The interaction of retail density and music tempo: Effects on shopper responses

Research examining the effects of store environment on shoppers has found that a number of atmospheric cues have significant effects on shoppers' cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses. To date, retail atmospheric cues have been studied in isolation, instead of simultaneously, like they occur in the retail setting. This study examines the interactive effects of two atmospheric cues—retail density and music tempo—and their impact on shopper responses within a real shopping environment. Based on the schema incongruity model, it is found that shopper hedonic and utilitarian evaluations of the shopping experience are highest under conditions of slow music/high density and fast music/low density. Significant main effects of music tempo are found for behavioral responses such as approach/avoidance tendency and extent of browsing behavior. The results underscore the need to examine interactive effects of atmospheric cues to better understand the impact of the store environment on shoppers. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Planning with scenarios : The banking world of 1985

Scenarios are widely used in large organisations as a planning tool. The success of this tool, however, depends on its ability to link macroviews of economic, social, and political events to the unique operating experience of a specific type of organisation. This article describes a formal linking procedure for assessing the impact of several scenarios on a large bank. The goal is to define those sets of economic, technological, and regulatory conditions which are most favourable (a “best scenario”) and those which are least favourable (a “worst scenario”).     

Daily mutual fund flows and redemption policies

We examine how redemption policies affect daily fund flows in open-end mutual funds. Since short-term trading of fund shares, as manifested in daily fund flows, can have an adverse impact on returns to the fund’s shareholders, mutual funds might find it desirable to discourage short-term trading through the use of redemption fees. However, if daily fund flows are due to fund shareholders’ legitimate liquidity demands, the redemption fee would have little effect on daily fund flows and possibly adversely affect fund shareholders by imposing a liquidity cost on them. We find that the likelihood of a fund charging a redemption fee is largely a function of its overall fee structure. We also use a sample of funds that imposed redemption fees to examine whether the distribution of daily fund flows changes after the initiation of the redemption fee. We find that the redemption fee is an effective tool in controlling the volatility of fund flows.     

A note on the optimal control of a cash balance problem

This paper provides an analytical solution to a cash management problem when cash income and demand are described by Compound Poisson processes. The paper generalizes past results in the cash management literature to arbitrary income and demand distribution functions. Further, our results can be applied as well in the area of banking. Throughout the paper we restrict attention to the family of control barrier policies. These consist in hedging cash up to a critical level and investing all incoming cash exceeding this level. We employ a long-run average cost criterion to determine an optimal control barrier. A diffusion approximation of the cash level process (income less demand) is used to obtain a simpler expression for the average cost and to yield a closed form solution to the optimal control barrier. For demonstration purposes, an example is resolved.     

A meta-analysis of consumer choice and subliminal advertising

A meta-analysis is used to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of subliminal advertising to influence the consumer's decision between alternatives. A review of narrative reviews is provided to illustrate that sample size and effect size is seldom used as the basis for evaluating whether subliminal marketing stimuli are an effective means for influencing consumer choice behavior. The results of the meta-analysis indicate that there is very little effect. The resulting coefficient had a value r=0.0585, which places the effectiveness of subliminal advertising on choice between the impact of aspirin on heart attacks and the relationship between alcohol abuse and a tour of duty in Vietnam (Rosenthal, 1990). © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Prison Labor: The Local Effects of Ohio Prison Industries

Prison labor has both positive and negative effects. Keeping prisoners active, training and socializing them to be productive citizens after prison, and helping to pay for their incarceration are some of the positives. Potential crowding out of free labor and industry is the major potential negative. This paper addresses the quantitative financial and employment consequences on local free labor and industry of prison industries in Ohio using an input–output model for Ohio. Based on the analysis, prison industries employment in Ohio has negligible to positive employment consequences for the Ohio economy and partially offsets the incarceration cost of the inmates who participate – providing between 5 and 10 percent of the incarceration cost in net cash flow and induced tax revenues.Presented at the 59th International Atlantic Economic Conference, London, March 9–13, 2005.     

Optimal search auctions

We study the design of profit maximizing single unit auctions under the assumption that the seller needs to incur costs to contact prospective bidders and inform them about the auction. With independent bidders’ types and possibly interdependent valuations, the seller's problem can be reduced to a search problem in which the surplus is measured in terms of virtual utilities minus search costs. Compared to the socially efficient mechanism, the optimal mechanism features fewer participants, longer search conditional on the same set of participants, and inefficient sequence of entry.     

The Agency Relationship in Churches: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract . The agency relationship has been observed in a variety of settings. Churches, like other organizations, are plagued with the typical agency problems of moral hazard, observability, goal displacement, and risk aversion. How do churches cope with these issues in dealing with their most critical resource, clergy? This study analyzes the agency relationship between churches and their clergy. Using data from nine denominations, this study finds strong evidence that pastor compensation is not tied directly to performance, but rather indirectly through promotion tournaments. Successful pastors are rewarded by being called to larger, presumably wealthier and more prestigious, congregations. Since it is so difficult to observe and measure a pastor's performance in specific activities, churches differentiate good pastors from mediocre ones by considering their total performance, rather than any specific activities.