Buying your way into a healthier lifestyle: a latent class analysis of healthy food purchases

A nonhypothetical second-price Vickrey auction was conducted to elicit consumer preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for vegetable attributes, including production technique, origin, taste and health benefits. Using a latent class analysis (LCA) we segmented participants based on health-driven motivations, WTP estimates and socio-economic characteristics. Two latent classes were found and characterized as: ‘Health Conscious’ and ‘Health Redeemers’. In particular, the ‘Health Conscious’ consumers presented healthy lifestyle habits, expressed price premiums for domestic and local-specialty food products after a blind tasting treatment, but they did not have price premiums for health benefits of the products. On the contrary, the ‘Health Redeemers’ presented unhealthy lifestyles but they were willing to pay more for healthy food products, perhaps in an attempt to make up for their unhealthy habits.     

Warfarin monitoring economic evaluation of point of care self-monitoring compared to clinic settings

Objective:

To determine the cost-effectiveness of home-based point-of-care self-monitoring compared to clinic-based care for patients managed on long-term warfarin medication. Current evidence is inconsistent; results should reduce uncertainty and inform service delivery.

Methods:

A Markov model compared self-testing and self-management, using point-of-care devices to usual care in patients with atrial fibrillation and mechanical heart valves. The primary clinical end-points were stroke and mortality avoided; costs and utilities were associated with these events. The costs of warfarin monitoring were included in the model.

Results:

Over 10 years, self-monitoring saved £1187 per person compared to usual care. Patients who self-monitored had notably fewer strokes and deaths. The results were sensitive to life-years gained and cost of the device. If the NHS purchased the device, financial break-even was achieved at the end of the second year; if the patient bought the device the NHS saved money every year. If 10% of the current 950,000 patients switched to point-of-care devices for 10 years, the NHS could save over £112million.

Limitations:

Clinical studies had a relatively short duration and only data on composite end-points were reported.

Conclusions:

With training, self-testing and self-management are safe, reliable, and cost-effective for a sizable proportion of patients receiving long-term warfarin. Compared to clinic-based services, self-monitoring offers the NHS the potential to make cost savings and release bed-days by reducing the number of strokes experienced by these high-risk patients.     

Who cares for children? A quantitative study of childcare in South Africa

In this study we investigate the gender division of labour in the physical and financial care of children in South Africa, in the context of large race differences in rates of union formation and parent–child co-residence. Using national micro-data, we show that across a variety of household forms, women are the primary caregivers of children even when they are not a child’s biological mother. Women are also more likely to provide physical care than men are to provide financial support for children’s schooling. However, this gender imbalance is far larger in the case of African children, the majority of whom do not live with their father. For most African children, both their physical and financial care is provided by women who are typically the child’s biological mother, but also the child’s grandmother or another female relative.     

Ethical leadership and ambidexterity in young firms: examining the CEO-TMT Interface

To enrich the knowledge of the value of ethical leadership in a more entrepreneurial setting, we focus on technology-based young firms and theorize through the lens of CEO-TMT interface whether and how founder-CEOs’ ethical leadership influences young firms’ ambidexterity. We argue that founder-CEOs’ ethical leadership can enhance young firms’ ambidexterity in an indirect way, through promoting top management team (TMT) members’ advice-seeking behavior and team satisfaction. Data from a multi-source and time-lagged survey of founder-CEOs and all TMT members in 81 Chinese technology-based young firms supported our predictions. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our study to the extant research.

     

The Destination Marketing Organization as an intelligent agent: Evaluating engagement in knowledge management practices

DMOs have been increasingly called upon to adopt the role of knowledge management, becoming intelligent agents with the capacity to gather, assess, and disseminate information among internal and external stakeholders. While knowledge management has remained a prominent topic in the literature, its application within the field of tourism management has been limited. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to ascertain to what extent DMOs have engaged in knowledge management practices through a nation-wide survey of 30 Canadian DMOs. The results demonstrate that, while DMOs have made progress toward becoming intelligent agents, there remains a long way to go.     

The effect of trust in management on salespeople’s selling orientation

Marketing Letters - In the following study, a sales rep hard-selling orientation is much more influenced by the hard-selling orientation they perceive senior management want them to adopt when (1)...     

Using virtual reality to increase charitable donations

Marketer interest in using virtual reality (VR) as a persuasion tactic continues to rise. Notably, one sector at the forefront of utilizing this tactic for persuasive means is nonprofit marketing. Many charities have devoted considerable resources to creating VR appeals under the assumption that this medium will increase donations over and above present tactics. However, research has not yet examined the persuasive consequences VR may provide over more traditional channels. This research seeks to understand the opportunities and limitations this emerging tactic can offer marketers. Specifically, we examine the donation effectiveness of three real VR charitable appeals by assessing actual donation behaviors, and find that VR appeals increase donations compared to a two-dimensional (2D) format. This work addresses a timely and relevant issue for practitioners and opens doors to future research investigating VR’s applications to marketing.