Salesperson stereotypes,consumer emotions,and their impact on information processing

This study examines salesperson stereotypes and their effect on the selling environment. After reviewing relevant literature, the authors advance a hierarchical structure of salesperson stereotype categories. Experimental results suggest that stereotypes influence consumer emotions, and these emotions then mediate the relationship between stereotype activation and subsequent consumer cognitions. He received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 1991. His expertise is in the area of consumer behavior and research methods. Current research topics center on consumption-related emotions, their measurement, and their impact on decision making. His research appears in theJournal of Consumer Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Consumer Affairs, Advances in Consumer Research, as well as in numerous other national and regional publications. He received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. His research centers on sales management and the conflicting roles of salespeople. His work appears in prestigious outlets such as theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Journal of Marketing Education, as well as in various conference proceedings. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina. He was named Outstanding Marketing Educator by the Academy of Marketing Science in 1990. He has published more than 400 scholarly articles in prestigious outlets such as theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, andJournal of Marketing.     

Transaction utility effects when quality is uncertain

The existing literature finds that price discrepancy, which represents the difference between expected and observed price, helps explain brand choice and purchase intention. This effect is often attributed to transaction utility, that is, the incremental utility associated with the surprise of observing a price lower or higher than expected. This research considers the possibility, however, that transaction utility is a less important determinant of choice when quality is uncertain. We propose and find that acquisition utility (perceived value for the money) tends to dominate the explanation of purchase intention, but transaction utility is significant only when consumers are more certain about quality. Our discussion considers the relative role of transaction utility in explaining consumer decision making and how the informative and allocative roles of price might be distinguished. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from Ohio State University and his B.S. from Ohio State University. His research interests include information economics and pricing. Previously, he taught at the University of South Carolina. He has published in theJournal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, andJournal of Retailing, among others. He received his Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina, his M.B.A. from the University of Georgia, and a B.S. degree from Clemson University. Previously, he taught at the University of Alabama. His research interests include consumer perceptions of value and interpersonal influences. He has published in theJournal of Consumer Research and theJournal of Marketing Research, among others. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of South Carolina and has a Bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Delhi. His research interests include price bundling, price effects on perceived quality perceptions, and segmentation of business-to-business markets. He has published in theJournal of Business Research and theAdvances in Consumer Research series, published by the Association of Consumer Research. He previously taught on the faculty of Valdosta State University. She received a B.S. in statistics, a Ph.D. in marketing from the University of South Carolina, and a M.S. in statistics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She previously taught at Lehigh University. Her research interests include market segmentation, discrete data analysis, and pricing. She has published in theJournal of Marketing Research, as well as in theProceedings of the American Marketing Association and theAssociation for Consumer Research.     

Voluntary Causal Disclosures: Tendencies and Capital Market Reaction

In this study, we provide empirical evidence on whether voluntarily disclosed causal attributions made in management earnings forecasts are credible by investigating the conditions under which such attributions are made and the extent to which security price responses are associated with attribution existence. We find that causal attributions are more likely to be made when forecast news is bad (relative to good), and that the type of attribution made is more likely to be external (internal) for bad (good) forecast news. Incorporating the existence and type of attribution into models that explain announcement period three-day cumulative abnormal returns yields significant effects for attribution incidence and type after controlling for unexpected earnings and forecast type (e.g., point, range, etc.). Consistent with the idea that attributions enhance the credibility or precision of management forecasts, attribution disclosure enhances price reactions per dollar of unexpected earnings conveyed in a management forecast.     

Consumer information cues in television advertising: A cross country analysis

This paper compares the number of consumer information cues found in television advertisements in three countries: Australia, Ecuador, and the United States. Earlier studies conducted by Resnick and Stern in the United States and Dowling in Australia were replicated in Ecuador. Content analysis of 108 Ecuadorian television advertisements evaluated the number and types of information cues in each commercial. Results indicate that a much greater proportion of Ecuadorian television commercials contain consumer information cues than those broadcast in the other two countries. The explanation suggested for this observation is that Ecuador, due to its level of economic development, has many more products in the introductory stages of the product life cycle. This situation, in turn, requires more extensive communication of consumer information to market the products effectively. This finding implies an additional dimension, information content level, which must be considered when adapting international campaigns to conditions in developing countries.     

