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This paper explores the influence of product type and arithmetic task complexity on users’ perceived mental effort and satisfaction in the context of online grocery shopping. A two-factor within-subject experiment was conducted with 32 participants. Results show that experience products and complex arithmetic tasks are associated with higher perceived mental effort compared to search products and simple arithmetic tasks. Perceived mental effort and satisfaction are negatively related. The more cognitive effort users need to invest in their online shopping tasks, the less satisfied they are likely to be with their online experience. Our results suggest that cognitive absorption mediates the relationship between cognitive effort and satisfaction. The study contributes to our understanding of online grocery shopping by explaining the effect of arithmetic complexity and product type on user satisfaction. It also offers shopping website designers a way to improve consumers’ online grocery shopping experience by implementing simple technology features in their websites to help users reduce their mental effort.

This paper explores the influence of product type and arithmetic task complexity on users' perceived mental effort and satisfaction in the context of online grocery shopping. A two-factor within-subject experiment was conducted with 32 participants. Results show that experience products and complex arithmetic tasks are associated with higher perceived mental effort compared to search products and simple arithmetic tasks. Perceived mental effort and satisfaction are negatively related. The more cognitive effort users need to invest in their online shopping tasks, the less satisfied they are likely to be with their online experience. Our results suggest that cognitive absorption mediates the relationship between cognitive effort and satisfaction. The study contributes to our understanding of online grocery shopping by explaining the effect of arithmetic complexity and product type on user satisfaction. It also offers shopping website designers a way to improve consumers' online grocery shopping experience by implementing simple technology features in their websites to help users reduce their mental effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on product distribution channels has mainly focused on channel cost, risk aversion, consumer fairness preference, price decision, channel coordination, and channel selection while paying less attention to the product experience. Compared with offline channels, the online channel is at a disadvantage with regards to the product experience. For experience products, consumers cannot accurately access the value of the products through online channels because of its virtuality. In contrast, offline channels can attract more consumers with real product experience. However, the application of virtual reality technology has become increasingly more extensive in recent years. Virtual reality technology enhances the interaction level between online consumers and experience products, and it can help consumers assess product value more accurately, which has a greater impact on consumers' purchase decisions. Manufacturers can make full use of virtual reality technology to expand online sales. To maximize the manufacturers' revenue, this paper uses consumer utility theory and game theory to design four experience products' distribution channel models and analyzes the relationship between the manufacturers' revenue in different distribution channel models and virtual reality technology. The results show when the interaction level of virtual reality technology is low, manufacturers tend to choose a dual distribution channel, but when the interaction level of virtual reality technology is high, a single online distribution channel is the best choice for manufacturers.

International marketing manager decisions pertaining to a new experience product's global rollout are critical to the product's country-level performance. Extending work on the lead-lag and success-breeds-success effects, the authors examine how the country-specific factors of economic wealth and national culture influence the effects of a new experience product's global rollout decisions (i.e., the time lag from initial lead country introduction to target country introduction and the number of countries in which the product was introduced before its introduction in the target country) on the product's country-level performance. The authors employ hierarchical linear modeling and, from an examination of 259 unique movies gathered from 16 countries, corresponding to 2,523 total entries between 2006 and 2007, find significant interaction effects between a country's economic wealth and national culture and time lag and target country position on the new experience product's country-level performance. The authors conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile augmented reality (AR) has emerged as an effective interactive technology for providing visual information on products. As the importance of contextual information grows, mobile AR makes it easier for consumers to visually examine products virtually placed in their existing physical spaces. Despite the popularity and potential of mobile AR in commerce, there is a lack of research confirming that, in terms of providing consumers with shopping experiences, mobile AR is a more influential tool than the traditional method of product presentation. Based on the experience economy and task-media fit theories, this study examines the effect of AR information in mobile shopping on consumer learning, including enjoyment, compared to that of two-dimensional and three-dimensional information. Moreover, we examine the moderating effect of product type on this relationship. We conducted experiments with 212 participants to confirm these relationships. Our results revealed that AR information helps improve consumer learning and purchase intention in mobile environments, and the effect of AR is stronger for experience products than for search products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors present a general consumer preference model for experience products that overcomes the limitations of consumer choice models, especially when it is not easy to consider some qualitative attributes of a product or when there are too many attributes relative to the available amount of preference data, by capturing the effects of unobserved product attributes with the residuals of reference consumers for the same product. They decompose the deterministic component of product utility into two parts: that accounted for by observed attributes and that due to nonobserved attributes. The authors estimate the unobserved component by relating it to the corresponding residuals of virtual experts representing