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1.
Demographic changes, tight public budgets, and reduced generosity of occupational pension plans shift the responsibility for
an adequate retirement provision towards the individual. Applying the theoretical perspectives of Behavioural Finance and
New Institutionalism to the domain of retirement provision offers insights into the difficulties individuals are facing in
planning for retirement, carrying out, and revising plans. Lacking financial literacy seems to lie at the heart of the problem
and points to a possible solution: providing financial education to consumers through non-governmental organizations and state-related
agencies. This article is examining which role consumer education and consumer advice can play to enhance financial literacy
with regard to pensions and old-age provision. As two case studies Germany and the UK are compared because the institutional
set-up of the pension systems and the approaches towards consumer policy are very different. The case studies show that financial
education with regard to old-age provision can be successful if it reaches consumers in their environment at life-stages where
important decisions need to be made. To achieve that considerable efforts have to be taken in terms of funding and organizational
set-up. However, evaluation is necessary to prove the effectiveness of the education especially for vulnerable consumer groups.
If evaluation reveals that these groups cannot be targeted effectively or that consumers are not taking action subsequently
to attending financial education, there might be a case for changing behaviour through the institutional set-up of pension
schemes (i.e., through automatic enrolment) and using financial education as a supportive policy instrument.
相似文献
Christina WernerEmail: |
2.
We examine how product and pricing decisions of retail gasoline stations depend on local market demographics and the degree
of competitive intensity in the market. We are able to shed light on the observed empirical phenomenon that proximate gasoline
stations price very similarly in some markets, but very differently in other markets. Our analysis of product design and price
competition between firms integrates two critical dimensions of heterogeneity across consumers: Consumers differ in their
locations and in their travel costs, as in models of horizontal differentiation. They also differ in their relative preference
or valuations for product quality dimensions, in terms of the offered station services (such as pay-at-pump, number of service
bays or other added services), as in models of vertical differentiation. We find that the degree of local competitive intensity
and the dispersion in consumer incomes are sufficient to explain variations in the product and pricing choices of competing
firms. Closely located retailers who face sufficient income dispersion across consumers in a local market may differentiate
on product design and pricing strategies. In contrast, retailers that are farther apart from each other may adopt similar
product design and pricing strategies if the market is relatively homogeneous on income. Using empirical survey data on prices
and station characteristics gathered across 724 gasoline stations in the St. Louis metropolitan area, and employing a multivariate logit model that predicts the joint probability of stations within a local market differentiating on product design and pricing
strategies as a function of market demographics and local competitive intensity, we find strong support for the central implications
of the theory.
相似文献
P. B. Seetharaman (Corresponding author)Email: |
3.
Intertemporal price discrimination with forward-looking consumers: Application to the US market for console video-games 总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1
Harikesh Nair 《Quantitative Marketing and Economics》2007,5(3):239-292
Firms in durable good product markets face incentives to intertemporally price discriminate, by setting high initial prices
to sell to consumers with the highest willingness to pay, and cutting prices thereafter to appeal to those with lower willingness
to pay. A critical determinant of the profitability of such pricing policies is the extent to which consumers anticipate future
price declines, and delay purchases. I develop a framework to investigate empirically the optimal pricing over time of a firm
selling a durable-good product to such strategic consumers. Prices in the model are equilibrium outcomes of a game played
between forward-looking consumers who strategically delay purchases to avail of lower prices in the future, and a forward-looking
firm that takes this consumer behavior into account in formulating its optimal pricing policy. The model outlines first, a
dynamic model of demand incorporating forward-looking consumer behavior, and second, an algorithm to compute the optimal dynamic
sequence of prices given these demand estimates. The model is solved using numerical dynamic programming techniques. I present
an empirical application to the market for video-games in the US. The results indicate that consumer forward-looking behavior
has a significant effect on optimal pricing of games in the industry. Simulations reveal that the profit losses of ignoring
forward-looking behavior by consumers are large and economically significant, and suggest that market research that provides
information regarding the extent of discounting by consumers is valuable to video-game firms.
相似文献
Harikesh NairEmail: |
4.
Managing the shipment of goods to consumers is one of the central aspects of retail competition on the internet. In this article, we analyze internet retailers’ shipping strategies using data from the internet book retailing industry. We find that, controlling for a variety of observable firm characteristics, firms with lower product prices offer lower shipping fees and higher quality shipping in terms of average delivery time, compared to firms with higher product prices. These patterns cannot be readily reconciled with a large class of models of competition under perfect consumer information. Theories based on imperfect consumer information can explain the findings better.
