فصلنامه تحقیقات بازاریابی نوین
پیاپی 3 (پاییز و زمستان 1390)

Innovation and new products have an important role in any company. Successful launching and marketing of new products require targeting innovative consumers. Difference in dimensions of consumer's innovativeness demands different marketing plan. A good understanding of decision-making styles of innovative consumers is imperative for such marketing activities. The main objective of this research is to investigate the effect of consumer's innovativeness on their shopping decision-making styles. Specifically, it aims at evaluating the relationship between two types of innovativeness, i.e. sensory and cognitive, and consumer's shopping decision-making styles. In this descriptive research which is performed as a survey, research population includes students of Islamic Azad University at the campus of Tehran Science and Research Branch of which, a random and proportional sample has been selected. A pretest has been used to check the validity and reliability of the research tool, i.e. questionnaire. Content validity and face validity of the questionnaire have been ascertained. Questionnaire reliability has been assured through the use of both retest reliability and internal consistency reliability. This paper integrates the consumer innovativeness and consumer shopping decision-making styles literature. It is built on the premise that if consumer innovativeness is regarded as a general personality trait, then it would also be reflected in consumer's shopping approaches. Test and analysis of the relationship between cognitive and sensory innovativeness and various shopping styles has been performed by the use of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using LISREL software. After investigating of eight hypotheses, only four of them have been supported. The findings indicate that cognitive innovativeness positively influences perfectionist and high-quality conscious shopping decision-making style; and sensory innovativeness, positively influences three shopping decision-making style (i.e. brand conscious, novelty and fashion conscious and recreational and shopping conscious). The findings of this research help managers to develop a deeper insight into product development and marketing. Marketing communication and brand management of new product should be based on two different types of innovative consumers (cognitive and sensory) and their shopping styles. The findings also provide valuable insights to marketing managers in segmenting and targeting their markets.

The subject of customer loyalty is a focal concern of marketers who seek to identify its antecedents and casual structure with the aim of better understanding of its relationship with employee loyalty, particularly in the service sector. In the service industry the role of staff in creating value is significant, therefore it is argued that maintaining customer loyalty is almost impossible without having loyal employees, since loyal employees offer higher quality services and make major contribution to customer satisfaction and loyalty. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between employee loyalty and customer loyalty in the service industry. Data has been collected using a sample of 303 employees and 356 customers of Shahrvand and Refah chain stores, respectively. The four hypotheses have been tested by Structural Equation Modeling and Pearson Correlation analysis. Findings imply that employee loyalty and customer loyalty are strongly interdependent. Also, there is a positive and significant relationship among employee loyalty and service quality, service quality and customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

One of the strategic launch decisions is the order of market entry. Adoption of a suitable competitive strategy is dependent on firm's decision on market entry earlier or later than competitors. This research aims to analyze the relationship between order of market entry and firms’ strategic orientation. For this purpose, three strategies have been defined as cost leadership strategy, innovation differentiation strategy and marketing differentiation strategy. In this study, the essential question is whether firms use a different strategy based on their order of market entry? The proposed model has been examined on a sample of 102 manufacturing companies in the food industry using Structural Equation Modeling based on the methodology of Partial Least Squares (PLS). Findings indicate a direct influence of order of market entry on adopting a particular strategy by the firms, so that pioneer companies tend more to use differentiation strategy at two levels of marketing and innovation, while cost leadership is more common among followers.

The aim of this article is to find the relationships between service brand equity and customer buying behavior of ANSAR bank. The service marketing mix is the starting point of the movement of organizations, which will form a perception on the customer’s mind. This perception shapes in the mind of the customer based on services marketing mix messages that will affect their next behaviors. For this purpose, a comprehensive model has been introduced to explain the trend from marketing mix to the next stages and finally to buying behavior. Some parameters have been selected from each aspect for further analysis using a questionnaire. 385 questionnaires have been distributed among 10 branches of ANSAR bank in Qazvin province. Cranach’s alpha has been used for approving data reliability. The findings confirm the trend of the comprehensive model. It has been concluded that word of mouth has a strong correlation with service marketing mix; this parameter also has a very strong correlation with buying behavior, while it has no influence on the perception and internal reaction of the customers. In addition, the internal reaction and perception of the customers have been found as major drivers for loyalty and long term buying behavior. The internal reaction is merely derived from customer's internal perception and has no direct influence on service brand equity.

