As a new format of retailing, social shopping on SNS has rapidly grown in recent. Although there is much literature associated with customer behaviours in the academic world, little attention has been paid to identifying the shopping patterns of SNS shoppers. This paper will, thus, identify how perceived value has an impact on the buying intention of SNS shoppers, after illustrating what kind of factor influences the formation process of perceived value in the Korean marketplace. Given that SNS shoppers are for the most part 20s as well as 30s, the authors handed out questionnaires to them. Furthermore, based on literature review results, the conceptualised research model was developed. Despite lack of literature, the authors developed five constructs like price reduction, quantity- and time-limited message, product ranges, information-sharing, and required number of shoppers. The researchers made a considerable effort to identify the relationship between research concepts and each variable, based on a few research analysis methods such as frequency analysis, the Varimax rotation technique used orthogonal rotation, Cronbach's Alpha, PCA (Principle Component Analysis), and the like. Amongst the 5 variables used to measure the degree of influences on the perceived value as a social shopping characteristic, it has been evident that price cut, required minimum shoppers, product variety, and information-sharing have a positive impact on the perceived value formation processes of SNS customers. Also, this research implies that SNS retailers can differentiate themselves from other retailers by differently using the above factors. From a practitioner's point of view, these factors should be strategically used to increase the social shopping opportunities of SNS users. It is, furthermore, evident that the perceived value formed by the above 4 factors have played an important role in the buying decision process of SNS customers. In a sense, whether customers are aware of higher price cut rates, information-sharing, required minimum shoppers, and product variety has a positive impact on making buying decisions. From a retailer's point of view, online shopping mall operators are able to use blog as well as twitter to improve the buying intention as a marketing tool of social network, because the business activities provided by social shopping retailers, like the rapid, accurate responses to customer requirements, the provision of a variety of information, and the communications between customers are closely related to buying intentions. There are a few research limitations to conduct this empirical research. It was not easy to review prior papers, due to its lack. In spite of the increasing number of SNS shoppers in Korea, little research attention has been paid to this kind of research topic by academicians, because buying products or services through SNS is in its infancy. With regard to research populations, it would be difficult to generalise the research findings in Korea, owing to unbalanced respondent distribution. Considering the above research limitations as well as the growth of social shopping, many authors should pay considerable attention to SNS-related issues in the future, and develop the more sophisticated criteria to measure the characteristics of SNS shoppers.
This study is an attempt to explore the nature and characteristics of strategic impact of green strategy by environmental capital, corporate reputation, and technology strengths on the firm's performance across countries. The main question addressed in this paper relates to how corporate sustainability, corporate reputation, technology strength, and capabilities influence the firm's economic performance with respect to diverse dimensions of performance measures including sustained growth through the leading firms across countries in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia-Pacific countries. Particularly, this study attempts to empirically explore the directions and magnitudes of the operational links between new emerging strategic core competencies (e.g., sustainability green strategy by environmental focus for more sustainable path, corporate reputation by corporate social responsibility and image enhancement, and technology strengths to develop a new product and market) and the firm's economic performance with respect to diverse dimensions of performance such as accounting (ROE and EOA) - and market-based performance (Market value and Tobin's q). Considering all possible limitations that might exist with regard to selected samples and methods, this study demonstrates that environmental sustainability, corporate reputation, technological capabilities and competencies through R&D intensity and patent are most likely to be significantly associated with most market-based performance measures, but the strategic significance of other variables such as capital intensity, leverage, and administrative cost efficiency on performance tends to be different depending on which performance measure is used across different countries with diverse economic and business contexts.
Understanding customer' lifestyles important for banks because it will guide in determining marketing policies, such as services, pricing, service delivery and promotion decisions. From the customer' lifestyle, banks will know what kind of customers' attitudes, interests and opinions, so they also will understand what the costumer' needs and what services needed by them. For Islamic banks, customers understanding are important because, nowadays, the competition of the banks is not only with other Islamic banks but also with the well-established conventional banks offering Islamic products or services The aims of this research paper are to describe what factors underline the customer's lifestyle of both Islamic and conventional bank, to segment the bank customers based on their lifestyles and investigate the profile of each segments, to compare the characteristics of the segments, and to identify marketing policies based on the characteristics. The population of the study is banking customers in Indonesia, in which the researchers have used judgment sampling as sample selection. There were 186 customers of Islamic banks and 244 customers of conventional bank as respondents in this study. Statistical methods employed were exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis. The finding of the study shows that there are twelve factor underlining the customers' lifestyle, namely: factor of fashion conscious, internet usage, sports spectator, financial and technology optimism, price sensitivity, independent, compulsive housekeeper, new brand tryer community activities, opinion leader, credit usage, and homebody. In addition, for Islamic banking, there are two market segments, namely fashionable-independent and innovative-social segment. Based on the lifestyle characteristics, the first segment has higher level in factor of fashion conscious, homebody, independent, optimism and price conscious, which is therefore called fashionable-independent segment. On the other hand, the second cluster has higher level in factor of new brand tryer, community minded, sport spectator, credit user, internet usage, opinion leader, and compulsive housekeeper, which is therefore called the innovative-social segment. Furthermore, for conventional banking, there are also two segments, namely persuasive-optimistic and sensitive-independent segment. The first segment has higher level on some factors, namely: opinion leader, optimism, internet usage rate, credit usage level, sport spectator, and new brand tryer. On the other hand, the second cluster is characterized by higher level in factor of price conscious, confidence, community minded, homebody, fashion conscious, and compulsive housekeeper. Managerial implications for the management of Islamic banks could be identified in this study as follows. Firstly, the twelve lifestyle factors of this study could be an alternative view in observe Islamic banking customers. The domination of both the fashionable conscious and the internet usage factor show that the aspects are quite instrumental in perceiving the customer' lifestyles, in which reflects the importance of these two aspects to customers. Secondly, in serving their customers, Islamic banks need to understand the customer lifestyle, in which the lifestyle segments found in this study provide a guide of how their needs were reflected. Finally, by understanding the segments and the characteristics each segment of the conventional banks, Islamic banks could adjust their marketing strategies differently from the conventional banks.
This study is designed to collaboratively investigate the influences of the characteristics of Internet shopping malls and the shopping traits of their users involved in e-commerce on shopping intention. With this in mind, the researchers take a look at the influences of such features of shopping malls on the web as the quality of the system, customer-support service, shopping-mall perception and security, the users' propensity to pursue pleasure and pragmatic interest on shopping intention. The study shows that all the variables suggested here have an influence on the purchase intent of Internet shopping-mall users. That is, this study cannot analyze how the purchase intent of the customers with regard to the features of Internet shopping malls has changed. Therefore it is necessary to conduct procedural researches taking longitudinal studies into consideration.