homogeneous groups of people who experienced the product earlier and evaluated it. Their methodology involves identifying such virtual experts and determining the relative importance they should be given in the estimation of the target person's residuals. Using Bayesian estimation methods and Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation inference, the authors apply their approach to two types of consumer preference data: (1) online consumer ratings (stated preferences) data for Internet recommendation services and (2) offline consumer viewership (revealed preferences) data for movies. The results empirically show that this new approach outperforms several alternative collaborative filtering and attribute-based preference models with both in- and out-of-sample fits. The model is applicable to both Internet recommendation services and consumer choice studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate a startup firm's incentives to offer free trial in Monopoly and Duopoly settings, and explore how free trial affects firms' pricing decisions. We find customers' prior belief plays a key role and the firm offers free trial only when customers' prior belief is less than a threshold. Under competition, we show that free trial may induce intense price war. The firm is more likely to offer free trial when the competitor's product quality is high. We also compare the effects of advertisement and free trial, finding that free trial is preferred when advertising is inefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As individuals increasingly rely on the Internet to access product information, search engines have become an important navigation tool to enhance information collection efficiency. Although there are plenty of user-generated reviews to help consumers evaluate product quality, individuals often seek further information using search engines such as Google before making a purchase, especially for experience products. With the accelerated pace of economic activities and the development of the internet and mobile technologies, consumers' shopping dynamics have been intensified. Therefore, it is of both theoretical and practical significance to track the shifts in customer interest with minimum time delay. Unlike previous studies that have used monthly or weekly data, we focus on the near-term relationship between Google search and product sales. The search requests recorded by Google Trends provide us an ideal database to learn the collective attention of potential customers in a timely fashion. Combined with the hotel data collected from Expedia.com, this study first investigates the relationship between Google search volumes and the related product sales with 48-hour time-lag intervals. The results confirm a two-way positive effect between these two factors. We further explore the influence of price discounts on consumer search behaviors and the moderate effect of retailers' online reputations. The results suggest that offering a price discount has a positive impact on the Google search volume of the promoted product, however the retailer's online reputation negatively moderates this influence. The findings not only have significant practical implications for the hotel industry but also benefit the experience products industry in general. Moreover, the findings contribute to the literature on consumer behavior in the online market as well as on online WOM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Helpfulness of user-generated reviews has not been studied adequately in terms of the interplay between review sentiment (favorable, unfavorable and mixed) and product type (search and experience). Moreover, the ways in which information quality relates to review helpfulness remain largely unknown. Hence, this paper seeks to answer the following two research questions: (1) How does the helpfulness of user-generated reviews vary as a function of review sentiment and product type? (2) How does information quality relate to the helpfulness of user-generated reviews across review sentiment and product type? Data included 2190 reviews drawn from Amazon for three search products—digital cameras, cell phones, and laser printers—as well as three experience products—books, skin care, and music albums. Review sentiment was ascertained based on star ratings. Investigation of the research questions relied on the statistical procedures of analysis of variance, and multiple regression. Review helpfulness was found to vary across review sentiment independent of product type. Besides, the relationship between information quality and review helpfulness was found to vary as a function of review sentiment as well as product type. The paper concludes with a number of implications for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study conducted two experiments to determine the influence of review valence, review quantity, and the interaction effects between the two among consumers designated as conformist and non-conformist. 4 4 For the sake of readability, we refer to people displaying a low degree of conformity as non-conformists. The results show that positive reviews are more effective than negative reviews in enhancing booking intentions and increasing the number of reviews can magnify the influence of review valence on booking intentions. Our analysis of valence indicated that reading positive reviews can have a stronger effect on booking intentions among individuals who are strongly inclined toward conformity. In addition, a greater number of reviews proved to be more persuasive among individuals displaying a low degree of conformity. Finally, the interaction effects among the three independent variables revealed that a larger number of negative reviews can be more damaging to the booking intentions of conformist individuals. In contrast, a larger number of positive reviews were shown to have a greater impact on non-conformists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates consumers' importance evaluation and usage of the Internet as an information source, compared with other traditional information sources. The main issue is the extent to which experience products can be transformed so as to be searchable on the Internet. The results of a web-based survey showed that consumers of experience products tended to use more online information than those of search products. Online information sources from other consumers and neutral sources were perceived to be more important and were used more often by the consumers of experience products; whereas retailer/manufacturer websites were perceived to be more useful by consumers of search products. Perceived usefulness, perceived ease-of-use, market mavenism, and usage of offline information sources were also positively related to the usage of online information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]