A Content Analysis of Bonus Pack Promotions

Bonus packs created by manufacturers have been characterized by scholars as special factory packs offering the consumer extra product for the same price or at no additional cost. However, this portrayal may fail to fully capture what consumers actually encounter in stores during and following a bonus pack promotion. Indeed, little is known about the types of products that manufacturers promote as bonus packs and how offers for them are specified, how retailers price them, and also what happens when the offers are discontinued. To address these shortcomings, a content analysis is conducted. The results illustrate a richness to bonus pack promotions that previous views of the topic have not described.     

Workplace isolation: salespeople and supervisors in USA

Virtual work is becoming the norm in sales organizations because it is cost effective for the firm and can benefit customers and salespeople. However, along with these benefits, virtual work brings new challenges to organizations. One critical issue is workplace isolation (WI). This study uses responses from a sample of 346 salespeoples in the pharmaceutical field to test a model that investigates the relationships among WI, self-efficacy, leadership style, extra-role performance (ERP), satisfaction with the supervisor, and turnover intentions. Salespersons perception of managers as considerate leaders are associated with lower WI levels. Salespeople with higher levels of self-efficacy are less likely to believe that they are isolated from the company and their colleagues. WI, in turn, is significantly related to satisfaction with the supervision and ERP. Managerial implications and future research directions are presented.     

Glass Houses? Market Reactions to Firms Joining the UN Global Compact

We examine market reactions to publicly held multinational firms announcing their affiliation with the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). The UNGC is a voluntary initiative to support four areas of United Nations viz. Human Rights, Labor, Environmental, and Anti-Corruption. Because firms must file annual Communication on Progress (COP) reports toward these initiatives, we argue this creates a differentiating transparency of interest to stakeholders. Using a sample of 175 global firms, we find support to the theory for joining the UNGC. Returns differ markedly, however, between multinational firms headquartered in the United States (negative) and Europe (positive). We also find that failing to complete the annual COP generates a negative market reaction.     

Marketing China's milk: A case study of the sales activity of dairy farmers in greater Beijing

Small farmer participation in marketing chains in emerging commodity markets and the determinants of their marketing channel choices are the center of many recent empirical and theoretical papers in the literature. The dairy sector is emerging in China. There are many fundamental questions about how farmers make dairy marketing decisions in China at the farm gate level that are unanswered. This makes the dairy sector in China a good place to study farmers in emerging marketing chains. Based on three sets of unique data collected in the mid-2000s in Greater Beijing, the analyses show that small farmers were the major producers of milk. There is no evidence that small farmers are being excluded from emerging marketing channels. One of the differences of China's dairy sector in the mid-2000s is that its marketing chain itself had many different types of agents that procure milk — and few of them were large; most were individual entrepreneurs. The high level of the competiveness may be the reason that individual agents do not have monopoly power and why small farmers can operate in the system.     

THE COST OF THE U.S. SUGAR PROGRAM REVISITED

The article analyzes the welfare cost of the U.S. sugar program using a multimarket model of U.S. sweetener markets. The latter includes raw crops, sugar extraction and refining, and sweetener users (food-processing industries and final consumers). The authors address the industrial organization of food industries using sweeteners and treat the United States as a large importer. With the removal of the program, this article estimates (all figures in 1999 dollars) that in 1998 cane growers, sugar beet growers, and processors would have lost $307, $650, and $89 million, respectively; sweetener users would have gained $1.9 billion. World prices would have increased by 13.2%. The deadweight loss of the program is estimated at $532 million.     

Dynamic R&D Competition, Research Line Diversity, and Intellectual Property Rights

This paper develops a simple model of sequential innovations with a diversity of research lines. Competitive strategies of firms for R&D are analyzed at each stage in a sequence of innovations. We compare two alternative regimes of enforcing patent law, as a mechanism to provide adequate incentives for R&D at each stage. The regime that protects the research line gives monopoly rights to an entire line of research, hence limiting the utilization of the previous knowledge and retarding subsequent innovations. The other regime protects the product, which facilitates the use of previous knowledge at the expense of providing inadequate protection to the ideas embodied in the product, and results in underinvestment in the first stage.     

Macroeconomic stabilization through monetary and fiscal policy coordination: Implications for European Monetary Union

In a two-country model, we consider the implications of monetary and fiscal policy coordination for macroeconomic stabilization. We show that the optimal regime is one of monetary and fiscal policy coordination under flexible exchange rates. In the context of the European Community, this suggests that the desire to fix exchange rates may not be costless. In addition, we show that fiscal coordination requires a relatively high degree of flexibility in fiscal policy. This result suggests that limits on the flexibility of fiscal policies, as suggested in the Delors Report, may hinder macroeconomic stabilization.     

On the dynamic effects of monetary and fiscal policy under floating exchange rates: Simulations with an asset market model

Zusammenfassung Die dynamischen Wirkungen der Geld- und Finanzpolitik bei floatenden Wechselkursen: Simulationen mit einem verm?genstheoretischen Modell.-Der Autor fügt in ein von Dornbusch entwickeltes Modell verz?gerte Anpassungen bei der Produktion und bei den Handelsstr?men ein, um die dynamischen Wirkungen der Geld- und Finanzpolitik bei floatenden Wechselkursen zu untersuchen. Trotz der Tatsache, da\ eine monet?re Expansion anfangs die Zinss?tze senkt, kann der Wechselkurs das Niveau seines neuen langfristigen Gleichgewichts unterschreiten. Dieses Ergebnis widerspricht früheren Behauptungen von Dornbusch und Fischer. Au\erdem führt eine fiskalische Expansion immer dazu, da\ der Wechselkurs sein neues langfristiges Gleichgewichtsniveau überschreitet. Schlie\lich konvergiert das System unter Schwingungen, wenn die Anpassungsverz?gerungen bei der Produktion und bei den Handelsstr?men verh?ltnism?\ig lang sind.

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Résumé Les effets dynamiques de la politique monétaire et fiscale sous des taux de change flottants: Des simulations avec un modèle du marché financier. — Dans cette étude on a introduit la retardation de l’ajustement de la production et des échanges commerciaux dans un modèle développé par Dornbusch pour analyser les effets dynamiques de la politique monétaire et fiscale sous des taux de change flottants. Malgré du fait que l’expansion monétaire abaisse le taux d’intérêt au début, le taux de change peut passer par au-dessous du nouveau niveau d’équilibre à long terme. Ce résultat contredit aux affirmations faites par Dornbusch et Fischer. En plus l’expansion fiscale fait toujours le taux de change passer par au-dessus de son nouveau niveau d’équilibre à long terme. Finalement, le système converge avec des oscillations si la retardation de la production et des échanges commerciaux est relativement étendue.

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Resumen Sobre los efectos dinámicos de la política monetaria y fiscal bajo tipos de cambio flotantes: simulaciones con un modelo “asset market”. — En estre trabajo se introducen desfasajes en el ajuste del producto y en el intercambio comercial en un modelo desarrollado por Dornbusch para analizar los efectos dinámicos de la politica monetaria y fiscal bajo tipos de cambio flotantes. A pesar de que la expansion monetaria inicialmente reduce las tasas de interés, el tipo de cambio puede no alcanzar su nuevo nivel de equilibrio de largo plazo. Este resultado contradice resultados obtenidos anteriormente por Dornbusch y Fischer. Además, la expansión fiscal siempre induce al tipo de cambio a superar su nuevo nivel de equilibrio de largo plazo. Finalmente, el sistema converge con oscilaciones si los desfasajes de producto y de comercio son relativamente largos.