The influence of advertising on the demand for chocolate confectionery

This paper addresses the impact of advertising on the size of five European chocolate confectionery markets: Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. It is prompted by suggestions that advertising may be responsible for excessive consumption of confectionery by children. The literature on whether advertising affects the total market size is not one-sided but the balance of previous research indicates market effects to be less likely. Chocolate confectionery in Western Europe is a mature market in slow decline. We found no significant association between the weight of advertising and market growth with either contemporaneous or lagged effects. There was, however, negative correlation between market size and price, as was to be expected. The results were consistent across the five countries.     

Sustainable consumption and the financial sector: analysing the markets for responsible investment in Hong Kong and Japan

The origins of the modern socially responsible investment (SRI) movement can be traced to the turbulent period in the 1960s when powerful social undercurrents including environmentalism and anti‐war activism fuelled a rise, in a radical change, in the way society viewed faith, values and commerce. Today, nearly 1 out of every US$9 under professional management in the US is currently invested using social investment strategies while the European green and ethical investment market is estimated to be €1 trillion or as much as 10–15% of the total funds under management. While some preliminary figures and analyses exist for countries outside these two regions, SRI has been, to date, largely explored within the context of North America and Europe. This is unfortunate as the sustainability of SRI as a consumer market is going to depend, to a great extent, to what happens outside of North America and Europe, and most notably in the rapidly developing Asian economies. In this article, I will explore the development of SRI as a mainstream financial consumer instrument in industrialized (Japan) and emerging (Hong Kong/China) economies of the Asia Pacific region. To fully analyse the SRI market development in Hong Kong and Japan, I will examine the following three issues and questions: first, how does the sustainable consumption framework offer a useful lens from which to explore SRI, and why is the Asia Pacific market and policy context so important for the broader issue of sustainable consumption? Second, what precisely is SRI and how did it develop into an important global financial investment vehicle? Third, how did the SRI market develop in the case of Hong Kong and Japan? I will then conclude the article with some analysis on the important lessons SRI market development in Hong Kong and Japan hold for market sustainability of the financial sector and sustainable consumption.     

Der deutsche Telekommunikationsmarkt im europäischen und internationalen Vergleich

According to current discussions, the German and European market for telecommunications is not as competitive as in the US or Asia. This paper shows — based on official data — that Germany has a high availability of broadband internet connections. It is not the availability but the usage that lags behind. Fixed telephone calls as well as broadband internet connections are rather cheap in Germany, but to be prepared for the digitalisation of the economy and society, more investments in infrastructure are needed. Surprisingly the US does have a higher number of network providers than Europe. What is missing in Europe is a provider that covers all countries of the European Union; current EBITDA does not show that the European market is too fragmented to make a profit.     

基于现代女性视角的消费行为研究

众所周知,当今世界女性消费者已经成为市场上的消费主力军,在购买活动中起着举足轻重的作用。女性的社会消费在当前的消费大潮中正在从温饱型消费向发展型、享受型消费发生着根本性变化。女性作为社会消费的一个特殊群体,有着不同于社会其他消费群体的消费心理和消费行为,其随着社会的发展而发生了重大变化,表现出更趋于个性化和高级化等多方面特点。在目前大部分市场处于饱和、竞争空前激烈的情况下,认真研究并探索现代女性独特消费心理特点以及消费行为的变化,能够为企业制定有效地营销策略,提供有益的建议,成为市场上最具潜力的竞争企业。     

创新流通理论营造市场和谐

在构建和谐社会的过程中,商业贸易、市场流通既有义不容辞的义务,又有先天有利的条件,和谐商业、和谐市场是和谐社会的一个重要组成部分,市场繁荣、流通规范、供求协调、消费顺畅是整个社会经济关系和谐的集中体现。流通从本质上来说是克服生产和消费之间矛盾的途径。合理的流通往往产生双赢乃至多赢的结果,能够增进整个社会的福利。营造市场和谐需要正确处理政府与市场的关系,政府不作为或过度作为都会成为市场混乱的原因。正确处理垄断与竞争的关系,同样是营造和谐市场必须解决的问题,只有打破垄断、约束垄断,维持必要的竞争,强化社会对垄断行业和企业的监督,才会达到市场和谐。当市场跨越国界,面对经济全球化的潮流时,营造和谐市场必须在坚持必要的国际贸易准则的同时,要坚决反对强势国家所推行的市场不公正。     

