Buyer Satisfaction Research Articles

Impact of Impulsive Buying Behavior and Opinion Leadership on the Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Consumer Satisfaction of Smartphone buyers

<p>This research studies the Impact of Impulsive Buying Behavior and Opinion Leadership on the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Consumer Satisfaction of Smartphone buyers. Due to an increased usage of smartphones among the youth of India, it has become a challenge for today’s marketers to find out the factors which affect, directly or indirectly, the sale of smartphones. Partial Least Square technique of Structural Equation Modeling was applied using SmartPLS 2.0.M3 to understand the proposed relationships. Both Impulsive Buying Behavior and Opinion Leadership were found to be significant mediators of the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Consumer Satisfaction. Managerial implications have been discussed.</p>

Negotiable Auction Based on Mixed Graph: A Novel Spectrum Sharing Framework

Auction-based spectrum sharing is a promising solution to improve the spectrum utilization in 5G networks. Along with the spatial reuse, we observe that the ability to adjust the coverage of a spectrum bidder can provide room to itself for further negotiation while auctioning. In this paper, we propose a novel economic tool, size-negotiable auction mechanism (SNAM), which provides a hybrid solution between auction and negotiation for multi-buyers sharing spectrum chunks from a common database. Unlike existing auction-based spectrum sharing models, each bidder of the SNAM submits its bid for using the spectrum per unit space and a set of coverage ranges over which the bidder is willing to pay for the spectrum. The auctioneer then coordinates the interference areas (or coverage negotiation) to ensure no two winners interfere with each other while aiming to maximize the auction’s total coverage area or revenue. In this scenario, the undirected graph used by existing auction mechanisms fails to model the interference among bidders. Instead, we construct a mixed interference graph and prove that SNAM’s auctioning on the mixed graph is truthful and individually rational. Simulation results show that, compared with existing auction approaches, the proposed SNAM dramatically improves the spatial efficiency, hence leads to significantly higher seller revenue and buyer satisfaction under various setups. Thanks to its low complexity and low overhead, SNAM can target fine timescale trading (in minutes or hours) with a large number of bidders and requested coverages.

Salespeople, Fairness, and Buyer Satisfaction: What about Emotions?

ABSTRACTPurpose: Although most studies focus on rational decision-making in organizational buying, this research examines the satisfaction through the integration of fairness and emotion theories. It thus broadens knowledge about the formation of satisfaction in buyer–seller relationships, through an integration of justice and emotion theories.Design/methodology/approach: A survey of 130 buyers was conducted. The test of the proposed model relied on structural equation modeling. To examine the mediating role of positive emotions, we followed the procedure proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986). That is, we compared the proposed framework against two competing models: a non-mediated model and a saturated model that featured all possible causal paths.Findings: Results show that both distributive and procedural fairness have a positive impact on buyer’s satisfaction, following two different paths: a rational path with fairness acting directly on satisfaction; and an emotional path where emotions play a mediator role.Research limitations/implications: Buyers evaluate satisfaction through an emotional lens. Business relationships are not completely rational, a consideration with importance for buying and customer relationship theory.Practical implications: Sellers must pay attention to their customer policies from the perspective of their customers. In addition to guaranteeing a “fair” outcome, sellers must ensure that buyers are subject only to procedures that customers perceive to be fair. Indeed, since buyers in business relationships are not completely rational, business-to-business (B-to-B) experts should acknowledge the influence of emotions in their sales strategies.Originality/value: The mediating impact of emotion in the fairness–satisfaction relationship has not been explored in buyer–seller settings previously. Deconstructing satisfaction with the decision process into its cognitive and affective elements, we examine the emotional dimension of B-to-B buying process.

