Kamel El Hedhli, Imene Becheur, Haithem Zourrig and Walid Chaouali
Although shopping well-being has become a focal construct in retail shopping studies, little is known about the key drivers of this construct. This study aims to further discern…
Abstract
Purpose
Although shopping well-being has become a focal construct in retail shopping studies, little is known about the key drivers of this construct. This study aims to further discern some of the key antecedents of shopping well-being by particularly focusing on the role of congruity. Furthermore, the study explores whether shoppers’ demographic characteristics moderate the effects of congruity on shopping well-being.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from a survey of actual shoppers in two urban Canadian shopping malls via a mall intercept. Structural equation modeling using SmartPLS was conducted to validate the study’s model.
Findings
Functional congruity has a stronger effect than self-congruity on shopping well-being. Shoppers’ demographic variables do not generally act as moderators in the investigated linkages.
Practical implications
This study can help mall managers formulate better marketing programs that would ultimately enhance shopping well-being.
Originality/value
The study advances the retailing literature by putting forward a conceptual model that remedies identified shortcomings related to functional and self-congruity and establishes new linkages between functional congruity, self-congruity and shopping well-being. Furthermore, the study explores whether shoppers’ demographic variables moderate the effects of functional and self-congruity on shopping well-being.
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Walid Chaouali and Kamel El Hedhli
The purpose of this paper is to address the following question: Can a bank capitalize on its well-established self-service technologies (SSTs) in order to entice customers to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the following question: Can a bank capitalize on its well-established self-service technologies (SSTs) in order to entice customers to adopt a newly introduced SST, namely, mobile banking? More specifically, it proposes an integrative model that simultaneously investigates the transference effects of attitudes, trust and the contagious influences of social pressures on mobile banking adoption intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
Structural equation modeling is applied to data collected from banks’ clients who are actually non-users of mobile banking.
Findings
The results indicate that attitude toward and trust in mobile banking along with coercive, normative and mimetic pressures are key antecedents to mobile banking adoption intentions. In addition, attitudes toward automated teller machines (ATMs) and online banking significantly predict attitude toward mobile banking. The results also support the effects of trust in ATMs as well as trust in online banking on trust in mobile banking. Moreover, predicted differences in the relative effects of attitude and trust are supported. Particularly, attitude toward online banking has a stronger impact on attitude toward mobile banking compared to the impact of attitude toward ATMs. In the same vein, the effect of trust in online banking on mobile banking is significantly stronger than the effect of trust in ATMs.
Practical implications
The study’s results hint at some practical and worthwhile guidelines for banks that can be leveraged in communication campaigns aiming at boosting the adoption rates of mobile banking. Banks can take advantage of the transference effects of the established attitudes toward and trusting beliefs in their mature SSTs as well as the contagious social influences in inducing the adoption of a newly introduced SST.
Originality/value
The present study represents a first step toward generating new insights into the role of the joint effects of attitudes, trust and social influences in the adoption of a new SST.
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Haithem Zourrig, Mengxia Zhang, Kamel El Hedhli and Imene Becheur
This study aims to apply McCornack’s (1992) information manipulation theory to the context of fraud and investigates the effects of culture on perceived deceptiveness.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to apply McCornack’s (1992) information manipulation theory to the context of fraud and investigates the effects of culture on perceived deceptiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 400 Chinese consumers and an equal-size sample of Canadian consumers were recruited to fill an online survey. The survey integrates four scenarios of insurance fraud and measures of perceived deceptiveness, cultural tightness and horizontal-vertical idiocentrism allocentrism, in addition to some control variables.
Findings
Results show that at the societal level of culture, perceived deceptiveness is higher in individualistic than in collectivistic cultures. When accounting for the level of situational constraint, cultural tightness was found to magnify the perceived deceptiveness. At the individual level of culture, vertical-allocentrism and vertical-idiocentrism were found to weigh against the perception of deceptiveness.
Originality/value
Understanding cultural differences in perceived deceptiveness is helpful to spot sources of consumers’ vulnerability to fraud tolerance among a culturally diverse public.
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Haithem Zourrig, Jeongsoo Park, Kamel El Hedhli and Mengxia Zhang
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how cultural tightness may influence consumers’ attitudes toward insurance services and occurrence of insurance fraud.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how cultural tightness may influence consumers’ attitudes toward insurance services and occurrence of insurance fraud.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on Gelfand et al.’s (2011) theory of tight and loose cultures, the authors theorize that perceived wrongness of insurance fraud, fraud occurrence and perceived risk of being caught depend on the cultural tightness. Using field data from a global European social survey (ESS), the authors investigate these differences across two fairly different European countries – Norway (i.e. tight culture) and Ukraine (i.e. loose culture).
Findings
Consumers from tight culture report less tolerance for insurance fraud (inflating insurance claim) are less likely to commit an insurance fraud, and they perceive higher level of risk of being caught than their counterparts from loose culture (Ukraine).
Practical implications
Understanding cultural variability in attitude toward insurance fraud, the occurrence of insurance fraud and the sensitivity to the risk of being caught could enrich the authors knowledge about how to prevent insurance fraud.
Social implications
Consumer protection agencies, consumer educators and policymakers could all benefit from understanding cultural variability in attitude toward fraud. This will potentially help to design effective learning and education programs to sensitize customers to the illegal and unethical aspects of fraudulent behaviors.
