Purpose – This paper aims to present the virtual community as a strategy that can increase the chance of success in the distribution of products over the internet. Design/methodology/approach – First, this paper describes the concept of a virtual community. Second, it analyzes how five...

This paper analyses the global evolution experienced by the retail food sector in Spain, taken as a model of a Southern European country. A detailed study is made of the main characteristics of the strategic behaviour patterns observed among the main firms operating in this sector during the...

Purpose – The importance of virtual brand communities is growing day by day as a result of consumers increasingly using online tools to contact fellow consumers in order to get information on which to base their decisions. For this reason, this work aims to explore some of the effects of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the main motivations that influence readers to read newspapers, and, to analyse their influence on the level of perceived substitutability between digital and traditional channels in the newspaper business. Design/methodology/approach –...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of different product presentation modes on consumers' perceptions of web site quality. Specifically the paper identifies the perceived degree of usability as the continent quality and the perceived quality of the information as the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the presence and type of product symbol on online users' information search behaviour. Adopting an information processing perspective, it gathers objective and self‐reported measures and investigates the relationships between...