相似文献
Han LiEmail: |
5.
Rodolfo Vázquez-Casielles Ana Belén del Río-Lanza Ana María Díaz-Martín 《Marketing Letters》2007,18(4):249-264
The conceptual model developed in this paper for the airline industry examines the relationship between quality of past service
performance and consumers’ responses to service failures (causal attributions, emotions and satisfaction). The empirical results
obtained indicate that for those consumers with higher perceptions of quality the causes underlying service failures are seen
as less stable and less controllable by the firm than the causes identified by consumers with lower perceptions of quality.
Attributions about the failure not only influence satisfaction directly but also moderate the effect of quality on satisfaction.
We also analyse the mediating effect of negative emotions on the relationship between service failure attributions and consumer
satisfaction.
相似文献
Ana Belén del Río-LanzaEmail: |
6.
Download of Copyright-Protected Internet Content and the Role of (Consumer) Contract Law 总被引:2,自引:1,他引:1
Peter Rott 《Journal of Consumer Policy》2008,31(4):441-457
The software, music, and movie industries keep suggesting to consumers that if they copy digital contents they may find themselves
in jail. Moreover, horrifying damage claims are in the air. The problem with these scenarios is, amongst others, that it is
difficult to understand for consumers where their rights end and where illegal use of content begins. This article focuses
on the contractual relationship between online content providers and consumers. It explores relevant consumer law issues and
lays open the legal uncertainties of the current regimes at the European Community (EC) and national level. The article then
looks at current ideas put forward by the Commission on how to regulate internet consumer law. It concludes that a sector-specific
i-consumer contract law should be introduced and offers proposals related to its possible content.
相似文献
Peter RottEmail: |
7.
We estimate a dynamic model of how consumers learn about and choose between different brands of personal computers (PCs). To estimate the model, we use a panel data set that contains the search and purchase behavior of a set of consumers who were in the market for a PC. The data includes the information sources visited each period, search durations, as well as measures of price expectations and stated attitudes toward the alternatives during the search process. Our model extends recent work on estimation of Bayesian learning models of consumer choice behavior in environments characterized by uncertainty by estimating a model of active learning—i.e., a model in which consumers make optimal sequential decisions about how much information to gather prior to making a purchase. Also, following the suggestion of Manski (2003), we use our data on price expectations to model consumers’ price expectation process, and, following the suggestion of McFadden (1989a), we incorporate the stated brand quality information into our likelihood function, rather than modeling only revealed preference data.Our analysis sheds light on how consumer forward-looking price expectations and the process of learning about quality influence the consumer choice process. A key finding is that estimates of dynamic price elasticities of demand exceed estimates that ignore the expectations effect by roughly 50%. This occurs because our estimated expectations formation process implies that consumers expect mean reversion in price changes. This enhances the impact of a temporary price cut. Finally, while our work focuses specifically on the PC market, the modeling approach we develop here may be useful for studying a wide range of high-tech, high-involvement durable goods markets where active learning is important.JEL Classification: C15, C33, C35, C42, C51, C52, D83, D84 相似文献
8.
Bing Jing 《Quantitative Marketing and Economics》2007,5(1):35-61
In this paper, we extend the Varian (1980) model to examine endogenous quality differentiation by firms, with a particular
emphasis on the interplay between the firms’ product quality decisions and the ensuing price rivalry. Specifically, we assume
that the price-sensitive (or informed) consumers hold a lower valuation for product quality than the brand-loyal (or uninformed)
consumers. It is shown that the firms will choose differentiated qualities for a broad class of consumer utility functions
and production technologies. We obtain two results. First, the equilibrium quality choices are efficient as they are also
the welfare-maximizing qualities chosen by a social planner. The equilibrium qualities are as if one firm serves only its
loyal consumers and the other serves only the price-sensitive consumers, even though they each serve both types of consumers
(at least for some fraction of time). Second, the firm choosing the lower quality makes greater profits and also prices more
aggressively, in the sense that it maintains a lower maximum price and offers discounts more often. The lower-quality product
is more profitable because it yields higher social surplus when consumed by the price-sensitive consumers.
相似文献
Bing JingEmail: |
9.
John C. Liechty Duncan K. H. Fong Eelko K. R. E. Huizingh Arnaud De Bruyn 《Marketing Letters》2008,19(2):141-155
The authors explore situations where consumers supplement their judgments with a measurement of uncertainty about their own
preferences, either implicitly or explicitly, and develop two sets of hierarchical Bayesian conjoint models incorporating
such measurements. The first set of models uses the relative location of a rating to determine the importance or weight given
to the rating, in a regression setting. The second set uses interval judgment as a dependent variable in a regression setting.
