Emotion has been discussed as a key element in the purchase decision process across several products and services by several researchers (Bagozzi, Gopinath, & Nyer, 1999; Kang, Jin, & Gavin, 2010; Lee & Park, 2013). Although a variety of products and services have been utilized to address the relationship between emotions and the purchase decision process, books, especially an online-book purchase environment, have been neglected in existing research of the relationship between emotions and the purchase decision process. Thus, the purposes of this study are 1) to investigate how book covers influence consumers’ purchase decisions in an online setting, 2) to examine the influence of two different criteria of book covers (the color of the book cover and the picture or photo on it) on consumers’ emotions of delight, and 3) to explore the cross-cultural differences (i.e., Japan vs. France) in the online book purchase decision process. Emotion is referred to “an affective, subjective, experimental, temporary, multidimensional phenomenon and a source of motivation caused by exogenous factors to the individual that interact with the process of treatment of the collected information for the purpose of experience of consumption” (Graillot, 1998, p. 12). In marketing, emotion is considered to be the beginning of the choice made by consumers (Derbaix & Pham, 1989), and many researchers have tried to find dimensions of emotion which better explain the consumer’s purchase decision process, such as circumstances (e.g., hope, relief, and joy), external cues (e.g., like, dislike, and anger), or self-created cues (e.g., regret, shame, and guilt) (Roseman, Antoniou, & Jose, 1996). In order to fill in gaps from previous research, in this study we present the following research hypotheses: H1: There will be a positive relationship between the color of the book cover and the consumer’s emotion of delight when purchasing a book from an online bookstore. H2: There will be a positive relationship between the picture or photo on the book cover and the consumer’s emotion of delight when purchasing a book from an online bookstore.H3: There will be a positive relationship between the consumer’s emotion of delight and a book’s perceived usefulness when purchasing a book from an online bookstore. H4: There will be a positive relationship between a book’s perceived usefulness and the purchase of the book. H5: The impact of the book cover on the purchase decision process will vary by country. Japan and France were chosen as the countries for the study as they are significantly similar in terms of the size of the book market on the global stage (Oricon, 2015), however the two countries are very dissimilar in terms of culture. In addition, there is no existing research that compares consumers in these two countries in an online book purchase setting. A total of 398 usable date sets were collected in Japan (n = 191) and France (n = 207) using a questionnaire survey. Two sets of questionnaires were developed in Japanese and French for the respondents and the respondents were randomly chosen for this study. All measurement items of each construct (i.e., the importance of the color of the book cover, the importance of the picture on the book cover, the emotions of delight, the perceived usefulness of the book, and the book purchase) were adopted from previous studies and measured using a 5-point Likert scale. To test the proposed research framework, in this study we developed a structural equation modeling method. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test construct validity, which showed satisfactory evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Based on Table 1, there is no significant relationship between the color of the book cover and the emotion of delight, therefore Hypothesis 1 was rejected. On the other hand, Hypotheses 2 (the relationship between the picture on the cover and the emotion of delight), Hypotheses 3 (the relationship between the emotion of delight and a book’s perceived usefulness), and Hypotheses 4 (the relationship between a book’s perceived usefulness and the book purchase) were found to be statistically significant. Finally, Hypothesis 5, indicating that the impact of the book cover on the purchase decision process varies across countries, was supported. In other words, the χ² difference test between the two countries revealed that an unconstrained model indicated a significantly better model fit than a fully constrained model (Δχ²(7) = 117.58, p < .001), indicating the evidence of differences in the path relationships between the two countries (Laukkanen et al., 2013). Since Hypothesis 5 was indicated to be significant, a further analysis of each path from Hypothesis 1 to Hypothesis 4 was conducted. This revealed that only the relationship between a book’s perceived usefulness and the book purchase was significantly different by country (Δχ²(1) = 3.91, p < .05). The study provides meaningful academic implications. This study examines the influence of the book cover on consumers’ emotions, which lead to the actual purchase of the book in an online setting and accurately explains the role of consumers’ emotions in the relationship. Furthermore, this study proved that the relationship between the book’s perceived usefulness and the purchase of the book was different by country. Given this, marketers should develop tailored marketing strategies for the two countries. For French consumers, practitioners should focus more on the usefulness of the book itself, such as the meaning of the book to readers, the impact of the book on readers, the potential for improving reader’s knowledge andhappiness, etc. In other words, marketers should emphasize and promote the concept of the usefulness of the book itself rather than the design components, such as the color of the book cover. Additionally, consumers’ emotions of delight have a significant role on the online book purchase decision, therefore promoting and arousing consumers’ positive emotions, for example, with music, easy transactions, easy access, etc., may be critical while shopping for books online.
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