فهرست مطالب بهرام رنجبریان

Though the customer experience and its components are measured to define, the antecedents and dimensions of customer experience require a comprehensive assessment in developing countries such as Iran. For this purpose, 23 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with the passengers of different Iranian airlines. In this attempt, seven dimensions of customer experience were identified – including sensory, emotional, cognitive, recognition, security, novelty, and relationship dimensions – through thematic analysis method. To identify the factors affecting the passenger experience, a list of factors was initially extracted from previous studies. The impact of the ambiance inside the airplane, marketing programs, staff, scheduling, planning and management actions, the scope of passenger choice, and physical facilities were extracted through the fuzzy Delphi method according to 10 experts’ views. The purposed method and the findings therein would contribute to the efforts of researchers and marketing practitioners, airline managers, and travel agencies in identifying the existing challenges in the airline industry besides planning to develop modern airline infrastructure and competitive differentiation.

ObjectiveThe tendency to use luxury cosmetic products is increasing in Iran, and Telegram has become a channel for offering and selling such products. Considering that the quality of online services is essential for the success of online businesses, this study sought to design a model of customer emotions' impact on their online purchase intention and impulsive buying behavior in terms of luxury cosmetic products. The model was intended to emphasize the role of customer-perceived online service quality. MethodologyIn this study, a mixed research method with qualitative and quantitative approaches was used. In the first phase, a qualitative study was conducted to identify customer emotions and perceived online service quality dimensions in Telegram groups made for selling luxury cosmetic products. The statistic population consisted of active customers with high experience in buying luxury cosmetic products from Telegram groups. A purposive non-probability sampling method was applied to select 23 interviewees, and semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data. Thematic analysis was then used to analyze the gathered data. The statistical population in the quantitative phase consisted of the customers of Telegram groups selling luxury cosmetics. The sample size was estimated to be 385, which was provided based on available nonrandom sampling. A structural equation model under the PLS software was also used to analyze the collected data.  FindingsThe data obtained from the qualitative method were coded and classified as “group quality”, “transaction-related service quality”, and “interaction quality”. Also, the test of hypotheses in the quantitative phase of the research confirmed the validity of the proposed model. ConclusionThe findings also confirmed the effect of customers’ emotional dimensions on perceived online service quality dimensions. It was also found that the dimensions of perceived online service quality have a significant effect on online purchase intentions and impulsive buying behaviors of the customers. Finally, the effect of perceived online service quality dimensions on customers’ online purchase intentions and impulsive buying behaviors was confirmed by the mediating variable of perceived online service quality. Based on the findings of the current research on luxury cosmetic brands, in Iran, the positive dimensions of customer emotions have a greater impact on all three dimensions of perceived online service quality (i.e., group quality, transaction-related services, and interaction quality), compared to than the negative dimensions. Also, among the dimensions of perceived online service quality, transaction-related services have the greatest impact on customer purchase intention and impulsive buying behavior. To improve customer purchase intention and impulsive buying behavior and to increase business profit in consequence, online sales managers and the Telegram groups are advised to ensure customer satisfaction and positive emotions through their proper performance during transactions.

Most purchasing choices and decisions are influenced by customer analysis of the pros and cons and emotional aspects. Psychological and marketing studies have validated the role played by customer emotions at various stages of the purchasing process. The purpose of this study was to identify the dimensions and factors that potentially affected customers' emotions in buying luxury cosmetics. First, to identify the dimensions of customers' emotions, qualitative studies were conducted using in-depth semi-structured interviews with 23 customers of luxury cosmetics in Telegram groups. This phase led to identification of the dimensions of customers' emotions and a list of factors that potentially acted as the antecedents affecting emotions in the target population. In the second phase of the study, the factors affecting the customer's emotions were identified based on group consensus. The panel members at this stage were 15 marketing and psychology experts and managers of importing luxury cosmetic products, who were active on social networks and managers of luxury cosmetics in a Telegram group. The group consensus was led to 36 variables that were identified as the effective factors on customer emotions in the Telegram groups of luxury cosmetic products and were placed in 3 categories: group and product variables, situational variables, and individual variables.

Introduction:

Most purchasing decisions are influenced by customer analysis to identify the pros and cons of emotional aspects. Psychological and marketing studies have validated the role played by customer emotions at various stages of the purchasing process. The role of customer’s emotions is evident in the purchase of luxury products. Besides, emotions play a large part in shaping consumer’s experience and affect people’s consumption reactions (Ladhari, 2007). Today’s consumers establish emotional relationships with products and brands and makes\ choices based on them. Therefore, being aware of the role of customers’ emotions can be very important for product marketing (Lin & Liao, 2012).
A global consumption pattern that is rapidly expanding in Iran is the desire to consume luxury goods, including luxury cosmetic products, which have become popular among the young people (Khairi, 2015; Quchani et al., 2013). A review of the literature shows that the dimensions of customer emotions and the factors affecting those emotions in the luxury cosmetics industry, especially in Iran, have not been comprehensively investigated. In addition, identifying the set of variables that excites customers in the market and leads to the purchase of certain products is specific to that market, which may be determined by such factors as a large number and variety of products to choose from, prices, shopping environment, and other factors mentioned in the previous sections. Therefore, in each market, these and other unidentified factors should be investigated based on the environmental, cultural, technological, and other characteristics of that market. Hence, conducting a comprehensive research in the Iranian market by considering the different values ​​of consumers in choosing products and the obvious difference between the brands of luxury cosmetics and the studied Iranian brands in terms of creating excitement for customers and the factors affecting it can bridge the gaps. The current research sought to achieve such goals.

Methodology:

This research aimed to identify the dimensions of customers’ emotions and examine, prioritize, and categorize the factors affecting those emotions during the purchase of luxury cosmetic products from the customers’ points of view in the Iranian Telegram groups selling luxury cosmetic products.
To reach the research objective, a two-stage study was conducted by using thematic analysis and fuzzy Delphi methods. The purpose of using thematic analysis was to identify the dimensions of the customers’ emotions in the Iranian Telegram groups, while the purpose of using the fuzzy Delphi technique was to identify and categorize the potential factors affecting their emotions through the consensus of a group of experts.
In the first step, an in-depth semi-structured interview was conducted with a number of active and experienced customers, who had made frequent purchases from the online Telegram groups selling cosmetics.
The interview forms consisted of two main sections. In the first part, the respondents were asked about the demographic characteristics and the relevant information about the extent to which they used virtual networks in terms of hours per day, as well as the times they spent in the online groups of cosmetics shopping. The second part was designed to gain experiences of the respondents’ emotions during the presence-in-group stage and the purchasing process. They were asked to explain what emotions like anger, worry, joy, fear, etc. they usually experienced when they entered a telegram group selling cosmetics online, usually by looking at the products, reading comments, talking to the members, and comparing the prices. They responded by describing their mental states.
Considering the qualitative nature of the research, sampling was done via a judgmental or purposeful method. In the first stage, the sample finally consisted of 23 people, by which the interview reached saturation from the theoretical dimension. The data obtained from the interviews were then coded in this step.

Findings:

In this study, considering the research objective and consulting the research supervisors, the expert panel members were determined to be 15 specialists with expertise in marketing and/or psychology, companies importing luxury cosmetic products active in virtual networks, and active managers of Telegram groups selling luxury cosmetics via the fuzzy Delphi technique. The validity and reliability of each step were also evaluated and confirmed.
For thematic analysis, all the interviews were recorded in writing and the resulting texts were read several times to determine the general pattern in the text of the interviews. Then, based on the patterns observed in the general framework of the interviews, a list of primary codes was created. In this step and in the first step, a total of 454 codes were identified. In the next step, these codes were categorized into groups with similar and coherent concepts and refined into 33 codes. The output of this stage included 11 secondary themes, which led to 2 organizing themes of "positive excitement" and "negative excitement" for the overarching theme of customer emotions.

Conclusion:

By considering the related studies and for expanding the previous concepts, this study examined the concept of customer’s emotions and its dimensions and components in the luxury cosmetics industry through a case study of Iran with regaerd to the international sanctions on the Iranian customers. The research was carried out in two stages by using thematic analysis and fuzzy Delphi technique. In the first stage, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 23 active customers with a long history of purchasing from Telegram groups selling luxury cosmetic products in Iran. In the interviews, some questions were asked about people’s feelings, emotions, and mental states during the stages of being in the group and the buying process. Next, by collecting the data from the interviews and using the method of thematic analysis, the dimensions of the customers’ emotions in the Iranian Telegram groups were identified and categorized in the two groups of positive and negative emotions and their components were determined.
In the second stage, to provide a comprehensive picture of the factors affecting the customers’ emotions and impulsive buying behaviors, the Delphi-Fuzzy technique was used. The initial list of factors affecting the customers’ emotions was prepared and provided to the experts in the form of a closed questionnaire with a 5-point Likert scale. After 3 rounds of evaluation and comparison of the opinions by the expert panel members, 36 factors were finally identified as the potentially effective factors that could affect the customers’ emotions when they were in their groups and chose and bought cosmetic products. The factors were prioritized based on their importance in terms of the impacts they could have on the studied concept and were classified into 3 general categories.

The current study aimed to apply the psychological life space theory to provide a comprehensive framework for the conceptualization of customer well-being in the banking field. A grounded theory including open, axial, and selective coding was employed. Theoretical sampling was applied to select candidates for an in-depth interview, and data gathering was done by purposive sampling followed by selective sampling. By following a qualitative approach, a deeper insight was provided about the role of banks in different domains of customers’ lives. The obtained results revealed that primary brand associations could enhance customer well-being by affecting six subdomains of customers’ lives, including consuming, social, communal, business, religious, and daily life spheres. Besides, it was found that five different images, namely, brand image, self-image, user image, bank’s employee image, and bank’s competitor image inside customers’ mind, could contribute to the changes in the customer well-being. This study contributes to the literature by proposing a new framework including new concepts and consequently, new relationships. Finally, managerial implications along with limitations are discussed.