This paper aims to investigate the influence of perceived value on users’ attitudes, considering the role of gender. The statistical population of this study includes master and Ph.D. students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. Using Cochran formula and classified random sampling, a sample of 252 people has been selected from the population. Data collection tools include standard questionnaire of Docoffe (1996) and Zhang and Wung (2005) whose validity and consistency were confirmed. Collected data has been analyzed by Smart PLS software. Findings imply that perceived value of users on entertainment and awareness as two prevalent strategies in web advertisements are positively and significantly correlated with the attitudes toward internet advertisement. Also, it has been found that gender has a moderating influence on the relationship between perceived value of awareness and entertainment and attitude.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the key factors influencing the adoption of mobile banking (as a new innovation in electronic banking) of the banks customers. For this purpose, potential factors influencing the adoption of these tools have been investigated based on a literature review on existing models. Descriptive statistics, one-sample mean test, confirmatory factor analysis and Spearman correlation test have been used to analyze the influence of factors on customers’ adoption, satisfaction and loyalty, by using two statistical packages of SPSS and LISREL applications. Data has been collected using questionnaire and variables have been measured using Likert spectrum and they have been classified based on customer behavior model. The results indicate that the service quality, trust, expected performance, conformance of task-technology, expected effort, facilitating conditions, knowledge of services, self-efficacy and individual innovation have significant influence on adoption of mobile banking, while sense of risk has less influence on adoption of mobile marketing compared to individual innovation and self-efficacy and has no significant correlation with customer satisfaction. Also in this study, customers of Saman Bank have been investigated.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of country of origin image on consumer based brand equity formation. Moreover, the second aim of this research is to examine the moderating role of product related consumer intellectual involvement. For these purposes, a conceptual framework has been designed and relationships among its constructs (i.e. country of origin image, brand equity dimensions and overall brand equity) have been hypothesized. Data has been collected using questionnaire from 602 college students who were the owners of the selected brands of laptop and mobile phone. Hypotheses have been investigated by regression and subgroup correlation analysis. Findings of exploratory factor analysis denote three factors of brand loyalty, perceived quality and brand association/awareness as brand equity dimensions. Findings have confirmed that country of origin image has direct and significant influence on brand equity dimensions and overall brand equity. Also, moderating effect of product related consumer intellectual involvement on the relationship between country of origin image and brand loyalty has been confirmed. This paper is important since it not only facilitates identifying the factors influencing brand equity formation, but also underlines the influence of product related consumer intellectual involvement from the viewpoint of Iranian consumers.

In this study, the advantage of long term relationship between employee and customer and its influence on positive behavioral outcomes for organization have been investigated. This study is a descriptive study which has been conducted through a survey. The research population includes 405 customers of four banks of Melli, Mellat, Saderat and Parsian. After data collection, the data has been analyzed using Structural Equations Modeling and Lisrel software. The findings indicate that confidence, social benefits and respect benefits have positive and significant influence on relationship quality, while special treatment benefits has not a significant influence on relationship quality. Also, relationship quality has had a positive and significant influence on word of mouth communication. The research findings have been analyzed in each bank.

Today, due to the growth and diversity of e-commerce technologies, the number of virtual stores is exponentially increasing and this has created new challenges in business. Therefore, improving customer loyalty is critically important for sustaining success of electronic stores. In this regard, an attempt has been made to propose an appropriate model for improving loyalty of customers in electronic stores. The study population includes faculty and students of Yazd University who have had experience of buying books from online bookstores. Due to non-normal distribution of data, nonparametric methods (sign test, Mann-Whitney, Friedman and Kruskal-Wallis) have been used for data analysis. Findings imply that 21 components have been extracted in three general categories, i.e. customer service, design and trust influence e-loyalty, which explain totally 70% of the structure of factors influencing e-loyalty in online bookstores. Findings indicate that from the viewpoint of faculty and students of Yazd University, indicators related to "trust" have the highest influence on improving e-loyalty.