Multinationals do it better: Evidence on the efficiency of corporations' capital budgeting

With U.S. multinational enterprises playing increasingly important roles in the global economy, it is important to understand the efficiency of their capital budgeting decisions. We examine an unbalanced panel of 332 U.S. firms from 1992–2000. Using the deviation of a firm's estimated marginal Tobin's q from a benchmark as an indicator of effective resource allocation, we find that widespread multinationals make more efficient capital budgeting decisions. We also test whether this reflects the MNEs' investment locations, but do not obtain support for the hypotheses that they might be monitored by more agents or more successfully resist pressures from interest groups and governments.     

Dynamics of the UK natural gas industry: System dynamics modelling and long-term energy policy analysis

We present a dynamic model of the indigenous natural gas industry in the UK. The model has been built using a system dynamics approach. Using the model several scenarios have been analyzed. We found that management of the supply-side policy alone cannot substantially postpone the discovery, production and consumption peak. We also found that the dynamics of the main variables, namely, exploration, production and consumption, are sensitive to initial demand conditions. Postponing the onset of gas price increases can therefore be achieved more effectively through efforts to reduce demand growth. One might expect that a low taxation policy would encourage more exploration and production of gas and thereby stimulate higher consumption rates. Instead, there was no overall net effect on production and consumption in the long term. The depletion effect on cost of exploration acts as counterbalance to low taxation policy. Depletion effect causes cost and thus price to rise further which depress consumption rate. The advances in exploration and production technology can delay the peak of exploration, production and consumption. Technological improvements mean lower cost of exploration and production which pressure down the long-term pattern of price dynamics.     

The Eurozone Crisis and Emerging‐Market Expansion: Capital Switching and the Uneven Geographies of Spanish Urbanization

The theory of capitalist urbanization posits that the built form serves as a crucial sink through which overaccumulated capital is ‘switched' from industrial production into long‐term investment in urban infrastructure. Since Harvey's (1978) deployment of the theory, researchers have attempted to empirically substantiate the switching thesis with limited success. Christophers (2011) revisited the debate with new data and methods to support the claim that significant investment had switched into the built environment at the onset of the 2007/08 financial crisis. However, Christophers' study overlooks how crises are also geographically displaced. This article analyses Spanish trade data for the years 1993 to 2013, the years prior and subsequent to the housing‐induced economic crisis (1997 to 2006). Two studies are undertaken. The first replicates Christophers' methodology to assess how and to what extent a sectoral switch into property investment occurred in Spain between 1997 and 2006. The second modifies the methodology to investigate the extent to which overaccumulated capital in Spain has been geographically displaced through investment in the Moroccan building industry since 2006. These approaches situate uneven development (geographical switching) and turnover time (sectoral switching) as the twin dynamics through which capitalist urbanization is spatio‐temporally fixed.     

Spatial monopolistic competition versus spatial monopoly

This paper compares the equilibrium firm output, market area, price of services, and level of net benefits in monopolistically competitive spatial equilibrium versus the multiplant monopolists spatial equilibrium. Through a computer simulation, it is found that the welfare comparisons depend on population density—the monopolists equilibrium is superior to the monopolistically competitive equilibrium in high density areas and vice versa, contrary to traditional economic theory in which distance is assumed costless.     

Convenient estimators for the panel probit model: Further results

Bertschek and Lechner (1998) propose several variants of a GMM estimator based on the period specific regression functions for the panel probit model. The analysis is motivated by the complexity of maximum likelihood estimation and the possibly excessive amount of time involved in maximum simulated likelihood estimation. But, for applications of the size considered in their study, full likelihood estimation is actually straightforward, and resort to GMM estimation for convenience is unnecessary. In this note, we reconsider maximum likelihood based estimation of their panel probit model then examine some extensions which can exploit the heterogeneity contained in their panel data set. Empirical results are obtained using the data set employed in the earlier study. Helpful comments and suggestions by Irene Bertschek and Michael Lechner are gratefully acknowledged. This paper has also benefited from comments by two anonymous referees and from seminar participants at the Center for Health Economics at the University of York. Any remaining errors are the responsibility of the author.