How price increases affect future purchases: The role of mental budgeting,income, and framing

This article suggests that mental budgeting processes provide afurther understanding of how and to what degree price increases negatively affect a customer's future purchase behavior in a particular category of expenses. Furthermore, the authors analyze how customer income and different price presentation tactics alter this reaction. Results of two experimental studies using both students and non‐students show that customer income attenuates the negative effect of a price increase on the likelihood of a future purchase in a particular expense category. As an underlying mechanism, the influence of customer income on future purchase behavior is partially mediated by the degree to which customers engage in mental budgeting. Moreover, mental budgeting strengthens the negative effect of a price increase on a future purchase in the same category of expenses, whereas it does not alter the effect of a price increase on a future purchase in another category. Finally, the framing of a price increase as a percentage versus in absolute terms leads to a lower likelihood of a future category purchase. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

资产价格波动与金融稳定研究述评

资产价格波动与金融稳定的关系,一直是学术界研究的热点问题。近年来的研究认为资产价格波动与银行信贷的相互作用加强,进而日趋影响金融稳定;资产价格波动直接影响银行资本金和金融机构经营环境从而影响金融稳定;理论研究日益强调信息不对称以及“委托一代理”问题在资产价格波动影响金融稳定过程中的重要性。同时,大部份的实证研究都支持了资产价格波动对金融稳定具有重要影响的观点。一些学者就如何应对资产价格波动从而保持金融稳定的问题提出了针对性的建议。     

高职大学生网上创业的调查与思考——以广东农工商职业技术学院为例

基于对广东农工商职业技术学院2009至2011级网上创业学生群体的部分抽样,作者对开展网上创业的高职院校在校大学生的基本信息、网店经营现状、未来规划等进行了问卷调查。根据调查结果,本文分析了学生网上创业的创业形式、经营状况、存在问题,并对高校可以在创业平台、经营场所、课程设置、教学制度、融资政策等方面给予学生的支持提出了针对性的建议。     

Studying Abroad: Understanding the Relationships Among Beliefs,Perceived Value,and Behavioral Intentions

Increased globalization highlights the importance of encouraging university students to participate in an international experience. In this study, the authors investigate how behavioral belief, subjective belief, and control belief influence students’ perceived value and intention to study abroad. The authors further examine the moderation effects of generation on the proposed relationships. The results show that behavioral belief, not subjective belief and control belief, is significantly related to perceived value. Second, the relationship between perceived value and intention to study abroad is stronger for the first-generation sample. Third, the subjective belief measure could be divided into the financial support versus nonfinancial support scales. The article concludes with implications of its findings for educators as well as for academic researchers.     

Financial analysis and strategic management

Applications of financial analysis and planning models to strategic management are presented and discussed in this article. The authors first define the concept of strategy and the nature of strategic problems, then present a useful organizing paradigm of the strategic management field. Against that backdrop, financial analysis applications are discussed. Various financial analysis and planning models are reviewed, focusing on their usefulness to strategic management. Suggestions for future research directions are raised and considered.     

AN ANALYSIS OF THE UTILIZATION OF FINANCIAL COUNSELLING SERVICES

Conceptual models were developed to explain the probability of seeking financial counselling services and the amount of time spent utilizing them. The models were estimated using a two-stage estimation procedure which corrects for sample selection bias. The sample included 912 undergraduate students enrolled at three institutions of higher education in the central New York State area during the fall semester of 1979. In the visitation model, non-white students, and students who lived in apartments, who attended private educational institutions, who received financial aid and who perceived their incomes to be inadequate were more likely to seek the financial counselling services offered by the Financial Aid Office. Seniors, students majoring in the natural sciences, students with higher total incomes and students who were dependent on their parents for financial support were less likely to visit the Financial Aid Office. The amount of time equation also showed that non-white students, students who were enrolled in private schools, who received high levels of financial aid and who perceived their incomes as inadequate spent more time in utilizing the financial counselling services on their campuses. On the other hand, students who lived with their parents, who had higher sources of non-financial aid income and who were dependent on their parents financially, spent less time utilizing the services of the Financial Aid Office.     

