Enrique P. Becerra

Hispanics and Patronage Preferences for Shopping From the Internet

The Hispanic market in the U.S. offers promising and lucrative online business opportunities. Spains Terra Network, one of the biggest online content and access providers in the Latin countries, has teamed up with New Jersey based IDT to provide access to U.S. Hispanics (Folpe, 2000). Approximately, 1.3 million households and 2.3 million Hispanic small businesses are using the Web. Still, little published research exists documenting the shopping preferences for buying from the Web by this growing segment of the U.S. population. Applying the product classification and perceived risk literature from the previous published studies of Girard, Korgaonkar, Silverblatt (2002), the authors explore the Hispanic Web users preferences for shopping from the Web. The study results and implications for managers are discussed.

Healthcare branding: developing emotionally based consumer brand relationships

Purpose – Brands can imbue unique meaning to consumers, and such meaning and personal experience with a brand can create an emotional connection and relationship between the consumer and the brand. Just as many service providers have adopted branding strategies, marketers are branding the health care service experience. Health care is an intimate service experience and emotions play an integral role in health care decision making. The purpose of this paper is to examine how emotional or affect-based consumer brand relationships are developed for health care organizations. Design/methodology/approach – Empirical evidence from both depth interviews and data garnered from 322 surveys were integrated into a conceptual model. The model was tested using structural equation modeling. Findings – Results indicate that trust, referent influence and corporate social responsibility are key variables in establishing affective commitment in consumer brand relationships in a health care context. Once affective commitmen...

Shopping orientations and patronage preferences for internet auctions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of consumers’ shopping orientations and income on online auction patronage intentions. Design/methodology/approach – The study collected data using a national sample of 3,000 online auction consumers over the age of 18, who had purchased from internet auction sites eBay, Yahoo, or Bargain Hunter in the previous six months and used structural equation modelling for data analysis. Findings – The results suggest that consumers’ price consciousness shopping orientation, which increases shopping in online stores, decreases patronage intentions towards the online auction site. In addition, the findings indicate that consumers’ search orientation, convenience orientation and income level increase patronage intentions towards the online auction site. Originality/value – The key theoretical and academic contribution of this study focuses on testing and integrating the shopping orientations literature in the more modern area of online auction retailing. P...

The Hispanic View of E-mail, Popup, and Banner Advertising

In this paper, the authors broadly investigate Hispanic consumer attitudes and their sociological behaviors toward online advertising. The study documents the correlation between Hispanic attitudes, behaviors, and three types of online advertising that have an effect on cultural distinctions. Additionally, the study compares the groups attitudes toward TV advertising vis-i-vis the three types of online advertising to compare the two mediums similarities and differences. Notably, Hispanics favor e-mail advertising and banner advertising over popup advertising, while Hispanics continue to enjoy advertising on television more than any of the three types of Web advertising that this paper will discuss.

Perceived Security Risk and Shopping Behavior: An Exposition in Emerging Markets: An Abstract

Perceived security risk refers to consumers’ perceptions of the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime (Rader, May, & Goodrum, 2007). Consumers’ cognitive perception of the threat of criminal victimization and associated emotional fear may drastically affect their daily lives and behavior (Rader et al., 2007). For instance, perceived security risk may influence consumers’ conspicuous consumption, shopping intentions, shopping times and locations, and brand-directed behaviors. Although crime and perceived security risk are prevalent in all countries and economies, they are heightened in emerging markets and, as more firms look to emerging markets for growth, it is important to understand the effects of perceived security risk on consumption.

Online Brand Derision: When Brand Animosity Drives Avoidance and Negative Communication (An Abstract)

Brands tend to polarize consumers. As a result, consumers engage in behavior and communication in support of a focal brand or against that brand’s competitors (e.g., Gregoire et al. 2009; Lovett et al. 2013; Wolter et al. 2015). As brand-directed word-of-mouth (WOM) behavior by consumers represents an opportunity to indirectly influence consumer behavior in a cost-effective and rapid manner, marketers are attempting to create “talkable brands,” which have characteristics that promote WOM (e.g., Berger 2014; Hollebeek et al. 2014; King et al. 2014; Lovett et al. 2013). But such efforts come with the concomitant risk of brands stimulating unfavorable behaviors such as opposition and avoidance (e.g., Wolter et al. 2015).