The purposes of this research were to identify costumers’ critical criteria applied in bank selection process and thier causal relationships.

A qualitative study was conducted using grounded theory strategy. Following a purposive sampling method, data collected through a series of convergent interview with the 15 banks’ customers in ten cities of Iran who had different characteristics. MAXQDA software was applied in order to analyse the data.

This paper has documented various findings including introducing a comprehensive scale in banking industry and identification of two new constructs namely Citizenship’s Well-being Originated from Banking Activities and Comparative Images is the contribution of the study. In addition, 12 variables, 8 constructs, and their relationships were discussed through a robust qualitative method by reviewing literature. As a result, an integrated conceptual model was developed. Managerial implications for amplifying customers’ quality of life through customer experiences, bank marketing activities and word of mouth were discussed.

This research shows that bank image can be influenced by word of mouth and marketing activity with the moderating role of customers’ age and impacts directly and indirectly on citizenship’s well-being originated from banking activities with the moderating role of comparative images.

Today, the medical tourism industry is considered as one of the most important industries in the world and one of the highest income industries. The growth of information and communication technologies has not affected the growth of the industry over the past few decades and has provided the growth of electronic tourism. Given this position, it is necessary to elaborate a recommendation system template for e-tourism marketing as an issue in the country and to strengthen the strategies and mechanisms for promoting and empowering the industry through the information technology approach. This study aimed to design a recommendation system model for e-tourism marketing in Iran. The research is developmental in scope and is a component of mixed research. The statistical population was in the qualitative part of hospital managers and medical tourism experts who were selected by snowball method. They had an in-depth semi-structured interview. The qualitative results showed that the model of medical tourism has five dimensions including factors related to medical services, factors related to individual characteristics, factors related to internet information, factors related to tourism peripheral attractions, and factors related to travel facilities. In the quantitative section, a questionnaire based on the qualitative model was prepared and distributed among patients who referred to hospitals of Shiraz and Tehran for treatment and use of health services. Content validity and diagnostic validity were used for validity and Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability were used for reliability, respectively. The results of the quantitative section confirmed the model designed in the qualitative section. According to the findings of the study, it is suggested that the model resulting from this research be implemented and proposed by the proposed system, which according to the characteristics of the research, using the hybrid methodology is the most appropriate method for implementing the research model.

Today, university management has become a dynamic activity, and if managers want to adopt appropriate strategies and goals, they need to plan for strategic planning. At first, they need to be aware of their status. The purpose of this study is to identify the field of research of Islamic Azad University through internal and external analysis. In this research, a quantitative-qualitative method was used. The research community of all directors and vice-chancellor of research, students and professors was a member of the Young Researchers Club of Tehran and Alborz Provinces and 370 respondents were selected by stratified random. The tool used was semi-structured interview and a researcher-made questionnaire containing 74 items in four areas of SWOT. Based on Cronbach's alpha coefficient, the reliability of the questionnaire was estimated to be 0.98 and Content validity was confirmed by the views of academicians and professors. For Data analyze, were used descriptive statistics and SWOT analysis. The findings showed that the strengths of the university's research are better than the weaknesses and opportunities are better than threats, have more privileges. According to the results of the formation of internal and external factor matrices (IFE = 2.60, EFE = 2. 59), the research strategy of the Islamic Azad University in the offensive region (SO), which means that the strengths The domain of research overcomes its weaknesses, therefore, the field of research of Azad University can provide the basis for the development of the desired research activities.

The recognition of success factors of shopping malls could be a lead for investors and it also could prevent the bankruptcy of the shopping centers and malls. The object of this study is to design a success pattern for shopping malls in Iran.This study is applied and mixed or hybrid in terms of purpose and type of data, respectively. Statistical population is experts, executive managers and the customers of shopping centers in Tehran, Isfahan, and Mashhad provinces. Semi-structural interviews were done and the collected data was analyzed by theme analysis.  Furthermore, to examine the relationship between variables in the model, structural equation modeling (path analysis) was run in the Lisrel Software. Findings indicated that six factors are critical for the success of shopping centers including: 1) geographical situation factors, 2) owners and renters’ factors, 3) shopping center management factors, 4) goods and services factors, 5) marketing factors, and 6) design and architecture factors. Investment in shopping centers should be conducted based on the identified factors and investors can evaluate the feasibility of shopping centers’ projects according to the identified success factors.

