The impact of search costs on consumer behavior: A dynamic approach

Prices for grocery items differ across stores and time because of promotion periods. Consumers therefore have an incentive to search for the lowest prices. However, when a product is purchased infrequently, the effort to check the price every shopping trip might outweigh the benefit of spending less. I propose a structural model for storable goods that takes into account inventory holdings and search. The model is estimated using data on laundry detergent purchases. I find search costs play a large role in explaining purchase behavior, with consumers unaware of the price of detergent on 70 % of their shopping trips. Therefore, from the retailer’s point of view raising awareness of a promotion through advertising and displays is important. I also find a promotion for a particular product increases the consumer’s incentive to search. This change in incentives leads to an increase in category traffic, which from the store manager’s perspective is a desirable side effect of the promotion.     

Interne Unternehmensberatungen

Ziel des vorliegenden Beitrags ist der Versuch, eine erste Systematisierung sowie eine Erweiterung und Aktualisierung der bestehenden Forschung über Formen sowie Funktionen Interner Unternehmensberatungen zu leisten. Auf Basis einer begriffsgeschichtlichen Ann?herung und der Rekonstruktion der wissenschaftlichen Beratungsforschung werden Ergebnisse einer empirischen Analyse eines kleinen Samples von Internen Beratungen vorgestellt. Vor dem Hintergrund dieses Datenmaterials formulieren die Autoren im zweiten Teil Thesen über aktuelle und potentielle Positionierungsszenarien von Internen Unternehmensberatungen. Hierbei steht insbesondere der Vergleich zu Externen Beratungen im Vordergrund.     

How Big is the Crowding-Out Effect of User Fees in the Rural Areas of Ethiopia? Implications for Equity and Resources Mobilization

Using a nested multinomial logit model, this study investigates the demand “reduction” and “diversion” effects of user fees in rural areas of Ethiopia. The results reveal that an increase in user fees of public clinics, which are the most widely used alternative, can have a significant demand reduction effect on the poorest of the poor. This implies that despite cost recovery has been advocated as an alternative means of health care financing in most of the developing world, increasing user fees may drive the poorest segment of the population out of the health care market unless some protective measures are taken.     

Free trade and garment work: the impact of NAFTA on service and manufacturing jobs in the Los Angeles apparel industry

This article examines the impact of North American economic integration on apparel‐related employment in Los Angeles and provides a first look at consequent changes in the composite of apparel‐related occupations in the Los Angeles apparel industry. It assesses the effects of new NAFTA‐generated transnational production networks and global production strategies on apparel industry employment, including the creation of ‘new NAFTA jobs’in the greater Los Angeles area, as well as changes in hiring patterns across occupational categories. The article also explores the accessibility of NAFTA‐generated apparel jobs to displaced workers in the labor‐intensive segments of the industry. The findings suggest that the new NAFTA jobs are inaccessible to the thousands of apparel manufacturing workers displaced by the trend in offshore sourcing. Finally, the article discusses the implications and consequences of recent state‐industry partnership programs designed to train and cross‐train sewing operators for jobs that are rapidly leaving the region. Cet article examine l'impact de l'intégration économique nord‐américaine sur l'emploi dans l'habillement à Los Angeles, en procurant un premier regard sur les changements occasionnés pour la mosaïque des métiers de ce secteur d'activités dans cette ville. Il évalue les effets des nouveaux réseaux de fabrication transnationale générés par l'ALENA et des stratégies de production mondialisées sur l'emploi du secteur, y compris la création des ‘nouveaux emplois ALENA’ dans l'agglomération de Los Angeles, ainsi que les changements dans les schémas d'embauche pour les diverses catégories professionnelles. De plus, il explore l'accessibilité des emplois de l'habillement créés par l'ALENA pour les travailleurs déplacés dans les segments industriels à forte main‐d'?uvre. D'après les résultats, ces nouveaux emplois sont inaccessibles aux milliers d'ouvriers de la fabrication vestimentaire déplacés par la tendance à un approvisionnement étranger. Enfin, sont abordées les implications et conséquences des récents programmes de partenariat État‐industrie pour la formation et la formation polyvalente d'opératrices de machines à coudre à des postes qui quittent rapidement la région.     