A Study of Effects of Service Quality and Ease of Use on Buyer's Satisfaction and Purchase Intention in Mobile Shopping Environment

A Study of Effects of Service Quality and Ease of Use on Buyer's Satisfaction and Purchase Intention in Mobile Shopping Environment

Multi-objective approach for broker dominant supply-demand matching decision

Supply-demand matching is crucial to optimize resource utilization and form long-term partnership. This study will contribute to the current supply-demand matching research by (1)generalizing the broker dominant supply-demand matching problem (B-SDMP); (2) proposing the B-SDMP multi-objective decision approach including (a) the mathematical model considering the satisfaction of important suppliers and buyers determined by the broker; (b) a weighted linearization method to solve the model; and (3) application the B-SDMP in practice. The results are the optimum matching decision solutions which can help the buyers to find the appropriate suppliers on one commodity. It could promote the formulation of long-term partnership of the three parties (suppliers, buyers, and the broker) as a stable supply chain. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach on a practical level, a seaborne coal transaction project is used. The matching solutions obtained from B-SDMP analysis are practically feasible.

Validating the relationship between trust, commitment, economic and non-economic satisfaction in South African buyer-supplier relationships

PurposeThe paper aims to validate the relationship between satisfaction, trust and commitment in South African business buyer–supplier relationships. Satisfaction was looked at from the dual perspective of economic and non-economic satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachA research model showing hypothesised relationships between the constructs was tested using data collected from 250 large companies in South Africa. Structural equation modelling using AMOS software was used to analyse the data. The results provide support for the distinctiveness of both economic and non-economic satisfaction and the mediating effect of trust.FindingsThe findings show that economic satisfaction exerts a direct influence on trust, which, in turn, has a direct influence on commitment. Trust and commitment were both found to have a positive influence on non-economic satisfaction.Research limitations/implicationsThe tested nomological network of business relationship quality dimensions validates some of the recent findings by Ferro et al. (2016) in the South African context of buyer–supplier relationships.Originality/valueThe study contributes to a better understanding of satisfaction and its relationship with other relationship quality constructs, especially in the context of large companies in South Africa.

Economic and Social Satisfaction of Buyers on Consumer-to-Consumer Platforms: The Role of Relational Capital

ABSTRACTWe empirically investigate how sellers’ website quality affects buyers’ economic and social satisfaction, which in turn influences buyers’ repurchase intentions in consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce contexts. In addition, we examine how the effects exerted by economic and social satisfaction on repurchase intentions are moderated by relational capital between buyers and sellers. Data collected from 311 buyers on the TaoBao website provide strong support for the proposed model. The results indicate that information quality exerts a stronger impact on economic satisfaction than does service quality. Service quality exerts a stronger impact on social satisfaction than does information quality. System quality has no effect on economic or social satisfaction. Economic satisfaction can contribute to buyers’ repurchase intentions, but the impact of social satisfaction on repurchase intentions is insignificant. Furthermore, relational capital positively moderates the effect of social satisfaction on repurchase intentions, whereas it has no moderating role in the relationship between economic satisfaction and repurchase intentions. Our study advances the theoretical understanding of the information systems success model in the C2C e-commerce context. The results also inform online sellers that they should more strategically improve website quality dimensions according to different types of buyers’ satisfaction and take advantage of relational capital in order to facilitate buyers’ repurchase intentions.