The concept of consumer confusion has gained a considerable attention in consumer behavior literature during recent years. However,it is considered as a relatively new concept in marketing, particularly in businesses that provide intangible products such as tourism. This study aimed to investigate factors that potentially influence consumer confusion proneness in purchasing outbound package tours. It also ranked the influential factors based on their importance or perceived influence strength from the experts’ point of view through a two-phase methodology constituting of Thematic-Analysis and Fuzzy Delphi Method. As a qualitative method, the first phase was done based on data collected from 23 in-depth qualitative interviews with the consumers of outbound tours. This phase resulted in a list of drivers potentially functioning as the antecedents of consumer confusion in the target society. The second phase was based on group consensus acquired from a panel of qualified experts providing their opinions on a specific issue. In this phase, 15 experts of consumer behavior, tourism, and psychology were interviewed to provide professional opinions and responses to tourism-oriented questions. The group consensus was obtained after the third round of running the questionnaires among experts. According to the consensus, 23 factors had potential influence on consumer confusion in buying an outbound package tour.

Identifying organizational lifestyle is very important for all organizational stakeholders because it enables them to plan their interactions with the organization accordingly. Organizational strategists, on the other hand, are looking for models beyond marketing and competition, especially in markets where companies’ products and services do not have a significant advantage over each other and the components of integrated marketing are very similar. This is to understand the difference between the competitive advantage of brands and their competitive position in the market. Therefore, the present study seeks to design a comprehensive model and framework in the form of lifestyle for the organizations to use to strengthen their ability to determine the decisions and organizational behaviors for the stakeholders. The first question of the research is: "What are the indicators of determining the lifestyle of the organization?". After determining the indicators, in the second stage, the research seeks to evaluate the identified indicators in the pipe and polymer fittings industry in Isfahan province so that the lifestyle of the active companies in this industry can be identified. Therefore, the second question of the study is "What is the diversity of the lifestyle of companies active in the polymer pipe and fittings industry?"

The present study is developmental in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in terms of method that has been done within three stages. In the first stage, the research population includes a sample of 15 management experts in Isfahan province who were selected based on their target method so as to identify the lifestyle variables of the organization; in the second stage, to discover the hidden dimensions of the organizational lifestyle, a sample of 300 industrial and commercial managers in Isfahan was randomly selected; and in the third stage, all the 47 units of companies were selected to determine the lifestyle of polymer pipe and polymer fittings producers in Isfahan province. The content validity index, exploratory factor analysis, and Key-Mines clustering analysis were used in the three stages, respectively, to analyze the data. The questionnaire was used to collect data in all three stages, the validity of which was confirmed using the content validity ratio index and its reliability was confirmed through Cronbach’s alpha coefficient.

Regarding the organizational lifestyle indicators, six factors or indicators determining the organizational lifestyle were identified which include the organizations’ interaction with humans, the organization’s interaction with technology, the organization’s interaction with money and capital, the organization’s interaction with the market and industry, the organization’s interaction with the environment, and the organization’s interaction with the future trends. Regarding the diversity of lifestyles in Isfahan polymer pipes and fittings companies, six different lifestyles were identified using the diamond pattern of the organizations’ lifestyle indicators including: undecided, entrepreneurial, self-evident, mediating, pioneering and competitive.

The undecided group includes companies that do not pay any attention to any of the six indicators of the organizational diamond lifestyle model. These companies do not have any specific program in the six areas of the diamond pattern and there is a kind of uncertainty in all of their interactive areas. The Entrepreneurial group includes companies that show a relatively high level of attention to four factors of the organizational interaction with human, market and industry, future and money and capital among the six indicators of the lifestyle diamond patterns; and pay little attention to other indicators. Entrepreneurial companies are very systematic and humanistic in terms of social structure, innovative and transformational in terms of competitiveness, and risk-taking and forward-looking in terms of finance. Based on the calculated average behavior, the self-reported group has the highest behavioral attention among the indicators of lifestyle diamond pattern to the three factors of market and industry, environment and future trends. From the personality perspective, the behavior of these organizations is very similar to self-reported characters or dramatic characters due to their great attention to the external interactions of the organization and their interest in creating an appropriate image of the organization in a professional and public environment. The largest number of intermediaries belongs to companies that pay special attention to the two indicators of interaction with money and capital and interaction with the market and industry among the six indicators of the diamond model. The pioneering group pays special attention to all the indicators of the organization’s diamond lifestyle. Behavioral characteristics of these companies include comprehensive attention to all internal and external stakeholders of the organization. Competitive group includes companies that pay attention to the three indicators of interaction with humans, interaction with technology and interaction with the market and show only relative attention to other three indicators. Focusing on pioneering behavior, those who challenge market seek to imitate their competitive behaviors by reinforcing human expertise and intra-organizational processes.

