Ascertaining the antecedents of Generation Y consumers’ perceived utility of celebrity influencers’ fashion content on Instagram and consequent fashion brand predispositions and purchase intentions

Considering the increase in smartphones, it becomes important to understand why people buy them. The purpose of this paper is to examine Generation Y’s motives behind smartphone purchases. The study made use of a qualitative research paradigm. Focus group interviews were selected as the method of data collection. Focus group members ranged from seven to ten. A total of 81 (N = 81) South African Generation Y were interviewed. The findings indicate that Generation Y consider quality and technical features when buying smartphones. Additionally, this study also observed that this cohort is status conscious and easily influenced by their friends when making purchase decisions.

The wholesale and retail industry is the fourth largest contributor to South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product. However, it faces the major challenge of attracting highly skilled and motivated workers. Although South African universities launched programs in retail management, attracting young talents to a career in retailing remains a tough challenge. Drawing on previous findings from the field of graduate decision-making and industry image from other countries, this research examines the perceptions and expectations of Gen Y members with regard to their field of study and their prospective career. A nationwide survey with 1363 South African first year students, in their first week at university, shows significant differences between freshmen enrolled in retail business management and those enrolled in other business majors. While retail students, as compared to other participants, tend to hold stronger positive associations with their field of study and a retail career, majoring in retailing appears to be a fallback option. Over all participants, the analysis reveals that the perception of retailing careers primarily exceeds expectations on attributes that are only of minor importance. When it comes to important career attributes like payment, work-life balance and advancement issues, the retail image lags behind that of other industries. Comparing the field of study with the preferred industry, we identify four different segments of students that qualify to be targeted by companies and universities in different ways.

Literature suggests that achieving adequate customer loyalty is a significant determinant of growth and profitability. However, in South Africa, there is no evidence of a validated customer-loyalty-in-retail-banking scale. Thus, this study aimed to contribute to the literature by validating customer loyalty in retail banking as a six-factor structure comprising customer loyalty, service quality, customer commitment, trust, switching cost and customer satisfaction, which practitioners can use as a marketing guide to better understand customer loyalty. Data was collected from one sample only once, and the sample size was selected (N = 400). Descriptive and confirmatory factor analyses were undertaken to achieve the study’s objective. Confirmatory factor analysis results validated customer loyalty in retail banking as a six-factor structure that includes customer loyalty, service quality, customer commitment, trust, switching cost and customer satisfaction. The results show no serious multicollinearity between the latent factors and that acceptable internal-consistency reliability was returned for each factor. Moreover, the measurement model returned acceptable composite reliability together with construct, convergent and discriminant validity. Moreover, IFI, TLI, CFI, SRMR and RMSEA model fit index values suggest a good fitting model. Thus, the results concluded that this six-factor model is a reliable and valid instrument of customer loyalty in retail banking and is the first validated customer loyalty scale within the retail-banking context of South Africa. Retail banks are encouraged to use this instrument as a marketing guide in their quest to provide excellent banking services to their market segments, as well as build solid bank-customer relationships.