The Perfect Fit: The Moderating Role of Selling Cues on Hedonic and Utilitarian Product Types

With the need among retailers to create effective promotional campaigns, scarcity, and popularity cues are increasingly used. Drawing from regulatory focus and popularity versus scarcity cues literature, this research explores the impact of popularity versus scarcity cues and product types on consumer perceptions of risk, product uniqueness, and purchase intentions. Results from three studies provide primary insights: (1) A utilitarian product aligns with prevention goals and hence the popularity cue will enhance consumers’ purchase intentions, and (2) a hedonic product aligns with promotion goals and hence the scarcity cue will enhance consumers’ purchase intentions. Further, we theorize that perceived risk and perceived product uniqueness will act as psychological mechanisms. We discuss theoretical contributions and strategic insights for retailers and marketers that the findings indicate.     

Building Financial and Health Literacy at Older Ages: The Role of Online Information

Improving financial and health literacy is an important step in reducing economic vulnerability in older age, yet the means by which individuals accumulate these types of human capital remains an open question. This article evaluates the impact of online search activities on the levels of financial and health literacy. We find that using the internet for such information increases literacy significantly: doing so frequently (versus not at all) increases financial literacy by 16%, and health literacy by 12%. Our results are robust to alternative measures of financial literacy. They are also robust to an instrumental variable approach using other web skills such as email use to proxy for how individuals use the internet.     

Medicaid and long‐term care: The effects of penalizing strategic asset transfers

Medicaid provides a critical source of insurance for long‐term care, and individuals may strategically offload assets (typically to children) to meet the means‐tested eligibility requirement. In this article, we quantify the extent of such behavior using variation in the penalty for improper parent‐to‐child transfers induced by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. We estimate difference‐in‐differences models based on the hypothesis that only individuals with high levels of nursing home risk (high risk) will alter transfers because of the Act. We find that over a 2‐year horizon, high‐risk individuals reduced transfers to children on the extensive margin by 11 percent and that the average total amount of transfers decreased by $4,860. The results hold only for coupled respondents. We also conduct a triple‐differences analysis to examine heterogeneity with financial literacy and find that even those with a low level of financial literacy responded to the penalty.     

Risk preferences estimation of exporting firms under exchange rate uncertainty

This note empirically analyses how exchange rate fluctuations affects firms’ optimal production and exporting decisions. A firm’s elasticity of risk aversion determines the direction of the impact of exchange rate risk on exports. Based on a flexible utility function that incorporates all possible risk preferences, a unique structurally estimable equation is derived. Quantile regression method is used to estimate this equation and compute the risk aversion elasticities for a panel of Indian firms. This approach allows us to demonstrate how characteristics of exporters at the intensive margin varies with the level of elasticities across the conditional exchange rate distribution.     

The Impact of the London Bombings on the Well-Being of Adolescent Muslims*

We exploit the timing of the London bombings of July 2005, coinciding with a large-scale national survey of adolescents, to identify the impact of extremist Islamic terror attacks on the well-being of adolescent Muslims. Our analysis reveals interesting gender differences. We find evidence of a decline in the happiness of Muslim teenage girls after the bombings, which is also accompanied by a rise in expectations of facing discrimination in the labour market. These findings are robust to several falsification tests. However, we fail to uncover compelling evidence of any impact of the bombings on Muslim teenage boys.     

Does technology licensing matter for privatization?

In mixed oligopolies, technology licensing from a cost‐efficient firm to a cost‐inefficient firm has been widely observed. This paper examines the relationship between privatization and licensing (by public or private firms) with the consideration of either a domestic or a foreign private firm. We find that (a) in the case of a domestic private firm, public licensing facilitates privatization, but private licensing hinders privatization; (b) in the case of a foreign private firm, both public and private licensing facilitate privatization. Our results yield important policy implications on privatization.     

Corporate Governance Reforms in India

In recent years India has been moving further in the direction of adopting an Anglo-American model of corporate governance. This decision, the result more of international economic and political pressures than public debate, in effect represents a new development strategy for the world's most populous democracy. In light of this situation, it is important to ask two basic questions: 1) why has the Anglo-American model of corporate governance been adopted? and; 2) can it be justified? This paper addresses the first of these questions by distinguish and examining three historical models of governance in India: 1) the managing agency model in the colonial period; 2) the business house model that emerged after independence, and; 3) the Anglo-American model which has recently been adopted (and is still emerging). The second question is approached through an examination of the "development impact" of the new model, as indicated by such measures as growth, employment and respect for shareholder rights.     

Cross‐cultural evaluation of factors driving intention to purchase new food products – Beijing,China and south‐east England

It has been reported that consumers in different countries have distinctive perceptions of, and attitudes to, products. This study investigated consumers’ thoughts on new food products in south‐east England (n = 222) and Beijing, China (n = 139), using a questionnaire‐based largely on the Theory of Reasoned Action. Results indicated that consumers in both countries believe it is necessary for the food industry in their respective countries to introduce new food products and they would like to try new products. There appears to be great interest in new products among the Beijing Chinese, with most interest in new healthy food products. The influences on choices suggest that a marketing focus on quality, utility and health benefits would be most fruitful, as personal beliefs were more important in intention to purchase than the influence of other people. Results point away from the expected result that the Chinese, as a collectivist culture, would place more emphasis on others’ opinions than their own beliefs. This may be linked to food not being an item of conspicuous consumption, or to a cultural shift among urban Chinese.     

Boards of directors in family firms: a generational perspective

The purpose of this study is to advance the understanding of boards of directors in family firms. Building on generational changes in family attributes, we argue that firms in a different generational phase have different governance needs and characteristics. With regard to board task needs, the empirical results indicate a convex generational evolution in the need for board advice, and a rise over the generations in the need for board control. With regard to board composition, we find that the likelihood of having an outside director on the board has a convex generational trend. This relationship seems to be fully mediated by the firm’s board task needs. Furthermore, the number of family directors seems to increase over the generations. This study demonstrates that it is important to consider the generational phase of the family firm in order to understand its governance system.

The effects of merchandise coordination and juxtaposition on consumers’ product evaluation and purchase intention in store-based retailing

Many retailers attempt to juxtapose and coordinate complementary products in their stores on the basis of key attributes because good coordination of complementary items can provide consumers with relevant information for their evaluation of individual products. In addition, the aesthetic appeal and the social impression that good coordination offers can be transferred to the products themselves. On the basis of these theories, the authors test the effects of merchandise coordination and juxtaposition (vs. separation) on consumer behavior using actual clothing items as stimuli in a laboratory setting. The authors find that coordination affects consumers’ evaluation of and purchase intention toward a target item only when the item is juxtaposed with a complementary item. This effect can be explained by the aesthetic response of consumers to and their social impression of a grouping of the items. Furthermore, in comparison with displaying the two items separately, juxtaposing them in a poorly coordinated manner appears to depress the target item's evaluation, though juxtaposing them in a well-coordinated manner does not seem to improve the evaluation.