Observation of a strategic household purchase decision

The present paper focuses on strategic household purchase decisions; i.e., major, complex buying decisions with long-term bindings of economic resources. An in-depth study of house buying in two-career households demonstrated preferences (goals) to be ambiguous, and consequences to be modestly understood and partly uncovered after the purchase. Only a few alternatives were considered, and they were from different broad need-satisfying categories such as purchase of apartment or house, or renting. No direct comparisons of alternatives were observed to take place. The purchase decisions were based on few, very crude decision criteria working as guidelines for judging whether or not the alternatives considered were acceptable, while the final choice seemingly was made according to an affect-referral decision rule.     

Online display advertising for CPG brands: (When) does it work?

This study examines how online display ads, alone or in combination with more conventional media (television and print), can help drive sales in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) sector. It also assesses how the combined sales effect of online and offline ads depends on the volatility of their expenditures over time. We explore these relations for 154 brands across 68 Dutch CPG product categories. We find that, even though display ads are not effective for the “average” CPG brand, they do have a significant impact for a sizable, and considerably larger than expected by chance, subset of brands. Importantly, this impact depends on the type of product. While display ads are found to be ineffective for low-involvement utilitarian products, they can significantly enhance sales for other CPG product types. Moreover, the effect depends on whether they are used in combination with other media: while display ads are best used as a stand-alone medium for high-involvement utilitarian products, it is better to combine them with traditional media for hedonic products. Finally, the long-term effectiveness of display messages increases significantly when they are spread more evenly in time.     

Rezensionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung

---

Rezensionen

     

The role of institutional quality on the performance in the export of coconut products

The literature that addresses the role of institutions in bilateral trade is extensive. However, research that links institutional quality to specific products and their different levels of value addition is lacking. In this study, we look into institutional quality, based on three indicators from the World Bank's world governance indicators, and its indicator-specific effects on bilateral coconut trade. In particular, we study coconut products with varying degrees of value addition. We use structural gravity models to measure how institutions affect the trade performance of the top 26 coconut producing countries to the top 15 importing economies over the years 1996–2016. Our results suggest that increased government effectiveness enhances trade of high-value products, whereas better voice and accountability scores decrease trade of coconut products with both levels of value addition. No clear trade effect is observed when two countries are more similar in each of the three indicators. We conclude that each indicator has different trade effects on each of the coconut product categories. We end by giving recommendations that will help to improve the coconut export performance in their respective countries and for future research.     

Student’s vacation travel: A reference dependent model of airline fares preferences

This article reports the results of student vacation travel choice analysis using a reference dependent model of airline fare preferences. Findings suggests, as expected, that the preferences/utility decreases with increasing levels of cost. The evaluation of the airfare, however, becomes significantly more critical in the regime were low-fare airlines are more expensive than the regular airlines, meaning that price sensitivity for low-fare airlines is higher in this case. Part-worth utility functions for airfare as part of a more general portfolio model of vacation decisions of students suggest that indeed a reference dependent model captures such regimes in utility space.