Financial literacy among university students: A study in eight European countries

This study analysed the level of financial literacy among university students in Estonia, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation and Turkey. The purpose of the study was to determine the level of financial literacy among university students, and to find out the relationship between financial knowledge and demographic characteristics of students. Online survey instrument was used to collect data. 409 fully completed questionnaires were accepted for analysis. Logistic regression was used to analyse of impact of the demographic characteristics on financial literacy. Overall mean of correct answers for the survey was 72.2%. This result represents a medium level of financial literacy about personal finance. Results indicate that male students, business major students, PhD students, those who live in a rental house, those whose parents have high level income, those who get advice on financial matters from their friends, those who took financial course before, those who get financial information about financial issues from university education, and students from Poland are more knowledgeable on personal finance. More financial courses should be provided in university education programmes, which could help more students handle their finances better and improve their financial wellbeing. It should be taken into consideration that in recent years, environmental and technological influences on financial literacy may be more important than parental influence.     

论上市公司内部控制信息披露的成本效益

完善企业内部控制信息的披露是保护投资者利益的重要途径,但目前我国上市公司披露内部控制信息的自愿性和动力均不足。本文的研究表明,企业内部控制信息披露要承担内部控制制度的完善、处理和传播成本、竞争劣势成本以及宏观调控成本,并可能影响证券市场的吸引力。同时,披露内部控制信息对企业而言也有一定的利益,包括降低融资成本、诉讼成本、委托代理成本和外部审计费用,并提升投资者关系管理,促进社会资源的有效配置。对此,应完善上市公司内部控制信息披露的相关规定,优化股权结构,加强注册会计师对内部控制信息披露的签证服务功能,强化对上市公司内部控制信息披露的监管,纠正投资者对内部控制信息的需求偏差。     

From Discrete to Continuous Financial Models: New Convergence Results For Option Pricing

In this paper we develop a new notion of convergence for discussing the relationship between discrete and continuous financial models, D ²-convergence. This is stronger than weak convergence, the commonly used mode of convergence in the finance literature. We show that D ²-convergence, unlike weak convergence, yields a number of important convergence preservation results, including the convergence of contingent claims, derivative asset prices and hedge portfolios in the discrete Cox-Ross-Rubinstein option pricing models to their continuous counterparts in the Black-Scholes model. Our results show that D ²-convergence is characterized by a natural lifting condition from nonstandard analysis (NSA), and we demonstrate how this condition can be reformulated in standard terms, i.e., in language that only involves notions from standard analysis. From a practical point of view, our approach suggests procedures for constructing good (i.e., convergent) approximate discrete claims, prices, hedge portfolios, etc. This paper builds on earlier work by the authors, who introduced methods from NSA to study problems arising in the theory of option pricing.     

Consumer heterogeneity in the longer-term effects of price promotions

While a significant literature has emerged recently on the longer-term effects of price promotions, as inferred from persistence models, there is very little if any attention paid to whether such longer-term effects vary across different types of consumers. This paper takes a first step in that direction by exploring whether the adjustment, permanent, and total effects of price promotions, and the duration of the adjustment period, differ between consumers segmented based on their usage rates in a product category and their loyalty to a brand. We also investigate whether such consumer segmentation will improve the forecasting performance of persistence models at both product category and brand levels. Expectations are developed based on consumer behavior theory on various effects of price promotions, such as the post-deal trough, the mere purchase effect, the promotion usage effect, and responsiveness to competitor's reactions. Evidence from household-level supermarket scanner data on four product categories is provided. We find substantial differences between consumer segments and provide insights on how managers can increase the longer-term effectiveness of price promotions by targeting each consumer segment with a different promotion program. In addition, consumer segmentation is found to significantly improve the forecasting performance of the persistence model for two of the four product categories. For the other two product categories, consumer segmentation provides forecasting performance similar to that obtained from aggregate-level persistence models.     

