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Like many businesses, travel agencies need to segment their markets and develop marketing strategies targeted toward specific groups of customers. One targeting strategy used successfully by both packaged goods and services marketers is to concentrate on the heavy-user segment. Our study describes heavy usage of travel agents based on a survey of 184 adults in Singapore. Compared with light users, the Singaporean heavy users of travel agents were found to be more involved with vacation travel, more innovative in their choice of vacation travel products, more enthusiastic about travel, more knowledgeable about vacation travel, more widely exposed to travel information from the mass media, and to travel more frequently for pleasure. Demographically, in contrast to some previous studies of other products and services, this study indicates that heavy users of travel agents exhibited differences from light users. The implications of these findings for travel agencies are discussed.

The results of a structural equation Banking Services Model (BSM) indicate that factors such as perceived search benefit, search cost, and consumer knowledge of banking services play a substantial role in determining the extent of customer research on banks. By using the BSM, banks can better market their services by understanding the needs of the customer.

Most of the studies on the impact of personality traits on consumer behavior have failed to show personality's impact on consumer behavior. The hierarchical relationships between a global personality trait, its manifestations in a consumer context and overt consumer behavior is tested in a bid to study personality's role in shaping consumer innovativeness.

Heavy users are important to marketers of many goods and services. The purpose of this study is to present a profile of the heavy user of travel agencies to demonstrate the usefulness of this approach in market segmentation and strategy development in the vacation travel industry. Data from 185 adult consumers show that frequent users of travel agents for vacation travel are more involved, mor innovative, more knowledgeable, and more likely to be opinion leaders than less frequent users. In addition, the heavy-user segment takes more trips and gather more information about vacation travel from television, newspapers, magazines, books, and travel shows. Implications for marketing strategy and suggestions fo future research are derived from the findings.

This paper reports a study validating a new self-report scale used to measure innovativeness or the tendency to adopt an innovation soon after it appears in a specific domain. Data obtained from 247 undergraduate business students showed that the 6-item scale was unidimensional and free from acquiescent responding. Rock music innovativeness was positively associated with opinion leadership for, involvement with, and both perceived and real knowledge of rock music. Innovativeness was also positively associated with the following: rock music magazine readership, time spent shopping for rock records, money spent for rock records, and time spent listening to rock music. These findings demonstrate both nomological and criterion-related validity of the new scale.

A six-item, Likert-type scale was developed by Goldsmith and Hofacker to measure consumer innovativeness in a context useful for identifying the potential early buyers of a specific new service. A survey of 185 men and women demonstrated the scale's performance in measuring the innovativeness of prospective travel package buyers. Advertising and marketing implications are discussed.

Advertisers frequently use endorsers or spokespersons as credible sources to influence consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions. Corporate credibility--the reputation of a company for honesty and expertise--is another type of source [...]

This study demonstrates the negative moderating effect of general self-efficacy on the relationship between need for cognition, which refers to stable individual differences in people's tendencies to engage in and enjoy cognitive activity, and cognitive effort. This negative moderating effect of general self-efficacy has been termed “plasticity.” Scholars assume the relationship between need for cognition and cognitive effort is true by definition. The study uses data from 144 U.S. college students and employs moderated regression analysis followed by subgroup analysis to demonstrate plasticity. The results set a boundary condition to the generally presumed relationship between need for cognition and cognitive effort, thereby improving the understanding of how these phenomena are related.

The purpose of this study was to assess the relationships between perceived ease of use, usefulness, trustworthiness, and expertise with self-reported willingness to give information to an e-vendor, future e-vendor purchase intentions, and to recommend the e-vendor to others. Data from a survey of 70 adult respondents showed that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and perceptions of corporate trust were positively correlated with future purchase intentions and willingness to recommend the e-vendor to other consumers. Only trust, however, was positively associated with information giving. Perceived corporate expertise was virtually unrelated to how consumers evaluated their online vendors.

The spread of handheld wireless devices gives firms new opportunities to transact business with customers through mobile technology, also referred to as mobile commerce. This paper describes a study of the antecedents of attitudes toward, and intentions to use, mobile commerce. We used data from 296 US student consumers to test our model. The results showed that experience with e-commerce positively influences consumers' perceived involvement with mobile commerce and their assessments of its perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. These factors lead to positive attitudes toward, and positive intentions to use, mobile commerce.