Selecting a country or countries for entering foreign markets is considered a strategic decision that require significant consideration and deliberation. The quality of such decision will bring about some conditions and necessities for an enterprise and can potentially affect the possibility of advantage creation, exchange cost as well as the effective capability of transferring knowledge in companies. Although presence in global markets can be beneficial and bring many advantages for an enterprise, it can also be as much risky and pose numerous risks. Major risks that can be incurred depend on the selection of foreign markets and the status of presence in that markets, but sound decision making in every field requires identification of effective variables of the decision and having adequate and relevant information in that field. This research examines and identifies effective macro indexes for selecting export markets in steel industry and after identification and prioritizing mentioned indexes, will work on screening and removing markets in which Mobarakeh Steel Company won't have competitive advantage. Screening the countries has been done in two stages and finally has been presented a list of 45 countries out of 193 that are members of the United Nations and can be suitable markets for this company. The research findings show that environmental and political-legal indexes reflect much more importance among other identified indexes to determine target markets. Economical indexes mirror medium importance while social-cultural and technological indexes are considered the least important ones among others.

As non-profit organizations, universities have specific goals and missions, their performance must be assessed for exploiting their limited available resources and achieving organizational goals. The purpose of this study is to employ the obtained strategies for evaluating the status of research area in the Islamic Azad University using SWOT analysis and design the research development model of the university through social marketing mix. A mixed methods research (quantitative-qualitative) has been used for the study carried out in two stages. In the first stage, SWOT analysis is used and in the second stage, social marketing is employed given the extracted strategies in the previous stage. In the qualitative section, the statistical sample included experts (deputies, research managers, students and professors who were the members of the young researchers club in the first stage and assistant and associate marketing professors in the second stage) selected via purposive sampling and theoretical saturation. In quantitative section, the research was descriptive and field-based where the statistical sample included 370 respondents from university branches at Tehran and Alborz provinces and selected via stratified random sampling. According to Cronbach alpha coefficient, reliability of the SWOT questionnaire was estimated equal to 98% and that of social marketing was equal to 96%. According to the results of the study, integrated social marketing could result in favorable research behavior.

Tourism destination image plays a significant role in the choice of destination. On the other hand, tourist perceived risk is an important factor influencing his/her image of tourism services. Therefore, the present article aims to provide a model for better explaining the impact of tourist perceived risks on the desire to revisit the tourism destination with the mediating role the mental image of the tourism destination image. The statistical population of the study consisted of those foreign tourists who traveled to Isfahan city in November 2015. A sample of 300 people was selected from this population by simple random sampling. To collect data, a questionnaire containing 38 questions was designed.  Then, descriptive and inferential statistics were used to examine the research data and test the hypotheses. According to the findings, tourist perceived risk was classified into four groups of political, economic, hygiene and socio-cultural risks. Also, the mental image of the tourist destination can be divided into three dimensions: affective, cognitive, and conative. Furthermore, the research findings showed that perceived political, health, economic and socio-cultural risks have a significant effect on the desire to revisit the destination of tourism with the mediating role of the affective, cognitive, and conative image of the tourist destination

Risk is an inherent factor in the traveler's choice of destination. Tourism destinations differ in many aspects including their location, economic condition, cultural and political status and crime. Given such differences, the analysis of destination risk and its dimensions is of substantial interest. The current study explores the risk factors perceived about Iran as a tourism destination using the mixed methods of qualitative content analysis and exploratory/confirmatory factor analysis. The results of qualitative and quantitative studies indicated that the potential tourists perceive eight types of risk factors about Iran, including the risk of human rights violation, satisfaction, inappropriate dress, inaccessibility to cash, crime, communication, securing visa and social risk.

Destination managers would like to have a better understaning of the factors affecting destination choice by tourists. In the conventional demand side models, factors such as the income level in tourist origin countries, the price level in the destination and the exchange rate have been introduced as the core effective factors. Here some important theoretical bases such as Lancaster’s theory of demand for multi dimensional products are ignored or not prefered because of the difficulties in practice. The following article would first focus on the theoretical basis of tourists’ destination choice and then will study the destination choice factors for tourists who visits Isfahan as a cultural historical destination. The sample volume was determined according to Morgan’s schedule for infinite societies, and the sufficiency of sample was checked by KMO statistics. The questionnaire’s face was confirmed by research team advisors and the reliability of questionnaire has been tested by Cronbach's Alpha test.Using factor analysis for a data set of 384 cultural heritage tourists, we found that: price level at the destination, authenticity and uniqueness of attractions, safety and security, attitude of local people and authorities toward the tourists, and level of tourism services at the destination are the most important factors in choosing cultural-historical destinations. The results indicate that 57.414 percent of all affecting factors on destination choice have been explained by the introduced factors in this paper. Key Words:

It has been a long time since competitiveness measurement concept was introduced to the tourism research literature for the first time. Since the introduction of the first model by Porter in the 1990s, several models have been developed for various destinations. A domestic model however, has not been developed yet for Iran's tourism destinations based on the specific variables of Iran. For this purpose, as the first stage of the present study, in order to derive the variables for the domestic model, library studies have been utilized by reviewing the valid models in the literature and the selection of variables appropriate to the tourism destinations of Iran. Then, in order to complete the variables, qualitative interviews with tourism experts, public sector managers and private sector activists were carried out until theoretical saturation was reached. For the purpose of placing the variables into the indices, the CFA method has been used. For collecting the quantitative variables, library resources and formal statistics have been gathered, and for qualitative data, a structured questionnaire filled by the destinations’ tourists has been applied. The indices' weights were derived from pairwise comparisons executed by tourism experts and for the weights of the variables, the WEF method was used. In the end, the developed model has been presented in 9 indices consisting of security, infrastructures, facilities and destination’s services, competitive pricing and destination environment, human resources, environment, attractions and events, destination’s management and planning and information. There are also 64 variables in the subset of these indices.

Present study aimed to examine the influence of tourists’ personality traits on their information search behavior while purchasing an outbound package tour. The statistical population of the study were heads of household from Isfahan who had purchased an outbound package tour during last year. For the purposes of data gathering, John and Srivastava’s (1999) questionnaire for personality traits and a researcher-made questionnaire for perceived values were used. Structural Equation Modeling based on Partial Least Squares method was applied to analyze the data. The findings of the study showed that conscientiousness and neuroticism have a significant effect on the extent of internal information search by perceived value for internal search. Indeed, the results showed that conscientiousness has influence on perceived value for familial search. On the other hand, openness to new experience has a significant influence on the extent of external information search through perceived value for external search. The study affirmed the influence of agreeableness on perceived values for familial sources of information. But, extraversion’s had no significant effect on perceived value for familial and external information search.

Nowadays, due to the increasing competition in tourism market, marketers are looking for ways to influence on consumers’ decision. Variety and diversity of tourism destinations and significant role of information in facilitating the tourists’ decisions, increased the importance of understanding tourists' information search behavior (Jani, 2011؛ hamidizadeh et al, 2016). Of course one of the most important psychological mechanisms which guides behavior is personality. Based on the theory of personality traits, important aspects of human behavior and experiences can be described with a limited number of traits. These traits may affect the attitudes and behaviors of people in the field of information seeking. One of the most important theoretical foundations in information search behavior is the economics approach that uses the profit-benefit framework to information search (Erawan et al, 2011). Based on this approach, consumers are assumed to be rational. They evaluate the costs and benefits of their search when searching for information. Therefore, the perceived value of the information search process will have a significant effect on the information search behavior.
Considering family as an important consumption and decision-making unit, family members have influence on each other’s decision-making process. Even though, literature indicate, information search is divided into internal and external search, present study also examined household information as another source of information alongside internal and external resources. So, present study aims to investigate the influence of personality traits on tourists’ information search behavior in purchasing an outbound package tour

The research was conducted using descriptive- survey method. For the purposes of data gathering, some questionnaires were used. The first was John and Srivastava’s (1999) questionnaire for personality traits. Other questionnaires were researcher-made for perceived values. The statistical population of the study were heads of household from Isfahan who had purchased an outbound package tour in the Last 5 years. Convenient sampling method has been applied. In order to test the hypotheses Structural Equation Modeling based on Partial Least Squares method by means of SMART PLS software package and SPSS was used. Discussion and Results: The paper provides a model for measuring the influence of personality traits on tourists’ information search behavior in purchasing an outbound package tour. The findings of the study showed that conscientiousness and neuroticism have a significant effect on the extent of internal information search by tourists. Indeed, perceived value for internal search has influence on the extent of internal information search. On the other hand, conscientiousness and agreeableness have a significant effect on perceived value for familial as a sources of information. The study also affirmed the influence of openness to new experience on the extent of external information search by tourists. Finally, results of the study revealed that perceived value for external search has influence on external information search extend.

The results showed that conscientiousness has a significant effect on the extent of internal information search by tourists. The results have been confirmed by previous researches such as Halder et al. , (2010) and Gul et al. , (2014). The effect of perceived value for internal search on extent of internal information search and the influence of perceived value for external search on extent of external information search has indicated by previous studies such as Gursoy and McCleary (2004). An increase in costs of external search is expected to lead to a decrease in the amount of external search effort. Similarly, the internal information search is probable to decline with an increase in the internal search cost. On the other hand, the results highlight the effect of openness to new experiences on external information search. Furnham and Thorne (2013) believe that openness to new experiences lead to an increase in need to know.
It is recognized by previous researches such as Amaro and Duarte (2012) that neuroticism and extraversionness have a significant effect on the extent of external information search. But the results of this study doesn't confirm it. In our opinion, this may be due to distrust of heads of household to travel agencies due to previous unpleasant experiences and not using proper promotional tools by travel agencies. Finally, the effects of conscientiousness and agreeableness on familial information search behavior have indicated by this study.
In sum, it can be said that although personality traits can influence the information seeking behavior, but these factors should be considered in conjunction with other factors such as situational, social class and familiarity with travel destination

