The Influence of Consumer Purchases on Purchase-Related Happiness: A Serial Mediation of Commitment and Selective Information Processing.

In the literature on material and experiential purchases, it has consistently been demonstrated that the relationship between the consumer's purchase type and purchase-related happiness favors experiential purchases. This research aims to extend the literature by examining how experiential purchases lead to greater purchase-related happiness due to the individual's processing of external information, especially in the online review context. An experiment was conducted to show that experiential purchases lead to greater commitment to decisions and a higher relative reliance on positive reviews (as opposed to negative reviews) than material purchases. The results of a serial mediation test indicate that such differences lead to greater purchase-related happiness. Based on these findings, we can deepen our understanding of the relationship between purchase type and purchase-related happiness from the perspective of information processing.

A Look at Collaborative Service Provision: Case for Cosmetic Surgery Medical Tourism at Korea for Chinese Patients.

Consumers admiring the beauty standards of other countries are approaching cosmetic surgery medical tourism. This study examines the roles of hospitals and facilitating agents as the main entities of cosmetic surgery medical tourism. 334 Chinese patients who underwent cosmetic surgery in Korea were collected and structural equation modeling is used to analyze the data. The results show that a hospital's service quality in terms of tangibles, assurance, and empathy affect customers' attitudes toward medical tourism for cosmetic surgery, which in turn, influences satisfaction with medical tourism. More importantly, facilitating agents' service quality moderates the effects of hospitals' service quality dimensions on service satisfaction. Findings extend the existing literature on medical tourism by identifying the roles of hospitals and facilitating agents to enhance customers' attitudes and satisfaction with respect to collaborative service provision. Moreover, this research provides the first empirical evidence for the facilitating agents' role in determining satisfaction with medical tourism.