Are You a Chocolate Lover? An Investigation of the Repurchase Behavior of Chocolate Consumers

This study aimed to understand the factors affecting repurchase behavior of chocolate brands and, consequently, customer retention and acquisition. The study adopted a qualitative, inductive approach using in-depth interviews with 31 Australian consumers. The factors identified in the extant literature as antecedents of customers’ repurchase intention in the chocolate industry, including brand recognition, sales promotion, product price value, variety, taste, texture, size, packaging, and customer satisfaction, were confirmed. The results also indicated that functional value, product selection value, self-gratification value, socialization value, and transactional value were also considered during the consumer decision-making process. Implications for practitioners are provided.     

Explaining the effect of financial development on the quality of property rights

Empirical evidence suggests that financial development can catalyze property rights reforms. This paper offers a theory of financial markets to explain these facts defining the relationship. The explanation is based on a simple trade‐off between the costs and the benefits of securing property. Securing the right to property at a cost allows agents to post collateral against loans. However, the benefits of collateral vary according to the existing credit market conditions, which we take into account in the tradeoff between the costs and the benefits of securing property rights along the path of financial development to explain the conditions under which financial development can create incentives for better property rights institutions.     

Factors affecting households’ seafood purchasing decisions in Auckland,New Zealand: an empirical analysis

This paper uses the binary choice model to identify the factors that are significantly influencing the household purchase decisions of seafood products for home consumption in Auckland, New Zealand. It is found that ‘quality’ and ‘cooking easiness’ are the main product attributes that significantly influence households’ choices of seafood in Auckland. Also, the representative household has shown a strong preference for fresh and other alternative seafood products, including processed, smoked and canned, over frozen products. Retail outlets are found to be more attractive to the household purchasing seafood for home consumption. The New Zealand seafood industry may find this baseline study useful as a guide to developing future research structure on the domestic market.     

Stores

Summary There is scope and incentive for stores to endogenously arise in an exchange economy when agents possess different levels of bargaining power and coalition formation is costly. In the absence of stores, agents face a trading lottery where the expected outcome for an individual agent depends upon his relative bargaining strength. By setting appropriate, preannounced prices, a store can profitably offer relatively weak bargainers trading opportunities which they prefer to the trading lottery. While relatively weak bargainers are attracted to the store, relatively strong bargainers prefer the trading lottery to the store. Thus, the simultaneous existence of barter and mediated trade is explained.The work reported here was conceived while both authors were visiting the University of Southern California. We thank Martine Quinzii and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.     

“My Fifty Shoes Are All Different!” Exploring,Defining, and Characterizing Acquisitive Buying

Why does someone buy the tenth pair of black shoes or the fourteenth white t‐shirt? Typically, extreme buying is associated with negative feelings and consequences: issues of self‐control, guilt, and financial problems are common among compulsive, impulsive, excessive buying, fixated buying, and hoarding. However, through two studies, the authors describe “acquisitive buyers,” who exhibit an extreme yet controlled acquisition process for items in a chosen product category. In his/her mind, these items are minutely differentiated and enrich the inventory, and there is logical justification that every purchase enhances his/her preparedness for anticipated specific product use occasions. Materialism, positive perfectionism and variety‐seeking in a particular product category are some of the characteristics of these buyers. The studies also help distinguish acquisitive buying from other types of extreme buying and mainstream buying.     

Inflation, the credit market, and economic growth

This paper presents a model which predicts a negative, non-linearrelationship between the rate of inflation and rate of outputgrowth, as observed in many empirical studies. The model describesan economy in which credit market imperfections arise due toasymmetric information between lenders and borrowers. Withinthis environment, two types of lending regime are possible—arationing regime, where high and low risk borrowers are separatedby means of credit rationing, and a screening regime, whereseparation takes place through costly information acquisition.An increase in the inflation rate alters lenders' behaviourin such a way (by increasing the incidence of rationing or thelevel of costly screening, or by switching the lending regimefrom screening to rationing) that adverse growth effect of inflationis magnified. The analysis provides a basis for the empiricalfinding that growth effect of inflation may be strongest insome specific range of inflation.     

Growth models and analysis of development

This paper deals with remnants of neoclassical elements in Keynesian and post- Keynesian throught, and attempts to demonstrate that the elimination of these elements from our modes of thinking would not impoverish economic analysis as a means of solving real problems.In the Keynesian analysis the causation from investment to savings is exhibited in terms of income determination. When put in terms of a capital theory model, the vector of savings is represented in two ways: firstly, real savings, and secondly, counterpart real savings. The former coincides with the investment vector and the latter with the vector of consumption goods foregone for diverting resources towards equipment making. Thus the Keynesian causation in capital theory terms makes the concept of national savings as an independent variable redundant.The Robinsonian causation in a golden age with full employment and its reversal of direction in a steady state with non-employment are then considered. But in each of these, variables like rate of savings and output-capital ratio are found to be dormat variables. They are termed as null variables which, being of no account in both full-employment and unemployment situations, could, without loss, be deleted from the repertory of analytical tools. The Harrod formula of warranted rate of growth, when put in causal form, thus becomes a redundant portion of economics of growth. The real determinants of the growth rate and real wage rate on which the analysis of growth or of development should be based, are also depicted.     

Exploiting International Stock Market Correlations with Open-end International Mutual Funds

Investors can exploit the correlations between international stock markets by trading no-load, open-end, international mutual funds. These investors in effect cheat passive investors because they buy the mutual funds at their net asset values, which do not reflect information released during the US trading day. The strategy we examine yields an annual rate of return 800 basis points above the S&P500, over a period of almost eight years.     

The Demand for Money in Canada: A Cointegration Analysis

In this Paper, using the techniques in cointegration theory, we find strong support for the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship among money demand variables in Canada. Additionally, when the conventional partial adjustment model (PAM) is compared to the two-stage error correction model (ECM), the latter approach is found to perform better, with M2+ showing better results than M2. Our results are also found to be in line with other studies from the U.K. and the U.S.A. These findings provide rationale for further in-depth studies on broader monetary aggregates to formulate sound monetary policy in Canada. [E41]     

Linkages Between Switching Barriers and Service Recovery Evaluation: An Indian Exploration

ABSTRACT

This study attempts to investigate the relationship between switching barriers and service recovery evaluation of consumers in Indian context. Empirical findings of the present study provided useful insights. The primary statistical techniques used in the study were correlation analysis and exploratory factor analysis. A total of 347 respondents completed the field survey, and the survey was conducted in Dehradun, Uttrakhand. It was found from the results of correlation analysis that compensation and promptness constructs had comparatively high correlation coefficients with overall service recovery evaluation in comparison to employee behavior construct. Another insightful finding of the study provided evidence for a significant relationship between service recovery evaluation and positive switching barriers, but at the same time there was no evidence for a relationship between service recovery evaluation and negative switching barriers.