The present study seeks to examine the factors affecting information search of heads of households in purchasing an outbound package tour. A sample of 60 academics and non-academics in the field of tourism was chosen. Sampling methods were judgmental and snowball sampling. In order to gather data, we used a semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis was applied for data analysis, and the collected data were codified and analyzed under four main categories. The findings showed that personality traits of heads of households, their preference for sole decision-making over collective decision-making, their motivation for providing family satisfaction, their motivation for taking better advantage of opportunities and their familiarity with the travel destination were among influencing personal factors. Familial demographic factors, social class, and family’s familiarity with the travel destination were among influencing familial factors. Situational factors included social factors, travel importance and time constraints; and travel agents factor encompassed their reliability.

Profligacy, luxuriousness and consequently, the tendency to use luxury cars have always been warned by benevolent religious leaders and the Islamic rulers. This research is aimed at discovering the reasons of tendency towards these luxury cars in terms of social and economic dimensions. For this purpose, a combination of two methods is employed. In the first section, using the qualitative grounded theory, socio-economic dimensions of the issue were identified. In the second part, using the designed model, a questionnaire was designed and distributed, then was responded by 320 people. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient, and was tested through affirmative factor analysis method. The results of the research indicated that three economic factors, including the importance of price, easy sale in the market, and the tendency to maintain real value of the asset are involved. Five social factors including the tendency to show off, achieving a certain social class, reference groups, prestige and change in the behavior of others were also discovered., Taking a critical-religious approach, this research proposed several ways to reduce this social and economic challenge

Nowadays, the customer determines the exchange conditions. Therefore, the use of traditional methods of service delivery can’t ensure obtaining the competitive advantage for the service providers. Customer satisfaction is not limited to the time of service delivery but customer experience encountering all parts of the organization plays a crucial role during customer journey. This study aims at developing a customer experience touch point’s model during the customer journey. The data were collected through semi-structured interview using a sequential incident technique with the bank customers. A thematic analysis was applied to identify the dimensions of customer experience touch points. The results revealed five dimensions of customer experience touch points including people, process, communication, technology, physical environment. The most significant dimension in creating customer experience in banking service is recognized as people dimension. The banking managers can carefully review the strengths and weaknesses in their organizations and properly allocate resources to improve the weaknesses and develop the strengths.

The study seeks to identify how Iranian consumers (Isfahan as the case study) perceive archetypes. Drawing on the Theory of Shape Symbolism, the study also addresses geometric shapes as potential elements in conveying archetypal meaning to the brands. Findings from several preliminary studies and seventy-seven semi-structured in-depth interviews in the main study revealed that, in spite of some similarities, Isfahan citizens are somewhat different in their perception of archetypes compared to western consumers. Moreover, the most and the least fitting shape(s) with each archetype were identified. Respondents’ archetypal associations with shapes are based on both intrinsic meaning stemming from shape’s attributes such as symmetry, angularity and number of sides, and referential meaning of shapes. In contrast to the existing literature on geometric shapes, angularity is not the only shape characteristic to affect archetypal associations and is not proved influential in all archetypal perceptions. The results of the present study are invaluable in brand meaning management in general, and for branding and advertising in particular.

