Dynamic market impacts of generic dairy advertising

Generic advertising of fluid milk and cheese represents the principal promotional activity undertaken with the $370 million per year provided by dairy farmers and fluid milk processors. This article describes a stock-flow-feedback simulation model that includes 17 intermediate and final dairy products, short-term and long-term milk supply response and government policies that influence the impacts of generic advertising on net revenues for dairy farmers. Permanent increases in generic advertising expenditures increase net revenues for dairy farmers, with a cumulative net benefit to cost ratio of 2.8. Permanent decreases produce a larger reduction in net revenues and indicate a net benefit to cost ratio larger than 4.5. Spending a larger proportion of existing generic advertising funds on cheese rather than fluid milk would also markedly increased dairy farmer net revenues. Generic advertising increases net revenues for dairy farmers even when industry supply response and government regulation are accounted for.     

Should all firms adapt websites to international audiences?

The authors investigate the moderating roles of brand equity and purchasing risk in the relationships between website cultural congruity (WCC) and two dependent variables: attitude toward the website (A_ST) and trust in the e-vendor. An exploratory study identifies typical French website design elements (graphic design and layout factors) to use in a subsequent experimental study to manipulate WCC. The results reveal that the effect of WCC on A_ST increases when brand equity is weak; for trust, both brand equity and purchasing risk act as moderators. The interaction between brand equity and purchasing risk reveals that WCC only influences trust when brand equity is weak. Overall, the results suggest that strong brand equity outweighs the effects of WCC in terms of improving site attitudes and reducing purchasing risk, with notable managerial and research implications.     

Coupon Redemption and Its Effect on Household Cheese Purchases

By endogenizing unit value and coupon redemption, we estimate U.S. household cheese purchase, quality choice, and coupon redemption equations simultaneously. Zero purchases and missing values on coupons and unit values are taken into account in the model to correct for selectivity bias. Correlations among the three equations are found to be significant. Empirical findings show that high-quality choice significantly decreases cheese purchases, while cheese coupon usage significantly increases purchases. We find that higher income households select higher quality cheese, while larger households choose lower quality cheese. For coupon redemption, we find that African-American and Hispanic households redeem less, while Asian households have no significant difference compared to Caucasian households.     

The Impact of Generic Advertising on U.S. Household Cheese Purchases: A Censored Autocorrelated Regression Approach

The impacts of generic cheese advertising on U.S. household cheese purchases are examined via the use of a unique household panel. Modest gains in overall at-home cheese purchases from generic cheese advertising appear to be largely the result of strong gains in purchases of natural cheese rather than processed cheese. Results indicate that relatively larger gains in household cheese purchases from generic advertising may be realized by targeting infrequent purchasers to increase purchase frequencies, rather than by targeting households in general to increase their conditional purchase levels.     

Voluntary Funding for Generic Advertising Using a Provision Point Mechanism: An Experimental Analysis of Option Assurance

The mandatory nature of check-off programs remains a contentious policy issue. A provision point mechanism with a money-back guarantee offers an attractive, alternative voluntary funding approach, yet faces the problem of how to maintain future administrative capacity should contributions fall short of the funding threshold in the present period. To address this concern, a novel two-threshold, provision point mechanism is tested that sets a high threshold to fund marketing and a low threshold, if necessary, to secure administrative capacity for future advertising. Experimental results demonstrate that providing such "option assurance" sustains high overall contributions and, in some settings, can increase producer surplus.     

A note on testing for complementarity and substitutability in the case of multiple practices

Recent empirical studies of firm-level performance have tested complementarity in the case of multiple practices. These papers have drawn conclusions using potentially biased estimates of pair-wise interaction effects. We develop a consistent and simple testing framework and test it against alternatives.     

The Economic Impact of Marena’s Investments on Sustainable Agricultural Systems in Honduras

This study examines the economic impact of sustainable agricultural production systems in Central America. In particular, we investigate the impact of investments promoted by the MARENA Programme in Honduras on the total value of agricultural production (TVAP) of its beneficiaries. Propensity Score Matching techniques along with the Difference‐in‐Differences framework are used to mitigate biases stemming from differences in observed as well as unobserved (time‐invariant) characteristics between beneficiaries and a control group. The econometric estimates suggest that MARENA has had a positive and significant effect on the TVAP of beneficiaries. In addition, the analysis shows that, under alternative scenarios, MARENA yielded higher than expected internal rates of return. The results of this study shed light on the response of small‐scale hillside farmers to economic incentives and lend support to the role of natural resource management projects in Central America as a tool to increase household income while also promoting the conservation of natural resources.     

Valuing Pharma R&D: The Catch-22 of DCF

There are two principal methods for valuing pharmaceutical R&D projects—discounted cash flow (DCF) and real options valuation (ROV). As typically practiced, DCF valuations tend to be lower than the estimates produced by ROV techniques. Part of the difference, as many have recognized, stems from DCF s limited ability to take account of managers' real option to cut its losses when new information reveals a drug candidate's lack of profit potential. Another reason for the difference, however, is the widespread use in DCF valuations of established success rates that do not distinguish between projects that fail to pass safety or efficacy trials and those that are abandoned for lack of economic viability. If the appropriate success rates are used, the two methods should yield identical project values because they assume the same scenarios. The practical reality, however, is that the two methods deal in a completely different way with the possibility of abandonment for economic reasons. Because ROV accounts for this possibility directly in the model itself, it is much better suited than DCF to this task—indeed, that is the uncertainty that it is designed to deal with. And the fact that 30% of all pharma R&D abandonments are for economic reasons is a strong argument for using ROV rather than DCF to evaluate new drug development.