Profiling Consumers Who Register Complaints Against Auto Repair Services

Surveys of consumer problems and reactions to those problems indicate considerable failure on the part of consumers to seek redress when faced with unsatisfactory purchases. The present study extends this research by using a longitudinal field survey of automobile repair services to investigate some consumer and purchase-related variables hypothesized to influence consumer actions following unsatisfactory purchase experiences. The results are consistent with conclusions emerging in other consumer satisfaction research that complaining behavior is influenced by both comparisons of purchase expectations with outcomes and individual consumer characteristics and dispositions.     

The Distribution of U.S. Income and Food Expenditures

Food expenditure and income distributions over 1980–1985 are examined using two welfare criteria: less inequality and more available resources. Intertemporal changes in the distributions are studied from the perspectives of inequality, relative economic affluence, society's satisfaction with the distributions, asymmetries, and average propensities to spend. Major conclusions are that inequality has increased over time in both the income and food spending distributions, relative economic affluence has generally risen, society is less satisfied with the food spending distribution, and average propensities to spend on food have been constant.     

The Use of Vivid Stimuli to Enhance Comprehension of the Content of Product Warning Messages

Thousands of consumers are injured annually using consumer products. It is intuitively plausible that vivid product warnings may improve communication of the hazards associated with product use, yet vividness effects have been difficult to demonstrate empirically. Vivid product warnings are shown to increase accurate memory of the hazards associated with product use by enhancing cognitive elaboration on the content of a product warning message. Moreover, vivid product warnings may not, in and of themselves, generate negative elaborations regarding the safety of the product in question.     

Psychographic and Demographic Profiles of State Lottery Ticket Purchasers

Data from a national mail panel are used to develop psychographic and demographic profiles of heavier, lighter, and nonpurchasers of state lottery tickets. The research is limited to the sixteen states that offered a lottery at the time the study was completed. The resulting profiles indicate that each of the groups has identifiable characteristics. The findings tend to dispel some of the stereotyped characteristics of lottery players—that they are poor, uneducated, and unemployed.     

Economic Impacts of a National Deposit Law: Cost Estimates and Policy Questions

This paper uses available evidence to project the impacts of national mandatory deposit legislation for beverage containers. Container litter should decline by 70 percent with 70 percent of redeemed containers recycled. This comes at an estimated cost of over $3 billion annually. Due to these high costs, alternative approaches should be evaluated first, with a national bottle bill adopted only as a last resort and then only with broad public support. Along with the impacts of the law, its operational characteristics require more research attention. Several directions for policy analysis are identified.     

TOWARD BEHAVIORAL MODELING OF ALASKA GROUNDFISH FISHERIES: A DISCRETE CHOICE APPROACH TO BERING SEA/ALEUTIAN ISLANDS TRAWL FISHERIES

This article implements a discrete choice model of fishery participation in the multispecies trawl fisheries of the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Region off Alaska. Nonparametric estimates of the operation-specific moments of quasirent by fishery and week are used to explain probabilities of choosing different target fisheries. There are pronounced risk aversion, seasonal, and relative performance effects. Notably, the model runs with regularly collected data, so this type of discrete choice modeling can be used routinely in the management and policy evaluation process. Improvements are needed, though, in both the quality and the extent of economic data on fisheries in Alaska and elsewhere in the United States. (JEL Q22, C25, Q28)     

Aggregate Market Reaction to Earnings Announcements

This analysis identifies a distinct immediate announcement period negative relation between earnings announcement surprises and aggregate market returns. Such a relation implies that market participants use earnings information in forming expectations about expected aggregate discount rates and, specifically, that good earnings news is associated with a positive shock to required returns. Consistent with this interpretation we find that Treasury bond rates and implied future inflation expectations respond directly to earnings news. We also find some evidence that the negative relation between earnings news and market return persists beyond the immediate announcement period, suggesting that market participants do not immediately fully impound these future market return implications of aggregate earnings news.     

Evaluating the Impact on Pharmacy Practices of a Law Requiring the Posting of Drug Prices

Posting price lists of most frequently purchased retail drugs under Section 4333 of the California Pharmaceutical Law offers consumers the opportunity to make more effective price comparisons. The same information also permits examination of the pricing structure of an entire local market, and it was just such an examination which was undertaken in the present study for 100 items on sale at 24 pharmacies in the northern region of the San Francisco Bay area. Wide price differentials were found to exist. Pharmacies charging higher prices were found to do so across their entire product line: the higher prices were not related to better service but primarily to monopolistic practices. It was also concluded that if posting has so far failed to bring about lower prices, it may be due to token compliance. The study examined computer simulation techniques for measuring the effectiveness of small, unsophisticated pharmaceutical price surveys, and the accuracy of such surveys was shown to be extremely high.     

The Effects of Consumer Education on Consumer Search

This paper reports the results of an empirical investigation of the relationship between selected consumer and marketplace characteristics—focusing on participation in consumer education activities—and consumers’ prepurchase information search behavior. A need exists for further study of the counteractive effects that consumer education is likely to have with respect to preferences for search and to the efficiency with which consumers conduct search.