Personal loan users’ mental integration of payment and consumption

Buying a good on a loan entails numerous consumption and payment episodes. Loan users can either mentally integrate or separate these episodes. In order to identify the actual mental structures, we conducted 29 semi-structured interviews with current and prospective loan users. A content analysis revealed that a majority of loan users established a hedonically efficient one-way connection from the loan to the good; i.e., the good was perceived as unrelated to the loan, whereas, concurrently, payments were buffered by thoughts of the good. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that mental structures are less stable than sometimes assumed.     

Top income shares in OECD countries: The role of government ideology and globalisation

This paper investigates how government ideology and globalisation are associated with top income shares in 17 OECD countries over the period 1970 to 2014. We use top income shares of the World Wealth and Income Database (WID ). Globalisation is measured by the KOF index of globalisation. Static and dynamic panel model results show that the top income shares increased more under right wing governments than under left wing governments. The ideology‐induced effect was stronger when globalisation proceeded more rapidly. Globalisation was positively correlated with income shares of the upper‐middle class (P99–P90), but negatively with income shares of the rich (top 1%) in the overall sample. We show that the relationship differs between Anglo‐Saxon countries and other OECD countries. Globalisation was more pro‐rich in Anglo‐Saxon countries than in other OECD countries. Government ideology does not turn out to have a statistically significant effect on top income shares in Anglo‐Saxon countries after the 1980s, whereas ideology‐induced differences in the distributional outcomes continued in other OECD countries.     

A study of the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility and price image on retailer personality and consumers' reactions (satisfaction,trust and loyalty to the retailer)

This study investigates the impact of a retailer's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy and its price image on retailer personality, along with the impact of these two variables on the consequences of retailer personality: consumers' satisfaction, trust and loyalty toward the retailer (measured by their attitude and future behavioral intentions). Data were collected on a convenience sample of 352 consumers of a French grocery retailer. Using Partial Least Squares analysis (PLS), we show that perceived Corporate Social Responsibility and price image have a significant positive/negative influence on retailer personality traits (“agreeableness” and “conscientiousness”/“disingenuousness”) and that Corporate Social Responsibility has also a significant positive influence on the “sophistication” personality trait. For the consequences examined (satisfaction, trust and loyalty to the retailer), we show that Corporate Social Responsibility, price image and retailer personality have a direct or indirect impact on these dependent variables.     

Critical consumer issues in St. Lucia: an examination of consumer challenges and related learning among rural adults according to income levels

Consumer education is a relatively new and growing interest in St. Lucia. Neither the government nor the National Consumer Association has established a consumer education programme to address the growing consumer concerns in the country. The purpose of this study was to examine critical consumer issues, related learning challenges and strategies among rural adults in St. Lucia according to income levels. Rural adult consumers are most disadvantaged in terms of levels of education, income and access to resources, which may help to prevent and mediate consumer concerns. The specific research questions examined were: (1) What is the nature of problems experienced by rural St. Lucian adult consumers in the marketplace? (2) How do rural St. Lucian adult consumers solve the challenges they encounter in the marketplace? (3) What is it like for rural St. Lucian adult consumers as they go about trying to learn to solve the consumer issues they face? and (4) What do rural St. Lucian adult consumers perceive to be the requisites for effective decision making in the marketplace? Data were collected using a questionnaire comprising of 29 questions divided into four sections (problems, strategies, solving consumer problems and making effective decisions) and two biographical questions. A total of 500 rural adult consumers were surveyed verbally through door‐to‐door contact. The findings of this study revealed that middle‐income rural adult consumers experience more problems in the marketplace than those with each lower or higher level of income. Middle‐income rural adult St. Lucian consumers in particular seek more information and are comfortable with using more strategies than the lower‐ and higher‐income rural adult consumers. This research gives us a better understanding of the problems faced by rural adult consumers based on their income. Research results will be useful to the government of St. Lucia and the National Consumer Association when they decide to establish an adult consumer education programme for St. Lucia.     

Exploring the dark side of pet ownership: Status- and control-based pet consumption

Desire for status or control may motivate some consumers to own certain types of pets. In the light of recent debates surrounding “designer pets,” this article examines the dark side of pet ownership through interpretive interviews with dog owners. The findings compare and contrast two types of ownership motivation — pets as companions to love versus pets as toys, status markers, and brands. This latter category forms part of the dark side of pet ownership. Owners differ in their motivation for ownership, their appreciation of the pet, the nature of human-animal interaction, breed choice, and the purchase of pet-related paraphernalia.     

