ALBERT

Notes: Theories of marketing management and strategy need to evolve and change to keep pace with changes in the marketplace and in marketing practice. As the next century draws closer, it is apparent that some marketing managers are basing their relationships with customers on policies and procedures called either "individualisation", "mass-customisation", or as we prefer, "personalisation". The core of this practice involves tailoring goods and services to the individual needs and wants of specific consumers, just the opposite of one-size-fits-all. We propose that personalisation is so important to marketing strategy that it should become one of the featured elements of the marketing mix, alongside product, price, promotion, place, personnel, physical assets, and procedures, to form a new marketing mix, the 8Ps.

Notes: An emerging new strategic approach is termed "mass customization" or "personalization" whereby elements of the marketing mix are individualized for each customer. This paper describes an empirical study in which 608 adult US consumers were interviewed with regard to their experiences with and attitudes toward mass customized products. The principal findings were that attitudes toward mass customization were generally positive, nearly half reported buying a personalized product, these buyers were very satisfied with their purchase, and the most likely buyers of this type of product tend to be younger, more well educated consumers, with higher than average incomes. Managerial, theoretical, and methodological implications of these findings are discussed.

Notes: A common approach to analysing markets and selecting the most profitable target consumers is to identify and focus on the heavy users. Although this is a widely used practice in food marketing, no general theory describes the characteristics of heavy users of food products. The purpose of this paper is to use data from four empirical studies to test hypotheses about heavy wine users with the objective of developing a comprehensive model of heavy usage. The topics of the surveys were wine attitudes and behaviours. Data came from samples of students and adult US consumers. The findings showed consistently that heavy wine users were more likely to be interested in and involved with wine. When compared with studies of heavy users in other product fields, the beginnings of a general model of heavy usage that focuses on product involvement rather than demographics can be proposed.

Notes: States that social values represent desired end states of being or desirable behaviours such as self-respect, warm relations with others, or excitement. These abstract social cognitions help shape product attitudes and through them guide overt behaviour. Empirical research has supported this theoretical structure of values-attitudes-behaviour, but only for a relatively few high involvement products. A sample of 323 adult women shoppers rated the importance of the nine social values from the list of values; reported their attitudes towards snack foods, convenience foods, and cooking; and described purchase frequencies for a variety of foods. The shoppers' food attitudes were consistently associated with self-reported food purchases. Moreover, ratings of several values were associated with attitudes towards snack foods and use of convenience foods, suggesting that social values may influence buyer behaviour for low as well as high involvement products.

Notes: Tests ten hypotheses describing characteristics that distinguish consumers who have purchased apparel online from those who have not. A sample of 263 men and 303 women students completed a survey that measured their online and offline buying behavior, attitudes and predispositions. The results showed that the 99 online apparel buyers had more online buying experience in general. Online buyers did not differ from non-buyers in their belief in how cheap buying online is, in their overall enjoyment of shopping, or in how often they bought clothing by any means. The demographic variables of age, sex and race were unrelated to online apparel buying. A further analysis showed that the online buyers used the Internet more hours per week and were more likely to buy online in the future than non-buyers. The findings are consistent with previous studies of consumer Internet behavior and with consumer theory and provide guidance for e-commerce apparel strategies.

Notes: The purpose of the present study was to test four hypotheses regarding the effects of viewing Web sites on Internet advertising. We surveyed a convenience sample of 329 undergraduate students, asking them to recall brand names seen on the Internet, to describe perceived advantages and disadvantages of online advertising, and to recall ads encountered in all media and whether they liked these or not. Visiting Web sites appeared to increase aided recall of brands seen on the Internet and to improve consumers' views of the brand. Consumers who felt that Web sites improved their perceptions of brands saw more advantages in Web advertising, but they perceived more disadvantages as well. Finally, the consumers appeared to like TV and magazine ads more than the ads they recalled seeing on the Internet. The findings present a complex picture of Internet advertising that should be useful to online advertisers.

