Hippies,Greenies, and Tree Huggers: How the “Warmth” Stereotype Hinders the Adoption of Responsible Brands

Past research has highlighted the difficulty faced by responsible consumers, individuals who wish to make environmentally and socially responsible consumption choices. Individual buyers, it is argued, act within a network of structural and social relationships that make responsible alternatives intrinsically hard to pursue. This paper maintains that one such barrier is the perception that users of responsible brands are not worthy of social emulation. Consumers are less likely to adopt brands positioned explicitly on their positive environmental or social credentials because of the stereotypes attached to the users of these products. Two empirical studies demonstrate that users of responsible brands are perceived as stereotypically warm. Warmth, however, is not an appealing feature in a consumption context. Warm groups are not envied and envy plays a central role in fueling a desire to emulate a consumption group. The study is the first to examine the possibility that a group‐level stereotype limits the potential attractiveness of responsible brands. The significant implications of this insight for both scholarly research and marketing practice are examined in detail. The presence of a warmth stereotype, which has a negative influence on the social perception of responsible brands, suggests that the development of niches of responsible or ethical consumers is intrinsically problematic.     

Cooperation support through the use of group decision systems

This article considers the development of the group decision support system (GDSS) field both from organizational and technological perspectives. The growing importance of teamwork, lateral coordination, and activities integration inside modern business organizations is emphasized. Technological and knowledge specialization, quick transformation of business environments, reduction of response time, and so on, are some of the reasons that can explain the renewed relevance of teamwork. Also, the development of information technology (IT) is analyzed in relation to the role it is assuming in supporting group activities. Research in the GDSS field is then introduced. A proposal concerning the identification of three different phases in GDSS studies is developed, ranging from decision rooms to distributed systems. Each phase shows distinctive research topics and application fields, together with different organizational goals. Results of these developments are the growth of potential application areas of GDSS tools. These theoretical considerations, together with empirical experiences coming from the study of a real manufacturing environment (an IBM plant where group cooperation plays a fundamental role for production efficiency), constitute the basis for a research GDSS prototype (GROUPS). Prototype features are designed to support executives in facing production‐planning problems through an improvement in communications and in knowledge representation.     

Bowling alone, drinking together

This paper investigates to what extent youth alcohol consumption depends on consumption patterns by other household members and on social interactions outside the household. Exploiting the richness of the data, we explore the possibility of asymmetric social influences by gender and by age, the differences between use and abuse and among different types of alcohol consumption (beer, wine and spirits). Moreover, we control for contextual effects, such as variables related to neighbourhood and family background. We find that both the drinking intensity by other household members and a richer social life outside home are positively related to alcohol consumption. We also find that siblings are more influential than parents, that the mother is more influential for females and the father for males.     

Strategic trade policy: a review of the theoretical debate

This paper reviews the recent debate on strategic trade policies, whose main conclusion is that while the real world may be far from the condition of perfect competition considered by standard theory, free trade remains the best ruleofthumb policies. In the second part of the paper several issues are reviewed which suggest that the debate is far from complete. Two aspects, in particular, require closer scrutiny: (i) the implications of multiple equilibria and pathdependency phenomena in a world in which innovation activities have crucial effects on trade performance; (ii) the problems of collective action associated with the constitution of a free trade régime.     

Trade and Wage Inequality: Local versus Global Comparative Advantages

This paper shows that disentangling the local and global dimensions of trade can be crucial to get a better understanding of the trade impact on wage inequality. In particular, it allows us to reconcile the empirical evidence with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions. Our focus here is on Italy. As for local trade – within its own cone of diversification – Italy is specialised in the production of unskill‐intensive goods, while for global trade – with respect to the other cone of diversification – it is mainly specialised in the production of skill‐intensive goods. On the evidence of these specialisation patterns, we point out that the local trade has a strong impact on wage inequality. In particular, in line with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions, the local export performance reduces wage inequality as it favours blue‐collar workers. As for global trade, it affects and increases wage inequality through the export channel, again consistent with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions.     

