In-store Marketing as a Mode of Discipline

Although the idea of the self-governing consumer has been widely disputed, modern shopping spaces and supermarkets are considered as the key arenas of the sovereign and empowered consumer. Yet, purchasing patterns, which seem predictable over time, can be explained as resulting from consumer routines and habits. Inspired by Foucault’s general thesis that the emergence of individual freedom coincides with new techniques of discipline, this paper explores consumer routines as an outcome of governance structures embedded in modern retail marketing techniques. First, the term embodiment of consumer choice is introduced to describe how shopping in modern supermarkets hinges on various techniques of bodily discipline. Second, by relying on a study of in-store marketing in Norwegian retailing, these promotional activities are examined as techniques normalizing purchasing behaviour. We conclude by saying that power and discipline are underestimated as explanations to the formation of shopping behaviour and consumer routines.     

A Norwegian fixation: explaining cheap money in Norway, 1945–1986

In a number of European countries, credit markets were characterised by heavy regulations of quantities and prices, in terms of interest rates, in the post war years. In Norway, the regulations became more vigorous and lasted much longer, than most other countries. This article seeks to explain the extent and persistence of the policy by tracing the role of leading economists, of financial sector, and political considerations in relation to growths policies and the housing markets. Whereas a number of factors are highlighted in the emergence of the system, the role of political considerations in relation to cheap funding for the housing sector appears as a fundamental cause and condition in explaining the persistence of the cheap money policies into the mid-1980s.     

Domestic tourism expenditures: The non-linear effects of length of stay and travel party size

The independent variables length of stay and travel party size are recurrent determinants of expenditures in micro level tourism studies. In most of this research it has been tacitly assumed that these variables have linear effects on tourism spending. This study, situated in a Norwegian setting, questions this approach by explicitly scrutinizing the possible non-linearities in the relationships between tourism expenditures on the one hand and length of stay and travel party size on the other. The empirical results suggest a positive but diminishing relationship between length of stay and tourism expenditures and a convex (i.e. U) relationship between travel party size and tourism expenditures. The study also considers how a number of other key independent variables affect tourism expenditures. Finally, some managerial and scholarly implications are discussed.     

Perceptions and performances of experienced incident commanders

Rescue operations have been organized in accordance with strict hierarchical management structures for decades. There seem to be minor differences between emergency response units within and between countries with respect to formalized routines and command structure. This presupposes that the incident commander is important for the emergency response performance and the actual outcome of the crisis. This paper presents findings from a study carried out in Norway, Sweden and Bosnia‐Herzegovina, designed to reveal the assessments carried out by incident commanders and other professional leaders of emergency response units, the police, paramedics and fire brigade. The study encompasses aspects of naturalistic decision making in the different accident response phases. On call‐out, the leaders constructed their mental maps of the situations from a combination of information from the call center, knowledge of standard procedures, their expectation of available resources and personal knowledge of the site. Typical management strategies involved incremental problem solving within narrow time horizons. The incident commanders were more concerned with details than with evaluating the overall situation. In general, the commanders expected normal situations, i.e. typical accidents they were trained to cope with and in response to which their preparations and strategies were standard. Our study shows that these incident command strategies are more reactive than proactive, and that the commanders rarely command. Risk management is limited to evaluations of the response units' safety.     

Regulation of sex discrimination in advertising: An empirical inquiry into the Norwegian case

Norway is one of the few countries in the world which expressly prohibits sex discrimination in advertising. In this article, particular attention is paid to the experiences of the Norwegian Consumer Ombud, and to how advertisements, which have given rise to complaints of sex discrimination, are assessed by both the Ombud itself and the Norwegian population. Article 1.2 of the Norwegian Marketing Control Act, which regulates sex-discriminatory advertising, appears to have had some success. Certain kinds of portrayals of women have disappeared from Norwegian advertisements. There seems, however, to be a disagreement between the Ombud and the general population when it comes to the assessment of whether certain advertisements have a sex-discriminatory content. The Ombud takes a more radical stance than the population at large.     