This study assessed the relationship between two important constructs in social psychology, conformity and psychological reactance, which are suggested to be negatively related, i.e., a person higher in the tendency to conform will score lower on psychological reactance and vice versa. The two constructs were measured by multi-item self-report scales, the Therapeutic Reactance Scale of Dowd, et al.and a new tendency to conform scale constructed for this study. Data from a survey of 423 undergraduate students were used to test the hypothesis that scores on the scales were negatively correlated. The hypothesized relationship was positively supported by a significant but only moderately sized correlation (r= -.32, p< .001).

A survey was made of 69 men and 51 women undergraduate students who described their self-image using the 15 adjective pairs of Malhotra's (1981) Self-concept Scale. Tests of mean differences showed that the men described themselves as more rugged, dominating, unorganized, rational, formal, and colorless; and the women described themselves as more delicate, submissive, organized, emotional, informal, and colorful. These results are consistent with several descriptions of male/female differences in the literature, thereby demonstrating that Malhotra's scale may be a simple and convenient way to measure these specific aspects of self-image.

Using the Fishbein Attitude Model as the conceptual framework, this study investigated whether female fashion leaders and fashion followers differed in the importance they gave to 12 selected clothing attributes and in their attitudes toward buying imported and domestic apparel. A random sample of 641 female consumers completed a mailed questionnaire. Results showed that fashion leaders accorded significantly more importance than fashion followers to six apparel attributes: color, attractiveness, fashionableness, brand name, appropriateness for occasion, and choice of styles. Both fashion leaders and followers accorded similar importance to six other apparel attributes: good fit, durability, ease of care, price, comfort, and quality. Also, fashion leaders as well as fashion followers had more positive attitudes toward domestic apparel than imported apparel. However, compared to followers, fashion leaders had more positive attitudes toward imported apparel.

This paper reports the results of two surveys of female consumers in Florida to discover whether fashion leadership was associated with ethnocentrism or how consumers feel about purchasing foreign-made products. Age was uncorrelated with fashion leadership in each study and only weakly correlated with consumers' ethnocentrism in Study 1 (r= .12). In Study 1 (n= 641) there was no relationship between fashion leadership and consumers' ethnocentrism. In Study 2 (n= 286), the correlation was weak (r= −.21); greater fashion leadership was associated with lower opposition to buying imported products.

Managers of many tourism businesses would like to determine which vacation travellers are most likely to be the earliest buyers of a new vacation product. Goldsmith and Hofacker1created a short, reliable and valid self-report scale, the Domain Specific Innovativeness Scale(DSI), to measure level of consumer innovativeness for tangible goods, shown alsoto identify innovators in service businesses effectively. This paper describes the results of a study using the DSI to identify tourism inno vators, those travellers who are most likely to choosea new travel option when one appears inthe marketplace, based upon thedata ina surveyof 184 consumers visitinga trade show in Singapore. The findings show that the DSI was positively correlated with several hypothesised variables: vacationtravel involve ment, product knowledge, opinion leadership for vacation destinations, travel information seeking behaviour, vacation frequency and total vacation trips taken annually. These results substantiate the validity and usefulness of the DSI for identifying tourism innovators and extendits application cross-culturally.

Innovativeness and cognitive complexity are hypothesized to be positively related. Since both constructs seem to be multi-dimensional, the methodological validity of the relationship is an especially important issue. Two studies were conducted using different measures of each construct. In the first, 82 undergraduates completed the Innovativeness Scale, the Open Processing Scale, and the Rep Test. The correlation between the two innovativeness scales was high, but the two with the cognitive complexity measure were non-significant. In the second, 81 undergraduates completed the Innovativeness Scale, the Open Processing Scale, and the Role Category Questionnaire. The innovativeness scales were highly correlated, but no significant correlations were found with the cognitive complexity measure. It seems that innovativeness is related, if at all, only with cognitive integration, not with cognitive differentiation.

This study reports new findings about fashion leaders that describe their unique characteristics in an unexamined area: their self-concept. A valid and reliable self-report scale was used to measure fashion leadership for 376 college students. Analyses showed that this scale did a good job of identifying the fashion leaders. Additional analyses showed that fashion leaders expressed a unique self concept; they considered themselves more excitable, indulgent, contemporary, formal, colorful, and vain than followers. The implications of these findings for fashion theory and merchandising are discussed.