优化社区消费环境的思考

党的十七大提出建设生态文明,必然要求形成与之相适应的和谐消费。营造和谐社区消费环境,是构建和谐社区乃至构建和谐社会的根本与基础。目前,我国社区消费环境存在的问题制约了我国居民消费水平与消费结构的合理发展。优化社区消费环境具有重要意义,解决社区消费环境存在的问题就必须加大社区商业投入、加强市场监管、规范商家经营行为以及不断进行消费教育。     

圣经和算盘的对峙—试论新闻实践中的专业主义和消费主义

作为一种影响到社会各个领域和生活各个层面的文化形态，消费主义带给新闻实践的影响是显著的。由此许多人认为消费主义必将侵蚀专业主义。但在消费社会的语境下，消费社会的逻辑结构是市场民主制。从新闻伦理学角度对专业主义和消费主义重新进行审视。可知新闻专业主义的消解并非是消费主义影响新闻实践的必然结果，新闻实践中呈现出的专业主义或消费主义是政府、媒介、工商界以及公众四种力量博弈的结果。     

Housing wealth effect in emerging economies

In this paper I estimate the impact of changes in real and financial wealth on private consumption for a panel of 17 emerging economies from Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. Households' consumption, income and the two measures of real and financial wealth – proxied by house and stock market prices – are found to be difference-stationary and co-integrated; by means of recent econometric techniques for heterogeneous panels, i.e. the pooled mean group estimator, inference is drawn about the long- and short-run relationships between the variables of interest. The main result of the analysis shows that both real and financial wealth positively affect households' consumption in the long-run, with the elasticity of housing wealth being larger than that of stock market wealth. Moreover, there is also a significant short-run adjustment from income, stock prices and house prices on consumption, i.e. consumption adjusts to its long-run relationship with lags. When the model is run for the two groups of countries separately, the long-run impact of an increase (decrease) in house prices is generally higher in Central and Eastern European economies with respect to Asian ones, which make them more vulnerable to further adverse housing market developments.     

Domesticating fears and fantasies of ‘the East’: integrating the Ottoman legacy within European heritage

ABSTRACT

‘Europe’ has no fixed geographical, historical, religious or cultural boundaries. Claims for the existence of European civilization as a discrete construct are continually made yet dissolve on close scrutiny. Here, we examine these claims at one of the grandest points of existential crisis and belonging for Europe, the relationship with the ‘Other within’: Turkey, the Balkans and Ottoman heritage in Europe. Through a hybrid semiotic and Foucauldian analysis of catalogues of eight high-profile exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Turkey, Belgium and Portugal we argue that an unsettled discursive struggle is at play, in which one ‘Europe’ articulates ‘reconciliation’ of profound civilizational difference while another, Ottoman, ‘Europe’ stakes a claim of right as an intrinsic component of what it means to be European in a contemporary context. We attempt to trace the role of museum marketing in the perennial accommodation/exclusion of the Ottoman Empire as an intrinsic component in the diversity of Europe’s cultural heritage.     