Housing prices and crime perception

In this article, we combine data from the housing market with data from a victimization survey to estimate the effect of crime perception on housing prices in the City of Barcelona from 2004 to 2006. Using dwelling data and a hedonic price model (using both OLS and quantile regressions), in the first stage, we estimate the shadow price of the location of dwellings. In the second stage, we analyse the impact of crime perception, after controlling for other district characteristics such as local public spending and immigration, on this locational valuation. After accounting for the possible endogeneity of crime and housing prices, our findings suggest that crime exerts relevant costs beyond its direct costs. Indeed, a one standard deviation increase in perceived security is associated with a 0.57 % increase in the valuation of districts. Moreover, in districts perceived as being less safe than the average for the City of Barcelona, houses are highly discounted. Less safe districts have on average a valuation that is 1.27 % lower.     

Is Integration Enough for Fast Product Development? An Empirical Investigation of the Contextual Effects of Product Vision*

Research into development time performance has suggested that integration—both internal, adopting cross‐functional organizational structures for development, and external, involving customers and suppliers in the process—can be a powerful driver when it comes to compressing cycle times and enhancing development punctuality. Some recent studies have also highlighted the compelling role of product vision to obtain high performances with product development. What these studies seem to suggest is that product vision guarantees the right goals and clarity of direction that integration mechanisms need to quickly develop new products and to stay on the development schedule. However, past studies have rarely considered or measured product vision as a construct and explicitly tested whether or not product vision acts as a contingent factor in determining the relationships between the aforementioned organizational drivers and development time. This research study maintains that product vision is crucial to pushing organizational drivers toward increased development efficiency. To find theoretical support for this position and to define a reference framework for the study, previous literature was analyzed. In the framework, both internal and external development integration are assumed to be positively related to time performance; however, these relationships are moderated by product vision. The model was then tested empirically on an international sample of 157 firms to verify and to obtain empirical support for the hypothesized relationships. The results confirm the importance of external integration in achieving better time performance. However, the influence of this driver on cycle time can also be increased by the presence of a very well‐defined product vision. The relationship between internal integration and time performance is more complex. Though it seems to slow down the process as a single factor, its interaction effect with product vision is in fact positive. These results have several managerial implications. First, externally integrated development can greatly improve time performance; however, the best results in terms of acceleration can be obtained when there is a well‐defined product vision. Furthermore, product vision is essential in the case of internal integration: A cross‐functional process alone would not be enough for development acceleration in the absence of product vision. Hence, managers interested in obtaining high time performances should accompany the adoption of integration mechanisms with increased attention to sharing clear objectives and directions with all those—both inside the firm (i.e., team members and functional representatives) and outside the firm (i.e., customers and suppliers)—involved in development and as well as throughout the firm.     

The rise and fall of WebTrust

While prior research mainly focused on the impact of third-party-certified web assurance seals on consumers' perceptions and purchasing behaviors, little research has been conducted on the managerial decision-making process about the selection, implementation, and the abandonment of such seals. Of particular interest here is the WebTrust seal, jointly developed by the AICPA and the CICA. We take a qualitative case study approach to understand the motivations and rationale of a large North American telecommunications firm's management behind the decisions about the selection, implementation, and abandonment of its WebTrust seal. Our case firm was one of the first to obtain the seal on its online shopping website. Semi-structured interview results suggest that the implementation and the subsequent abandonment of WebTrust may be explained by several theoretical frameworks — the managerial accounting perspective, organizational slack theory, innovation theory, and institutional theory. First, the case firm's leader attitude in innovation, its extra resources available, coupled with the endorsement of the accounting profession led to the implementation of WebTrust. Second, when the benefits of WebTrust versus its costs were questioned and other companies increasingly abandoned the seal, our case firm decided to follow this trend.     

A revisited and stable Fourier transform method for affine jump diffusion models

In the last decade, fast Fourier transform methods (i.e. FFT) have become the standard tool for pricing and hedging with affine jump diffusion models (i.e. AJD), despite the FFT theoretical framework is still in development and it is known that the early solutions have serious problems in terms of stability and accuracy. This fact depends from the relevant computational gain that the FFT approach offers with respect to the standard Fourier transform methods that make use of a canonical inverse Levy formula. In this work we revisit a classic FT method and find that changing the quadrature algorithm and using alternative, less flawed, representation for the pricing formulas can improve the computational performance up to levels that are only three time slower than FFT can achieve. This allows to have at the same time a reasonable computational speed and the well known stability and accuracy of canonical FT methods.