Transition arrangements to a new editorial structure

Transition arrangements to a new editorial structure

Comparing Open and Sealed Bid Auctions: Evidence from Online Labor Markets

Online labor markets are Web-based platforms that enable buyers to identify and contract for information technology (IT) services with service providers using buyer-determined (BD) auctions. BD auctions in online labor markets either follow an open or a sealed bid format. We compare open and sealed bid auctions in online labor markets to identify which format is superior in terms of obtaining more bids and a higher buyer surplus. Our theoretical analysis suggests that the relative advantage of open versus sealed bid auctions hinges on the role of reducing service providers’ valuation uncertainty (difficulty in assessing the cost to execute a project) and competition uncertainty (difficulty in assessing the intensity of the competition from other service providers), which largely depend on the relative importance of the common value (versus the private value) component of the auctioned IT services, calling for an empirical investigation to compare open and sealed bid auctions. Based on a unique data set of 71,437 open bid auctions and 7,499 sealed bid auctions posted by 21,799 buyers at a leading online labor market, we find that, on average, although sealed bid auctions attract 18.4% more bids, open bid auctions offer buyers $10.87 higher surplus. Furthermore, open bid auctions are 55.3% more likely to result in a buyer’s selection of a certain service provider and 22.1% more likely to reach a contract (conditional on the buyer’s making a selection) with a provider, and they generate higher buyer satisfaction. In contrast to conventional wisdom that “the more bids the better” and industry practice of treating sealed bid auctions as a premium feature, our results suggest that the buyer surplus gained from the reduction in valuation uncertainty enabled by open bid auctions outweighs the buyer surplus gained from the higher competition uncertainty in sealed bid auctions, which renders open bid auctions a superior auction design in online labor markets.

A Scalable Framework to Choose Sellers in E-Marketplaces Using POMDPs

In multiagent e-marketplaces, buying agents need to select good sellers by querying other buyers (called advisors). Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) have shown to be an effective framework for optimally selecting sellers by selectively querying advisors. However, current solution methods do not scale to hundreds or even tens of agents operating in the e-market. In this paper, we propose the Mixture of POMDP Experts (MOPE) technique, which exploits the inherent structure of trust-based domains, such as the seller selection problem in e-markets, by aggregating the solutions of smaller sub-POMDPs. We propose a number of variants of the MOPE approach that we analyze theoretically and empirically. Experiments show that MOPE can scale up to a hundred agents thereby leveraging the presence of more advisors to significantly improve buyer satisfaction.

The mediation role of buyer's satisfaction in relationship between structural capital with performance

The purpose of this paper is performing an empirical investigation on the impact of structural capital (supplier evaluation, supplier development, information sharing, network ties and appropriability) on buyer satisfaction and the relationships between buyer satisfaction and buyer performance (cost, quality, delivery, flexibility and innovation). The statistical population of this study is the buying managers of manufacturing companies in Qazvin province. One hundred thirteen questionnaires with multiple choice questions were distributed among sample individuals. The partial least squares method and Smart-PLS software were used for analysing the data in order to evaluate the relationship between variables and their impact on each other. Empirical results confirm that structural capital has positive impact on buyer satisfaction. Among the structural capital factors, the network ties, supplier evaluation and supplier development, have a significant impact on the buyer satisfaction while, appropriability and information sharing do not have significant positive impact on the buyer satisfaction. Finally, the buyer satisfaction has a positive impact on the buyer performance. The result of this study leads supply chain managers to correct understanding of the impact of structural capital on buyer-supplier relationship in order to improve this relationship and performance.

Attributes influencing buying of residential apartments

Several previous studies have probed different aspects of the decision-making process of home buyers worldwide; but we have a limited understanding of the factors that influence the choice of Indian buyers of residential apartments and their post purchase satisfaction. Extant literature on consumer satisfaction of buyers of apartments suggests that the satisfaction and willingness to recommend are impacted by dissatisfaction components; basic and lifestyle amenities; basic and value added features and external influencing factors such as promotion, distance, safety and security, environment at the location and financial. By deploying structural equation models, this study extracts the factors that buyers of residential apartment in India consider before purchase. It is found that the characteristics of the building have no significant effect on buyer's residential satisfaction. Further, characteristics do not play the role of mediating variable between external influencing factors and satisfaction. Factors like escalation in prices; clogged kitchen outlet; dimensions of built up area; readiness of sample flat; quality of after sales service; safety and security features and the environment friendly initiatives taken produce significant effects on satisfaction.

