Advancing the aesthetic middle principle: Trade-offs in design attractiveness and strength

Key design properties of marketing artifacts that influence consumer response include perceived attractiveness (the valenced evaluative response to the artifact) and perceived strength (the artifact’s ability to capture attention). The aesthetic middle principle contends that the designs most effective in generating purchase intentions are counterintuitively not the most attractive and strongest, but rather designs tempered to be moderately attractive and very strong or very attractive and moderately strong. Such designs are visual representations closer to the aesthetic middle, thereby prompting more favorable consumer responses. This research empirically tests the aesthetic middle principle in two consumer field studies, using both simple (typeface) and complex (wine package) designs. In a subsequent controlled experiment, the strongest aesthetic middle effects emerge for hedonic (rather than utilitarian) products and when less product-related information is available. The effects of the aesthetic middle occur regardless of available cognitive resources or individual differences in design acumen.     

The 1999 Small Employer Retirement Survey

Abstract

In this article we examine to what extent policyholders buying a certain class of participating contracts (in which they are entitled to receive dividends from the insurer) can be described as standard bondholders. Our analysis extends the ideas of Biihlmann and sequences the fundamental advances of Merton, Longstaff and Schwartz, and Briys and de Varenne. In particular, we develop a setup where these participating policies are comparable to hybrid bonds but not to standard risky bonds (as done in most papers dealing with the pricing of participating contracts). In this mixed framework, policyholders are only partly protected against default consequences. Continuous and discrete protections are also studied in an early default Black and Cox-type setting. A comparative analysis of the impact of various protection schemes on ruin probabilities and severities of a life insurance company that sells only this class of contracts concludes this work.     

Why do people drink? Tests of the rational addiction model

The rational addiction (RA) model applied to alcoho consumption is tested using 1983 US Health Interview Survey data. The RA model yields refutable hypotheses concerning effects of current, past, and future prices, past and future consumption, time preference and marginal utility of wealth on addictive good consumption. The estimations provide relatively strong support for the RA model. Past and present consumption had strong positive relationship with current consumption. Coefficients on past, present, and future money prices and fines for first oflence drunk driving (as a form of price for alcohol consumption) were significant and of the predical sign.     

Are for-profit hospital conversions harmful to patients and to Medicare?

We examine how changes in hospital ownership to and from for-profit status affect quality and Medicare payments per hospital stay. We hypothesize that hospitals converting to for-profit ownership boost post acquisition profitability by reducing dimensions of quality not readily observed by patients and by raising prices. We find that 1-2 years after conversion to for-profit status, mortality of patients, which is difficult for outsiders to monitor, increases while hospital profitability rises markedly and staffing decreases. Thereafter, the decline in quality is much lower. A similar decline in quality is not observed after hospitals switch from for-profit to government or private nonprofit status.     

Social responsibility and personal success: A research note

Views of corporate social responsibility recognize thatindividual decision makers are key to implementing socially responsible programs and that it is difficult to ask executives to act in a socially responsible manner if such actions have a negative impact on personal success. Using a sample of more than 300 advertising executives, the compatibility of social responsibility and personal success are explored by examining the relationship between social responsibility and advertising executives’ incomes and titles. Findings indicate that neither penalties nor rewards accrue to advertising executives for socially responsible actions. Implications for executives wanting their organizations to be viewed as socially responsible are discussed.     

Physician participation in health insurance plans: evidence on Blue Shield

Various health insurance programs, including Blue Shield, have developed arrangements whereby the physician agrees to accept the insurer's reimbursement as payment in full. Incentives facing the physician to accept an arrangement of this type are reviewed in this study. The empirical work uses data on individual physicians from a 1973 survey. The results indicate that physician willingness to accept insurer reimbursement as payment in full is sensitive to the amount the insurer pays for specific procedures and to other insurance program characteristics. Physicians located in high patient income areas and/or with relatively prestigious credentials are less likely to accept insurer payments as payment in full. The empirical findings are used to generate policy implications pertaining to the Medicare and Medicaid programs, to medical care quality-access tradeoffs, and to national health insurance.     

A Dualistic Model of Harmony and its Implications for Conflict Management in Asia

Conflict avoidance is common in East Asia, and the Confucian notion of harmony is often invoked to explain this tendency. We review the classical Confucian doctrines and found no encouragement of conflict avoidance in Confucian teachings. Quite the contrary, the Confucian notion of harmony embodies disagreement and open debates. Thus, we argue that harmony as conflict avoidance is not a main feature of classical Confucianism, but a characteristic of the secular version that is associated with cultural collectivism. We then review several theories that are based on the notion of harmony, and show that they are compatible with a dualistic model of harmony, which posits an instrumental as well as a value motive in harmony-seeking behavior. In the instrumental perspective, harmony is viewed as a means to a typically materialistic end, whereas in the value perspective, harmony is deemed an end in its own right. Conflict avoidance is primarily driven by the instrumental motive. These two motives are then crossed to form four types of harmony-seeking behaviors. This typology is discussed in terms of its implications for future research and its applications in conflict management.