Voluntary pricing mechanisms for green product purchase: altruistic versus self-enhancing consideration

Voluntary pricing mechanisms, such as Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW), could be a better pricing strategy to substitute for cash discount promotions. They can effectively promote the sales of conventional goods and services, while being influenced by socio-psychological variables. However, there is no clarity on the relative assessment of the impact of pricing frames, such as PWYW and Mark-Off-Your-Own-Price (MOYOP), on the consumers’ purchase of green products, where the purchase consideration might vary as the environment protection (altruistic) consideration versus the self-interest (self-enhancing) consideration. Further, there remains ambiguity on when and why such pricing mechanisms will work. This study, through an experiment, examines the buyers’ varied responses for the PWYW price frame versus the MOYOP price frame versus the fixed price frame under the environment protection (altruistic) consideration versus the self-interest (self-enhancing) consideration. It shows that although buyers do not show any difference in the mean voluntary payment between PWYW versus MOYOP frames as such; they prefer PWYW price frame under the environment protection (altruistic) consideration and MOYOP price frame under the self-interest (self-enhancing) consideration. The results show that the perception of price fairness mediates the relationship between pricing mechanism and willingness to buy (WTB). Furthermore, this study finds that price consciousness impacts the indirect effect of pricing mechanisms on WTB via perceived price fairness. The present study is the first to examine and analyze different considerations when the buyers’ preference varied for the PWYW versus MOYOP pricing frames. This study has suggested the underlying role of the perception of price fairness and price consciousness in the participative pricing mechanism on purchase.     

Gender and labor retrenchment in Chinese state owned enterprises: Investigation using firm-level panel data

In the late 1990s, China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) underwent dramatic labor retrenchment, drawing considerable attention to how women fared relative to men during the retrenchment process. However, almost all the existing studies on the subject rely on individual-level data. In this paper, we study the gender patterns of SOE labor retrenchment using a unique enterprise-level dataset for the period from 1995 to 2001. We find that disproportionately large share of discharge was borne by female workers and that female discharge rates were more sensitive to output growth than male discharge rates. Further, estimating dynamic labor demand equations by gender, we find that female employment was more sensitive to negative output shocks experienced by enterprises than male employment but less sensitive to positive output shocks. Further, we find that sensitivity of female employment to output was greater for reformed than non-reformed enterprises and for male-intensive than female-intensive sectors. These results provide new insights into the gender patterns of employment adjustment of Chinese SOEs to output shocks during the retrenchment period.     

Effective Rental Housing Demand in the Tokyo Metropolitan Region

This paper reports on the estimation of housing demand for tenants in Tokyo Metropolitan Region using household level data for 1993. The results indicate that the rental housing demand is inelastic with respect to permanent income and price, with coefficients as 0.31 and -0.093 respectively. Other important variables, which determine housing demand for tenants are length of stay and type of household. Larger households demand more housing. However, keeping the size of household constant, households with elderly members have higher demand for housing. The only exception to the rule is households formed with members not belonging to same nucleus family demand less housing.     

DISCRIMINANT FUNCTION ANALYSIS OF SMALL FARMERS AND LANDLESS IN INDIA*

The small farmers and landless in India are faced with the vicious cycle of low incomes, low savings, low investment and uneconomic size of operational holdings and often are nonviable. Using data for the Haryana State of Northern India for 1977/78, the linear discriminant function was used to identify those factors which will make the majority of small farmers and landless in India a viable entity. Analysis of these data indicated that per hectare fertiliser use, area under high yielding crop varieties, operational size of holding and working capital are the factors which affect the viability of the small farmers and landless. As compared to the simple regression analysis discriminant function approach has been found an effective tool for discriminating the two social groups and for predicting the sponsored social change. However, the use of the discriminant function may be limited if the qualitative independent variable has more than two classes and its orderings are not in sequence.     

Opportunity is not everything

We experimentally investigate in village India how belief systems that hierarchize social groups affect the groups’ responses to economic opportunities. Earlier we found that making caste salient hurt low caste performance both absolutely and relative to the high caste's. To examine the possible role of mistrust, we manipulate the scope for discretion in rewarding performance. When offered a gamble in which success mechanically triggers rewards, making caste salient has no significant effect. Instead, it is in the case with scope for discretion that making caste salient creates a large caste gap in the proportion of subjects who refuse the gamble.     

Dynamic Currency Linkages and Their Determinants: An Empirical Study for East Asian Economic Community Region

In this article, Copula GARCH models have been employed to study the inter-temporal process of currency market co-movements between ASEAN+6 countries (referred to in this study as East Asian Economic Community) and ASEAN+6 currency market index. Empirical results show that the sample countries of the region exhibit varying levels of currency co-movements with the Asian benchmark. Markov regime switching results show that many of the countries which had high dependences with the regional currency index as was found in copula estimations had also overlapping currency market cycles. Using Principal Component Analysis, we find that three statistical factors explain exchange rate co-movements which came out to be trade linkages, economic risk, and currency market openness in our dynamic panel data estimation.     

Health care and retirement costs in North America spiralling uncontrollably: what are employers to do?

This article addresses some of the issues related to the rising costs of employee benefits in the United States and Canada in terms of the cost of retirement pensions and employer-provided health insurance for employees and retirees. We examine various factors that affect the cost of these services for organizations as well as how these might affect the choices employers might be forced to make. We elaborate on how various factors might compel employers to shift the cost of benefits to employees. Specifically, we elaborate on various legislative, economic, and demographic constraints on these employee benefits and examine in detail two employer practices of concern, namely cash balance retirement plans and consumer-directed healthcare plans.     

Celebrity influences on consumer decision making: new insights and research directions

ABSTRACT

Throughout human history, people have expressed admiration for heroes who possessed extraordinary abilities and achieved superhuman goals. For many, modern-day celebrities fulfil this role and are prominent in various marketing communications activities. This paper addresses the literature review gaps and provides an in-depth review of the psychological and social psychological perspectives which are relevant to the celebrity endorsement literature. The contributions of this paper consist of a detailed analysis of important types of consumer-celebrity relationships, key emotional drivers (e.g. envy and admiration) of celebrity influence and the development of an original conceptual model. The conceptual model pulls together the past research and identifies new research gaps, which synthesises different research perspectives and provides a sound theoretical basis guiding future researchers and marketing managers.