贵州构建和谐商业的思考

和谐商业是和谐社会的重要组成部分,和谐社会离不开和谐商业。但是现阶段贵州商业存在着诸多不和谐的矛盾和问题,成为贵州构建和谐商业的障碍。从商业活动中各种经济关系的角度看,加快现代流通体系的建设,实现城乡协调发展、完善商业流通法律法规,强化市场监督、促进中小零售企业发展,提高企业竞争力和注重商业诚信建、营造放心消费环境等是构建和谐贵州商业之良策。     

Acculturation and the influence of ethnicity on market orientation of African and Caribbean companies in Britain

Since acculturation is the process of acquiring the customs of an alternative society we assume that adapting to consumers from various cultures will be a fundamental task for African and Caribbean (A&C) companies in Britain. This study investigates market orientation of A&C service companies and their processes of cultural learning and adaptation using ethnicity as a basis for an exploratory study of the British market. The findings indicate that A&C companies serve as bicultural mediators, both accommodating their consumers and working to alter their consumption patterns to bring them into line with their own ethnic and British national market customs. The adaptation of A&C service companies to the cultural characteristics and needs of their customers results in changes to their companies, consumers and the British marketplace.     

以和谐流通促建和谐社会

本文认为,和谐流通即流通与经济社会发展需要相适应,能促进经济又好又快发展;与全体人民物质文化需要相适应,能保证各阶层消费群体特别是普通老百姓的需要得以满足;能促使公平竞争的市场环境得以建立,使所有市场参与者的合法利益得到保障;能鼓励健康消费,抑制不良消费,有利于人的身心健康和全面发展;以不损害消费者、企业和国家利益为基本原则,能确保消费安全,促进经济社会的可持续发展。文章提出,促进和谐流通,应从“主体管理”走向“社会管理,”建立覆盖全社会的流通管理和协调机制;坚持用法规与政策的手段抑制流通领域中的垄断与不公平竞争现象,维护经济社会的协调发展;强化舆论监督、行业自律和商德教育,不断提升流通企业经营者持续发展的战略意识和诚信经商的伦理道德水平;采取切实措施改变流通领域人才结构,提高流通现代化水平,促使流通效率提高和成本下降。     

Socializing consumers in a global marketplace

Abstract: People now make consumption decisions in a global marketplace. Slowly, society is collectively gaining painful awareness of the impact of these decisions. Contemporary consumerism is the product of long-term historical changes and, by implication, can be further changed. This paper develops the position that enriching our conventional understanding of consumer socialization from a global perspective is one way that family and consumer scientists can impact the future direction of modern consumption in a global market. By adopting this role within civil society, members of the profession can contribute to the process of resocializing the existing generation, and socializing entire new generations, of consumers to be globally conscious. By implication, business and governments’ trade, production and foreign policies will be challenged as well, leading to an even more profound change in consumption patterns around the world.     

“Fairtradization”: a performative perspective on fair trade markets and the role of retail settings in their enactment

In line with the Callonian approach in economic sociology, this paper introduces the concept of “fairtradization” to analyze the assemblages of human agents, material devices, and discourses through which the fair trade market is enacted. We argue that the retail setting is a key site for the enactment of particular versions of “fair trade,” focusing on a case study of the newly designed world shops in Flanders (Belgium). We reveal that the new shop design – aimed to address particular overflows resulting from the mainstreaming of fair trade – constitutes a multivocal shopping environment that enables four analytically distinct enactments of fair trade shopping. Our analytical approach opens up a more dynamic and complex understanding of fair trade beyond the unidirectional diagnosis of mainstreaming. More generally, it provides support for a radically performative view of consumption markets, pointing to the importance of retail settings as socio-material spaces for their enactment.     

Participation Versus Social Exclusion

The different experience of unemployment and of poverty in the two main Western economic systems (roughly, Europe and the US) demonstrates that a simple economic approach to these problems does not exist. In this paper I deal with the question of the impact of technological change on productive activities, employment and income distribution.The main idea is the following: technological progress may lead to an impoverishment of the disadvantaged people in a free-market society, as a consequence of their inability to adjust their skills to the new requirements of the labour market. By contrast, a just society, grounded on moral principles, recognizes that the distributive criterion has to take into account not only individual contributions to production, but also the relative needs of the individuals. In that context, everyone should be better off after a technological change, since it is fair that everyone gains some advantage from a generalized improvement in the productive conditions of society. A policy that adopts this perspective should provide an effective guard against the danger of social exclusion that strikes modern societies.     

