How Chipotle used unbranded content to increase purchase intention by changing beliefs about ethical consumption

Abstract

To combat ad avoidance, advertisers are moving advertising into programs, a practice known broadly as branded entertainment. The difficulty of advertising to Millennials has also prompted the use of unbranded cause advertising, to increase awareness of issues championed by the brand, without triggering defensive persuasion-coping strategies. Chipotle combined both these trends when it produced a relatively unbranded piece of branded entertainment, Farmed and Dangerous, a four-episode sitcom that humorously dramatized the ethical issues raised by industrial farming. When the series ran on Hulu, an online television network, it increased sales for the Chipotle brand and won awards for its creators. This study reports a classic pre/post experimental design, to show how exposure to this unbranded entertainment increased purchase intention by changing beliefs about ethical issues related to the environment, nutrition, and gene technology.     

Government ownership,corporate governance and tax aggressiveness: evidence from China

This study investigates how government ownership and corporate governance influence a firm's tax aggressiveness. Using Chinese listed companies during 2003–2009, we find that compared with government‐controlled firms, non‐government‐controlled firms pursue a more aggressive tax strategy. In particular, non‐government‐controlled firms with a higher percentage of the board shareholdings and with a CEO who also serves as the board chairman are more aggressive. For government‐controlled firms, we find that board shareholding has an impact on tax aggressiveness and it does not differ between local and central government‐controlled firms. However, local government‐controlled firms in less developed regions where the implementation of corporate governance measures is generally less effective are more tax aggressive than those in other regions.     

Sectoral gender wage gap in Vietnam

Abstract

Price forecasting systems are of considerable importance to food security management by governments’ and non‐governmental organizations. Sparse data availability in low‐income economies, however, generally necessitates reliance on reduced form forecasting methods. Relatively recent innovations in heteroscedasticity‐consistent time series techniques offer price forecasting tools that are feasible given available data and analysis technologies in low‐income economies. Moreover, extended GARCH models exhibit superior out‐of‐sample forecast accuracy using monthly food price data from Madagascar. These techniques also permit cost reduction in food security operations by more precise estimation of the risk of hitting a critical price level.     

Quantifying corruption by a human capital earnings equation

This paper uses a human capital earnings equation to quantify administrative corruption in the public sector. Regression analyses are conducted based on information from surveys administered to public officials in Albania. After accounting for officials’ characteristics, e.g., schooling, experience, gender, type of agency, and public and private sectors’ features, we deduce that the administrative corruption was on average 2.6× the officials’ current salary in Albania, which is equivalent to 16.7% of the country’s GDP.

Examining the relationship between customer and entrepreneurial orientation on nascent firms’ marketing strategy

Is entrepreneurial marketing (EM) a ??one type fits all?? approach? Research suggests that EM is especially suitable for small firms. However, it is obvious that??despite their size??small firms show a myriad of different characteristics. In this paper, it is argued that different firm characteristics can be seen in different business orientations, namely customer orientation (CO) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO). In turn, different amounts of EO and CO lead to different forms of EM strategy. The Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) serves as source to investigate relationships between EO, CO, and respective marketing strategies among nascent firms. The study suggests that innovativeness is strongly related to the importance of several marketing strategies, such as developing new or advanced product or process technologies. However, other strategies, such as lower prices or convenient location, are not related to either significant levels of CO or EO. The paper offers two main implications. Firstly, small business founders have to be aware of the fact that certain strategies cannot come ??out of nowhere??. This paper shows that running proactive marketing strategies that aim for ongoing innovativeness require the existence of an underlying EO. Secondly, there are different forms of ??small firm EM??; a finding that requires further research in the future.     

Collaboration decisions on disruption recovery service in urban public tram systems

This research focuses on the decisions on recovery services to deal with short-term disruptions in public tram systems. The disruption recovery approach used in Munich, Germany - the best service acclaimed by the public, is adopted as the basis to examine whether to collaborate with a taxi company to provide the recovery service and how to price to compensate the service. The two involving parties’ decision functions with the taxi’s average arrival time as the leading decision variable are formulated and analyzed. Both theoretical and numerical sensitivity analyses are conducted to shed lights on the critical factors affecting the decisions.     

Type A behaviour at work – an empirical study of Taiwanese managers and entrepreneurs

Bortner's Type A Behaviour Questionnaires were used to explore the work behaviour of Chinese managers and entrepreneurs in Taiwan and to investigate how that behaviour was influenced by occupation, age and gender. One hundred and seventeen subjects participated in the study, of which 45 were also interviewed. The mean score on the questionnaire was 74.68, the median (74) and the mode (76) within a scoring range of 0–140. Eighty-four subjects registered scores of 80 or less (Type B behaviour) and 33 came within the mid-range of 81–120. None of the subjects registered scores of 121–40 (Type A behaviour). The highest score of 113 was registered by a female bank vice-president and the lowest (47) by a male manager working in a charitable organization and about to retire. The results are discussed within the context of Chinese cultural traditional and parenting practices, the unique characteristics of Taiwan's recent history and the subjects' career experience.     

Prostitutes,Pimps, and Brothels: Intermediaries,Information, and Market Structure in Prostitution Markets

Prostitution is a multi‐billion dollar, globally distributed, low‐concentration service industry that is receiving increasing attention in the economics literature. This article focuses on a widespread, but little studied, feature of this environment—the role of intermediaries (pimps or brothel owners) on market outcomes. Prostitution laws and markets are perhaps unique in that transactions between principals (prostitutes and johns) are legal in many countries, while intermediary activity (pimping) is illegal. After surveying the varying cross‐country legality of agents we develop a simple theoretical model to analyze how the presence or absence of intermediaries shifts the distribution of market surplus. We show that eliminating pimps and brothels may shift surplus in non‐obvious ways, depending on the precise function they perform and on whether equilibrium is pooling or separating across “high quality” and “low quality” market segments. The implications of alternative policy regimes (intermediaries legal or illegal) are considered.     

The political economy of state-level adoption of natural resource damage programs

U.S. states can implement programs to pursue damage recovery when firms cause natural resource damages (NRDs). We present new empirical evidence that such programs have effectively reduced oil spills in states that adopt them. However, only 34 states had implemented such programs by 2003. We analyze data on 50 states and the District of Columbia from 1980 to 2003 to ascertain the likely determinants of NRD program adoption. We find that states with many environmental accidents adopt programs more rapidly, while income and interest-group pressure have no significant impact on the process. While non-adopting states might benefit from such programs, at least NRD programs are being adopted most rapidly where they can do the most good.