Thijs Broekhuizen

Online purchase determinants: Is their effect moderated by direct experience?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating influence of direct online shopping experience in an e‐commerce context.Design/methodology/approach – The conceptual framework links attitudinal constructs such as price attractiveness, merchandise quality, service quality, time/effort costs, risk and enjoyment to future online purchase intentions. Purchasers and inquirers of a car insurance comparison website were approached by personalized email to participate in an online questionnaire. Multi‐group structural equation analysis was used to test for group differences in the structural weights.Findings – Compared to the purchasers, the inquirers were more concerned with the perceived enjoyment, risk and price attractiveness offered by the website, while caring less about time/effort savings. Inquirers were negatively influenced by the price attractiveness of their chosen insurance, which indicates that they were less likely to use the website for future transactions if they were satisfied wi...

The Effects of Shared Consumption on Product Life Cycles and Advertising Effectiveness: The Case of the Motion Picture Market

Consumers frequently consume hedonic products together with other consumers and derive value from this shared experience. This article investigates the impact of shared consumption, a type of social influence that determines the enjoyment of joint experiences, in the context of a typical hedonic product: movies. The authors argue that this type of influence has important consequences for the diffusion curves of hedonic goods that are consumed together and the effectiveness of advertising in generating launch and postlaunch sales. An empirically validated agent-based model simulates the U.S. motion picture market, with new movies launching, competing, and exiting. The agent-based model serves as a means to demonstrate the essential role of shared consumption for explaining movie life cycles and tests how advertising expenditures accelerate and/or acquire movies’ demand in markets with varying levels of shared consumption. The results provide key theoretical insights for the new product diffusion of hedonic products and help managers predict the financial consequences of their strategic decisions.

How Do Franchisees Assess Franchisor Trustworthiness?: JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

This study investigates the antecedents of franchisees’ assessments of franchisor trustworthiness. It combines multiple theoretical perspectives to develop a framework that is empirically tested with survey data from 128 franchisees of a Dutch franchise system. The results show that franchisees’ perceptions of a franchisors fulfillment of its functional duties on proactive and reactive quality assurance and strategic management positively influence franchisees’ assessments of franchisor trustworthiness. Moreover, the results show that the impact of the antecedents on franchisees’ trustworthiness assessments varies across franchisees: market competition attenuates the influence of strategic management and reactive quality assurance. Unit performance does not moderate the importance of the antecedents.

How Experience Changes the Importance of Website Criteria: The Moderating Influence of Online and Website-Specific Experience

Online shoppers may differ in what they desire from websites based on their experience with a specific website and with online shopping in general. This study investigates the moderating influence of online and website-specific shopping experience on the importance of website criteria. The results from survey data from customers of two bookstores reveal that both experience measures similarly moderate the importance of the website criteria of enjoyment and time/effort costs, but differentially affect the importance of service quality as a driver of online behavioral loyalty intentions. E-tailers can benefit from these insights by tailoring their websites to the heterogeneous preferences of consumers who possess varying levels of website and general online experience.