After specifying the models, the authors perform a theoretical comparison with a basic Bayesian regression model. They show
that, under different conditions, the proposed models will yield more precise individual-level partworth estimates. Two simulated
data examples and data from a conjoint study are used to illustrate the gains that could be obtained from modeling uncertainty.
In the empirical application, the authors show that model fit improves when ratings for items that respondents do not like are given more weight compared to ratings for items that they do like.
Electronic Supplementary Material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
相似文献
John C. LiechtyEmail: |
10.
Ron Borzekowski Raphael Thomadsen Charles Taragin 《Quantitative Marketing and Economics》2009,7(2):147-179
This paper examines whether mailing list sellers, when faced with additional competitors, are more likely to try to segment
consumers by offering additional choices at different prices (second-degree price discrimination) and/or offering different
prices to readily identifiable groups of consumers (third-degree price discrimination). We utilize a dataset that includes
information about all consumer response lists derived from mail order buyers (i.e. lists derived from catalogs) available
for rental in 1997 and 2002. Our results indicate that increased competition leads to an increased propensity to price discriminate
along each of the dimensions we investigate. These results hold for both second-degree and third-degree price discrimination.
Further, list owners offer menus with more choices in more competitive markets. These results, taken together with results
from other empirical studies, suggest that the connection between competition and increased price discrimination is a result
that applies broadly.
相似文献
Raphael ThomadsenEmail: |
11.
We investigate the relationship between free-standing insert advertising style and coupon redemption. Results from two experiments
indicate that the propensity to clip a coupon can be enhanced by matching ad tone (emotional vs rational) to the nature of
a consumer’s primary motivation with respect to coupon usage. Moreover, this result appears to hold for consumers with both
procoupon and anticoupon inclinations.
相似文献
Michelle L. RoehmEmail: |
12.
In this paper, we consider third-degree price discrimination in two markets in the presence of asymmetric consumption externalities;
we establish that under plausible conditions, a firm reduces its price in the market with low price elasticity of demand.
The firm can increase its profits by reducing the price for these consumers and enlarging the demand for other consumers,
provided that positive consumption externalities exist. Moreover, we show that third-degree price discrimination enhances
not only the firm’s profit but also total consumer surplus.
相似文献
Tatsuhiko NariuEmail: |
13.
In mixed price bundling, the consumer has the choice of buying the individual products separately, as part of a bundle with
a discounted price, or not purchasing them at all. Framing effects refer to how the price of the bundle is presented to the
consumer. Past studies have focused on perceptual measures and aggregate level results, and have only looked at a subset of
different types of price framing in any one study. In this paper we use discrete choice data to investigate whether price
framing affects choice in mixed price bundles. We find that the joint, integrated frame results in the highest proportion
of respondents choosing the bundle and the fewest choosing “none.” When the prices of items in a bundle are itemized, some
consumers are more likely to compare prices separately to their reference prices to evaluate the attractiveness of the deal,
but this actually reduces the probability of purchasing the bundle. However, the majority of consumers do not use reference
prices and instead follow a simple economic choice model.
相似文献
Joel E. UrbanyEmail: |
14.
Christopher T. Marsden 《Journal of Consumer Policy》2008,31(1):115-132
The “Internet,” as a global self-regulated and interconnected network of institutions driven by educational and subsequently
commercial priorities, has evolved into an element within a broader “global information society.” Industry, treated benevolently
by market-led governments, has created co- or self-regulatory institutions or compacts, but as consumers have eagerly embraced
the broadband Internet the scheme of governance must embrace respect for the social and economic rights and responsibilities
of consumers at national, European and global levels. This paper shows how existing divisions between public-sector, private-sector,
and civil-society institutions and responsibilities have rapidly become eroded and it portrays the emerging agenda for “multistakeholder
governance.” The involvement of the consumer on a more legitimised and consensual level than is permitted under industry-led
regulation is as yet a novel approach, but this paper draws on case studies which demonstrate the salience of these issues
to consumers as citizens, and it concludes by preparing an agenda for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies
to adopt more sophisticated patterns of participatory co- and self-regulation.
相似文献
Christopher T. MarsdenEmail: |
15.
There are two key ways in which the Australian Uniform Consumer Credit Code seeks to protect consumers in relation to consumer
credit transactions. The first is by means of disclosure regulation where information is required to be disclosed to the consumer
before the credit contract is entered into and the second is by way of “safety net” provisions, where contracts can be varied
or set aside in the event of hardship, a finding that the transaction was unjust, or a finding of unconscionable fees or charges.