Fairness and the employment contract: North American regions versus Germany

Substantial evidence shows that North Americans are generallymore accepting of the market than Europeans and attribute marketoutcomes to a larger degree to effort or skill. Thus, NorthAmericans might be more accepting of layoffs and pay cuts thanGermans, and Germans might be more sensitive to the proceduresand conditions under which pay cuts and layoffs occur. The empiricalresults from our quasi-experiment are largely in line with thesehypotheses. The results may help to explain and be explainedby the different labour market institutions in the differentregions.     

Food Beliefs: Elicitation,Estimation and Implications for Labeling Policy

We present a model in which consumers use product attributes (or labels) and their own beliefs to form expectations about the quality of a product. We use best–worst scaling to elicit beliefs, and study how information may influence these beliefs. In our ranking experiments, participants sort different milk products according to (perceived) nutritional or environmental quality, and we use the resulting choice data to recover beliefs econometrically. In a nutritional quality experiment, we measure how food labels (i.e. front‐of‐package, back‐of‐package and ratio of recommended to restricted nutrients) alter consumers’ beliefs, finding that truthful attribute information may sometimes mislead consumers. The discussion explains how similar experiments could be used to distinguish informative labels from marketing messages.     

THE EFFECT OF TAX PREFERENCES ON HEALTH SPENDING

In this paper, we estimate the effect of the tax preference for health insurance on health care spending using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys from 1996-2005. We use the fact that Social Security taxes are only levied on earnings below a statutory threshold to identify the impact of the tax preference. Because employer-sponsored health insurance premiums are excluded from Social Security payroll taxes, workers who earn just below the Social Security tax threshold receive a larger tax preference for health insurance than workers who earn just above it. We find a significant effect of the tax preference, consistent with previous research.     

Resource acquisition strategies in business relationships

Integrating the IMP Group approach with aspects of the resource-based view of the firm, we seek to develop and test a typology of relationship strategies based on different resource acquisition foci. For this purpose, we conducted interviews with thirty CEOs and other senior marketing managers in the UK and the USA. In-depth content analysis identified five main resource acquisition strategies (RAS) behind building business relationships: money bonds, new market bonds, utilization bonds, intellectual bonds, and credibility bonds. We further carried out a quantitative study with 658 senior managers in the USA to test for the generalizability of our findings. Results of a one-way repeated ANOVA and multinomial logistic regression analysis show significant differences between the five RAS for business relationships. However, a pair-wise comparison provides evidence for the existence of hybrid strategies. In addition, an investigation of the association between the RAS of business relationships on the one hand, and business strategy on the other, revealed equifinality of alternative business strategies vis-à-vis the applied relationship strategy. Finally, our analysis revealed no significant differences between the distributions of RAS types for knowledge intensive versus non-knowledge intensive business services. However, we found that RAS distribution is significantly associated with company size.     

Understanding the role of marketing-purchasing collaboration in industrial markets: The case of Russia

This study aims to investigate the role of interfunctional collaboration between marketing and purchasing functions in industrial companies. Interfunctional collaboration is considered as a measure of the internal alignment and partnership between departments in the firm, which in turn contributes to the creation of sustainable advantages via improved external partnerships and facilitating demand chain integration. We test the impact of customer orientation as well as the interactions between departments (specifically marketing and purchasing) as collaboration antecedents, and analyze the direct impact of marketing-purchasing collaboration on business performance. The model is tested on a sample of 148 industrial companies in Russia with two key respondents in each firm, incorporating the purchasing as well as the marketing perspective. The results show that marketing-purchasing collaboration mediates the effects of interfunctional interaction as well as customer orientation on business performance. Alternative model testing shows that the direct effects of these antecedent constructs on performance are non-significant in the context of Russian industrial companies.