Risk Relievers Research Articles

Sustainability and authenticity: are they food risk relievers during the COVID-19 pandemic?

PurposeThe study jointly investigates sustainability and authenticity concepts in the food context during the COVID-19 outbreak with a fourfold objective: (1) understanding whether sustainability and authenticity are equivalent concepts in consumers' perceptions; (2) advancing knowledge on the role played by them about food frauds' perception; (3) investigating whether these concepts are considered as “risk relievers” by consumers, (4) comparing the concepts to understand which one has a greater weight on the consumer's perception.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a Combination of a Uniform and a shifted Binomial distribution (CUB models) on data gathered in Spain between June and August 2020 through an online questionnaire.FindingsThe findings reveal that: (1) consumers perceive sustainability and authenticity as different concepts in the food context and (2) as two important indicators of fraud protection of a product for consumers; (3) besides, authenticity is seen as a “risk reliever” in buying a food product, as well as sustainability, (4) although results underline high uncertainty in the latter case.Originality/valueBy considering that the COVID-19 outbreak seriously threatens food safety, security and nutrition, this research elucidates the relevant role of food sustainability and authenticity concepts as “risk relievers” in terms of food frauds and negative issues related to COVID-19.

Cruise passengers’ risk reduction strategies in the wake of COVID-19

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the cruise sector with an initial global shutdown and ongoing patchy resumption, widespread reporting of virus transmission onboard and billions of dollars in economic losses. This study explores how COVID-19 has impacted Australian and UK consumers’ risk perceptions, revealing cruises are no longer considered “safe”. Consumers are more negative about, and less willing to, cruise. Cluster and Leximancer analyses identified five distinct market segments differentiated by the extent of travel risk they perceived. Specific risk reduction strategies are identified and include risk mitigation, use of risk relievers, and risk avoidance.

Understanding trust and perceived risk in sharing accommodation: an extended elaboration likelihood model and moderated by risk attitude

ABSTRACT Facing the rapid expansion of the sharing economy, it is essential to understand the trusting mechanism in the P2P sector and its consequence on the perceived risks. This study extends the elaboration likelihood model to explore the relationships among argument quality, source credibility, trust, risk perception, and behavioral intention in the sharing economy context. The proposed theoretical framework has been tested with a survey targeting the younger generation in China. The results suggest that both the central route (i.e., argument quality) and peripheral route (i.e., source credibility) in the information processing positively affect trust. Trust is positively associated with behavioral intentions, while risk perceptions have a negative effect. Besides, a significant effect of trust was found on risk perceptions. The moderating effect of risk attitudes was further uncovered through model comparison. Moreover, the usefulness of risk relievers differs across three groups of tourists with different risk attitudes.

Consumer’s Risk Relieving Strategy towards Branded Food Outbreak: The case of Maggie Noodles in India

This research aimed at various risk relieving strategies adopted by consumers of Maggie 2 Minute noodles in the post food scare reported in the recent past in India. Despite being a speculation of the major scare over the alarming level of MSG and lead in Maggie's 2 Minute noodles, the product is continuously patronised by the consumer. The survey-based research using structural equation modelling (SEM) technique was employed to test the significance of seven risk relieving strategies identified from the literature. The research finds that the consumers are still purchasing Maggie 2 Minute noodles due to the high brand image associated with the product which is followed by product quality. The price was found to be the least risk relievers among the consumers.

The impact of abusing return policies: A newsvendor model with opportunistic consumers

Consumers may return a product for a variety of reasons, such as the product having the wrong color or size, having poor functionality, being damaged during shipment, or simply prompting regret for an impulsive purchase. Retailers generally provide lenient return policies not only because they may signal high quality but also because they act as risk relievers for consumers’ purchasing decision processes. However, increasing product returns have become particularly challenging for the efficient management of inventory. As such, at the crux of a holistic inventory model lies the understanding of consumer return behavior. In this study, we introduce a variant of the classical single-period inventory (newsvendor) model with returns, in which heterogeneous consumers decide, based on their post-purchase valuation of the product, whether to return the product after using it. From the perspective of the retailer, such deliberate returns may abuse the return policy, which in turn may exacerbate reverse logistics and environmental costs. To that end, we incorporate demand uncertainty and consumer valuation uncertainty by explicitly gauging return probabilities and differentiated salvage values into a newsvendor model. We derive analytical results for the profit-maximizing order quantity for a single-period product that comes with a retailer return policy and exclusively identify the impact of return type as abused or normal. Also offered are closed-form optimal solutions in the cases where market demand is exponentially or uniformly distributed. Structural and numerical results lend managerial insight into how optimal ordering amount, profit, return rates and salvage values change with the price, return window, and hassle cost of returning the product.

