Formen der Angebotsanpassung und wirtschaftliches Gleichgewicht

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

In-store demonstrations as a promotion tool

Retailers and manufacturers jointly do their best to influence in-store customer behavior. One promotional tool often used by the industry but rarely studied by academics is in-store demonstrations. In this article we look at when and how demonstrations work the best. Two large field experiments were run and the results indicate that in-store demonstrations are powerful tools to increase sales. Furthermore, the results from the experiments show that the effectiveness of the demonstrations vary widely depending on when they and how they are executed.     

Cattle numbers,biomass, productivity and land degradation in the commercial farming sector of Namibia, 1915‐95

As part of a natural resource accounting project undertaken in Namibia, livestock accounts have been drawn up and are being used to analyse the relationship between numbers of livestock, rainfall, land degradation, and economic and policy variables. Part of the analysis concerns an investigation into trends in cattle numbers, changes in cattle biomass and the productivity of livestock in commercial areas. Cattle numbers increased from 1914 until 1960, then declined steadily to half that number. This decline was at least partly due to deliberate actions by farmers to improve herd productivity and production efficiency. Although beef production did not decline over this period, productivity is still lower than potential industry standards. Range degradation (bush encroachment) may have contributed to this curtailment. This investigation has implications for an understanding of long‐term carrying capacity, land degradation and rangeland management, and for agricultural development policies in Namibia and similar regions in southern Africa.     

The impact of tourism on cultural patrimony a Costa Rican example

Development of tourism in tropical areas is having a distinct impact on the preservation of cultural resources, particularly when developments are on the coasts, and where lack of monumental architecture does not make it visually obvious that cultural heritage is present. The impact is primary, in that sites are levelled, covered over, or otherwise destroyed; and secondary in that roads to new areas encourage auxiliary population concentrations or open new areas to exploitation by professional pot-hunters. Cooperation between museums and universities who seek to preserve and study these cultural remains, and those who are stimulating the development is often poorly established because of lack of precedence for cultural resource management programs in developing countries. Discussed are the problems of primary and secondary impact based on an example from Pacific coastal Costa Rica     

Advertising weak and strong brands: Who gains?

The authors present an empirical study that compares advertising for a weak brand and advertising for a strong brand. The results indicate that brand attitude and purchase intention for the weak brand are higher when subjects cannot recall the ad. The opposite is found for the strong brand. Comparisons between single‐brand ads and a joint ad reveal that ad‐evoked brand recall increases for the weak brand in the joint ad and decreases for the strong brand. Furthermore, brand attitude and purchase intention are lower in the joint ad for the weak brand and higher for the strong brand. The study adds new insights to the literature on brand exposure without recall and the literature on joint advertising. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Statement no.103 principles of regulatory restructuring

Statement no.103 principles of regulatory restructuringFebruary 14, 1994     

The Estimation of a Cusp Model to Describe the Adoption of Word for Windows*

This article revisits earlier work in this journal by Paul Herbig (1991) that proposed a catastrophe model of industrial product adoption under certain conditions. Catastrophe models are useful for modeling situations where organizations can exhibit both smooth and abrupt adoption behavior. It extends Herbig's work by focusing on organizations' adoption of new products when network externalities are an important part of the decision process, and it presents an empirical estimation of the model. Network externalities occur when firms do not want to adopt a new innovation or product unless other firms do. The reason is that they do not want to end up with an innovation that ends up not being a standard of some sort. Mistakes of this nature can be costly as the firm must invest twice and loses time relative to competitors who have not made such a mistake. However, when such externalities exist, for example with regard to technological adoptions, then normal diffusion gives way to sudden discontinuous shifts as all firms seemingly act together an move to a new technology. Since, technology is an area where the authors expect network externalities to exist, that is the focus of this article. The specific application is developed from two sets of panel data on the organizational adoptions of Microsoft's (MS) Word for Windows software by organizations that previously were using either Word for DOS or Word for Macintosh (Mac). The theoretical framework for the analysis is based on work in the economics literature on network externalities. However, the organization and new product development catastrophe model comes primarily from Herbig (1991) . The article focuses on an area of organizational adoption where relatively little empirical research has been done, namely organizational adoption “for use.” Longitudinal data provided by Techtel Corporation is used to develop the estimations. Results of the empirical analysis are consistent with the theoretical framework suggested in Herbig's article and in those found in economics and catastrophe theory literatures. This lends clear support to the idea that organizations will adopt a bandwagon‐type behavior when network externalities are present. It further suggests that in such markets, the standard S‐shaped diffusion curve is not an appropriate model for examining organizational behavior. From a managerial perspective, it means that buyers and sellers may face nonstandard diffusion curves. Instead of S‐shaped curves, the actual curves have a break or rift where sales end, and there is a sudden shift to a new product that is relatively high very early on. Clearly, for new product development (NPD), it suggest that organizations' “for‐use” purchases may be similar to regular consumers and may change rapidly from one product to another almost instantly, as in the case of the switch from vinyl records to compact discs (CDs). From an old product seller's viewpoint, the market is here today and gone tomorrow, while for the new seller it is a sudden deluge of sales requests. To put it in more everyday terms, sudden changes in adoption behavior are a September 11‐type experience for the market. It is the day the world changes.     

Wealth,Natural Capital,and Sustainable Development: Contrasting Examples from Botswana and Namibia

Theoretical work has demonstrated that sustainable development requires non-declining per capita wealth, where wealth is defined to include produced, natural, human and social capital. Several studies have attempted to measure total national wealth or changes in wealth, but have been seriously hampered by a lack of data, especially for natural and human capital. To address this problem, the UN and other international statistical agencies developed a standardized framework for environmental accounts, the System of integrated Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA). Using the newly available asset accounts for natural capital, national wealth accounts are constructed and used to assess the contrasting development paths of Botswana and Namibia. Botswana, with an explicit policy of reinvestment of resource rents, has roughly tripled per capita wealth and national income over the past two decades. Namibia, with no explicit policy to use natural capita to build wealth, has seen per capita wealth and income decline.