中产阶层的社会消费引领与波及效果

近年随着中产阶层规模的逐渐壮大,出现了众多的相关研究。先前的研究多聚焦于中产阶层的消费结构等方面,而本文则以中产阶层的社会消费引领与波及效果为视角,阐明中产阶层在高档化消费、高附加价值化的消费等方面具备消费引领功效,同时对于普通民众的投资行为、公序良德的意识等方面都有社会波及效果。为此,政府需要通过拓宽投资渠道、积极引导中产阶层,这是建立健康的消费环境以及和谐自然的社会环境的重要基础。     

Purchase frequency,sample selection,and price sensitivity: The heavy-user bias

We study the relationship between purchase frequency and volume and choice behavior as summarized by brand preferences and price sensitivity. Our most striking finding is that consumers with high purchase frequency or high purchase volume are much more price sensitive and have more sharply defined preferences for national brands than consumers with low frequency or low volume of purchase. In much of the choice literature, analysis is confined to households that have on average a larger number of purchases than is representative of the ERIM panel. Our findings suggest that some caution should be exercised in interpreting studies that employ purchase-frequency or purchase-number sample inclusion rules. Our findings also support an information theoretic point of view in which households become more price sensitive via costly acquisition of information about the distribution of prices.We acknowledge helpful comments from Greg Allenby and Bob Blattberg. Support from the Micro-Marketing Project at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago is gratefully acknowledged. Byung-Do Kim is the corresponding author.     

The interplay of international trade,economic growth and income convergence: a brief intellectual history of recent developments

The literature on the interplay of international trade, economic growth, and income convergence across economies has proliferated in the past few decades. The present essay reviews the theoretical advancements and empirical findings in this literature. The focus will be on recent developments with a few glances at the past. The essay also describes new findings and insights into the role of international trade in global income distribution. Ideas for further research are offered throughout the essay.     

Consumer social voice in the age of social media: Segmentation profiles and relationship marketing strategies

Service failures, once handled quietly by customer service departments, are now played out on a highly public social media stage. These failures can result in not only the loss of a loyal consumer but also can negatively affect relationships with those watching the dialogue between disgruntled customers and organizations. The phenomenon of seeking resolution to service failures online is distinct from both traditional word-of-mouth and voice behaviors. This article introduces social voice: public complaining behavior that aims to change the behavior of the organization. A qualitative methodology defines eight dimensions of social voice and categorizes them by the strength of the relationship to the organization. Results indicate that appropriate response strategies differ based on social voice segment.     

Corporate social responsibilities,consumer trust and corporate reputation: South Korean consumers' perspectives

This study proposes and tests a model of corporate social responsibility (CSR) that specifies relationships among (1) four categories of CSR initiatives as independent variables, (2) three types of consumer trust as mediating variables, and (3) corporate reputation as the dependent variable. Results show that the firm's fulfillment of economic and legal CSR initiatives had a direct positive effect on corporate reputation, whereas neither ethical nor philanthropic CSR initiatives did. In the CSR-trust link, economic performances fostered consumer expertise trust, legal and ethical CSR activities affected integrity trust, and philanthropic CSR activities influenced social benevolence trust in the firm. This study confirms that all three types of trust partially or fully mediate the effect of the four CSR initiatives on corporate reputation. This outcome indicates that CSR activities create and nurture consumers' trust in the company, which will, in turn, bring about consumers' positive or improved perceptions of the firm.     

The role of conflict, culture, and myth in creating attitudinal commitment

Using qualitative methods, the authors examine commitment in the sports industry and specifically in a NASCAR context. Commitment, or the culmination of the customer-service provider relationship, plays a particularly critical role in NASCAR, for which more than 70% of fans consciously choose a current sponsor's brand over a competitor's. Previous research, primarily in the domain of business-to-business marketing, focuses on attitudinal, instrumental, and temporal components of commitment; this article examines attitudinal commitment within the NASCAR context. Whereas previous research conceptualizes attitudinal commitment as identification, value congruence, and affiliation, this research presents a wider view. Specifically, within the NASCAR consumption culture, hero/villain myths surrounding drivers create conflict that heightens attitudinal commitment to the sport. This research therefore offers implications regarding non-traditional components of attitudinal commitment.     

Innovation,consumption and services: encapsulation and the combinatorial role of services

This article explores a phenomenon termed here as ‘encapsulation’. Part of this process is the trend in secondary (manufacturing) and primary (agricultural and resource-based) companies towards providing service products that are related to the goods they produce. The study attempts a more distinctive approach of considering the innovation process within services by considering the issue of service consumption, both in combination with manufactured goods and separately on their own (associated with the issue of utility in consumption process). It also analyses the life span of consumption and use are considered; with analysis moving away from the perspective of a single act of consumption towards the ongoing use and utility of the service (or good with it) being consumed.     

Explaining import quality: The role of the income distribution

We examine a generalized version of Flam and Helpman [Flam, H., Helpman, E., 1987. Vertical Product Differentiation and North-South Trade. American Economic Review, 77, 810-822.] in which consumption prices for quality differentiated goods are rising in household income. We provide propositions for aggregating this relationship across heterogenous households to map cross-country differences in income distributions to cross-country differences in import price distributions. The theoretical predictions are examined and confirmed using disaggregated data on prices of traded goods and micro data on household income from the Luxemburg Income Study. Country pairs with more similar income distributions have more similar import price distributions, whether similarity is measured by 1st-4th moment statistics, population and consumption shares within world income and product price quantiles, or income and price dis-similarity indices.     

