Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand the factors influencing Iranian tourists' behavioural intention to use consumer-generated contents (CGC) websites whilst browsing the web when it comes to travel planning, based upon the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) extension. Design/methodology/approach: The total of 211 valid responses were collected through an online questionnaire survey. Data collected from Iranian online tourists were used to test the proposed research model by using the partial least squares structural equation modeling method of analysis. Findings: The results of the study indicate that perceived source credibility is the strongest predictor for behavioural intention. Furthermore, in this study, the most significant relationship is between perceived enjoyment and perceived ease of use. However, the findings of this study show that perceived ease of use is unable to predict behavioural intention of Iranian tourists while using CGC websites. Research limitations/implications: This study provides clear evidence for the importance of additional key variables in improving the authors' understanding of the Iranian adoption behaviour concerning CGC websites for travel planning purposes. Implications of this research can aid both academicians and practitioners towards a better understanding of tourists' adoption behaviour when associated with the social media. Originality/value: This paper adopts TAM and extends it with other variables, namely, perceived enjoyment, perceived source credibility and perceived risk. It examines their influence in the behavioural intention of using CGC for travel planning in the context of Iran for the first time.

This research is aimed at identifying the main variables in an industry based on which the advertising intensity in that industry can be estimated. Using prior knowledge, six variables, including investment, statism ratio, concentration, sales, added value and direct export were utilized by Multiple Discriminant Analysis, using the stepwise method. It turned out that among these variables, sales, direct export and concentration are variables which can better enhance the discrimination power of the model. Based on the means and standardized canonical coefficients of these three variables in different groups and also the group centroids in each function, we concluded that the first function is better at discriminating the first group from the other two and the second function is better at discriminating the third group from the other two. The correct classification percentage of 82% indicates the highly satisfactory performance of the model in classifying the data.

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We examined the causal effect of external quality cues on brand image of cigarettes, in the absence of any internal cue, among Iranian adults. The experimental research employed a 3*2*2 factorial design with three levels of graphic quality, two levels of price and two levels of product variety signs. Results suggested that all three factors had an impact on brand image, though the effects varied noticeably among smokers and non-smokers. The effect of moderating variables was also studied and results indicated that a respondent's profile and status, particularly his age, education, marital status and number of cigarette-consuming companions could influence the way he interprets the quality cues. Moderating factors were formulated as a new variable we called it permeability.