Notes: A total of 117 student consumers participated in a longitudinal survey of their purchasing behavior for three product categories: snack foods, CDs, and skin care. The Domain Specific Innovativeness Scale was included in the survey to measure how innovative participants were with regard to buying online. It was hypothesized that an innovative predisposition toward online buying would be associated positively with more hours of Internet use, greater Internet purchasing, higher likelihood of future Internet purchase, and use of the Internet to download music. The data analyses confirmed all these hypotheses. Few respondent demographics, however, were related to any of these variables. These results demonstrate that the Domain Specific Innovativeness Scale is a reliable and valid measure of this potentially important construct; and that Internet innovativeness functions as predicted by theories of consumer innovative behavior, thereby increasing the generalizability of these theories and yielding potentially important information for e-commerce managers.

Notes: Presents a simple and concise survey method for measuring price sensitivity and illustrates its use by examining the relationship between innovativeness and price sensitivity within a specific product category. The results of a survey of 457 students revealed a negative relationship between fashion innovativeness and fashion price sensitivity, thereby confirming previous studies. Additional analyses showed that the individual scale items and the short summed scales operationalizing the constructs possessed discriminant validity, enhancing the credibility of the findings. Discusses applications of this self-report method for measuring price sensitivity to other pricing issues.

Notes: Purpose - To compare and contrast clothing buyers who buy in stores, on the internet, and through catalogs so as to better understand these behaviors. Design/methodology/approach - We surveyed 805 US consumers. They reported attitudes and shopping behaviors. These were compared among those who shopped chiefly in stores, on the internet, and through catalogs. Findings - Consumers who shopped more and spent more for clothing did so via all three shopping modes. Buying on the internet was more highly related to buying by catalog than it was to store buying. Heavy buyers of clothing by all three shopping modes were more involved with fashion, more fashion innovative, and more innovative regarding online buying than light and medium buyers regardless of the shopping mode. Fashion opinion seeking and reliance on sales associates for information were unrelated to amount of buying for all three shopping modes. Research limitations/implications - The findings are limited to US consumers and the convenience sample. Other limitations include the specific measures used, and the cross-sectional survey method prevents us from making causal statements. The effects of other, unmeasured variables could not be assessed. Future studies could avoid these limitations by using data from several countries, representative samples, and additional variables. Practical implications - Brick and mortar stores have less to fear from the internet than often thought. Catalogs are more likely to lose sales to the internet than are stores. The most profitable apparel companies might be catalogs or physical retailers who add/build web sites, while pure play companies may have a more difficult time achieving profitability. Apparel managers should focus research attention on learning more about the psychology of their buyers. While involvement with clothing leads to buying more via all three shopping modes, it is more important for store buying than buying by catalog or internet. Remote buyers of clothing are less fashion involved. Catalogs and apparel web sites might wish to feature new fashions, but they may be more successful in selling "standard" or normal clothing online than the latest fashions. They might broaden the selection of fabrics and colors to offer buyers more choices in the styles they already like. Clothing innovators shop more frequently via all three modes, but are most strongly drawn to stores. Originality/value - Little research compares shopping across modes. Because modern clothing retailing involves all three modes, the study provides an unusual picture of this shopping behavior.

Notes: Describes the results of a survey of 281 adult women in the state of Florida. We used the 15 adjective pairs of the Malhotra self-concept scale to measure their self-image. A valid and reliable self-report scale measured their fashion innovativeness, thus identifying those consumers most likely to buy new fashions after they first appear in the market. T-tests compared the mean scores on the self-image adjective pairs between 30 innovators and 251 later adopters. Pearson correlation analysis was also performed. The results of both analyses showed that the fashion innovators described themselves uniquely as more comfortable, pleasant, contemporary, formal, colorful, and vain than the later adopters. The results were quite consistent with an earlier published study of college students, lending confidence to this approach to profiling fashion innovators and suggesting that using self-image could be a fruitful way to appeal to these important consumers.