The path of least resistance: Regulatory resource depletion and the effectiveness of social influence techniques

Two experiments examine the role of regulatory resource depletion in the effectiveness of social influence techniques aimed at inducing consumer compliance. They test the two-step hypothesis that a) responding to the initial request stage of an influence technique requires self-control, thereby depleting one's limited resource of self-regulatory energy, and b) a state of regulatory resource depletion fosters the use of heuristics present in the persuasion context, which increases the odds of compliance with the target request of an influence technique. A first field experiment shows that yielding to initial requests (answering a series of questions) induces resource depletion. Experiment 2 demonstrates that a lower level of self-regulatory resources increases the extent of compliance with a request through the employment of the heuristic principle of authority. Together these results provide support for the prediction that regulatory resource depletion is important in explaining the effectiveness of social influence techniques.     

中国农村居民财产性收入提高的问题研究

中国农村居民较低的财产性收入在一定程度上加剧了中国城乡收入差距。基于中国农村居民的收入来源和财产性收入的产生途径等分析了财产性收入的涵义,利用数据剖析了中国农村居民的财产性收入现状,以试图寻找制约中国农村居民财产性收入提高的因素和存在的问题,最后提出增加中国农村居民财产性收入的切实可行的措施和办法。     

Impact of adoption in Ghana of an improved fish processing technology on household income,health and nutrition

Surveys were conducted in three fishing communities in Ghana, where an improved fish smoking technology (the Chorkor smoker) had been introduced previously, to assess the impact of adopting the improved technology on household income, health and nutritional status. Fifty‐one fish processors (all women), who had adopted the improved fish processing technology, were selected for the study, in which the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) technique, nutritional survey methods and structured questionnaires were used to obtain both qualitative and quantitative data. The results revealed that there was an improvement in economic activities. This resulted in a positive impact on household income and food consumption patterns of the processors. Improvement in household income resulted from increases in the quality and quantity of output, price per unit output and profits. Improvement in food consumption pattern was mostly in respect of quality and quantity of food intake, but the types of food consumed remained the same. The nutrient intake of the respondents was good on average, with a majority exceeding the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of protein, vitamin B1 and calcium. The average body mass index (BMI) of the processors was also within the ideal range of 20–25. Adoption of the new technology also improved the health status of the respondents. Lessening of eye problems and headaches as a result of reduced exposure to smoke and heat was reported by 52% of the women. However, preschool children were undernourished as a result of poor child feeding practices. In any technology transfer process, apparently unrelated nutritional factors need to be considered.     

Triple acculturation: The role of African Americans in the consumer acculturation of Kenyan immigrants

The role of a subcultural group in the consumer acculturation of Kenyan immigrants is examined. Our findings demonstrate that particular immigrant consumer behaviors are influenced by triple acculturation forces: dominant; subcultural and original culture. We find that immigrants do not arrive in the United States aware of their need to acculturate to a subcultural group. Critical incidents alert the immigrants of the need to acculturate to the African American subculture in order to fulfill some basic consumer goals such as accessing hair care, nightclub entertainment and church services. Progressively, immigrants begin to incorporate triple acculturation forces in their consumer decision making. The immigrants learn to be innovative as well as to engage in satisficing as they navigate the new consumption environment. This research contributes to acculturation studies by extending the models of Berry (Berry JW. Acculturation as varieties of adaptation. In: Padilla AM, editor. Acculturation: theory, model and some new findings, Boulder, CO: Westview Press; 1980. pp. 9-25) as well as Penaloza (Penaloza L. Altravesando Fronteras/Border Crossings: a critical ethnographic exploration of the consumer acculturation of Mexican immigrants. J Consum Res 1994;2:32-54[June]) by incorporating the role of a subcultural group in this process.     

Income and social communication: The demographics of stock market participation

This paper analyses the determinants of stock market participation decisions using officially compiled aggregate stock account opening data in China. Different from the literature that often focuses on one particular dimension, our paper systematically evaluates the relative importance of disposable income, demographic variables, macroeconomic factors, stock market conditions and social communication on both the level and the change of the participation rate. We find that the level of the participation rate is predominately determined by the income factor, followed by various measures of social communication. Social communication plays the most important role in the change of the participation rate, acting as a multiplier to stimulate stock market participation. The effects are more pronounced in high‐income, high‐education, high‐population‐density groups and during the bull market period.     

Future fantasies: a social change perspective of retailing in the 21 century

Experts expect great retailing changes in the next ten years. What do consumers expect? With increasing innovation in retail technology and the large-scale implementation of e-commerce formats, shifts in consumer behavior can be categorized as social change. Sociologists have long studied the interaction of social change and technology, focusing on society members’ characteristics to help predict the future. One characteristic of enduring influence is age. In this research note, we consider consumer expectations regarding the evolution of retailing, with an emphasis on expectations of social change and the variance of such expectations by age cohort.