Nowadays, strategic marketing management has become an accepted practice in the strategic field. An increasing number of researchers consider marketing strategies for offering key competitive advantages associated with strategic marketing management. Every decision in the strategic field should be based on three dimensions of evaluating market, evaluating competitors and evaluating company. In this research, a model has been developed for selecting and ranking marketing strategies considering the evaluation of market (customer satisfaction elements), competitors and company based on Kano model. Quality function deployment (QFD) and the analytic network process (ANP) approaches have been used for market prioritization. The research has been carried out in three phases. In Phase one, the Kano model of customer satisfaction has been used to determine which requirements of a product or service brings more satisfaction to the customers, followed by the evaluation of competitors and gap analyze. In Phase two, The QFD approach has been used to incorporate the voice of customer (VOC) into the marketing strategies of the company and has provided a systematic planning tool for considering the information of elements (in the last phase) to make appropriate decisions effectively and efficiently. In Phase three, the ANP method has been used to analyze strategic actions considering company conditions. Finally the outputs of QFD have been corrected by ANP weights. Findings imply that the three most important strategic actions which are important for the company include offering differentiated and new generation of products to the market (leapfrog strategy), optimizing visual properties of products, and widespread and attractive advertising (frontal attack).

Over the last decade, foreign market entry has continued to play a critical role in global economic development. Because of dynamics and complexity of entry modes and the influences of many variables, decision making on selection of international market entry strategies is a difficult task. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the strategic variables determining foreign market entry strategies. In every study, a different set of variables and findings has entered, which are often inconsistent. Hence, this study intends to identify the factors affecting selection of foreign market entry strategies and their influences on the selection. For this purpose, the content and types of foreign market entry strategies have been introduced by studying relevant literature. These strategies have been then divided into three main categories of export strategies, non-export strategies, and intermediate strategies. Then, the factors that make effect on selection of these strategies have been identified and classified. Finally, all factors are used to form two separate structural equation models (SEMs) based on the theory of Strategic Reference Points and respectively it has been explained that how foreign entry strategies are chosen according to these reference points. To support this explanation empirically, 42 export companies of food industry have been studied in Mazandaran. SPSS18, MINITAB15, and AMOS18 have been used for analyzing and testing the research hypotheses. Findings imply that uncertainty of host country, uncertainty of product market, competitive uncertainty, uncertainty of partner behavior, international experience, technical knowledge, marketing skills, total investment, competitive intensity, nature of foreign activity, attractiveness of location and business relatedness affect selecting foreign market entry strategies. Moreover, with our SEMs, Attractiveness of location, language diversity and uncertainty of the host country are proved to be good manifests of the companie's strategic focus. Uncertainty of host country, uncertainty of product market, competitive uncertainty, international experience, firm size, technical knowledge, marketing skill, total investment, business relatedness and the nature of foreign activity are good manifests for the companies’ desired degree of control over their foreign activities.

The main goal of this research is to review and determine the factors associated with tendency to forward the marketing messages in viral marketing plans of Fast-food industries. In other words, in this study, the effects of three critical determinants, i.e. commercial intention, attractiveness, and media richness have been examined on receiver's intention to forward marketing message in Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz. Findings imply that receivers’ attitude toward the message has positive and significance relationships with attractiveness and media richness. Also, receivers’ attitude toward the message has positive and significance relationships with intention to forward marketing message, while commercial intention has negative and significance relationships with receivers’ attitude toward the message and intention to forward marketing message. Furthermore, severity of forwarding message has positive and significance relationships with media richness and intention to forward marketing message.