To Whom,When, and How Much to Discount? A Constrained Optimization of Customized Temporal Discounts

Customized temporal discounts are price cuts or coupons that are tailored by size, timing, and household to maximize profits to a retailer or manufacturer. The authors show how such discounts allow companies to optimize to whom, when, and how much to discount. Such a scheme allows firms to send just enough discounts just prior to the individual's purchase of a rival brand. To do so, the authors model household purchase timing and brand choice in response to discounts and use Bayesian estimation to obtain individual household parameters. They illustrate the model on a Japanese data set having price cuts, a US data set having coupons, and another US data set having discounts. They formulate the optimization task of customized temporal coupons as a constrained multiple-knapsack problem under a given budget. They use simulations of the empirical contexts to obtain optimal solutions and to assess improvement in profits relative to existing practice and alternate models in the literature. The proposed model yields increase in profits of 18–40 percent relative to a standard model that optimizes the value but not timing of discounts.     

Combining value and price to make purchase decisions in business markets

The authors investigate how purchasing managers combine information about product offerings' values and prices to make purchase decisions. The results of two field studies show that managers do not regard monetarily-equivalent changes in value and price to be the same. Using reference-dependent theory, the authors show that, rather than a single utility function, separate functions for value and price appear to underlie purchasing managers' decisions. The authors also address means of inducing managers to choose higher-valued, higher-priced product offerings.     

A glimpse of the complexity of factors that influence financial literacy

Financial literacy has been recognised as a vital life skill, but there is little evidence of the factors behind the differences in managing personal finance. Socio‐economic factors and the provision of financial education do explain the variance in financial literacy in some countries, but not in all. In the PISA 2012 financial literacy test, Estonian students ranked very highly in international comparison; although only a few had received financial education at school. Compared with other countries, socio‐economic factors explained the smallest proportion of variance in the test score. There was, however, a significant difference between the mean financial literacy scores of Estonian‐ and Russian‐language communities. The aim of the article is to analyse the factors behind the differences in financial literacy when financial education is not provided. It also offers insight into how students in a similar education system in two different cultural and language frameworks achieve different financial literacy scores. Moreover, the results demonstrate how indicators, such as family background can work through different channels as opposed to the usual parental education or occupation based socio‐economic indicators. The latter implies that unexplained factors remain, such as cultural, developmental and societal indicators, which most researchers pay little attention to when explaining efficient policies for improving financial literacy. Multivariate regression models show that the level of financial literacy in Estonia is correlated with gender, language of the school, the number of books at home, mathematics and reading scores. The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition explains less than half of the gap between the two communities. The only variable significantly explaining the gap is the number of books at home. Books can be interpreted as a symbol of social status, evidence of cultural background or source of influence for broader picture and better problem solving skills.     

How do you feel when you see a list of prices? the interplay among price dispersion,perceived risk and initial trust in Chinese C2C market

The issues of trust fraud, product genuineness and price dispersion jointly make Chinese C2C buyers difficult to identify trustworthy sellers with a low price. Little is known about the generation of initial trust when buyers search products and receive lists of widely ranged prices. This study proposes a theoretical model to explain how price dispersion interacts with other factors in C2C purchase, such as initial trust, perceived risk, perceived value and purchase intention. Product type is considered as a moderator. 261 students were invited in a survey-based experiment. The results from PLS analysis show that price dispersion negatively affects perceived value, whilst, positively affects perceived risk, which further influences perceived value negatively. Price dispersion also negatively influences initial trust through perceived risk. Moreover, the negative effects of price dispersion are stronger when buyers purchase high-touch products.     

Small shop survival – The financial response to a global financial crisis

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), many of which are small retail shops, remain the largest employer in the western world. Yet the financing of their fixed and working capital investments remains under-researched. This study focuses on this topic by examining Eurozone wholesale and retail SMEs enterprises at the peak of the 2008 financial credit crisis. In order to do this, an innovative analysis of existing theories in retail finance and policy research using generalised multilevel structural equation modelling is performed to establish how retail SMEs sourced capital during this period. This analysis, a first of its kind in wholesale and retail SME research, finds that pecking order theory, the independence of investment and financing, as well as the contest for financial resources between fixed and working capital do not hold for wholesale and retail SMEs. Moreover, it is found that government grants and subsidised loans were not used by SMEs in this sector of the Eurozone as primary sources of finance during the aftermath of the 2008 global credit crisis. Crucially, it is posited that a business environment characterized by stronger legal rights and deeper credit information did not improve SMEs’ access to external finance. The authors recommend that further research should be pursued in this field in order to improve current understanding of the resilience of retail SMEs for future global financial crises.     

