Mary C. Gilly

eTailQ: dimensionalizing, measuring and predicting etail quality

Abstract Quality is related to customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty in both product and services settings. Thus, quality is expected to be a determinant of online retailer success as well. Based on online and offline focus groups, a sorting task, and an online survey of a customer panel, the authors establish the dimensions of the etail experience, and develop a reliable and valid scale for the measurement of etail quality. The analysis suggests that four factors—website design, fulfillment/reliability, privacy/security and customer service—are strongly predictive of customer judgments of quality and satisfaction, customer loyalty and attitudes toward the website.

Shopping Online for Freedom, Control, and Fun

Consumers shop online for both goal-oriented and experiential reasons. However, goal-oriented motives are more common among online shoppers than are experiential motives. This article identifies and discusses attributes that facilitate goal-oriented online shopping, including accessibility/convenience, selection, information availability, and lack of unwanted sociality from retail sales help or shopping partners such as spouses. Importantly, consumers report that shopping online results in a substantially increased sense of freedom and control as compared to offline shopping. While consumers are more likely to describe offline rather than online shopping in experiential terms, evidence of experiential motivations for online shopping is emerging. Also, while closing transactions at web sites is one important e-commerce goal, companies should not lose site of the continuing importance and power of their web site as an information and communications vehicle.

We Are What We Post? Self‐Presentation in Personal Web Space

This article examines personal Web sites as a conspicuous form of consumer self-presentation. Using theories of self-presentation, possessions, and computer-mediated environments (CMEs), we investigate the ways in which consumers construct identities by digitally associating themselves with signs, symbols, material objects, and places. Specifically, the issues of interest include why consumers create personal Web sites, what consumers want to communicate, what strategies they devise to achieve their goal of self-presentation, and how those Web space strategies compare to the self-presentation strategies of real life (RL). The data reveal insights into the strategies behind constructing a digital self, projecting a digital likeness, digitally associating as a new form of possession, and reorganizing linear narrative structures.

A Dyadic Study of Interpersonal Information Search

Although interpersonal word-of-mouth communication, by definition, takes place between two people, rarely has the phenomenon of word of mouth been studied using both members of the dyad. Building on the literature, this article offers a model of active interpersonal information search that is tested by using a method in which information seeker and source perceptions were obtained. Source characteristics were important determinants of interpersonal influence, but seeker characteristics also played an important role. Interestingly, it proved useful to distinguish between demographic and attitudinal homophily of seeker and source as the former was inversely and the latter directly related to interpersonal influence.

Sex Roles in Advertising: A Comparison of Television Advertisements in Australia, Mexico, and the United States

In the past, research has found that the portrayal of sex roles in advertising has not reflected equality or reality. Further, studies typically have examined only U.S. advertising, leaving open th...

The Elderly Consumer and Adoption of Technologies

The study investigated adoption of several key consumer-related technologies by the elderly. Specifically, the adoption of scanner-equipped grocery stores, electronic funds transfer, automated teller machines, and custom telephone calling services was compared in an elderly and a nonelderiy sample of consumers. Results indicated that lower percentages of the elderly group were in the trial and adoption stages for most of the innovations. However, elderly consumers were more likely to adopt electronic funds transfer. The elderly also used sources of information to different degrees than did the nonelderly to learn about innovations.

Gaining Compliance and Losing Weight: The Role of the Service Provider in Health Care Services

This research provides and empirically tests a conceptualization of health care services in which customer compliance outside of the service organization is necessary for successful health outcomes. Using data from service providers and customers in a weight-loss clinic, the authors examine the providers role in gaining customer compliance. They find that provider expertise and attitudinal homophily play a role in bringing about customer role clarity, ability, and motivation. This study demonstrates that compliance leads to goal attainment, which results in satisfaction. More important, compliance also leads to satisfaction directly; consumers who comply with program requirements have greater satisfaction with the program.

A transaction cost approach to consumer dissatisfaction and complaint actions

Abstract This paper analyzes consumer dissatisfaction and complaint behavior from a transaction cost point of view. Transactions involve uncertainty and are subject to contracts. Due to uncertainty and costs, most transactional contracts are incomplete. Here, perceived dissatisfaction is conceived as realized risk, i.e. ex post regret experienced by consumers. By employing basic dimensions from the transaction cost perspective, it was found that a high proportion of reported bad buying experiences can be related to market institutional arrangements, outside the contractual arrangements between individual sellers and buyers. Opportunistic seller practice was also observed. Reported complaint behavior in prior research was found to be in accordance with intended, rational behavior when interpreted in the perspective presented. Implications are highlighted.

Trends in Advertising Research: A Look at the Content of Marketing-Oriented Journals from 1976 to 1985

Abstract It is important to examine periodically the outlets for advertising research to provide both producers and consumers of that research with an accurate view of topics and trends. For this paper, the content of 10 years of advertising research in six marketing/advertising journals was analyzed to determine the direction in which these journal editors, reviewers, and authors are taking the field of advertising research. Variables examined include advertising topics researched, empirical methods used, and the journal audience(s) addressed. Sample findings include a significant relationship between the journals and the topics they publish (e.g., JA published research covering a variety of topics, such as social issues, advertising practice, and advertising content, while JAR was more specialized, devoting over half of its content to advertising practice alone). JCR has significantly increased publication of advertising research over time, and significant topics of advertising research remain under-pub...

Consumer Identity Renaissance: The Resurgence of Identity-Inspired Consumption in Retirement

Using multimethod data, we investigate retirement as a life stage centered on consumption, where cultural scripts are particularly contested and in flux and where we witness an increase in breadth and depth of identity-related consumption, which we term consumer identity renaissance. While prior research on older consumers focuses on corporeal and cognitive decline and its impact on individual decision-making situations, our attention is drawn to the competency and growth potential of those who have exited their formal productive stage and privilege consumption as a means to create and enact identity. Contrary to the received view of older consumers simply reviewing and integrating their already developed identities, we find retirement can be a time of extensive identity work with multiple revived and emergent inspirations weaving across all time orientations (past, present, and future) and involving intricate consumption enactments.