The effects of scent on consumer behaviour

This article presents a systematic review of extant research on the effects of scent on consumer behaviour for readers of the International Journal of Consumer Studies. Although many articles have been published on this topic in recent years, there is a need for a comprehensive summary of up‐to‐date findings in this area of research. A systematic literature review is conducted with selected Chartered Association of Business Schools‐ranked journals in the fields of marketing and psychology, covering the period between 1980 and 2015. Thematic areas include the impact of scent on consumers’ cognitive and affective responses, attitudes and perceptions, as well as memory and behaviours. Relevant mediators and moderators of the effects of scent on these variables include affect, cognition, awareness and individual or environmental stimuli. Gaps for future research are identified and include the role of consumer awareness of scent and its influence on behaviour. Although this article provides a systematic review of the literature within the fields of psychology and marketing, it acknowledges that a large body of research regarding human responses to odours exists within other disciplinary fields such as neuroscience. The potential for, as well as the ethical caveats of, using scent stimuli for marketing purposes are also considered. This article makes a significant contribution to the consumer behaviour literature given its systematic article selection and review process, encompassing the most up‐to‐date research and focusing on all key thematic areas related to scent and consumption.     

Understanding road traffic risks from the street hawker’s perspective

This study explored street hawkers’ lived experiences and risks in traffic using the phenomenological case study design. Data from 24 hawkers at three hawking spots and field observations form the basis of our study. A stratified purposeful sampling scheme was employed to ensure a balance of gender and age. Thematic data analytic strategy was employed in the data analysis. We found that participants’ traffic incidents were mainly self-induced, attributable to their negligence on the road, indiscriminate road crossing and car-following behaviour. Our results suggest a perceived relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and personal traffic accident encounters. Also, we noted that the ability to manage traffic risk seem to influence hawkers’ traffic risk perceptions, with gender and age as possible mediators. As this study is exploratory, we recommend further scientific enquiry to explain these issues and to provide the basis for appropriate interventions to manage the road safety implications of this activity.     

Long-term care social insurance: How to avoid big losses?

Long-term care (LTC) needs are expected to rapidly increase in the next decades, and at the same time, the main provider of LTC, namely the family, is stalling. This calls for more involvement of the state that today covers <20% of these needs and most often in an inconsistent way. Besides the need to help the dependent poor, there is a mounting concern in the middle class that a number of dependent people are incurring costs that could force them to sell all their assets. In this paper, we study the design of a social insurance program that meets this concern. Following Arrow (Am Econ Rev 53:941–973, 1963), we suggest a policy that is characterized by complete insurance above a deductible amount.     

Formal institutions and subjective well-being: Revisiting the cross-country evidence

A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited, and inconclusive. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent cross-country studies on the institution–happiness association. Our findings suggest that their conclusions are qualitatively rather insensitive to the specific measure of ‘happiness’ used, while the associations between formal institutions and subjective well-being differ among poor and rich countries. Separating different types of institutional quality, we find that in low-income countries the effects of economic–judicial institutions on happiness dominate those of political institutions, while analyses restricted to middle- and high-income countries show strong support for an additional beneficial effect of political institutions. Our results bear important implications that we discuss in the concluding section of the paper.     

Smart packaging: definitions,models and packaging as an intermediator between digital and physical product management

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to examine the traditional ‘contain–protect–communicate–facilitate convenience’ model of the main packaging functions, to revise each component of it in relation to packaging strategies and smart packaging applications, and to establish a new model of the main packaging functionalities concerning the analysed data. The scientific approach of this paper is twofold: it is based on an extensive literature review focused on articles related to packaging science and on a set of empirical observations from industrial cases of enhanced packaging with a higher emphasis on interactive packaging. The key findings of this paper are the two principal purposes of smart interactive packaging: (1) to enhance the product’s functionality or experience in order to serve its primary initial purpose more effectively and (2) to improve consumers’ experiences through engagement and entertainment in both the retail and the usage environment. This paper proves its originality by considering shifts in technological opportunities in packaging to assure a broader range of design options in packaging and engagement, thereby leaving packaging as static item. Also, bridging the general consumer experience between digital marketing and physical shopping using packaging is a novelty in retailing and brand management. This research is in its early stages and limitations are given from the modest proliferation of smart and interactive packaging into empirical contexts. New technologies of packaging and the design decisions are expected to have significant practical implications for brand and retail managers as well as consumers.     

The Inherited Inequality: How Demographic Aging and Pension Reforms can Change the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth

The role of inherited wealth in modern economies has increasingly come under scrutiny. This study presents one of the first attempts to shed light on how demographic aging could shape this role. It shows that, in the absence of retirement annuities, or for a given level of annuitization, both increasing longevity and decreasing fertility should reduce the inherited share of total wealth in a given economy. Thus, aging is not likely to explain a recent surge in this share in some advanced economies. Shrinking retirement annuities, however, could offset and potentially reverse these effects. The paper also shows that individual bequests will be more unequally distributed if aging is driven by a drop in fertility. In comparison, the effect of increasing longevity on their distribution is non‐monotonic.     

Long‐term care and intrafamily moral hazard: Optimal public policy

The paper studies optimal public long‐term care (LTC) policy in the context of intrafamily moral hazard suggested by Pauly. The model considers a representative family consisting of an adult child and her elderly parent who might become dependent, in which case he places a special value on the LTC provided to him by his child. Since the child's caregiving is decreasing in the amount of insurance coverage, the parent prefers to underinsure, which is socially suboptimal. The child's choice of caregiving is also inefficient since she does not internalize its positive effect on the parent. The paper tackles these inefficiencies and shows that intrafamily moral hazard is a sufficient justification for public intervention targeted at insurance. If not necessarily for the introduction of mandatory public insurance, then at least for the taxation or subsidization of private insurance premiums.     

Public sector decentralization and school performance: International evidence

Using a panel of international student test scores 1980-2000 (PISA and TIMSS), panel fixed effects estimates suggest that government spending decentralization is conducive to student performance. The effect does not appear to be mediated through levels of educational spending.     

GOVERNMENT DECENTRALIZATION AS A DISINCENTIVE FOR TRANSNATIONAL TERROR? AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS*

Using panel data for a maximum of 109 countries over the years 1976–2000, we empirically analyze the impact of decentralization on the occurrence of transnational terror. Our results show that expenditure decentralization reduces the number of transnational terror events in a country, while political decentralization has no impact. These results are robust to the choice of control variables and method of estimation.