Are Consumer and Brand Personalities the Same?

Current discussions of brand personality refer to a personified brand image, that is, a brand image that can possess any attributes of consumers, rather than brand personality. From a conceptual and methodological critique of the literature, this paper applies the definition of personality to brand personality, and tests the idea using a peer‐rating methodology that focuses on each individual's perception of a brand (the brand × subject structure). The results reveal that consumers reflect their personalities by the brands they use, but the relationship between brand choice and symbolic dimensions (i.e., extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience) is much stronger than the relationship with functional dimensions (i.e., conscientiousness). Moreover, the pattern of this relationship remains consistent across symbolic and utilitarian products, which implies that consumers choose brands with similar personalities to theirs across various products. The study concludes that an abridged personality scale, based on the Big Five, can be applied to both brands and consumers. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

SUSTAINABILITY IN A MULTIPRODUCT AND MULTIPLE AGENT CONTESTABLE MARKET

We prove that a natural monopoly can set subsidy free pricing and sustainable pricing schedules in a general economic environment. The setting is a multiproduct and multiple agent contestable market where demands are elastic and where rivals can enter the submarkets composed by a set of the products line and a set of agents. Our results suggest that the existence results of the extant literature admit analogues even in an environment where rivals have enlarged possibilities to enter the market and where demands react to prices. The approach makes use of cooperative games to deduce the main results under conditions of fair sharing cost, a threshold in consumption and regularity of the profit function.     

Labor market institutions and firms’ location choices

The paper evaluates the empirical effects of labor market institutions (LMI) on foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions using an individual dataset describing French firms’ expansion strategies in OECD countries over 1992–2002. First, we provide evidence that labor market institutions do matter in location decisions. Precisely, we show that labor market rigidity significantly reduces the country’s attractiveness for foreign investors. Yet, the effect is of limited magnitude compared to FDI determinants related to the country’s market potential or supply access. Second, we go deeper in the precise role of various LMI dimensions. In line with the literature, we find that stringent employment protection laws have a dampening effect on the location probability. Besides, we show that this is not the only dimension that matters. In particular, we find that the generosity of the unemployment benefit system plays a significant negative role on the country’s attractiveness, even once the role of employment protection is controlled for.