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This paper examines patient preferences and choice behavior in scheduling medical appointments. We conduct four discrete choice experiments on two distinct populations and identify several “operational” attributes (e.g., delay to care and choice of doctor) that affect patient choice. We observe an interesting gender effect with respect to how patients trade off speed (delay to care) and quality (doctor of choice), and demonstrate that risk attitudes mediate the impact of gender on the perception of speed and quality. Specifically, females (versus males) are more averse to not seeing their own doctor, and, when delay to care is relatively long, females perceive greater utility loss than males. As many operational strategies in outpatient care aim to improve the patient experience by making trade-offs between speed and quality, we make suggestions for when managers should intervene to improve their practice and how such interventions might look based on the patient mix and current delay level. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2704 . This paper was accepted by Gad Allon, operations management.

Chronic diseases related to unbalanced and unhealthy eating habits have definitely become one of the major issues of modern age, not only in western countries but also in those ones where rapid economic growth has increased global prosperity levels. In order to avoid medical systems to collapse under excessive costs, International and Public Organizations strongly support health policies that aim to make people shift towards wholesome dietary patterns, also encouraging the use of food-labels to choose healthier products. To evaluate the consumers’ knowledge and perception about food-labels a brief questionnaire was developed and shared on Facebook between January-March 2016. Most of the participants were young adults with higher education. They declared to do their shopping at least once a week, reading the food-labels quite often. Despite owing limited knowledge in basic nutrition principles and food-labelling they were generally able to recognize healthier products looking over their nutritional fact tables. Anyway, on average, what they care the most about the products they purchase is the global quality level rather than the nutritional values. In order to induce the whole population to use food label as an effective self-protection tool, more efforts should be done to improve their knowledge on nutrition fundamentals and basics about food labelling, because that would make them able to take safer and more conscious choices as regards their own health.

Based on a series of pathbreaking lectures given at Yale University in 2012, this powerful, thought-provoking work by Cass R. Sunstein combines legal theory with behavioural economics to make a fresh argument about the legitimate scope of government, bearing on obesity, smoking, distracted driving, health care, food safety, and other highly volatile, high-profile public issues.

In light of the fact that increasing consumer emphasis is being placed on the concepts of safety, health, and environmental protection, and that consumer groups are now attentive to the issues of “greenism” and sustainable development, the certification label has become an important tool. This study explores individual needs from the perspective of food “clean label” certification, highlighting that the importance of general food certification to consumers is different from the previous literature that only focused on the impact of organic labeling, nutrition labeling, and food safety certification on consumer behavior. In this study, the consumer purchase intention for the use of the “clean label” and its influencing factors are discussed, using product knowledge and involvement as the independent variables. The target is the consumer who has experience with “clean label” products. This study employs snowball sampling. A formal questionnaire was sent to 292 participants. After eliminating the invalid samples, we retained 265 valid questionnaires for the analysis (a valid response rate of 90.75%). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to test the research hypotheses. The results indicated that: (1) consumers’ involvement with “clean label products significantly influences their purchase intention; and (2) consumers’ product knowledge of “clean label” products significantly influences their purchase intention and involvement. Based on these results, enhancing consumers’ knowledge of food security is suggested. Furthermore, the findings provide crucial insights for marketing channels, suggesting that the food industry can target consumer confidence over certification labeling and “clean label” products as keys to purchase intention, and to attract business by developing practical marketing strategies.