Because fashion leadership among women is of great interest to clothing researchers and retailers alike, much effort has been devoted to studying the demographic characteristics of women who can be identified as fashion leaders. Although demographic data provide valuable information, demographics alone give little insight into the forces that motivate women to become fashion leaders. Beyond demographic factors, personal and social values have been argued to have an important influence on the strength and direction of consumer behavior. Few studies, however, have attempted to reveal the social values of fashion leaders. Our study examines the relationships between fashion leadership and the nine social values measured by Kahle's List of Values. Data from 248 women whose ages ranged from 16 to 85 years confirmed that younger women are more likely to be fashion leaders and that level of education and income are unrelated to fashion leadership. Fashion leaders were also found to be more active in fashion-related behaviors (spending for clothing, reading fashion magazines, spending time shopping, buying new fashion items). Finally, fashion leadership was associated with the social values of excitement and fun/enjoyment in life. The study suggests ways this knowledge about values can be incorporated into marketing and retail strategies.

Data from 125 sales representatives of 9 firms suggest that the difference between their scores and those of their sales managers on the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory moderates the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance.

The Kirton Adaptation-Innovation Inventory (Kirton, 1976) has demonstrated utility for identifying stylistic differences in individual approaches to problem-solving. The present study examined the influence of acquiescent response style (Yeasaying) on this instrument among 89 American undergraduates and found little or no evidence that the KAI is affected by yeasaying.

Intercorrelations of four scales purporting to measure innovativeness indicate that they generally exhibit convergent validity in two samples of student subjects.

The Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI) was evaluated for its factorial composition, internal consistency, and relationship with self-esteem compared with previous studies. Data was from a random sample of adults (n= 214) in a southern city. Results of the factor analysis revealed the scale to have high factorial stability across populations. The scale was found to be highly internally consistent, and a positive correlation with the Rosenberg Self-esteem scale was successfully replicated. These findings provide evidence for the construct validity of the scale.

Two studies of yeasaying are reported. Data from 36 college students supported the hypothesis that scores on a yeasaying measure would be positively correlated (.58) with a measure of dogmatism. Data from 133 college students confirmed that yeasaying is moderately correlated with “true” responses to socially undesirable items (−.38) and that social desirability and faking are positively correlated (.53). Yeasaying was also positively correlated with extraversion (.35) and neuroticism (.31).

Consumers' self-assessments of materialism and status consumption may be influenced by external economic conditions. In this study, 239 Malaysian students were asked to describe their levels of materialism using Richins and Dawson's 1992 Materialism scale and status consumption using Eastman, Goldsmith, and Flynn's 1999 Status Consumption Scale. Half the students were told to respond assuming that they were in an expanding economy, and half as if the economy was in a recession. Comparison of the groups' mean scores showed no statistically significant differences.

The purpose of this study was to compare men and women on two concepts, self-perceived knowledge or what one thinks one knows about some topic and real or actual knowledge of that topic. A survey of 457 students showed that the men (n= 234) claimed to know more about financial investments than the women (n= 223) and also scored higher than the women on a test of real investment knowledge. About the same proportions of both sexes reported current ownership of savings accounts, stocks, and bonds, but men reported more plans to own stocks and bonds than women.

This study investigated the possible relationship between dogmatism and confidence. Confidence is related to the amount of information needed to make a decision. Rokeach's theories concerning dogmatism suggest that, because they resist new information, highly dogmatic individuals will report that they are more confident than persons low in dogmatism in their ability to evaluate a new product. 70 undergraduates were asked to assess their confidence in their ability to evaluate a new product and to complete the Troldahl and Powell Short-form Dogmatism Scale. As hypothesized, 15 subjects high in dogmatism reported that they were more confident than those (n= 16) low in dogmatism.

Researchers interested in discovering the motivational bases of authoritarianism have isolated the negative relationship between self-esteem and dogmatism as one possible source. Previous research has shown low self-esteem associated with high dogmatism. This study replicates the finding successfully using different tests and a different population of students.

The I-O Social Preference Scale has been a preferred measure of social character. The scale, however, has been used without evaluation of its reliability as internal consistency. Using data from 70 students and 73 adults alpha coefficients (.58 and .62, respectively) were low.

A survey of 457 students showed very little overlap between innovativeness regarding restaurants and fashion, thereby substantiating the empirical generalization that innovativeness is domain-specific.

This study tested the hypothesis that high self-monitoring individuals would score higher on a measure of innovativeness than low self-monitoring individuals. A two-way analysis of covariance with social desirability as the covariate confirmed the hypothesis for both male and female college students (n= 187).

Scores on the Sensing-Intuition scale of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator were hypothesized to be correlated with scores on two sensation-seeking scales. A random sample of 62 adult grocery shoppers was chosen. The sample was 75% female with a mean age of 39.97 years. As hypothesized, Sensing scores were negatively correlated (—.67, —.67), and Intuition scores were positively correlated (.56, .59) with the Arousal Seeking Tendency Instrument and the General Sensation Seeking Scale, respectively.