Influence of Risk Relievers on Dimensions of Perceived Risk in Car Purchase

Influence of Risk Relievers on Dimensions of Perceived Risk in Car Purchase

Consumer Perceived Risk and Risk Relievers in E-shopping in Pakistan

The editorial board announced that this article has been retracted on December 6, 2013. If you have any further question, please contact us at: cis@ccsenet.org

Types de risques perçus et réducteurs de risques dans le commerce électronique : le cas du site Fnac.com

Résumé Cette recherche aborde les freins relatifs à l’achat sur Internet, non par le concept de confiance déjà largement mobilisé dans la littérature, mais par celui de risques spécifiques perçus. Réalisée sur 1167 adhérents de la Fnac, elle identifie les types de risques perçus qui pénalisent le plus l’achat en ligne, puis les caractéristiques du site que l’enseigne concernée devrait améliorer pour réduire ces risques. Elle conclut qu’il est possible de se concentrer sur seulement quelques réducteurs de risques. Toutefois, cette stratégie aura plus d’effet sur des acheteurs multicanaux que sur des clients n’utilisant encore le site que pour s’informer.

Prioritised risk relievers in purchasing licensed sport merchandise online: influence of product price as purchase involvement

The current study was aimed at exploring the relative importance of five risk relievers in the purchase involvement level of licensed sport merchandise (replica and authentic team jersey) purchasing. To investigate the effects of purchase involvement, the current study employed a conjoint experiment with a two-group random-assignment design. The level of purchase involvement was manipulated by different levels of price in the purchase of licensed sport merchandise on the internet. Compared to the low product involvement group, participants in the high product involvement group placed greater importance on the availability of a warranty, the amount of product information, and the type of website. The subsequent cost-utility and cluster analyses were also conducted to explore cost-effective risk reduction strategies and to identify market segments.

Making Money with Free Software? Sampling Implications of Software Market

Distributing freeware or trialware is a common practice of most publishers in the software market in order to increase potential users' experience prior to their final purchasing. Third-party rating of new software is an objective quality reference to the users as well. We develop an empirical framework to analyze the impact of freeware/trialware and third-party rating on software sampling. Our results show that freeware is not always a dominant strategy to enhance the users' software sampling and outperformed by trialware when the quality gap between them is high enough to the users in some software categories. Third-party rating reflects more credible information to the users compared to anonymous users' rating. As the sampling acts as risk relievers for final purchasing, our findings demonstrate how actual marketing strategies work in the software market. We have used various estimation methods to address endogeneity issues in our model.

Consumer Responses to Vertical Service Line Extensions

Vertical line extensions extend an established brand to products at different price/quality points. In this study, we examine consumer evaluations of vertical service line extensions and the feedback effects of these extensions on the parent brand. Findings of two empirical studies in the hotel industry indicate that consumers perceive higher risks in step-up extensions than in step-down extensions, which consequently influences their evaluations of the extensions. This effect of extension direction is also found to be moderated by risk relievers such as service guarantee and consumers’ prior knowledge in the service category. Furthermore, we found that a parent brand receives more positive evaluations after the introduction of a step-up extension than that of a step-down extension.

How Advertising Affects: A Study of the Chinese E-market

The major objective of this study is to explore the general attitudes and beliefs of the Chinese public toward web advertisement strategies with or without celebrity, richness of information and price consciousness relievers. We selected the China online e-market because it is ”one of the most rapidly growing markets” in the world (Anderson & Barton, 1992; Wu & Deng, 2002). Following a description of the China online e-market, we build our conceptual framework by combining the online advertisement literature with celebrity richness in information, price consciousness reliever and perceived risk literature. We collected student data from five universities in GuangZhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Shanghai, and Nanjing cities and found both their main and interactive effects. Interestingly we found: (1) Considering consumers' perceived risks of online shopping, ads with celebrity, richness in information and price consciousness relievers, such as money-back guarantees, do relieve their purchase risks and induce consumers' purchase intention. (2) Richness in information does not have a positive effect on the ads with celebrities exerting on risk perception-that is, consumers are already significantly convinced by the message conveyed by the ads with celebrities. (3) Considering consumers' perceived risks of online shopping, ads offering money-back guarantees have a positive interactive effect with the degree of richness in information. (4) It seems that Chinese respondents perceive that the risk is not low, which is also different from other previous studies. We discuss our results in the light of the implications for e-marketers management of websites in China. Different types of risk relievers are also included in this survey.

Promises, Promises: How Consumers Respond to Warranties in Internet Retailing

Past studies have shown that perceived risk is a critical determinant of purchase intention in non–store retailing contexts, including Internet retailing. Extant literature in physical retailing suggests that warranties can be a significant variable in reducing consumers’ perceived risk. We examine the role of Web site warranties in risk reduction and how warranty information interacts with retailer reputation and brand name as two other risk relievers in an online shopping environment. Results suggest that warranties can make a positive difference for online retailers with strong reputations with respect to perceived risk, perceived product quality, and purchase intentions. However, consumers are less influenced by warranty information when dealing with online retailers with weak reputations. For the other extrinsic cue, however, we find that warranty information does not have an effect when dealing with brand names, suggesting that a brand name’s impact on online risk reduction remains regardless of the presence of warranty information.

