Consumer response to marketing channels: A demand-based approach

Abstract

Marketing channels have faced rapid structural and functional transformations during the last few decades. While a large body of research has been devoted to understanding the supply-side aspects of marketing channels, much less research has taken the demand-side perspective to study consumer perception of channel position and functions. This article extends the channel literature to a broader domain and develops a consumer-based theoretical framework reflecting factors that influence consumer perception of and reaction to channel strategies and decisions. The authors conceptualize that consumers’ perceived channel value is a critical factor in determining their loyalty behavior. Seven important channel features are identified that would positively influence the perceived channel value. The relationship between perceived channel value and channel preference is strongly dependent on the level of customer value co-creation. The article concludes with research implications and suggestions of avenues for future research.     

International trade in services: firm-level evidence for Portugal

Portuguese Economic Journal - This paper adds to the existing firm-level evidence on international trade in non-tourism services, using a new Portuguese database merged with balance-sheet data. In...     

Globalization,Tax Distortions,and Public‐Sector Retrenchment*

It is widely perceived that globalization inevitably leads to a retrenchment of tax‐financed public‐sector activities. The argument is that tax distortions increase when production is more easily relocated across countries (the elasticity argument). We question this perception in a model that captures standard mechanisms from trade and open‐economy models. Importantly, the retrenchment argument overlooks the fact that the basic effect of integration (i.e., gains from trade) tends to lower the marginal costs of public funds. Moreover, the elasticity argument is not unambiguously supported, and there is no race to the bottom as a result of the perceived terms‐of‐trade effects of non‐cooperative fiscal policies.     

Building the foundation of a Firm’s market competence

Many firms are experiencing difficult times regarding their turnover and profits. What started as a financial crisis soon became a sales crisis. This article offers a definition of market competence — what areas a firm needs to master in order to drive sales — and a model offering a stable foundation for knowledge sharing, strategizing and executing regarding customers.     

Emission Trading with Fiscal Externalities: The Case for a Common Carbon Tax for the Non-ETS Emissions in the EU

A government is fiscally constrained if it is unable to raise sufficient tax revenue to finance the first-best level of public spending. When involved in emission trading, a fiscally constrained government will potentially seek to close its fiscal gap through emission permit sales. This fiscal incentive therefore generates a fiscal externality in the permit market that is endogenous to the extent of fiscal constrainedness among the participating countries. Our theory explains how, and when, fiscal externalities may be expected to arise. Moreover, we show that in a permit market equilibrium with fiscal externalities, the initial allocation of emission permits between countries will affect: (1) the price of emission permits, (2) the global distribution of abatement effort, and (3) total greenhouse gas mitigation costs. This is contrary to the textbook model of emission permit markets. Our findings are especially relevant for the EU which is about to allow for trading in emission rights between EU member countries for all emissions outside the European Emissions Trading System.     

Picture this: Managed change and resistance in business network settings

This paper discusses change management in networks. The literature on business networks tends to downplay the role of managerial initiative in network change. The change management literature addresses such initiative, but with its single-firm perspective it overlooks the interdependence of network actors. In exploring the void between these two streams of literature, we deploy the concept of network pictures to discuss managed change in network settings. We analyze a change project from the furniture industry and address the consequences of attempting to manage change activities in a network context characterized by limited managerial authority over these activities. Our analysis suggests that change efforts unfold as a negotiated process during which the change project is re-negotiated to fit the multiple actor constituencies. The degree of overlap in the co-existing network pictures of the involved actors is found to be decisive for the possibility of successfully implementing network change.     

Fictitious Play in Extensive Form Games

This article analyzes the fictitious play process originally proposed for strategic form games by Brown (1951) and Robinson (1951). We interpret the process as a model of preplay thinking performed by players before acting in a one-shot game. This model is one of bounded rationality. We discuss how fictitious play should then be defined for extensive form games and conclude that this is somewhat problematic. We therefore study two alternative definitions. For either of these, under a weak condition of initial uncertainty, a convergence point of a fictitious play sequence is a sequential equilibrium. For generic games of perfect information initial uncertainty also implies convergence of fictitious play.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Number: C72.     

A Foot in the Door: Relationship Marketing Efforts Towards Transaction-Oriented Customers

Despite the growing awareness and use of relationship marketing principles, there are still limitations to the range of exchange situations to which relationship marketing is applicable. Customers may resist suppliers' attempts to become intimate. This contribution deals with how suppliers seek to overcome customer unwillingness, through an investigative case study. Seven propositions are developed on the marketing relationship policies followed by suppliers seeking to initiate, maintain and terminate relations with transaction-oriented customers.     

Industrial organization in oil markets since the embargo

Recently it has become obvious that OPEC, a cartel which only a few years ago could cause substantial redistribution of wealth in its favor, is now hard pressed to protect these gains. In the history of cartels the phenomenon is not new, and the conventional tools of industrial organization analyses are used here to provide insights into the process. The dynamics of structural change and the conduct of market participants have undermined OPEC's dominance in world crude oil trading. Strategies adopted by major energy companies which have contributed to weakening the cartel are examined. The development of crude reserves alternate to those held by OPEC has been the focus of large investment expenditures. In addition, the development of flexible trading policies for purchases of crude oil has enhanced bargaining power with alternate suppliers. The paper also examines marketing and organizational changes within OPEC. Less and less are OPEC members simply sellers of crude oil. Increasingly, crude is bartered or sold in packages containing mixtures of LNG or refined products. Moreover, corporate diversity among various OPEC national oil companies is growing as major new facilities in refining, marketing, transportation and chemical production come into operation. The very fact that this complexity reflects explicit decisions by participants indicates the growing force of individual as opposed to group interest maximization and permanently weakens the cartel's ability to exercise market power.