Originality/value
Insurance fraud is a universal issue and exists in many European countries, yet no previous work has investigated the effect of cultural tightness–looseness on fraud perception.
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Haithem Zourrig, Kamel Hedhli and Jean Charles Chebat
– This paper aims to investigate the cultural variability in assessing the severity of a service failure.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the cultural variability in assessing the severity of a service failure.
Design/methodology/approach
Two separate studies were conducted. The first investigates differences in the perception of service failures across two cultural pools of subjects (allocentrics versus idiocentrics) and within a same country. The second contrasts two levels of comparisons: a cross-cultural values’ level and a cross-country level, to assess differences in the perception service failures’ severity.
Findings
Results showed that cultural values differences, when investigated at the individual level (i.e. idiocentrism versus allocentrism) are more significant to understand the influence of culture on the perception of severity, that is, allocentrics perceive more severity in the service failure than idiocentrics. However, a cross-country comparison (i.e. USA versus Puerto Rico) does not show significant differences.
Research limitations/implications
Customers may assess, with different sensitivities, the severity of a service failure. These differences are mainly explained by differences in cultural values’ orientations but not differences across countries. Even originating from a same country, customers could perceive with different degrees the seriousness of a same service failure as they may cling to different cultural values. Hence, it is increasingly important to examine the cultural differences at the individual-level rather than a country level.
Practical implications
Firms serving international markets as well as multiethnic ones would have advantage to understand cultural differences in the perception of the severity at the individual level rather than at the societal or country level. This is more helpful to direct appropriate service recovery strategies to customers who may have higher sensitivity to the service failure.
Originality/value
Little is known about the effect of culture on the severity evaluation, although investigating cross-cultural differences in the assessment of severity is relevant to understand whether offenses are perceived more seriously in one culture than another and then if these offenses will potentially arise confrontational behaviors or not.
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Shahzeb Hussain, Olga Pascaru, Constantinos Vasilios Priporas, Pantea Foroudi, T.C. Melewar and Charles Dennis
This study aims to examine the effects of celebrity negative publicity on attitude towards brand, corporation, brand reputation and corporate reputation, both directly and through…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the effects of celebrity negative publicity on attitude towards brand, corporation, brand reputation and corporate reputation, both directly and through the moderating effects of social media involvement, brand commitment, identification and attribution (both types). Associative network theory has been used to explain these effects.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative survey of 550 respondents was carried out in London and surrounding areas. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.
Findings
The findings suggest that celebrity negative publicity affects brand reputation and corporate reputation. Further, the moderating effects of social media involvement and brand commitment on attitude towards brand and corporation, identification on attitude towards brand, attribution types on attitude towards corporation were not found.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the effects of celebrity negative publicity on attitudes towards brand, attitude towards corporation, brand reputation and corporation reputation, directly, and through the moderating effects of attribution (both types), identification, commitment and social media. Findings from this study will minimise the gap in the literature on the topic and will help managers and policymakers to understand the effects of celebrity negative publicity in detail.
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Rami Zeitun and Ousama Abdulrahman Anam
This paper aims to investigate the effect of product offering and other service quality (SQ) dimensions on the satisfaction of the customers of both Islamic and conventional…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the effect of product offering and other service quality (SQ) dimensions on the satisfaction of the customers of both Islamic and conventional banks, using evidence from an oil-based economy that is based on a prolonged SERVQUAL model with 11 dimensions and other statistical analysis methods.
Design/methodology/approach
The data were collected from 461 Islamic and conventional bank customers in Qatar via a survey and several tests were used to test certain hypotheses. Component analysis, factor analysis and gap and ascendency analysis were used in this study. Afterward, a correlation analysis and regression model were used to examine the hypotheses and validate the instruments used.
Findings
The results show that regardless of the type of bank, customers always have greater expectations of the services than they had perceived. A customer’s expectation of the product on offer is the only dimension that is significantly different in relation to the two types of banks. However, reliability, competence, responsiveness, credibility and empathy dimensions are significantly different of the two types of banks in customers’ perception of quality. In addition, the results suggest that both types of banks need to concentrate their efforts on the product offering, competence and courtesy dimensions.
Research limitations/implications
The size of our sample of Islamic and conventional banks is unequally balanced. Future studies might therefore choose an equally balanced sample.
Practical implications
Bank managers in both types of banks need to continue improving the quality of their service including product offering and to adopt advanced methods to enhance customer satisfaction (CS) and reduce the gaps in quality in the dimensions used. Furthermore, managers in both types of banks need to put more emphasis on product offering, competence, courtesy and communication if they wish to improve SQ. Moreover, Islamic banks must guarantee that they possess competent, highly trained personnel who are familiar with Islamic finance products, so as to enhance the quality of service and attract customers.
Originality/value
To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the effect of product offering and other dimensions of SQ on CS in both Islamic and conventional banks by using 11 dimensions of SQ. In addition, it provides evidence of gaps in SQ, at the dimensions level, for both types of banks in an oil-based economy. The results of this study are valuable in helping decision-makers and bank managers who wish to raise the level of SQ and improve CS and in validating the results from other countries with a dual financial system.