Tourism industry is considered as one of the biggest and most diverse service-providing industries in the world. Given the economic importance of the tourism industry, identification of barriers to attract tourists and to gain market share become worthy of notice. Here, then, the social distance perceived by tourists to with local residents as a barrier to attract tourists is considered as the subject of this article to be investigated. . Due to the existence of cultural differences, tourists’ perceptions or attitudes toward different social matters are different from those of natives, and this may lead to social distance. Therefore, the main goal of this study was to analyze the effects of perceived social distance on behavioral intentions of international tourists who had visited Kish Island, at the southern part of Iran- with a focus on the perceived risk and tourists’ satisfaction. Social distance explains the cooperative behaviour and sympathetic understanding that exists between people (Sinkovics & Penz, 2009).Social distance is defined in terms of the affective distance between group members. ‘‘Where there is little sympathetic understanding, social farness exists. Where sympathetic understanding is great, nearness exists’’(Matear,2014).Thus, positive views of residents regarding tourists and well-functioning relationships between tourists and residents, together with low levels of social distance are key ingredients to sustaining continuous visits, promote return visitation and stimulate demand for tourist destination(Sinkovics & Penz, 2009). Since the perceived social distance affects tourists’ satisfaction from their visit, reducing this perceived distance can help to develop tourism industry. Also, it needs to be mentioned that the concept of “social distance” in tourism has been less noticed, especially on Iran, and this paper seeks to fill this research gap. So, this paper seeks for an answer to whether the social distance perceived by foreign tourists in the Kish Island has affected their satisfaction from their trip as well as their behavioral intentions for repeating their trip to this region.
Material & In the present study, a group of international tourists who had a trip to the Kish Island were chosen as the statistical population. Stratified Random Sampling was used for tourists’ selection of three famous neighborhoods named Daamoun-e Saaheli, Sadaf and Seffeyn. Considering Cochran's formula, 296 questionnaire forms for evaluating respondents’ responses were used. The statistical data were analyzed properly after measuring the variables.The data were collected using a self-adminstered questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire was evaluated using content and face validity, and its reliability was measured to be 84% by using Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient. . The collected data were analyzed by SPSS and LISREL software through statistical tests performed in two levels of “descriptive” (frequency, percent, mean and standard deviation) and “inferential” (structural equation modeling, t-test associated with level of significance, comparative t-tests and variance analysis).
Discussion of Results & The results proved that reducing the perceived social distance will be led to increased satisfaction of tourists. The effect of the social distance on the amount of the perceived risk was also investigated in this study. The results showed that by increasing the social distance led to increased amount of tourists’ perceived risk. The reason lies behind the increased mistrust due to low intimacy feeling between tourists and native residents. The effect of satisfaction level on behavioral intentions was also evaluated. The results showed that tourists’ intentions for repeating their trip to the region increased as their satisfaction level increased. The effect of perceived risk on behavioral intentions was also studied. The results proved tourists’ intentions for repeating their trip to the region decreased as their perceived risk level increased. In addition, the effect of social distance on behavioral intentions was independently investigated in the present research. The results proved no effect of social distance on behavioral intentions- that is, social distance, by itself, could not affect tourists’ behavioral intentions or willing to come back to the destination, without taking perceived risk and satisfaction level into consideration. The rejection of this hypothesis in the present study and in the statistical population of the Kish Island is due to the fact that cultural differences and lock of social relations between native residents and tourists are not the only factors that had influenced tourists’ decision about repeating their trip to the region- if not saying that this social difference some time could even attract more tourism. The effect of perceived risk on tourists’ satisfaction level was studied in this research. The results showed that the lower level of perceived risk would increase tourists’ satisfaction level.

Perception of risk is of paramount importance in decision-making process as it can alter rational decision-making pertaining to product and service choice. Indeed, Perceived risk is regarded as one of the most crucial factors for understanding consumer behavior. So, it is necessary developing a perceived risk model for natural customers of investment services market. The purpose of this study is to determine the antecedences and consequences of perceived investment risk. This study is a development-applied and descriptive survey. Statistical populations are customers of Yazd brokerage. In this research, questionnaires and interviews have been used for data collection. Also, structural equation modeling and path analysis have been used for data analyzing. The results show that risk propensity, trust, self-efficiency and awareness have a significant effect on investor's perceived risk. In this context, results show that knowledge and awareness of investors has the most effect on their perceived risk. In addition to, perceived risk has a significant effect attitude and intention to invest.

This study aims to identify and compare domestic tourists’ motives of travelling to Isfahan between men and women. The population of this research was domestic tourists who had traveled to Isfahan during April and May 2016, which among them a sample of 400 tourists was randomly selected. The data was collected by a questionnaire consists of 40 questions. To analyze the data, exploratory factor analysis and independent t-test were used. The results revealed nine travel motives for domestic tourists; historical and cultural motives, visiting relatives and friends, shopping, accompanying family and friends, recreation and having fun, low-cost trip, city attractions, enjoying a safe travel, and work motivation. The results also showed that there was a significant difference between men and women in terms of historical and cultural motives, recreation and having fun, shopping, accompanying family and friends, domestic attractions, and enjoying a safe travel. The results also demonstrated that there was no significant difference between women and men in terms of enjoying a safe travel, visiting relatives and friends, and work motivation.

Since market segmentation is essential to develop and implement marketing strategies, has always been focus of marketing researchers’ attention. The advent of new technology and emerging E-businesses, which accumulating immense customer data in their databases, made the market segmentation more fascinating for researchers. Since they found customer database as one of the most valuable asset that if being managed and manipulated effectively, can provide useful knowledge about the customers and prospects. There are numerous non-coherent methods of customer clustering and classification which has been proposed in different disciplines. This paper utilizes different clustering and classification methods and compares their performance in order to propose a comprehensive and integrated algorithm for e-businesses to exploit their databases in a competent manner. In the first step, regency, frequency, monetary (RFM) data is used to ensemble K-Means, Self-Organizing-Map (SOM) and Two-Step clustering methods and Silhouette index is used to evaluate the cluster quality. In second step, different classification methods vis-a-vis multi-group discriminate linear programming (MDLP) are used to compare the performances of the methods in terms of percentage of correct classification. The results show that the performance of MDLP is better than other methods. The problem of insufficient data in databases for classification purpose is also takes into account and fuzzy Delphi method is proposed to select the required data.