Book Notes “Economics and Social Sciences” 2/2021

Journal of Consumer Policy -     

Reading a Duty to Provide Accessible Pre-Contractual Information for Consumers with Disabilities into EU Consumer Protection Law

Journal of Consumer Policy - This paper considers whether a duty to provide consumers with disabilities with pre-contractual information in an accessible format, or in an otherwise personalised...     

Strategies to prevent economic recessions from causing business failure

An average of more than 500,000 businesses failed in the United States during each of the 10 recessions that have occurred since the end of World War II. Yet, scholar and practitioner understanding of how to prepare for and respond to the challenges of an economic downturn remains extremely limited. This article analyzes and synthesizes the information from academic theory and business experience on managing through an economic recession. To assist firms in successfully navigating economic recessions, we suggest a program that involves positioning by investing in multiple markets and geographies, planning by developing a turnaround plan for facing sharply declining sales, promoting by maintaining marketing initiatives, and preparing by acting in anticipation of economic recovery.     

Britt,Steuart Henderson. Psychological Principles of Marketing and Consumer Behavior. Lexington,Mass.: Lexington Books, 1978

Abstract

Conventionally, an advertiser's spending on the creative component of an advertising campaign is small in relation to the media budget and is channeled exclusively to a single advertising agency. Gross challenged those conventions more than 20 years ago, using a mathematical model of advertising effectiveness. His model suggested spending more on the creative component and doing so in a competition among several independent sources. The model assumed a normal distribution of effectiveness of advertisements. Data on response to consumer product ads show that the distribution of effectiveness is not normal, but quite skewed. Using Monté Carlo simulations and Gross's framework, the authors find that the skewness strengthens the case for competition. Shifting a sizable percentage of a campaign budget away from media spending and into competitive generation of creative renderings apparently can be very profitable.     

Simple and Painless? The Limitations of Spillover in Environmental Campaigning

The comfortable perception that global environmental challenges can be met through marginal lifestyle changes no longer bears scrutiny. The cumulative impact of large numbers of individuals making marginal improvements in their environmental impact will be a marginal collective improvement in environmental impact. Yet, we live at a time when we need urgent and ambitious changes. An appeal to environmental imperatives is more likely to lead to spillover into other pro-environmental behaviours than an appeal to financial self-interest or social status.