The Influence of Branded Stores Within a Store: An Abstract

Branded store-within-stores is an innovative approach aimed at improving customer engagement, retail store design and layout, and ultimately, value creation for customers, brands, and retailers (Jerath and Zhang 2010; Sorescu et al. 2011). Typically in a branded store-within-store format, specific brands agree with a retailer to have a standalone existence within a retail store’s layout with the brand’s vendor partly or wholly managing activities such as pricing, merchandising, staffing, and stocking in an autonomous manner (Jerath and Zhang 2010). There are different manifestations of the store-within-store format, but the focus of this study is on formats where third-party owned product or retailer brands are presented in an independent arrangement within a retail store, such as the Sephora store inside JCPenney, Armani and Gucci stores inside Neiman Marcus, and the DKNY store inside Bloomingdale’s. This study tests a framework of (1) consumers’ evaluations of brands and retailers involved in branded store-within-store formats, (2) their subsequent behavioral intentions toward the brand alliance and constituent partners (i.e., the brands and retailers), and ultimately, (3) differences in the abovementioned issues across store-within-stores featuring a “star” brand (i.e., a standalone store-within-store for a brand that is perceived as significantly superior to the other brands in the retail store) versus a “supporting cast” brand (i.e., a standalone store-within-store for a brand that is perceived as comparable to the other brands in the retail store). Furthermore, as a follow-up study, we examine the influence of brand’s image, price, and their interaction on perceptions of branded store-within-store and on intentions to purchase. Based on data collected from a large Southwestern university in the USA, the findings indicate that the type of branded store-within-a-store affect intentions toward a retailer, with a Star Brand exerting greater influence on intentions toward the retailer and the featured brand than the retailer’s prototypical brands. Results show greater intentions toward the retailer and the featured brand in the case of a Star Brand store-within-store for male shoppers rather than female shoppers. In addition, follow-up study results indicate that Star Brand must be congruent with store’s image but its price does not have to. Overall, results indicate that stores looking to increase sales by adding a branded store-within-store should consider brands that their shoppers consider superior to the store’s prototypical brands but congruent in image to store. This study is exploratory in nature, and future research, using different product and/or store types and samples, could help validate the results.

Branded Store-Within-Stores: Differential Impact of “Star” vs. “Supporting Cast” Brands on Brand and Retailer Outcomes

The adoption of branded store-within-stores by retailers is an innovative approach aimed at improving customer engagement, retail store design and layout, and ultimately, value creation for both customers and retailers (Jerath and Zhang 2010; Sorescu et al. 2011). In a typical branded store-within-store format, specific brands enter a rental or profit sharing agreement with a retailer to have a standalone existence within a retail store’s layout with the brand’s vendor partly or wholly managing activities such as pricing, merchandising, staffing, and stocking in an autonomous manner (Jerath and Zhang 2010). Although there are different manifestations of the store-within-store format, the focus of this study is on formats where third-party owned product or retailer brands are presented in an independent arrangement within a retail store. The Sephora store inside JCPenney, Armani, and Gucci stores inside Neiman Marcus, the DKNY store inside Bloomingdale’s, the North Face store inside Sports Authority, and the Samsung store inside Best Buy are examples of this phenomenon.

Approximation queries for building energy-aware data warehouses on mobile ad hoc networks

This study proposes the use of approximate queries in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of data warehousing systems on mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). In particular, the approach proposed shifts some computational cost, from the server to the client on the mobile network, thus increasing the power efficiency of the server. The study presents the concept of aggregate query approximation, goodness-of-fit of such approximations, and an evaluation of energy consumption.