Trade-in (TON) and trade-old-for-remanufactured (TOR) programs are commonly used to boost consumer demand and recycle old products, and can generate significant economic benefits from disassembling or reusing old products. However, the influence of channel structures on the TON and TOR optimal decisions of closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs) is rarely discussed. To explore the impact of the implementation of the TOR program on the optimal pricing and demand strategy, enterprise profit, environment, and social welfare when the enterprise has applied the TON program, we develop four models with different power structures and market decisions to maximize enterprise profits based on consumer utility and the Stackelberg game: (1) manufacturer-led model with TON (Model M); (2) retailer-led model with TON (Model R); (3) manufacturer-led model with TON and TOR (Model TM); (4) retailer-led model with TON and TOR (Model TR). The manufacturer-led models may benefit consumers more and stimulate the replacement consumers’ demand for TON and TOR programs. Both TON and TOR demand for the Model TM are considerable. However, when the retailer is in the driver’s seat, the retailer can profit more due to government subsidies for the TOR programs. Our analysis provides insights into the choice of corporate power structures, reducing environmental impacts and improving social welfare. This paper studies for the first time the influence of different power structures and government subsidies on TON and TOR programs in CLSCs. Future research could consider the impact of old products quality or multi-period models on TON and TOR programs. Plain Language Summary To explore the impact of the implementation of the trade-old-for-remanufactured program on the optimal pricing strategy, demand strategy, enterprise profit, environment, and social welfare when the enterprise has applied the trade-in program, this paper develops a closed-loop supply chain that includes only a manufacturer and retailer and considers power structures and government subsidies. Based on consumer utility and Stackelberg game, we develop four models with different power structures and market decisions to maximize enterprise profits. Our analysis provides insights into the choice of corporate power structures, the reduction of environmental impacts and the improvement of social welfare. This paper studies for the first time the influence of different power structures and government subsidies on trade-in and trade-old-for-remanufactured programs in closed-loop supply chains. Future research could consider the impact of old products quality on TON and TOR programs. We can also consider the impacts of two-period or multi-period models on pricing strategies, TON and TOR strategies.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, flow, cognitive attitudes, perceived satisfaction, and purchase intention of consumers’ online shopping from a cognitive attitudes perspective. This study collected data from consumers having bought goods on the e-shopping platform. Design/methodology/approach – This study adopted online questionnaire through my3q (www.my3q.com) for data collection. This research collected and analyzed 866 samples by using the structural equation modeling for validation of the proposed model. Findings – The results indicated that hedonic value, utilitarian value, security, and privacy significantly affected cognitive attitudes (i.e. cognitive trust and perceived risk). Cognitive attitudes significantly affected perceived satisfaction and purchase intention, respectively. Flow significantly and positively influenced cognitive trust and purchase intentions, respectively. Cognitive trust is the mediators between motivations/flow and perceived satisfaction/purchase intention. Research limitations/implications – Both of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation can reflect the cognitive and conscious plan of an individual for a particular task. The cognitive trust and perceived risk are partial mediator and full mediator in the model, respectively. Hedonic value, utilitarian value, security, privacy, and flow all affect the individual’s perceived satisfaction and purchase intention through cognitive trust and perceived risk in the context of online shopping. Cognitive trust is a full mediator of the effects of privacy on purchase intention. It indicates that consumers must fully trust the website to ensure that the information provided by consumers in the transaction will not spread out for the protection of personal privacy. Practical implications – This study aimed to assist the marketing personnel of the EC industry to examine the key influential factors of consumers’ purchase satisfactions and purchase intentions. The results of this study indicated that cognitive trust is the foundation for gaining and retaining customers. The classification of consumer motivations facilitates the understanding of consumers’ demands and accurate interpretation of consumers’ needs. The main influential factor of cognitive trust is utilitarian value. Therefore, this study states that the primary intrinsic motivation of online shopping for most consumers is utilitarian value (e.g. saving time, the cost of searching for the appropriate products, and increasing purchasing efficiency). Social implications – Websites should strengthen the quality and quantity of product information. In addition, websites should provide a dynamic presentation of the product by presenting in various forms (multimedia and text description) about product-related information in order to increase consumers’ hedonic value. For the aspects of security and privacy, websites should provide consumers with reliable safety features, such as secure socket layer or digital signature, smooth communication channel (specific phone services and e-mail address), and consumer’s privacy statements. Finally, web design should meet with the consumer experience model in order to make the website easy to use and order the purchase from the website directly. Websites should also increase the fluency and positive experience of consumers and improve the interaction of a website. Meanwhile, websites need to feedback the consumer problem instantly and provide customized information in order to increase the chance of interaction between the consumers and the website. Originality/value – Relevant studies have explored online shopping from various perspectives, but few studies have examined consumers’ cognitive attitudes toward websites from the consumer motivation perspective. Thus, this study focussed on the influences of consumers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (e.g. hedonic value, utilitarian value, security, and privacy) on their cognitive attitudes toward websites. In addition, with the rapid development of the internet in recent years, internet users’ online flow experiences have gained increased attention. The creation of attractive consumption conditions is vital for website managers to provide consumers with flow experiences. Therefore, this study included consumers’ flow in the proposed model.

Since the early 1990s, there has been hope that the uptake of certified forest products would ensure more sustainable forest management and also deliver business benefits along the value chain. Our study applies a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) to model an e-commerce purchase in the case of multiple products with various attribute and certification combinations in the Finnish retail outdoor decking material market. We received 2772 responses from 231 participants in an online survey. Applying conditional logit and latent class models, we were able to assess the relative importance of attributes, identify various consumer segments, and simulate various scenarios for communicating the certification and origin of forest products and competing materials. Our results show that the most important attribute for consumer decision-making was the outdoor decking material followed by price, origin, and certification. Some consumer segments showed a habit of only choosing certain materials or domestic products, while paying less attention to other product attributes. Simulations for an e-commerce purchase situation also implied that communications concerning intangible product attributes, such as domestic origin and environmental certifications, could be used in the brand building of the forest sector to gain competitive advantage and increased market shares over other sectors. The results suggest that the conventional and constantly developing e-commerce marketing tools should be harnessed also in forest product and more general environmental marketing.

Purpose – In the competitive e-marketplace today, sellers are using an increasing number of signals to entice customers to make online purchases. However, how differential these signals are in terms of their capacity to improve sales performance has not yet been investigated. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on signaling theory and grounded in the context of China’s largest e-marketplace, Taobao, this study investigated the different effects of five commonly used signals on the sales performance of e-marketplace sellers. Findings – The authors find that warranty has the highest effect on sales performance, followed by overall rating, mean detailed seller rating, percent of positives, and web site quality. Originality/value – First, this study builds on signaling theory and contributes to the e-marketplace literature by providing new insights into how specific signals differentially affect sales performance in the e-marketplace (with evidence from a large-scale empirical analysis). Second, the study extends the applicability of signaling theory to the e-marketplace domain by incorporating distinctive features of the e-marketplace into the original signaling theory. Finally, the findings lend practical support to e-marketplace sellers’ investment decisions on signals and provide guidelines for deployment of such signals.