Author

Yanan WANG

Date of Award

2004

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Philosophy (MPHIL)

Department

Marketing and International Business

First Advisor

Dr. CUI Geng

Second Advisor

Prof. CHAN Tsang-Sing

Abstract

E-Commerce research shows that existing studies on online consumer choice behavior has focused on comparative studies of channel or store choice (online or offline), or online store choice (different e-tailers). Relatively less effort has been devoted to consumers’ online brand choice behavior within a single e-tailer. The goal of this research is to model online brand choice, including generating loyalty variables, setting up base model, and exploring the effects of Internet-specific attributes, i.e., order delivery, webpage display and order confirmation, on online brand choice at the SKU level. Specifically, this research adopts the Multinomial Logit Model (MNL) as the estimation methods. To minimize the model bias, the refined smoothing constants for loyalty variables (brand loyalty, size loyalty, and SKU loyalty) are generated using the Nonlinear Estimation Algorithm (NEA). The findings suggest that SKU loyalty is a better predictor of online brand choice than brand loyalty and size loyalty. While webpage display has little effect on the brand choice, order delivery has positive effect on the choice. Online order confirmation turns out to be helpful in choice estimation. Moreover, online consumers are not sensitive to net price of the alternatives, but quite sensitive to price promotion. These results have meaningful implications for marketing promotions in the online environment and suggestions for future research.

Keywords

Multinomial Logit model, Brand choice, Internet-specific attributes, Smoothing constant

Recommended Citation

Wang, Y. (2004). Exploring online brand choice at the SKU level: The effects of internet-specific attributes (Master's thesis, Lingnan University, Hong Kong). Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.14793/mkt_etd.13

Included in

Marketing Commons

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