Attributes influencing buying of residential apartments

Several previous studies have probed different aspects of the decision-making process of home buyers worldwide; but we have a limited understanding of the factors that influence the choice of Indian buyers of residential apartments and their post purchase satisfaction. Extant literature on consumer satisfaction of buyers of apartments suggests that the satisfaction and willingness to recommend are impacted by dissatisfaction components; basic and lifestyle amenities; basic and value added features and external influencing factors such as promotion, distance, safety and security, environment at the location and financial. By deploying structural equation models, this study extracts the factors that buyers of residential apartment in India consider before purchase. It is found that the characteristics of the building have no significant effect on buyer's residential satisfaction. Further, characteristics do not play the role of mediating variable between external influencing factors and satisfaction. Factors like escalation in prices; clogged kitchen outlet; dimensions of built up area; readiness of sample flat; quality of after sales service; safety and security features and the environment friendly initiatives taken produce significant effects on satisfaction.

The Effects of Interdependence and Cooperative Behaviors on Buyer’s Satisfaction in the Semiconductor Component Supply Chain

The semiconductor industry is characterized by extreme competition in price and product features. Firms need to acquire or exchange resources with their supplier or buyer partners to stay at the leading edge of technology. Cooperation between buyers and suppliers is important and power is the mechanism that can explain the cooperative behaviors. This study aims to investigate how the power structure between the buyer and supplier influences the extent of suppliers’ cooperative behaviors, and the effects of these on buyer satisfaction with the buyer-supplier relationship. Opinions from firms in semiconductor manufacturing supply chain were used to investigate the proposed model. It is found that mutual interdependence between a supplier and its buyer can enhance cooperative behaviors and power asymmetry hurt firms’ investment in cooperative behaviors. Suggestions are then provided to semiconductor supply chain members based on the findings of this work.

B2B relationship calculus: quantifying resource effects in service-dominant logic

Increasingly, knowledgeable business-to-business (B2B) customers and evolving customer needs are leading to seismic shifts in vendor–client interactions. Across industries, sellers are changing their business models from a simple goods orientation to a hybrid goods–services model, placing greater emphasis on delivering complete customer solutions. In such an environment, companies must find ways to prioritize investments in resource development. The service-dominant (S-D) logic framework offers significant insights into this challenge; however, these effects have not been tested quantitatively. This study addresses that gap, examining the influence of various seller resources on buyer satisfaction. An empirical analysis of buying organizations that purchased and implemented business intelligence systems finds that “augmented” operant resources that the buyers ascribe to the software’s sellers—resources that go above and beyond expectations—are the most significant predictors of both successful technology assimilation and overall customer relationship quality. In particular, an augmented operant resource reflecting a seller’s ability to see value creation opportunities from the buyer’s perspective (value mindset) has up to three times the effect on relationship satisfaction as “core” operant resources such as product-specific expertise or basic interpersonal service skills. These results can help sellers prioritize resource investments.

Robust Location of New Housing Developments Using a Choice Model

We consider the issue of choosing a subset of locations to construct new housing developments maximizing the satisfaction of potential buyers. The allocation of demands to the selected locations is modeled by a choice model, based on the distance to the location, real-estate prices and incomes. We study two robust counterparts of the optimal location problem, where uncertainty lies on demand volumes for the first one, and on customer preferences for the second one. In both cases, the parameters subject to uncertainty appear both in the objective function and constraints. The second robust model combines a scenario-based approach with nominal, price-centric and distance-centric scenarios on customers preferences, and an uncertainty budget approach that limits the number of cities that can deviate from the nominal scenario. Computational experiments are conducted on instances of the Paris region to analyze the tractability of the problem and its robust counterparts, and derive insights for the new housing development issue.

