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The analysis and determination of typologies of tourism consumers has been a major concern for scientists, specialists and companies as well. Knowing the demographic and motivational factors that determine consumers to buy tourism products can have a major impact on the marketing strategy by a more efficient targeting of customers. This article presents the results of a research that aims to determine the factors which influence the buying decision for tourism products and the clusters of consumers resulted from these factors. 90 persons have been surveyed pursuing the determination of the most important factors for buying a tourism product and the correlation between them. The factor analysis and the cluster analysis have been applied with the help of the SPSS program. The results of the factor analysis group the items into six factors. In a second phase, the consumers have been divided into three categories based on a hierarchical Ward cluster analysis. The three clusters have been defined and analyzed and recommendations for the future research have been given.

The use of electric cars has increased in recent years and has an accelerating development. Despite its advantages and growing trends, it still faces the challenge of limited autonomy range of batteries and under developed infrastructure. Both aspects are key factors in the decision of consumers to buy an electric car. In order to do so, consumers have to feel comfortable with the autonomy range of their electric car and the possibility to reload it, by having a well-developed charging stations infrastructure. Our paper deals with the perception of consumers regarding the risks associated with the limited autonomy of cars and expectation towards charging infrastructure. In a quantitative study, we analyze from two perspective the level of consumers' comfort related to the autonomy of their electrical mobility. On the one hand we analyze the different perception related to the autonomy of the electric car. On the other hand, we analyze the expectation towards the infrastructure of charging stations. As expected, consumers feel more comfortable with autonomy ranges of more than 500 kilometers for electric cars. For the charging infrastructure, consumers prefer distances shorter than 50 kilometers between charging stations, in order to feel comfortable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of service robots and chatbots has changed the way companies interact with their customers. Several automated tasks have been taken over by AI, such as communication with customers, processing of orders and also other automated tasks. To measure the impact AI will have on our society, we have analyzed AI's agency by testing different scenarios of AI's ability to perform human-specific tasks such as having own political opinions, religious beliefs and other situations which go beyond the simple execution of tasks. The results show that consumers perceive a low probability that AI has such thoughts. However, AI with stronger anthropomorphic characteristics is more likely to have agency to perform these types of tasks. According to our study, a human-like appearance enhances the perception that AI can have political views, religious beliefs and an own identity. Moreover, people consider that AI with anthropomorphic characteristics should be responsible for their mistakes and punished if they do something wrong. In spite of this, AI, independent of its anthropomorphic characteristics, is not believed to have the ability to solve mankind problems such as reducing pollution, stabilizing the world economy or to ensure world peace. Our research also shows that men are more inclined to attribute agency to AI compared to women, which perceive a lower AI agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of social media, influencers have gained an important role in the marketing strategies of companies. Their constant presence in social media, determined by the creation and posting of content as well as their permanent interaction with the consumers, has created them a great advantage and credibility in the eyes of consumers. The fact that they are not perceived as a form of marketing, increases their credibility and ability to influence their followers. In this article, we present the results of a research about the consumers' perception towards fashion influencers depending on age category. Our results show that fashion influencers have the ability to influence the fashion style adopted by the consumers, but not necessarily the buying decision. The fashion style of young consumers is more likely to be shaped by influencers, while people with ages between 25-40 years are least impressed by influencers. In a surprising way, even consumers older than 40 years shape their fashion style based on influencers, but are not influenced directly in their buying decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Celebrity endorsement is nowadays a frequently used technique in marketing and advertising. On the one hand, celebrities have the ability to attract attention towards the advertising while on the other hand, their behavior is imitated by consumers, having a greater impact on buying decisions. One of the main challenges in advertising endorsed by celebrities is the overshadowing effect, by which consumers tend to watch the celebrity and not necessarily the advertised product. In three eye tracking experiments, we investigated the attention of consumers towards advertising with celebrities. The results showed that the celebrity was the eye-catcher of the advertising, being the first and longest object watched, but at the same time the product or the logo was also watched. The results also showed that the number of objects in advertising influenced the attention of the consumer. Across the three studies, we manipulated the number of objects and the results showed that in the case of information overload, the participants tended to watch the most familiar elements, which in our case were the celebrities. Therefore, the design and the number of objects in advertising endorsed by celebrities are also important in having a significant impact on the consumer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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