Use of microcredit for household income and consumption smoothing by low income communities

This paper discusses findings of a study that investigated income, savings and consumption patterns of low income people and critical factors that influence the use of microcredit—a form of small instant loans targeted for low income people—for household income and consumption smoothing. The sample of the study consisted of households from low income communities living in a lower‐middle income country—Sri Lanka. It was found that microcredit borrowers were using the loans for purposes that can be identified as income and consumption smoothing, which is beyond the ideas and intended practice of microcredit. The findings suggest that the consequences of using microcredit for income and consumption smoothing could be costly for households and the society at large.     

Collaborative Learning Instrument in Teaching Entrepreneurship Issues

Abstract

Due to the shortcomings associated with the largely passive learning experience currently experienced by students at the University level in Central and Eastern Europe, active learning approaches have been promoted by educationalists as a more effective method for teaching business and entrepreneurship. This paper contributes to this literature by outlining a collaborative learning instrument involving active learning that can be used to teach entrepreneurship at university level in Central and Eastern Europe. This instrument illustrates the role of entrepreneurship and proprietorship in both a well-established market economy and in the post-communist economies of Central and Eastern Europe. Students outcomes should include the following: firstly, the recognition that the emerging small business sectors of the post-communist economies have much potential as a vehicle for economic growth and for developing capitalist forms of economic production; secondly, an understanding that entrepreneurial behavior is an essential element in the development of the small business sector; thirdly, an ability to identify traits common to successful entrepreneurs; and fourthly, they will develop and practice a variety of entrepreneurial skills themselves that may make them aware of their potential as entrepreneurs.     

THE GENERAL STRUCTURE OF OPTIMAL INVESTMENT AND CONSUMPTION WITH SMALL TRANSACTION COSTS

We investigate the general structure of optimal investment and consumption with small proportional transaction costs. For a safe asset and a risky asset with general continuous dynamics, traded with random and time‐varying but small transaction costs, we derive simple formal asymptotics for the optimal policy and welfare. These reveal the roles of the investors' preferences as well as the market and cost dynamics, and also lead to a fully dynamic model for the implied trading volume. In frictionless models that can be solved in closed form, explicit formulas for the leading‐order corrections due to small transaction costs are obtained.     

From command economy to market economy with a human face: The potential role of the stakeholder approach

This article questions the wisdom of the tendency to adopt managerial capitalism, in its purest form, as the only guiding principle of the new organizational philosophy now evolving in Eastern Europe. The article's main thesis is that following the demise of the command economy, the stakeholder approach can play a pivotal role in providing social legitimacy to organizations attempting to transform and revitalize in the newly created market economy in Eastern Europe. Rather than viewing maximization of profits to the stockholders as the enterprise's sole responsibility, this approach calls for a management strategy that matches the enterprise's “values” to the “values” of all its stakeholders optimizing, over the long-term, the net (social and economic) value added to society. © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Internationalisation of Hypermarket Retailing in Poland

ABSTRACT

Retailing in Poland after 1989 was privatised rapidly. There was an explosion in the number of small shops and kiosks. By 1996 rationalisation had begun in the store network. By the mid-1990s foreign retailers were perceiving the Polish market as a potentially lucrative one. Several store formats were introduced. Hypermarket operators from Western Europe have moved into the market strongly since the mid-1990s. French and German retailers are making substantial investments in this format. There are notable implications for the supply chain, logistics and the behaviour of manufacturers of fast-moving consumer goods, particularly food. There are implications also for the training and development of a cadre of managers in operational and strategic functions. The development of hypermarkets represents a significant transfer of managerial know-how from Western to Central Europe. There are also implications for the small shopkeeper sector which has already been affected but is likely to be more heavily affected as hypermarket numbers increase. In the process of the modernisation of retailing in Poland foreign hypermarket operators are playing an important role.