Disentangling location-based advertising: the effects of location congruency and medium type on consumers' ad attention and brand choice

Research on location-based advertising (LBA) suggests that the merits of LBA lie in the fact that consumers can be targeted with location-congruent ads on their personal mobile devices. However, LBA consists of two underlying constructs: a mobile (vs. point-of-sales) advertising medium and location congruency (vs. location incongruency). This study aims to disentangle these underlying constructs by showing that they differentially affect the efficacy of an ad. Using a virtual reality lab experiment, this study shows that location-congruent ads result in increased choice for the target brand as compared to location-incongruent ads, independent of medium type. However, in location-incongruent situations, mobile ads attracted more attention than point-of-sales display ads. The advantages of LBA thus do not seem to emanate from medium type, but rather from the congruency between the ad and product location. When the ad is received at a different location than the product, the mobile medium is able to enhance consumers' ad attention.     

Soziale Lage — Was sind die drängendsten Probleme?

Democracy seems to be at risk. People elect populists and autocrats, who offer simple solutions to social problems. Often, these problems are not even real ones but are only perceived as such. Economists have measures to determine which problems are fact-based, but they cannot draw a clear distinction between academic analysis and normative demand. If politics pursues a correction of a market outcome, any normative criteria other than efficiency have to be outlined explicitly. Nevertheless, some authors consider inequality one of the central contemporary social and economic challenges. Marcel Fratzscher emphasises that the solution is not found in more redistribution via taxes and transfers, but rather through greater equality of opportunity and social and educational mobility. Bert Rürup thinks that to stabilise the acceptance of the compulsory pension scheme, the dominance of the equivalence principle should be reduced. Further, the existence of different federal subsidy schemes should be replaced by a fixed federal contribution rate in alignment with the pension expenditures. In an international comparison, the fiscal burden for households with small and mid-level earned incomes is exceptionally high in Germany. In order to reduce this burden, Rürup suggests a contribution-free allowance for the social insurance contributions.     

Versuche,die Robustheit der deutschen Volkswirtschaft zu verstehen

GDP and employment in Germany have been improving since the economic and financial crisis. This paper investigates where this stability comes from. Michael Hüther does not believe that the cheap euro alone accounts for the high level of German competitiveness. He stresses unique German features such as the advantages of collaboration through social partnership and interconnected networks, as well as the flexibility of the economic sectors. In addition, German social stability plays an important role. He warns about the risks that would accompany a reversal of supply side political reforms, a lack of development of the country’s digital infrastructure and a failure to take coming demographic changes into account.     

Nach der Wahl: Was sind die wichtigsten wirtschaftspolitischen Herausforderungen?

Even though Germany’s economy is currently going strong, the country still faces enormous challenges if it wants to maintain and increase this prosperity. The new government should take this opportunity to set the course for the future by encouraging the digitalisation of the economy and the society as well as by ensuring that the ongoing energy transition is sustainable and efficient. Other challenges include the adverse effects of globalisation on parts of society and the uneven distribution of income and wealth. But the actual magnitude of the government’s room to manoeuver is up for debate. The new government’s fiscal space might be more limited than it seems, since an automatic adjustment of the income tax to inflation and growth is required to end the bracket creep. Given that transfer programmes are being phased out, the federal income tax surcharge to finance German unification also needs to be abolished. Further budget pressure stems from the pension system and from demands by state and local as well as European governments. The new German government should use the next governing period to initiate fundamental reforms of economic and fiscal policy that will provide adequate answers to long-run challenges.     

Bitcoins,Blockchain und Distributed Ledgers

Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin were invented to facilitate instant payment services without the need for a central bank or financial intermediaries executing payments. Using cryptographic functions, any user of the bitcoin system can transfer units of the virtual currency globally on an anonymous basis. However, financial supervisory authorities are about to increase regulation of virtual currencies due to concerns that the anonymous character of the system facilitates money laundering and the financing of illegal transactions. Nevertheless, the underlying blockchain technology, or in broader terms the distributed ledger technology, may revolutionise several industries. This paper illustrates the functioning and recent market developments in the bitcoin industry as well as the disruptive potential of the underlying technologies.     

Foreign direct investment via M&A and domestic entrepreneurship: blessing or curse?

There are conflicting predictions in the literature about the relationship between FDI and entrepreneurship. This paper explores how foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, measured by lagged cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A), affect entrepreneurial entry in the host economy. We have constructed a micro-panel of more than two thousand individuals in each of seventy countries, 2000–2009, linked to FDI by matching sectors. We find the relationship between FDI inflows and domestic entrepreneurship to be negative across all economies. This negative effect is much more pronounced in developed than developing economies and is also identified within industries, notably in manufacturing. Policies to encourage FDI via M&A need to consider how to counteract the prevailing adverse effect on domestic entrepreneurship.     

The moderating role of nationality on destination experience

ABSTRACT

Differences in tourists’ cultural values are significant factors in their product and service choices, yet they have generally been neglected in the literature. Therefore, this study examined how tourists’ nationalities influence their perceptions of service quality, affective image perceptions, and revisiting intentions. Activities were found to be more determinant on a destination’s affective image for Russian tourists, whereas accommodation, hospitality, and language communication services had a larger effect on German tourists.