The Impact of Frequent Shopper Programs in Grocery Retailing

Frequent shopper programs are becoming ubiquitous in retailing. Retailers seem unsure however about whether these programs are leading to higher loyalty, or to higher profits. In this paper we analyze data from a U.S. supermarket chain that has used a number of frequent shopper rewards to improve sales and profitability. We find that while these programs are profitable, this is only because substantial incremental sales to casual shoppers (cherry pickers) offset subsidies to already loyal customers. In this way our findings are inconsistent with existing theories about how frequent shopper programs are supposed to work. We construct our own Hotelling-like model that explicitly models cherry picking behavior and show that its predictions match the data quite closely. We further test the predictions of our model by characterizing the impact of such programs on trip frequency and basket size. We then use the model to examine more complex scenarios. For example, our analysis suggests that frequent shopper programs may be unprofitable if they eliminate all cherry picking. This may explain why some retailers seem dissatisfied with their programs. We end by proposing a solution that retains the benefits of the frequent shopper programs and yet continues to let supermarkets benefit from price discrimination.     

Heuristics in Mutual Fund Consumers' Willingness‐to‐Invest: An Experimental Approach

This paper improves the understanding of heuristics in the choice of mutual funds. We analyze the effect of price‐quality relationship and anchors as heuristics on the evaluation of the willingness‐to‐invest. We perform two studies with graduate students who possess a medium–high level of financial literacy in Chile. In the first study, we find that willingness‐to‐invest increases (decreases) when subjects observe (do not observe) in the market a positive relationship between expense ratios (price) and service quality. In the second study, in the presence of an anchor, the reference price obtained by individuals from the market information loses relevance and the anchor effect predominates. Our results confirm that participants, as consumers of financial services, apply heuristics as groundwork for their investment decisions. These heuristics as a decision making process are useful but do not always lead to the choice of the lowest cost alternative with the highest possible service quality.     

External Ethics Statements: Research Recommendations and the Drip Effect

Should companies make explicit external statements of their ethical stance? If so, at what point in their ethical development? And, what form might such a statement take? The authors, MBA students at London Business School, researched these questions among the stakeholders of a large financial services organisation in the UK, and recommended what they term “the drip effect” approach. The implications of the project offer insights to other companies which may be deliberating whether and how to produce an external statement of ethics.     

金融创新与金融监管的动态博弈——兼论对我国金融监管的启示

金融创新作为客观发展规律对金融监管的影响是决定性的,金融监管在某个时段可能会影响金融创新,但它最终要适应金融创新的需要。本文应用博弈论分析方法论证金融创新与金融监管的动态博弈关系,并借鉴美国金融创新和金融监管动态博弈的例证,探讨在金融全球化和金融自由化的浪潮下,我国金融监管当局如何适应新形势的需要,转变监管理念,运用现代信息技术,完善监管体系,防范金融风险。     

Competent consumers? Consumer competence profiles in Norway

Consumer competence is increasingly important in today’s commercialized society. This paper refers to some main findings from a national representative survey on consumer competences and practices in Norway. To be a competent consumer, it is decisive to be informed about products and to be familiar with how markets function. In this paper, consumers’ self‐reported efforts to keep themselves informed about specific markets is treated as an indicator of consumer competence. First, the results indicate that Norwegian consumers’ competence, according to their own judgement, is rather mediocre. Second, different groups of consumers seem to have different consumer competence profiles. Accordingly, we find that some consumers are price‐conscious in their daily purchases, others are price‐conscious when they make their yearly dispositions in the financial markets, while a third group is community‐oriented and active in the environmentally friendly and ethical product markets. Third, the analysis indicates that consumer competence is an important indicator of how market‐rational and reflective consumers’ choices and practices are.