Disentangling supply and demand shifts: the impacts on world salmon price

To understand price changes, one must determine the relative impact of supply and demand shifts on price. Conditional on predetermined supply and demand elasticities, we retrieve yearly shifts in regional supply and demand. The relative impact on price from each supply and demand shift is determined through an equilibrium displacement model (EDM). This procedure is applied on a yearly basis for the world salmon market in the period 2002 to 2011. The results indicate a large variation in demand and supply growth both over time and between regions. While average annual price impacts from supply or demand shifts from most regions are not statistically significant, price impacts from supply or demand shifts for specific periods are detected in all but one region. This indicates that the use of smooth trend indicators is likely to be inappropriate for measuring supply and demand shifts and their impacts on price. The procedure presented in this article can be a useful instrument for determining the relative impacts of supply and demand shifts on price in any market with unstable price behaviour.     

Introducing the concept of environmental policy integration into the discourse on sustainable tourism: a way to improve policy-making and implementation?

Many studies have explored how the tourism sector and tourism policies understand and relate to the concept of sustainable development. A common conclusion is that tourism concentrates on economic and social viability at the expense of environmental sustainable development. This paper considers if and how the concept of environmental policy integration (EPI) could improve sustainable tourism policy implementation. It defines EPI, and explores both the three-level (co-ordination, harmonization and prioritization) and four-level (inclusion, consistency, priorities and reporting) EPI approaches. It notes that there is both strong and weak EPI, and both political systems and policy analysis approaches. The paper then describes Norway's post-2007 adoption of sustainable tourism as a central part of its national tourism development strategy, with 10 defined principles, and suggested defined development standards, and assesses the implementation of the national strategy through the lens of the EPI concept. While there are now 18 pilot sustainable tourism destinations, with 44 criteria and 108 indicators, there remain many difficult issues to address. A series of suggestions are made, the chief of which is the need for a politically strong central authority that has been entrusted with having environmental concerns within the tourism sector as its key mandate.     

Environmental policy integration as a strategy for sustainable tourism planning: issues in implementation

Both in a national and global context, it is challenging to identify key conditions for the integration of sustainable tourism in public policy. By studying a number of recent planning processes pertaining to tourism development, this article aims to contribute recent insight into how sustainability may be integrated into tourism planning. The study was motivated by a publicized shift in the Norwegian government policy strategy on sustainable tourism, from a sector approach to an integration approach. Through case analysis, the concept of environmental policy integration is applied. Findings show that sustainable tourism is partially integrated in all cases and three key issues are outlined. First, although Norway is characterized by a high degree of sector organization, it has a weak structure for overall tourism policy integration. Second, the integration of sustainable tourism has been stimulated by national horizontal integration, bottom-up integration prepared by institutional changes, public participation, and by active use of the municipal system of planning. Third, this study could not find any evidence for the announced shift from a sector approach to an integrated approach to sustainable tourism.     

Administrative Records and Surveys as Basis for Statistics on International Labour Migration

This paper discusses possible sources for statistics to be used for describing and analysing the number, structure, situation, development and impact of migrant workers. The discussion is focused on key, intrinsic features of the different sources, important for the understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, and draws the reader's attention to features which may tend to undermine the quality of the statistics produced as well as ways in which the impact of such features can be evaluated and, if possible, reduced. This discussion thereby provides concrete illustrations of many of the methodological issues referred to in (Hoffmann, 1995). The paper is organized around three key groups of migrant workers:

• (a) Persons who are arriving in a country to work there, i.e. the inflow of foreign workers;
• (b) Persons who are leaving their country to find work abroad, i.e. the outllow of migrant workers
• (c) Stock of foreign workers in the country.

Definitions of these groups are given in section 2. Sections 3 to 5 review, for each key group, main possible sources of statistics and the extent to which they can cover the group and identify separately important sub-groups. The discussion in each section distinguishes between administrative registrations and statistical surveys, and deals with the capacity of a source to provide estimates of the size of the group, and whether it can provide estimates of the amount of change in the group over time, or at least indications of the direction of such changes. Section 6 outlines problems related to other data quality dimensions, such as frequency and timeliness of the statistics as well as the validity, reliability and consistency of the registration of variables used to describe migrant workers and where they come from. Section 7 presents strategies for the development of statistics on migrant workers based on two model scenarios for “countries” of different geographic circumstances and institutional capacities. Summary recommendations on how to organize cooperation, for the production of statistics on migrant workers, between the relevant agencies and between them and the potential users are proposed in the concluding section. The overall conclusion is that trying to piece together a coherent statistical picture of any of the above key groups is similar to trying to put together a large puzzle based on photographs of a rapidly changing reality, with important pieces missing and many of the available photographs out of focus.