cycle assessment (LCA) technology as one of the frontiers and key technologies in the fields of green design and green manufacturing. Furthermore, combined with the impact of COVID-19 on the sharing economy and the actual problems in real life, we present the future development directions of the sharing economy.
Companies deal with good and bad publicity daily. We study the impact of news on consumer sentiment toward a company in the presence of pre-news sentiment. We use Sina Weibo’s (the Chinese version of ...Twitter) microblogging data and the full list of news items published in Sina Finance between 2013 and 2014 to measure sentiment. In our study, we address the following research questions: Does negative news have a greater impact than positive news on consumer sentiment change? Does news affect sentiment change to a greater degree when pre-news sentiment matches the news valence? Does the type of company (either B2C or B2B) matter? Our empirical findings show that consumers overreact to negative news and negative pre-news sentiment intensifies such overreaction, leading to negative herding. Further, negative pre-news sentiment is even more damaging for B2B companies than for B2C companies.
While the importance of electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) for Business-to-Business (B2B) firms is increasing, the use of B2B firm-generated content for driving positive eWOM is less understood. Given ...the emergence of image-oriented social media platforms, this study investigates how color features increase positive eWOM in the B2B versus B2C context by analyzing 13,356 images on Instagram. The results reveal key differences in color features in the contexts of B2B and B2C. Specifically, cool colors are more appealing in B2B content, while warm colors work better in B2C content. Further, darkness, saturation, and colorfulness moderate the cool effect in B2B content, such that darker, less saturated, and more varied colors increase the effect of cool color. In the B2C context, only colorfulness increases the effect of warm color. The findings of this research contribute to the literature examining the different drivers of eWOM between B2B and B2C social media and offer managerial implications for B2B and B2C firms on ways to encourage positive eWOM.
•Cool (Warm) colors boost positive eWOM in B2B (B2C) social media.•In the B2C context, Darker, less saturated, and more varied colors increase the cool color effect.•In the B2C context, only colorfulness increases the warm color effect.
The sharing economy has changed not only the purchasing and use behaviour of consumers but also the operating mode of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). For OEMs, the sharing economy represents ...a challenge and an opportunity. In the car market, some OEMs (e.g., General Motors and Toyota) choose to cooperate with peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing platforms, while others (e.g., Nissan and Haima) choose to work with business-to-consumer (B2C) sharing platforms. This paper develops an analytical framework to study how the OEM selects business modes under the sharing economy. Considering participation concerns inherent in the sharing economy, including renters' perceived value of shared products and owners’ maintenance costs, which depend on the marginal cost of products, we first study how the profit-maximising sharing platforms of the P2P and B2C modes affect the OEM. Then, we analyse the mode decision of the OEM. We find that the OEM should choose to cooperate with the B2C platform if the value perception factor is higher or the marginal cost is lower. If the value perception factor is in the middle range and the marginal cost is higher, the OEM should choose the P2P platform. The OEM should not cooperate with any sharing platforms if the value perception factor is lower and the marginal cost is higher.
•Construct a Stackelberg model for the blockchain-based fresh produce supply chain.•Study equilibrium strategies of the fresh produce supply chain in four scenarios.•Investigate the impact of ...government subsidy on blockchain adoption.•Blockchain technology is not always beneficial to the fresh produce supply chain.•Government subsidy is beneficial to the fresh produce e-commerce platform.
The breakout of COVID-19 has made consumers pay attention to the quality and source of fresh produce sold on e-commerce platforms, while the information traceability feature of blockchain can effectively monitor fresh produce quality and cope with fresh produce safety issues. Considering influencing factors such as the cost of blockchain technology, and the perceived and real quality of fresh produce, should blockchain technology be adopted in the supply chains for fresh produce? In this paper, for a fresh produce supply chain consisting of an e-commerce platform, i.e., Business-to-Consumer (B2C) or Online-to-Offline (O2O), and an offline retailer, we apply the Stackelberg game model to investigate the equilibrium strategy of the supply chain under the following scenarios: Model C(O) where the B2C (O2O) supply chain without blockchain technology; and Model CB(OB) where the B2C (O2O) supply chain implements blockchain technology. We research the conditions for implementing blockchain technology in the B2C (O2O) supply chain, the best business model for the e-commerce platform, and the conditions for the offline retailer to cooperate with the O2O e-commerce platform. Further, we investigate the impact of consumers’ awareness of traceability and the incentive effect of government subsidy on the implementation of blockchain technology. It is shown that the B2C (O2O) supply chain implements blockchain technology only when consumers' awareness of traceability is high. At this time, the offline retailer has the willingness to cooperate with the e-commerce platform. For the B2C supply chain, government subsidies are beneficial to the B2C e-commerce platforms but not to the offline retailer. For the O2O supply chain, government subsidies are beneficial to both the O2O e-commerce platform and the offline retailer.
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