A model of consumer buying behavior is used to identify household characteristics that should affect deal proneness. The model treats household purchasing and inventory decisions like those of a firm. In other words, the household's purchasing decisions are assumed to be based on such factors as transaction costs, holding costs, and stockout costs in addition to product price. Household characteristics then are related to these cost parameters to identify households that are likely to be deal prone. The predictions are tested empirically by use of panel data for five frequently purchased products. The empirical results indicate that deal prone households can be identified and that the key variables affecting deal proneness are household resource variables such as home ownership and automobile ownership.

Identifying the Deal Prone Segment

Retailers’ private labels are unlike normal competitors to manufacturers’ national brands. From a channel viewpoint, retailers’ private labels do not merely compete on a horizontal level with manuf...

The Influence of Private Labels on Retailer Cooperation

PurposeThis paper aims to deepen understanding of the role played by new technological tools used in customer–travel agency (TA) interactions by analysing the TA owner/managers' perceptions, pre- and post-Covid-19, regarding the effectiveness of in-store traditional and innovative tools.Design/methodology/approachThis exploratory study is based on a questionnaire-based survey conducted among Italian TAs and distributed via email from September 2020 to January 2021.FindingsThe study highlights how, even among TAs, the role of in-store technology is gradually taking on greater importance, and it delves into the specific business and socio-demographic factors that seem to cause differences among agencies.Research limitations/implicationsThe study focuses on the Italian context, which does not allow for any generalisations. Furthermore, it is only the travel agent perspective that is observed and not the consumer's.Originality/valueIn addition to helping to bridge the literature gap, this study on in-store technologies focuses on the TAs sector, where human resources and human relationships play a decisive role in customer experience and interaction. The paper investigates the travel agents' point of view regarding the introduction of new in-store technologies; it also highlights their growing adoption and use, overall, despite the travel catalogue still remaining the main tool for interacting with customers. The study also shows how the advent of Covid-19 has increased travel agents' propensity to use digital technologies.

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In-store technologies to improve customer experience and interaction: an exploratory investigation in Italian travel agencies


Purpose
Extant literature on business-to-business (B2B) has largely ignored studying multi-homing through a psychological lens. This paper aims to outline the results of three constituent studies, which were designed to reveal potential differences in multi-homers’ versus single-homers’ loyalty behaviors in a B2B and supply chain management (SCM) setting; identify factors that differentiate single-homers and multi-homers in these settings; and examine the relevance and effect of perceived risk on multi-homing behaviors.


Design/methodology/approach
In Studies 1 and 2, the authors used a questionnaire-based survey to capture the perceptions of 503 and 458 SCM experts, respectively. They then deployed AMOS v.21 to perform structural equation modeling. In Study 3, the authors used a mixed-methods approach to interview 18 SCM experts and then applied these insights to a survey with 242 SCM experts.


Findings
Study 1 reveals that multi-homers’ loyalty toward their preferred SP has a weaker effect on willingness to pay premium prices and share-of-wallet than single-homers’ loyalty. Study 2 establishes that several attitudinal factors distinguish multi-homers from single-homers in a loyalty framework. Study 3 concludes that perceived risk dimensions promote multi-homing intention, which in turn promotes multi-homing behavior.


Originality/value
Through empirical investigation, the present research succeeds in establishing that multi-homing is a concern for SPs, deciphering the attitudinal factors that distinguish multi-homers and single-homers in a loyalty framework, and confirming the influence of perceived risk dimensions on multi-homing. Thus, the study has several theoretical and practical implications for B2B services in emerging economies.


Multi-homing in B2B services: a psychological perspective

Recommender systems have become an essential instrument to connect people to the items that they need. Online grocery shopping is one scenario where this is very clear. So-called user-centered recommendations take a user as input and suggest items based on the user’s preferences. Such user-centered recommendations have received significant attention and uptake. Instead, we focus on an item-centered recommendation task, again in the grocery-shopping scenario. In the reverse next-period recommendation (RNPR) task, we are given an item and have to identify potential users who would like to consume it in the next period. We consider three sub-tasks of the overall reverse next-period recommendation (RNPR) task, (i) Expl-RNPR, (ii) Rep-RNPR, and (iii) Mixed-RNPR, where we consider different types of target users, i.e., (i) explore users, who are new to a given item, (ii) repeat users, who previously purchased a given item, and (iii) both explore users and repeat users. To address the Expl-RNPR task, we propose a habit-interest fusion model that employs frequency information to capture the repetition-exploration habits of users and that uses pre-trained item embeddings to model the user’s interests. For the Mixed-RNPR task, we propose a repetition-exploration user ranking algorithm to decouple the repetition and exploration task and investigate the tradeoff between targeting different types of users for a given item. Furthermore, to reduce the computational cost at inference, we analyze the repetition behavior from both user and item perspectives and then introduce a repetition-based candidate filtering method for each sub-task. We conduct experiments on two public grocery-shopping datasets. Our experimental results not only demonstrate the difference between repetition and exploration, but also the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

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Who Will Purchase This Item Next? Reverse Next Period Recommendation in Grocery Shopping

Behavioural and psychographic characteristics of supermarket catalogue users

Abstract The role of the catalog in retail advertising remains important, even as advertising is gradually shifting to digital formats. The overarching objective of this study is to synthesize current practices in supermarket catalogs, identify key trends in content, composition, format, and layout, and compare results across countries. This paper investigates the content of 39 catalogs from 13 supermarket chains in five countries (Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States). The coding scheme and variables are based on main design elements in print advertising to examine the catalogs objectively. The results show that catalogs are not merely a media to advertise temporary price reductions, but they have evolved into a media tool to promote supermarkets’ product range, including full-price products. This study applies findings from print media to the supermarket catalog sector and provides a quantitative benchmark for typical content, composition, format, and layout, comparing results across countries.

Audit and benchmarking of supermarket catalog composition in five countries

This paper examines the relationship between the dynamic stages that arise in consumers’ lives, and the brand choices they make throughout their entire lives. Using a Classical Grounded Theory approach, researchers analysed qualitative data gained from 42 in-depth interviews in six product categories cars, TV sets, financial services, mobile phone providers, toothpastes and breakfast cereals. Researchers discovered distinct stages in consumers’ lives that influence the brand choices they make within a product category. Understanding when these re-evaluations occur, along with what drives new decisions, gives marketing practitioners the opportunity to acquire new, or re-capture ‘lost’ customers. Such knowledge is an asset for marketers, as it offers insights into the future purchasing behaviour of current or potential customers.

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Christopher Villani

Papers

Behavioural and psychographic characteristics of supermarket catalogue users

Audit and benchmarking of supermarket catalog composition in five countries

A Lifetime of Consumer Brand Experiences: A Grounded Theory Approach