Interfirm Structure and Buyer-Salesperson Behavior Impact on Relationship Outcomes

AbstractThe individual level interaction between the buyer and salesperson can best be understood in the broader framework provided by the inter-firm relationship. Very little research has been conducted that examines both firm level and interpersonal level constructs in the context of business relationships. The primary purpose of this study is to design and test a theoretical model that examines the effect of inter-firm structure and buyer-salesperson behaviors on relationship outcomes. The results suggest that in established relationships, the external environment plays a role in determining the how buyer-seller firms structure their relationships. The way in which the relationship is structured plays an important role in determining how the buyer and salesperson interact. Both inter-firm structure and buyer-salesperson behaviors, in turn, influence buyer satisfaction.

Efecto de la cadena de frío en la preservación de los productos pesqueros

En Honduras la pesca se realiza en las costas del Caribe y el Pacífico, en la cual el más beneficiado es el intermediario, ya que establece con los pescadores artesanales un bajo precio de compra de los productos pesqueros y realizan la manipulación de los productos sin las medidas adecuadas de higiene y conservación. La industria acuícola usa como indicador de la calidad la mínima presencia de bacterias como Escherichia coli y coliformes totales. Para minimizar la presencia de estas bacterias, la industria usa la cadena de frío; sin embargo, existe la carencia de un estudio que determine el efecto de esta cadena en los productos pesqueros. En consecuencia, el objetivo del estudio fue evaluar el efecto microbiológico de la cadena de frío en la preservación de los productos pesqueros y encontrar la satisfacción de los compradores en los productos pesqueros en el municipio de Choluteca. El estudio se realizó en dos etapas, en la primera se colectaron muestras de pescado y se trataron con el método de preservación de la cadena de frío y el procedimiento tradicional del pescador, se comparó el crecimiento microbiológico de Escherichia coli y coliformes totales a las 6, 24 y 36 horas postratamiento; en la segunda fase del experimento se aplicaron 383 cuestionarios en los consumidores finales del municipio de Choluteca, para conocer la satisfacción y preferencia de compra de los productos pesqueros. Se encontró que el método de cadena de frío reduce el crecimiento de colonias de bacterias y que los compradores finales están dispuestos a pagar hasta un 10 % más por los productos pesqueros tratados con inocuidad y cadena de frío. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5377/pc.v6i0.1845 Revista Portal de la Ciencia, No. 6, julio 2014: 93-106

Customer Satisfaction as Basis for E- Marketing Leadership (A Study Based on Marital Diversity)

This study highlights the role of satisfaction for building e-marketing leadership and empirically explores the differences in the customer satisfaction of online buyers. The study tries to discern how segmenting the customer based on marital status may help the online marketers for effective leadership and competitive advantage in the modern globalized market. An online survey instrument was administered to a sample of 200 online buyers from a northern city of India. The respondents were contacted both personally as well as through the emails, social media like Facebook, Whatsapp etc. The instrument comprised items related to online satisfaction along with few variables of demographic variables. The study employed purposive sampling which is appropriate for exploratory type of studies. The findings indicate that online shoppers are moderately satisfied from e-retailers. It is suggested that e-retailers must address issues of customers vibrantly so that customers become highly satisfied which ultimately leads to e-marketing leadership.

The post-purchase communication strategies for supporting online impulse buying

As online impulse buying and the consequent cognitive dissonance can be a critical determinant of consumer e-satisfaction, effective post-purchase communication (arguments) to reduce post-purchase cognitive dissonance of impulsive buyers hence warrants further exploration. The current research focuses on the determinants of perceived persuasion of the post-purchase arguments and impulsive buyer e-satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to investigate the persuasion of post-purchase arguments on online impulsive buyer satisfaction. A 2 (number of arguments)×2 (argument strength) experimental design was employed in order to examine whether the persuasion of arguments (e.g. the number and strength of arguments) would vary upon consumers’ tendency to regret. The results indicated that an increased number of arguments provided after the purchase had a stronger positive effect on e-satisfaction when arguments were strong than when arguments were weak. Such an impact would be less pronounced for low tendency-to-regret consumers than for high tendency-to-regret consumers.