Effective Risk Relievers for Dimensional Perceived Risks on Mail-Order Purchase

This article examines the effective risk relievers for different dimensions of perceived risk on mail-order purchase of food products. The sample comprised 1,600 active and inactive mail-order specialty food shoppers in the UK. The analysis focused on the correlation coefficients between consumers' levels of perceived risk and their weight on the importance of the risk relievers. Amongst 15 risk relievers, the results implied that there are certain risk relievers attached to higher levels of importance by consumers, who perceive higher levels of risks in certain aspects of mail-order purchase. Therefore, mail-order companies should promote the effective risk relievers to reduce specific dimensions of perceived risks.

Risk relievers in mail-order catalogue retailing: The case of the high-frequency purchaser of low-involvement products

This article reports on the identification of how various risk relievers, available to consumers and mail-order catalogue organisations, influence general risk perception. Consumers who have purchased low-involvement products on a number of occasions by mail-order constitute the sample. The findings are that two of the major risk relievers significantly reduce, whilst another one increases, the general risk perceptions of mail-order customers when buying low-involvement goods. These findings are important to mail-order catalogue managers because they confirm that a variety of risk relievers need to be offered to ensure that perceived risks are properly addressed.

Consumer Acceptance of the Internet as a Channel of Distribution

In this empirical study, the viability of the World Wide Web (WWW) as a channel of distribution is investigated. Two research questions are studied: (1) comparison of two non-store retailing channels with two store channels and the importance of risk relievers for each store type, and (2) consumer reaction when channel functions are transferred to the Internet. Respondents were asked to ignore security considerations in their evaluations of the Internet offers. An electronic mail questionnaire was used for data collection. Results indicate that WWW offers with a mix of risk relievers are evaluated favorably and can even challenge specialty store alternatives. Current Internet users do not seem to consider buying on the WWW to be equivalent to buying through mail order. Hence, the WWW medium may well represent the breakthrough of non-store retailing. Furthermore, the results confirm earlier findings that money-back guarantee is the most important risk reliever, followed by offering a well-known brand and a price reduction. As part of the second research question, different levels of channel functions performed by the Internet are evaluated, and the findings of this study reveal that the Internet as a reservation medium is already highly accepted. Its acceptance as a physical delivery channel is considerably lower.

Strategies for reducing consumers’ risk aversion in Internet shopping

Using experimental design and conjoint analysis, this paper studies the risk perception of Singaporean consumers on Internet shopping, and tests the effectiveness of several risk‐reducing strategies that Internet marketers could use in promoting online shopping among consumers. The results show that Singaporean consumers with a higher degree of risk aversion than others tend to perceive Internet shopping to be a risky activity. However, Internet marketers could rely on using reference group appeal as the most preferred risk relievers for this group of consumers, particularly by getting expert users to endorse the products involved. In addition, the marketer’s reputation, the brand’s image, and specific warranty strategies are also effective risk relievers for the potential Internet shoppers.

Determinants of the Buy/Non-Buy Decision in Purchasing Low Involvement Products by Mail Catalogue Retailing

Various factors, some objective and some perceptional, influence the decision of consumers to buy or not to buy by mail order. Consumers, in their “pre-response” evaluation, are confronted with various types of perceived risk and, if available, various risk relievers to minimise the perceived impact of the risks This article deals with determinants of the buy / non-buy decision in low involvement products in direct order retailing as dependent variable by using biographical and attitudinal variables as explanatory variables in a logistic regression framework.

Consumers' perceptions of mail‐order speciality foods

The objectives of the study are to examine consumers' perceptions of speciality food mail‐order products on the basis of a mail survey of “active” and “inactive” mail‐order shoppers. The paper identifies a profile of mail‐order shoppers, examines the influence of perceived risk and the effectiveness of risk relievers, derives the dimensions of perceived benefits and establishes consumer segments based upon benefits sought. The results reveal a distinct profile of active in‐home shoppers with resped to demographic and lifestyle variables. Shoppers perceive higher levels of risk with mail‐order shopping compared to in‐store shopping. Appropriate risk relievers are identified for both active and inactive groups. Consumers' perceptions of the benefits of mail‐order emphasis quality, uniqueness and convenience. However, underlying these attributes are four main dimensions of customer relations and service, convenience, nostalgia and uniqueness. Furthermore, it is possible to identify two segments of active mailorder shoppers in terms of a produd‐oriented group and a mail‐order‐oriented group.

Perceived risk and rise reduction strategies in mail-order versus retail store buying

This study examines the differential impact of perceived risk upon two alternative channels of distribution, namely specialty store and mail-order buying, for different product categories. Given the critical role of perceived risk in limiting mail-order buying, different types of risk relievers and their potential for reducing perceived risk have also been analysed. This study confirms the general belief that mail-order buying is not only more risky than buying the same product in a specialty store but it also indicates that the level of perceived risk seems to be highly influenced by the value of the product. Although mail-order companies may reduce this competitive disadvantage by using the appropriate risk relievers the results clearly indicate that risk relievers differ considerably in effectiveness. 'Money-back guarantee' and 'offering products with positive ratings of consumer organizations' are among the better risk relievers.