Modelling the traits of consumer resilience: implications to emerging markets

Abstract

PurposeThe author identifies the traits of consumer resilience in emerging markets, classifies these major traits into five categories and analyses the influence relationships among them with distinctive focus on the psychological and personal resilience aspects.Design/methodology/approachThe influence relations among the traits of consumer resilience from an expert perspective were identified with typical focus on electronic supply chains, and later the same was analysed through an intelligent influence modelling method, the grey causal modelling (GCM).FindingsThe major traits were analysed using the GCM, where the cause–consequence relations were observed for various objectives and the situational effects are noted. By constructing a magnitude plot and further a causal magnitude table, the important influence traits of consumer resilience for the considered case were observed and the same were auxiliary validated using an interpretive structural modelling (ISM) based approach.Research limitations/implicationsAs perceived from the results, it is evident that social support and recommendations from customers emerge as the principal influence traits of consumer resilience from an expert perspective, considering the case. The study can be further extended empirically to validate the findings.Practical implicationsAltogether, the author can recommend for practitioners that the influence of family, society, friends, peers as well as ratings from the customers can determine the level of consumer resilience. Hence, practitioners of customer relationship management can focus on improving the product and brand awareness among customers, so that more customers may recommend for typical products.Originality/valueConsumer resilience depend on several factors, where the author has identified 25 major traits of the same and classified them into five major categories, including individual psychological factors, individual attitudes, individual socio demographic factors, micro environmental factors and macro environmental factors and the influence relations among them were studied from an expert perspective.