Personalisation–privacy paradox: The effects of personalisation and privacy assurance on customer responses to travel Web sites

Personalisation refers to individualizing products, services, and contents according to customer interests and preferences. In order to deliver appropriate personalised offerings, firms inevitably need to collect rich customer data profiles. Prior research suggests that personalised services lead to positive customer responses such as increased willingness to disclose personal information and make purchases. However, another stream of research emphasizes negative outcomes of personalisation – namely, privacy concerns surrounding the use of personal information and associated negative effects on behaviour. The objectives of this study are twofold: (1) to examine how privacy assurance affects proximal outcomes of personalisation, such as perceived usefulness and privacy concerns; and (2) to identify the role such outcomes play in predicting customer behavioural responses, such as willingness to disclose personal information and make purchases. Our findings show that enhancing privacy assurance increases the perceived usefulness of services and decreases customer privacy concerns. Moreover, customer behavioural responses are positively related to the perceived usefulness of services and negatively associated with privacy concerns. However, despite the positive effects on perceived usefulness and purchase intentions, personalisation has no effect on privacy concerns and intentions to disclose personal information.     

Why should firms manufacture retailer brands?

For firms manufacturing convenience goods there are three branding policies available, a proprietory brand policy, a retailer brand policy and a mixed brand policy. A firm's choice depends on differences in demand and promotion costs between the proprietory and retailer brand markets. This can be analysed using a simple elaboration of the standard 3rd degree price discrimination model. But if the two markets are not independent over the long-term there may be other consequences of following the optimization rules of the model. If retailers develop consumers' preference for their own shops and their own brands, the demand advantage enjoyed by manufacturers' brands may be reduced further. The more willing are manufacturers to supply retailer brands, the more retailers win undermine the demand for manufacturers' proprietory brands.     

The timing of residential land development: A general equilibrium approach

A formal model of the development process is constructed in order to arrive at a better understanding of the land development process, the change in land prices over time, and the effects of public policy on these variables. The relationship between the rate of interest and the rate of price appreciation on land is shown to depend upon development costs, agricultural opportunity costs, market structure, and the level of Ricardian rents on land. The effects of a land tax and a capital gains tax on the rate of development are also analyzed.