Spontaneous selection: The influence of product and retailing factors on consumer impulse purchases

Our research examines the effect of product characteristics and retailing factors on the likelihood a consumer makes an impulse purchase. We present a framework for understanding the impulse buying process and use it to explain our findings. Our nested logit model uses data from an adult panel of grocery shoppers over three major household grocery shopping trips. The results indicate that product characteristics have a fifty percent greater influence on impulse buying than do retailing factors. Of the three product characteristics investigated, the hedonic nature of the product has the greatest influence on impulse buying. Of the three retail factors, a store environment with a high–low pricing strategy influences impulse buying the most. Our findings suggest that retailers who want to encourage impulse buying behavior utilize promotional activities and merchandising tactics that attract consumers' attention to emotionally appealing products.     

The New International Division of Labour in Asian Electronics: Work Organization and Human Resources in Japan and Malaysia

This article documents and analyses the organization of work and human resources management in ten manufacturing plants in Malaysia and three plants in Japan. Each of the plants carries out specific tasks within an emergent international division of labour surrounding two Japanese multinational producers of consumer electronics goods. Plant roles reflect their positions in commodity chains driven by the multinationals, varying in relation to product-to-product and component-to-component divisions of labour, and in relation to the location of product and process innovations. How work is organized and how workers are managed are explained by the location of each plant within this division of labour, and by the characteristics and situation of labour, the one commodity which talks back, within the local environment.     

Fairness and the Political Economy of Trade

This paper argues that, as a matter of positive political economy, fairness plays a non‐trivial role in the politics of trade policy. Specifically, we first argue that, as a matter of fact, widely held notions of fairness, that are empirically identifiable on the micro level, have macro effects not only in the social and political spheres of life, but even in the economy. Furthermore, as we argue in the second section, these notions systematically constrain public officials in the construction and pursuit of trade policy.     

Moral ethics v. tax ethics: The case of transfer pricing among multinational corporations

In recent years there has been an increased awareness with regards to ethics in business. More specifically, the abundance of well-publicized examples of cheating, greed, and hypocrisy has created some alarm about the general state of personal ethics (Josephson, 1988). Recent examples include the Oliver North, Ivan Boesky, and Jimmy Swaggart cases. The tax practitioner probably has little direct concern for matters of misconduct and ethical improprieties as mentioned above. Adherence to a code of conduct appears to circumvent the ethical conflict typically found in the business environment. The tax practitioner's ultimate goal is tax minimization for clients. This goal has the blessings of the courts and the writers of tax law.The present day dynamic global economic system includes organizations which have extensive international activity. In an effort to enhance the performance of these organizations, there is typically decentralization of operations. When decentralization exists it is necessary to evaluate the decentralized units. Profit centers are commonly used for this purpose. With profit centers comes the need for transfer pricing between profit centers. The transfer price should be determined in some objective fashion. However, tax minimization often is the driving force in the transfer price decision.This paper examines the compatibility of tax minimization goals, following a code of professional conduct, with moral ethics, using the transfer pricing problem in a multinational environment. A case that presents a common scenario for international firms is used as a vehicle to discuss the underlying tax and ethical ramifications.Don R. Hansen is Professor of Accounting at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA.Rick L. Crosser is Associate Professor of Taxation and Coordinator of Graduate Programs at Weber State University, Ogden, UT, USA.Doug Laufer is Associate Professor and Willard Eccles Accounting Research Fellow at Weber State University, Ogden, UT, USA.     

Demography and Inflation: An International Study

Changes in the relative share of different age groups in the population may present inflationary, disinflationary, or even deflationary tendencies. We find evidence that increases in the share of the very old (age 80 and older) may be associated with deflation. The analysis is based on an international dataset over a long period. Classifying age groups into young, working, younger old, and older old, we find that the shares of the young and the younger old groups are inflationary, while those of the working group are disinflationary and those of the very old group seemingly deflationary.