Third world industrialisation-The consequences for Western Europe

There is growing awareness that some fundamental change has for some time been affecting the major European economies, involving a shift of manufacturing away from the developed market economies of Europe towards the developing countries. The following article analyses the process of European deindustrialisation and discusses some of the possible consequences.     

The effect of phosphate detergent bans on consumer clothing expenditures

Metropolitan sales data from the 1977 Census of Retail Trade were analysed to test whether phosphate detergent bans increased consumer expenditure on clothing: positive effects were found for men's clothing and domestic fabrics (sheets and towels). In areas with medium water hardness the average annual cost in 1977 equalled $11·08 per household. For 1984, the equivalent cost was $14·17 per household. These results are consistent with laboratory studies that show decreased detergency associated with non-phosphate detergents and increased fabric wear associated with carbonate-built detergents, the principle substitute for phosphate detergents. The bans impose the largest cost on hard water areas. In both ban and non-ban areas in 1977 higher laundering costs were associated with higher water hardness. Analysis of 1972 data indicated that water hardness did not affect clothing expenditures significantly when detergents contained large amounts of phosphates.     

Clothing outshopping in a rural Western community

Statistics reveal that over half of all women are gainfully employed outside the home. Professional working women have a certain status to maintain and it is reasonable to assume that their clothing needs might differ from women who are employed in other occupations and who remain in the home. Recent research has shown that considerable shopping occurs out of the local retail trade area (termed outshopping). Product-specific outshopping research has revealed clothing to be a product consumers are willing to out-shop to obtain. Professionally employed women might have to resort to outshopping more often than the other women in order to meet their clothing needs. For this project outshopping was defined to be the percentage of shopping which occurred at least 50 miles from the test site. This research represents the combined efforts of a graduate class studying trends in fashion merchandising; a telephone survey was developed and conducted by the class and responses from 100 female consumers were analysed using multiple step-wise regression. It was predicted and found that clothing outshopping behaviour could be significantly predicted by the degree of satisfaction with local retailing and number of children remaining in the home. Including the two variables professional/non-professional working status, and the age of female respondent as predictors, did not significantly improve the ability to predict outshopping behaviour. The implications for retailers are discussed.     

Dependent care and the workplace: An analysis of management and employee perceptions

This study attempts to identify differences in the perceptions of top management (defined as CEOs, directors, and presidents) and employees (defined as middle and supervisory management) regarding (a) the effects of dependent care responsibilities on job performance, and (b) the extent of a firm's responsibility in providing support for those faced with caring needs concerning eldercare, childcare, substance abuse, and mental/physical handicaps. The results indicate that these two groups have significantly different perceptions of the effect of dependent care responsibilities on job performance, and on the firm's responsibility in providing support for three types of dependent care.     

Prospects and problems in modeling group decisions

This paper summarizes some of the major issues related to group decision modeling. We briefly review the existing work on group choice models in marketing and consumer research. We draw some generalizations about which models work well when and use those generalizations to provide guidelines for future research.     

The growth of UK companies and their contribution to job generation, 1985–1987

Theories of firm growth are reviewed and various models examined. The firm growth and job generation process in the UK over the period 1985–87, is examined empirically, by using the very large data files of the Dun and Bradstreet credit rating organisation. In the analysis, four computer processes were carried out; the sorting and matching of files, the cleaning of the data, the validation of the cleaned data, and the scaling up the results. The final adjusted data were grossed-up to provide an overview of the growth and job generation potential of UK firms. This is compared with past results for the periods 1971–81, and 1982–84. Small firms performed well, providing 48% of all new jobs, although consisting of only 21% of all employment in 1985. The 1000+ employee range provided only 13% of all new jobs over the period, although consisting of 37% of all employment in 1985. An overall trend of positive performance in smaller firms, and negative in larger firms was apparent. The 20–49 employee cohort performed unusually poorly in firm and job creation, against the expected pattern. The effect of takeovers, mergers and rationalisations on employment was examined. As expected, there was negligible restructuring of small firms, but over 5% of employees in the largest 1000+ cohort were involved in some form of reorganisation.In this and the two previous studies for 1971–81 and 1982–84, we found a consistent pattern of small firms as net generators of jobs, and large firms as net losers. This overall net behaviour is essential for the overall stability of the population, and can not be seen in good or bad terms. Bolton in 1971 found that the UK had an unduly small and weak small-firm sector. That trend to concentration is being reversed.This research was supported by the Department of Employment, Small Firms Division.     

The impact of free and exaggerated prices on perceived quality of services

Previous research in the price-quality area has largely limited its focus to the normal price range and has concentrated on physical goods almost entirely. This study examines the effect of offering a service for free and at an exaggerated price on the perception of its quality. Consistent with the theory developed in this paper, the experimental results suggest that when the tested services are offered for free and for exaggerated prices, they are perceived as lower in quality than when they are offered in a normal price range.     

Antitrust pitfalls for doing business in the post-1992 EC

Despite the potential that the European Community holds for American companies, those seeking to do business in the EC should be aware of the potential difficulties that may be created by EC antitrust laws. A knowledge of the EC antitrust laws can keep companies from making costly mistakes when marketing, producing, or importing and exporting goods.     

Motives for purchase decision-making: combining attribution and functional approaches

The motivations which lead to consumer decisions have been given relatively little research attention, since motivations are difficult to quantify. The four part typology developed by Katz,¹ when combined with self-perceived attributions, provides a useful method of examining the motivational underpinnings of consumer-purchase decisions. This study involved an experimental design to evaluate self perceptions of the four functional motives—ego defensive, value expressive, knowledge and utilitarian. A sample of 105 undergraduate students attributed their use or purchase for each of 52 items to one of the four functional motives. Using these responses as self-perception attributions, two research questions were examined: (i) would the four part typology be useful in explaining self-perceptions of past behaviour? and (ii) would one function of the typology dominate these reports for each item? An across-subject analysis suggested the four part typology could be meaningfully employed within a self-perception context. However, one functional motive dominated attributions for only six of 52 items. Since motivations and consumer behaviour are clearly linked, this research offers a method of providing additional insight into that linkage. The paper concludes with further research possibilities that integrate the functional motive approach and self-perception attributions.