Abstract—
The purpose of this study is to present a new approach to consumer behavior analysis by generating a tailor-made consumer behavior model. The study’s area of focus is wine e-commerce on the Swiss market. As a design methodology, the authors sent an electronic survey to local wine consumers in Switzerland. They analyzed a final sample size of n = 69 by means of the PLS Assistant 3.0 software (Morard and Jeannette, 2007). The software computed the data based on a partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) analysis, which selected the four axes that had the highest potential to explain e-consumers’ behavior with respect to purchasing wine on the Swiss market. This approach generated an optimal consumer behavior model. The research implication of the study lies in showing how a tailor-made model can be built for a particular market. Moreover, the choice of Switzerland as the field of study creates a more multifaceted challenge. This study is original in demonstrating a different approach toward determining a specific market’s consumer behavior. The model’s tailor-made aspect comes from using a PLS-PM analysis instead of the normal structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. The authors created the model from scratch – in other words, without using explicit models to explain the study data. With regard to the study’s practical implications, local SMEs active in wine e-commerce would benefit from the recommendations to improve their offers and develop their activities further. The study also shows marketing researchers the utility of using PLS-PM in their market research field.
Index Terms—
Consumer behavior, e-commerce, optimal marketing model, partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM), structural equation modeling (SEM), Swiss wine market.
The authors are with the Faculty of Economics & Management, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland (e-mail: bernard.morard@unige.ch, dimitri.simonin@outlook.com).
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Cite:
Bernard Morard and Dimitri Simonin, "
Partial Least Squares Modeling in Marketing Research:
A Tailor-Made Model of Wine e-Commerce Consumers
in Switzerland," Journal of Economics, Business and Management vol. 4, no. 5, pp.
410-417, 2016.