Heart rate variability in marketing research: A systematic review and methodological perspectives

Heart rate variability is a promising physiological measurement that accesses psychophysiological variations in response to a marketing stimulus. While its application spans diverse fields, there is a limited understanding of the usability and interpretation of heart rate variability in marketing research. Therefore, this hybrid literature review provides an overview of the emerging use of heart rate variability in marketing research, along with essential methodological considerations. In this context, we blend marketing mix framework with stimulus-organism-response theory, segregating the use of heart rate variability in various marketing research contexts. We follow the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) framework to reflect on 33 records obtained from six databases. Our findings suggest that 42% of studies used heart rate variability to investigate promotion-related topics. Overall, heart rate variability is mostly used in combination with Galvanic skin response (48%). Further, 39% of studies used non-portable systems for data collection. Last, using the theory characteristics methodology (TCM) framework, we identified six research avenues: (1) affective, cognitive, and sensorial constructs; (2) personality, thinking style, and demographics; (3) product experience; (4) advertising and branding; (5) correlation with immersive technologies; and (6) triangulation with other neurophysiological tools.     

Consumers’ Reactions to Negative Information on Product Quality: Evidence from Scanner Data

Using daily scanner data we analyze consumers’ reactions to negative information with regard to product quality with reference to a fraud that involved a number of leading Italian firms in the cheese sector in 2008. We evaluate the effects of this event by using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy that compares the brands that were involved in the fraud with those that were uninvolved. It emerges that the negative news with regard to product quality induced consumers to shift their demand from involved to not involved brands. These effects persisted over time, even after the media stopped giving attention to the issue. Retailers suffered part of the costs of the bad news about product quality: the retail margin on brands that were mentioned adversely by the media decreased after the negative publicity.     

The impact of taxation on bank profits: Evidence from EU banks

Using bank-level data for the period 1990–2005, we investigate to what extent European banks are able to shift their tax-burden forward. We examine the effects of corporate income tax (CIT) and value added tax (VAT) on pre-tax profits and their components, and find that both are shifted forward. The pass-through mainly involves total operating income, but as far as CIT is concerned it also affects loss provisions, with negative implications on stability of the banking systems.     

The Impact of Corporate Governance Press News on Stock Market Returns

Stock market prices reflect information regarding firms’ business environments, operations and, in general, their fundamentals. Recently, various studies have analysed the link between news coverage and stock prices but no evidence exists on how channels and ways of communication of information affect investors’ behaviour. We analyses these aspects focussing on a large sample of corporate governance news published between 2003 and 2007 in ‘Il Sole 24 Ore’, Italy's major financial newspaper. We show that before news is made public investors are only able to assess the type of corporate governance event underlying it. After publication, investors are influenced by the content (positive or negative) and the tone of communication (strong or weak) of the news.     

Big data for corporate social responsibility: blockchain use in Gioia del Colle DOP

The traceability of the supply chain with strict compliance with the specification to demonstrate in "transparency" the production processes in compliance with legislation and from a corporate social responsibility perspective, represents a fundamental requirement at the basis of competitive advantage in the food industries (Patelli and Mandrioli, J Food Sci 85: 3670–3678, 2020). The purpose of this work is to illustrate the innovative method for the certification and protection of the production phases of the DOP food chain and specifically the Mozzarella DOP of Gioia del Colle produced by the company Capurso Azienda Casearia Srl. This innovative approach consists of several phases that will be described in detail in the following paper. Besides, the idea of the introduction of Blockchain technology in an industry like this is an important step. This technology, associated with more accurate and intelligent management of the data acquisition process (Big data approach), optimizes the productivity of small businesses such as the dairy company. Blockchain technology guarantees security in the management of large amounts of data as never before possible, an innovative and experimental approach that makes the entire path of the production chain more controlled and optimized (Giacalone et al. International workshop on fuzzy logic and applications. Springer, Cham, pp. 218–225, 2016).

     

On the influence of US monetary policy on crude oil price volatility

Forecasting oil prices is not straightforward, such that it is convenient to build a confidence interval around the forecasted prices. To this end, the principal ingredient for obtaining a reliable crude oil confidence interval is its volatility. Moreover, accurate crude oil volatility estimation has fundamental implications in terms of risk management, asset pricing and portfolio handling. Generally, current studies consider volatility models based on lagged crude oil price realizations and, at most, one additional macroeconomic variable as crude oil determinant. This paper aims to fill this gap, jointly considering not only traditional crude oil driving forces, such as the aggregate demand and oil supply, but also the monetary policy rate. Thus, this work aims to contribute to the debate concerning the potential impact of (lagged) US monetary policy as well as the other crude oil future price (COFP) determinants on daily COFP volatility. By means of the recently proposed generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity mixed data sampling model, different proxies of the US monetary policy alongside US industrial production (proxy of the US aggregate demand) and oil supply are included in the COFP volatility equation. Strong evidence that an expansionary (restrictive) variation in monetary policy anticipates a positive (negative) variation in COFP volatility is found. We also find that a negative (positive) variation of industrial production increases (decreases) COFP volatility. This means that volatility behaves counter-cyclically, according to the literature. Furthermore, the out-of-sample forecasting procedure shows that including these additional macroeconomic variables generally improves the forecasting performance.     

Postponing retirement: the political effect of aging

Conventional economic wisdom suggests that because of the aging process, social security systems will have to be retrenched. In particular, retirement age will have to be largely increased. Yet, is this policy measure feasible in OECD countries? Since the answer belongs mainly to the realm of politics, I evaluate the political feasibility of postponing retirement under aging in France, Italy, the UK, and the US. Simulations for the year 2050 steady state demographic, economic and political scenario suggest that retirement age will be postponed in all countries, while the social security contribution rate will rise in all countries, but Italy. The political support for increasing the retirement age stems mainly from the negative income effect induced by aging, which reduces the profitability of the existing social security system, and thus the individuals' net social security wealth.     

Pseudocontinuous functions and existence of Nash equilibria

In topological spaces, we introduce a new class of functions (pseudocontinuous functions) and we present some characterizations and properties. In particular, we show that any preference relation endowed of utility functions is continuous if and only if any utility is pseudocontinuous. A maximum theorem is proved for such a class of functions and connections with similar results are investigated. Finally, the existence of Nash equilibria for games with pseudocontinuous payoffs is obtained.