Preventing shoplifting: Exploring online comments to propose a model

In recent years, the marketing literature has expended considerable effort to understand and theorize consumer misbehavior. However, scant research theoretically explores shoplifting. This is surprising, as currently, the annual cost of shoplifting is close to $50 billion in the United States. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, we conduct two studies. Study 1 is a qualitative content analysis of online consumer discussions with regard to shoplifting. Study 2 is an empirical examination that uses a US national sample of n = 1,001 consumers; it is designed to test specific hypotheses regarding antecedents to consumers’ intentions to shoplift using an interdisciplinary theoretical framework from criminology, psychology, and marketing. The model integrates research from these different disciplines to improve our understanding of shoplifting by offering avenues to tackle it that supersede traditional security measures in retail. The integrated conceptual framework extends the theory of planned behavior and routine activity theory in understanding the behavioral intentions behind shoplifting. The results show that the suitability of shoplifting targets, offender motivation, and the absence of capable guardians affect potential offenders’ attitudes, subjective norms, and confidence in their ability to shoplift, which, in turn, all influence the intention to shoplift. The results contribute to our understanding of shoplifting and provide implications for retail practitioners over and above merely augmenting store security.     

Conserving biodiversity of community forests and rangelands of a hot arid region of India

Community forests/rangelands, called Orans and Gauchars in the western arid part of India, constitute a significant proportion of the total geographical area of the region. Given the economic importance of these areas from time immemorial, the local people took special care to protect and sustainably utilize these common property resources. However, these forests and rangelands have suffered severe degradation in the recent past. Rehabilitation of Orans and Gauchars needs proper planning and execution of a technically feasible package, tailored to suit their unique edaphic, climatic, vegetation, social and legal status. Keeping in view the vast potential of these areas to sustain large scale livestock farming for overall economic upliftment of the local population, there is an urgent need to rehabilitate these degraded areas in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Salient problems faced by these natural assets of western Rajasthan and strategies for their rehabilitation have been discussed in the paper.     

The role of exports in India's economic growth

We analyze the role of exports in India's economic growth and examine whether the export-led growth hypothesis (ELGH) applies to India. Our causality analysis provides support for the validity of the ELGH for India in the trade liberalization phase. Error variance decomposition and other analyses are also undertaken; these corroborate the results of the causality analysis and suggest that the rapid growth of exports has played a substantial role in increasing the growth rate in India following the economic reforms of 1991.     

India’s petroleum demand: estimations and projections

Energy security is crucial for sustaining high economic growth in India. This article empirically estimates India’s long- and short-term demand relations for crude oil, diesel and petrol (gasoline) using the ARDL and ECM cointegration procedures and then uses them to project demand for these products up to 2025 under various scenarios of GDP growth and oil prices. Our projections show that over 2012 to 2025, demand is likely to increase by about 74% for crude oil, 117% for diesel and 136% for petrol – the annual growth rates being about 4.3% for crude oil, 6.1% for diesel and 6.8% for petrol (gasoline). This article suggests that India needs to (1) take measures to improve efficiency in the use of petroleum products; (2) try to enhance supplies such as through production sharing agreements by Indian oil companies with other countries and (3) increase the use of nuclear, hydro, solar and other alternative energy sources, as Western European countries have done.     

Risk Management with Derivatives by Dealers and Market Quality in Government Bond Markets

This paper investigates how bond dealers manage core business risk with interest rate futures and the extent to which market quality is affected by their selective risk taking. We observe that dealers use futures to take directional bets and hedge changes in their spot exposure. We find that, cross‐sectionally, a dealer with longer (shorter) risk exposure sells (buys) a larger amount of exposure the next day. However, this risk control takes place via the futures market and not the spot market. Finally, we find strong support for the price effects of capital constraints emphasized by Froot and Stein (1998).     

An Experimental Study of Cognitive Dissonance,Product Involvement,Expectations, Performance and Consumer Judgement of Product Performance

Abstract

This experimental study investigates the effects of cognitive dissonance, expectations, and product performance on product evaluations. The study improves upon the methodological problems of the past experimental studies. The results of a 2×2×2 factorial design suggest that product involvement acts as a moderator in the postdecisional product evaluation process. The theoretical and empirical findings suggest communication guidelines for the advertisers.     

Learning with perfect information

For extensive form games with perfect information, consider a learning process in which, at any iteration, each player unilaterally deviates to a best response to his current conjectures of others' strategies; and then updates his conjectures in accordance with the induced play of the game. We show that, for generic payoffs, the outcome of the game becomes stationary, and is consistent with Nash equilibrium. In general, if payoffs have ties or if players observe more of each others' strategies than is revealed by plays of the game, the same result holds provided a rationality constraint is imposed on unilateral deviations: no player changes his moves in subgames that he deems unreachable, unless he stands to improve his payoff there. Moreover, with this constraint, the sequence of strategies and conjectures also becomes stationary, and yields a self-confirming equilibrium.     

Competitive prizes: when less scrutiny induces more effort

We consider a principal who is keen to induce his agents to work at their maximal effort levels. To this end, he samples n days at random out of the T days on which they work, and awards a prize of B dollars to the most productive agent. The principal’s policy (B, n) induces a strategic game Γ(B, n) between the agents. We show that to implement maximal effort levels weakly (or, strongly) as a strategic equilibrium (or, as dominant strategies) in Γ(B, n), at the least cost B to himself, the principal must choose a small sample size n. Thus less scrutiny by the principal induces more effort from the agents.The need for reduced scrutiny becomes more pronounced when agents have information of the history of past plays in the game. There is an inverse relation between information and optimal sample size. As agents acquire more information (about each other), the principal, so to speak, must “undo” this by reducing his information (about them) and choosing the sample size n even smaller.     

Retailer Pricing and Competitive Effects

Until recently, retailers have taken an either/or approach to competition: either reacting fiercely to competitive price changes or ignoring them altogether. Today, however, firms make a concerted effort to determine and quantify competitive effects. In this paper, we focus on how pricing and competitive effects interact as a general phenomenon, particularly as it applies to retailing. We attempt to construct a general framework that enhances our understanding of the emerging research issues in the area of pricing and competitive effects, and we examine their implications for practice. The areas that show high promise/opportunity are in the online setting for all types of goods—fashion, perishable and packaged staples, and durables—particularly with respect to pricing for profitability and understanding the impact of competition. Other opportunities include understanding the pricing and competitive effects in the perishable goods category sold in specialty, discount, and convenience stores.