PurposeThere has been an increased interest in marketing literature in understanding the role of sensory experience. However, few researchers have addressed multisensory interaction of visual and tactile evaluation for products salient in single sensory modality. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap and investigate how multisensory evaluation influences overall attitude and purchase intentions. Further, the role of individual personality variable in influencing the interrelationship between sensory evaluation and behavioral outcomes are examined.Design/methodology/approachThe data for this study were collected from 126 students who responded to attitude towards the product and purchase intentions after evaluating three experimental tasks. Repeated measures analysis of variance was carried out to test the multisensory interaction hypotheses.FindingsThe multisensory interaction of tactile and visual information was found to significantly increase the consumer attitudes for products dominant on single sensory modality of touch. Further, the multisensory evaluation led to greater purchase intentions than visual or tactile evaluation.Originality/valueThe paper is perhaps first to investigate multisensory interaction of tactile and visual sensory information in evaluation of products that are salient in touch properties. The current study further examines the role of individual personality variables in influencing interrelationship between sensory evaluation and purchase intentions.

Despite the heightened emphasis on the sanitation agenda of the country, driven by both international and national development goals, there is little scholarly work to base our understanding of infrastructural needs of users for effective implementation. This research was conceived as a part of an extended study to assess sanitation needs in the city of Warangal, Telangana, India. The aim of this study is, specifically, to understand the needs of women for public toilets (PTs) and sanitation facilities. This article presents the results from the analysis of interviews conducted among a cross section of women from various walks of life, and of different ages and qualifications. The interviews were subjectively parsed and interlinked by two independent women reviewers unacquainted with the project. The raw qualitative data was then text analysed, and networks were created to map the co-occurring concepts. This exercise led to the revelation that there is a need for

Understanding consumer disposition behavior: opportunities in CSR and marketingConsumer behavior includes the acquisition, consumption and disposition of goods and services, time and ideas by decision-makers (Jacoby, 1976). As the literature on consumer behavior shows, marketers, businesses and academicians have found studying ''acquisition'' and ''consumption'' of prime importance. Scant attention has been paid to the third component of consumer behavior, disposition [1].Consumer disposition may be broadly construed as a consumer's attempt to get rid of a product that has outlived its purpose. The decision that the product is redundant is a subjective decision made by the discarder, even if the decision is based only on perceived redundancy and not on utilitarian redundancy. For example, one may decide to dispose of a wearable and non-damaged dress if it is perceived to be out of fashion (perceived redundancy). While the dress continues to have utility as an article of clothing, it has apparently become obsolete for the purpose of dressing fashionably, as perceived by the consumer, and hence disposable. Disposition has sometimes been differentiated from recycling. Recycling has been construed as an attempt to add life to the now discarded product by either finding a completely new use for it or breaking it apart and using its parts in other objects. Studies that examine recycling as a method of disposition typically concern themselves with reducing waste and conserving resources.

The Internet has moved human interaction to a virtual dimension. The World Wide Web has helped create online communities that link to one another and form a complicated web of interactions. Corporations that operate in these environs have begun to listen to the ‘voice’ of their communities and participate in their ‘conversations’. Blogs are quickly emerging as a useful media of participating in consumer conversations. This article articulates the role of blogs in a computer-mediated society with specific reference to its use in the business world.

Several uses and gratification (U&G) studies provide bases for understanding motivations for the uses of traditional mass media such as television and radio. As a new medium, U&G research on Internet has tended to rely on studies of such traditional media. This article assumes that Internet is a unique medium and offers a set of gratifications different from those offered by traditional mass media. This study, therefore, sought to first identify motivations for using the Internet and then extract the structure of gratifications. In addition, it determined the gratifications of male and female respondents separately assuming that access to and use of any new and emergent media tends to favour the male gender. The study identified an eight-factor gratification structure. The study concludes that the underlying motivations for the use of Internet for the entire sample as well as the male and the female sample, separately, varies slightly but is largely stable and consistent.