Rezensionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Einflussfaktoren auf die Bereitschaft von Privatkunden, Ökostrom nachzufragen

The present study investigates impacts of attitudinal and perceptual characteristics of residential electricity consumers on their intention to use a green power tariff/supplier in the future. The work rests on a standardized telephone survey of 267 household electricity consumers of a German power supplier. Multivariate Partial Least Squares analysis indicates that, regardless of a person’s level of actual power consumption in the recent past, the intention to use green electricity is significantly higher among customers who have a positive general attitude towards environmental protection measures and who report an endorsing valuation of green power by their close social contacts. In a subsample of participants with a low actual electricity consumption in the year preceding the survey the intention to use green energy is significantly positively affected by the weight an individual attaches to electricity prices in one’s own supplier selection decisions and the person’s belief that one’s present power company takes over social responsibility. In contrast, in the subgroup of respondents with a high actual electricity consumption customers’ intention to use green energy is significantly enhanced by the degree of perceived dissimilarity among power company offerings. The findings are used to derive suggestions for green energy marketing measures of power companies and future energy consumer research.     

Bringing the brand to life: Structural conditions of brand-consistent employee behavior

Continuous brand success can be realized only if the brand promise that is communicated through mass media campaigns is lived up to by customer contact employees. In fact, discrepancies in brand experience may lead to customer confusion and dissatisfaction. However, what does that mean to brand managers? A survey among marketing managers shows that a reorganization of brand management routines is needed in order to bring the brand to life: informal management techniques and employee empowerment are required instead of formal management activities. In this article, we elaborate first steps for the implementation and maintenance of behavioral branding considering findings of our survey as well as implications from management focus groups and best practice examples.     

Privatisierung der Autobahnen—Soll der Bund sein Tafelsilber verkaufen?

Gegenw?rtig wird der Verkauf des deutschen Autobahnnetzes diskutiert. Mit den Privatisierungserl?sen k?nnte ein erheblicher Teil der Verschuldung des Bundes abgebaut werden. Ist die traditionelle staatliche Bereitstellung noch gerechtfertigt? Wie weit sollte eine Autobahnprivatisierung gehen? Henrik Armbrecht, 30, Dipl.-Volkswirt, Sebastian Badura, 27, Dipl.-Verkehrswirtschaftler, und Torsten Marner, 34, Dipl.-Volkswirt, sind wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter am Institut für Verkehrswissenschaft an der Universit?t Münster.     

The first stage of European Economic and Monetary Union

After two false starts, the first stage of European Economic and Monetary Union began on 1st July 1990. The following two articles discuss the consequences that the inauguration of EMU will have for economic policy co-ordination in the European Community. The views stated here are only those of the author and can on no account be attributed to the Commission of the European Communities.     

Forecasting real estate prices in Germany: the role of consumer confidence

The aim of the paper is to analyse the forecasting ability of various potential predictors for real estate prices in Germany over the short term. In the wake of the financial crisis, real estate prices in Germany started to increase markedly and still did so by the end of 2013. Despite a number of fundamental reasons, e.g. favourable lending conditions and Germany’s rapid return to economic growth, this provoked a discussion on whether consumers have too gloomy expectations regarding real estate prices in future. To capture the role of expectations for predicting real estate prices, in our forecast evaluation, we put special emphasis on various components of consumer confidence. Using single indicator models, we find that households’ perceived financial situations as well as their intended consumption/saving plans serve as valuable real estate price predictors.