This article explores the limitations of both of these means of protection, particularly in the case of vulnerable, low-income
consumers. In order to highlight the inadequacies of these forms of consumer protection and the need for regulatory reform,
we draw on interviews conducted with 30 low-income consumers who had recently signed a credit contract, focusing on their
understanding of information disclosed in the contract, as well as their responses to hypothetical unfair terms and their
understanding of their rights, for example in the event of an unjust transaction. These interviews were conducted as part
of a joint research project between Brotherhood of St Laurence and Griffith University’s Centre for Credit and Consumer Law,
funded by Consumer Affairs Victoria.
相似文献
Genevieve SheehanEmail: |
16.
This article examines the merit of the test of the average consumer as a basis for judicial and regulatory action. In the
first part, we describe the origin of the test, its application in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and its possible
developments. In the second part, we discuss the theoretical grounds of the average consumer test (i.e., information and rationality),
drawing upon the studies of cognitive psychology and behavioural economics concerning consumers’ behaviour. The result of
our analysis is that we call into serious question the practical workability of the test of the average consumer, which requires
consumers an overly demanding standard of rationality and information without dedicating much attention to the real functioning
of consumer behaviour. The average consumer may be described as an interesting, anti-paternalistic and, to some extent, useful
notion. It is, however, an overly simplistic concept with little correspondence with the real world of individual consumer
behaviour and should be reinterpreted more flexibly, or even abandoned to mirror consumer behaviour more effectively.
相似文献
Cristina Poncibò (Corresponding author)Email: |
17.
Carmen Valor 《Journal of Consumer Policy》2008,31(3):315-326
This paper analyses one of the business case arguments for social responsibility: that corporate social responsibility plans
are rewarded by consumers. This paper explores the ability of consumers to buy responsibly, identifies the main obstacles
for responsible consumption, and suggests conditions for it to work. The review of previous studies leads us to conclude that
consuming responsibly is seen as a time consuming activity, economically disadvantageous, and stressful. The main thesis of
this paper is that unless market failures are corrected, consumers will not be able to buy responsibly, and therefore, market
incentives for CSR are seriously threatened.
相似文献
Carmen ValorEmail: |
18.
As consumer use of information and communication technology (ICT) products grows, the importance of ICT standards in consumer
markets also grows. While standards for manufactured products were once developed at the national level in formal standards
bodies, standards for ICT products today are more likely to be developed by informal standards bodies that target global markets,
creating new challenges for national consumer protection laws. As part of the process of creating a single market, the EU
developed an innovative and successful form of “coregulation” known as the “New Approach” that coordinated the work of legislators
and standards developers to reduce technical barriers to trade in the internal market. In order to protect consumer interests
in markets for ICT products effectively, another “New Approach” is needed to coordinate the work of global ICT standard-developing
organizations with the goals of national and regional consumer protection laws, but the institutional challenges facing such
a strategy are daunting. The French DADVSI legislation represents progress in this direction; further progress may be possible
by adopting “better regulation” strategies.
相似文献
Nicolas JondetEmail: |
19.
Lucie Guibault 《Journal of Consumer Policy》2008,31(4):409-423
The current methods of distributing music and film on the mass-market, either off-line or on-line, raise two types of consumer
protection issues. First, consumers are not always in a position to know what they can and cannot do with their digital hardware
and content. A lack of proper information and the ensuing failure of the products to meet the consumer’s expectations inevitably
leads to discontent. In addition, as weaker party in the transaction, consumers have often no other choice but to accept or
refuse the restrictive terms of use, even if these could be regarded as unfair. This paper examines whether European law is
amenable to accommodate the iConsumer’s needs, and if so, in what form.
相似文献
Lucie GuibaultEmail: |
20.
Jens Schovsbo 《Journal of Consumer Policy》2008,31(4):393-408
Until recently consumers and consumer-interests have been virtually absent not only from the rules of copyright but also from
copyright’s discourse. This has been so even though the combination of an expansion of copyright and a devaluation of the
internal balancing mechanisms raise concern from a consumer perspective. There would, therefore, seem to be a need to incorporate
a consumer perspective into copyright analysis. To integrate consumer interests in copyright law, this study recommends action
aimed at two levels. On the general level it is suggested to rebalance copyright in order to recognize the interests of users
on the same level as right holders. On the concrete level it is suggested to change the limitations found in copyright to
ease access to reuse elements of previous works. It is also proposed to reinforce the rule on private copying and to consider
measures to secure access to basic information.
相似文献
Jens SchovsboEmail: |