Assessing the Impact of Price Promotions on Consumer Response to Online Stockouts

The recent growth of e‐commerce technologies has disrupted the traditional retail environment, leading to more consumers shopping online. While the manner in which consumers shop is changing rapidly, our understanding of how changing consumer behaviors affect retail supply chain management is lacking. In particular, our understanding of how consumers react to stockouts in an online shopping environment remains unclear. Making the challenge even more difficult is the fact that price promotions are heavily used to attract consumers in an online retail environment where consumer switching costs are low. This research develops a theoretical framework, based on expectation‐disconfirmation theory, to explain the effect of price promotions on consumer expectations of product availability and their reactions to stockouts in an online retail environment. Surprisingly, our findings suggest that consumers are actually less dissatisfied with a stockout of a price promoted item than a nonprice promoted product and are less likely to switch to another retailer's website. These findings may suggest that price promotions actually create a type of switching cost in the online retail environment, leading to interesting implications for researchers and supply chain managers.     

Disentangling liberalization and privatization policies: Is there a political trade-off?

We empirically investigate the political determinants of liberalization and privatization policies in six network industries of 30 OECD countries (1975–2007). We unbundle liberalization and privatization reforms and study their simultaneous determination in a two-equation model. Unlike previous studies, we account for cross-effects between the two pro-market measures. Our findings unveil that both right-wing and left-wing governments implement liberalizations and privatizations, showing a common trend under the so-called neo-liberalism wave. However, although the privatization rate is higher than liberalization in right-wing environments, the opposite occurs under left-wing governments. We argue that ideological cleavages still affect pro-market reforms, particularly the combination of privatization and liberalization policies. We conclude that different deregulation patterns should be expected under governments characterized by different political ideologies. Our results shed new light on the literature investigating the political-economic rationale underpinning pro-market choices.     

Selection processes in a Delphi study about key qualifications in Senior Secondary Vocational Education

The focus of this study is the Delphi method. First, a short history of the Delphi method is given. Then, different types of the Delphi method are described, and the validity and reliability of the Delphi method are discussed. Finally, this study reports on the selection processes and assessments faced when a policy Delphi was conducted into qualification issues in Senior Secondary Vocational Education in the Netherlands.     

A Transatlantic Energy and Climate Pact Is Now More Necessary Than Ever

Intereconomics - The Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed Europe to re-design its energy map at speed. Amid this unprecedented energy overhaul, the EU and the United States have flagged their...     

Unravelling the design process of business models from linear to circular: An empirical investigation

In the last years, circular economy has represented one of the most-debated topics in management research. Although the understanding of this industrial paradigm has significantly improved over the last decade, a number of important research questions still remain unanswered. Among them, the design process of business model through which established firms evolve from being linear to circular deserves further investigation. Existing research still falls short to investigate how companies design the dimensions of value creation, value transfer, and value capture of their business models to launch circular products into the market. By leveraging a multiple case study analysis of four companies in the paper and beverage industries that have launched six circular products, the paper examines the process that these companies have followed to face the transition toward a circular business model. The paper contributes to the research field in the intersection between new product development and circular business models, by showing that the process toward a circular business model occurs along three major phases, that is, idea generation, product development, and commercialization. In each phase, companies implement peculiar managerial practices for launching circular products into the market, which typically address all the dimensions of the business model and follows a recurrent path over time.     

Hurry! Sale Ends Soon: The Impact of Limited Inventory Availability Disclosure on Consumer Responses to Online Stockouts

A prevalent challenge for online retail supply chain managers is maintaining and managing adequate inventory levels to support and fulfill consumer orders and purchases. Interestingly, this challenge is not only about maintaining inventory availability, but also how to effectively disclose and communicate inventory availability, particularly if a stockout occurs. This article investigates a conceptual model that explores the impact of online inventory availability disclosure on consumer perceptions in the context of a stockout. Based on expectation disconfirmation theory, the core of the model is the notion that limited inventory availability would stimulate expected consumer competition, which in turn, causes consumers to not be as negatively impacted by stockouts. Contrary to this prediction, however, the results of this experimental study show that consumers are actually more dissatisfied when low inventory availability items are out‐of‐stock. This is likely due to the combined impacts of a stockout encounter and a “loss” of a competitive shopping scenario. Thus, implications of these findings for future research and supply chain practice are offered accordingly.     

信息非对称性与市场失灵

金融市场是指资金供应者和资金需求者方通过信用工具进行交易而融通资金的市场。金融市场的好处在于它有效地降低了商品和证券的交易成本．并且证券的交易价格能够充分反应当前有效市场的所有信息。根据有效市场假说，     

The analysis of students’ academic achievement: the evaluation of peer effects through relational links

In literature, the analysis of the influence of the environmental context on individual choices and behaviors, with particular reference to areas related to school and academic education, is usually performed through the methodology of peer effects. In this study, after presenting a brief overview on this approach, we propose a procedure for the analysis of the dependence of students’ academic performances on the contextual effects, determined by the sociometric ties observed between them, and by the subsequent division of the network into groups, using the linear-in-mean model for social interactions. This procedure is then applied to real data, collected in a second level degree course of the university of Rome Tor Vergata, for the construction of some models on student academic achievement. Empirical evidence suggests that peer effects are a significant determinant of performance, and that they identify explanatory aspects of individual achievement, that usual regressors are not able to catch.