A hierarchical utility model for the dynamic acquisition of heterogeneous items

This paper develops a model for situations in marketing and elsewhere in which an individual decision maker acquires multiattributed items that belong to several classes over time. The model captures the dynamic acquisition of heterogeneous items. Measurement and parameter estimation methods are described and illustrated with a small set of experiment data involving the acquisition of durable goods by households. Future research steps are also outlined.     

Book Notes “Economics and Social Sciences” 2/2021

Journal of Consumer Policy -     

Reading a Duty to Provide Accessible Pre-Contractual Information for Consumers with Disabilities into EU Consumer Protection Law

Journal of Consumer Policy - This paper considers whether a duty to provide consumers with disabilities with pre-contractual information in an accessible format, or in an otherwise personalised...     

The U.S. Military-Industrial Complex is Circumstantially Unethical

Business ethicists should examine not only business practices but whether a particular type of business is even prima facie ethical. To illustrate how this might be done I here examine the contemporary U.S. defense industry. In the past the U.S. military has engaged in missions that arguably satisfied the just war self-defense rationale, thereby implying that its suppliers of equipment and services were ethical as well. Some recent U.S. military missions, however, arguably fail the self-defense rationale. At issue, then, is whether a business supporting these latter missions may not be circumstantially unethical. No it is not, say defense industry advocates, for two principal reasons. For one, this business benefits society at large in numerous ways. And, for another, the organizer of these military missions is a superpower which by its very nature is not subject to the ethical constraints of the self-defense rationale. I dispute both reasons, argue against the second, and conclude that the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC) is circumstantially unethical.     

Britt,Steuart Henderson. Psychological Principles of Marketing and Consumer Behavior. Lexington,Mass.: Lexington Books, 1978

Abstract

Conventionally, an advertiser's spending on the creative component of an advertising campaign is small in relation to the media budget and is channeled exclusively to a single advertising agency. Gross challenged those conventions more than 20 years ago, using a mathematical model of advertising effectiveness. His model suggested spending more on the creative component and doing so in a competition among several independent sources. The model assumed a normal distribution of effectiveness of advertisements. Data on response to consumer product ads show that the distribution of effectiveness is not normal, but quite skewed. Using Monté Carlo simulations and Gross's framework, the authors find that the skewness strengthens the case for competition. Shifting a sizable percentage of a campaign budget away from media spending and into competitive generation of creative renderings apparently can be very profitable.