Customer-centric pricing: The surprising secret for profitability

Companies spend enormous amounts of energy and capital in creating value for customers, but less regard is given to actually capturing the value they have created. Segmentation based on buying behavior uncovers a tremendous differential in willingness to pay for subjective product attributes such as convenience, status, and quality. Purchase decisions are made through an assessment of a myriad of factors balancing perceptions of value components against price in a subtle, complex, and often sub-conscious decision matrix. Customer-centric pricing requires the simultaneous and continuous assessment of product attributes, customer perceptions, and the circumstances of time and place by listening to customers' actions. It is a means of assuring that companies assess the value they create for customers and extract that value from the marketplace.     

Profiling consumers of own brands and national brands using human personality

Traditional methods of market segmentation based on demographic variables have shown mixed results in differentiating between those who are more likely to buy own brand products and those who prefer national brands. Taking advantage of the emerging convergence in human personality research on the Big Five dimensions, we focus on the potential of human personality as a method of identifying different customer segments. Two types of own brands are considered, those labelled with the retailer's corporate name and those labelled with a name independent of the retailer. Two product categories are included, cola as an example of a low-involvement product and cosmetics as an example of a high-involvement product. The personality profiles of buyers of these and the leading national brands in each category are compared. Stepwise regression is used to identify those aspects of shopper personality that predict purchase rates of all products. Individuals who are more ‘open to experience’ report higher purchases of corporately named products, while individuals who are more ‘extrovert’ report higher purchases of national brands. Those reporting higher rates of purchase for own brands with independent names tend to be more ‘agreeable’ and ‘extrovert’. The positioning of the three types of brands against the 5 dimensions of human personality is illustrated using correspondence analysis. The clear potential to use human personality to segment and profile markets for own brands and national brands is discussed.     

Wine tourism: Chilean wine regions and routes

Wine tourism is an important activity in several wine-producing countries. Yet the roles wine tourism plays within winery strategies remain unclear. This exploratory study investigates and differentiates the roles wine tourism plays within winery strategies in Chile. A generic literature review suggests that many questions remain unanswered within the wine tourism debate, substantial differences exist from country to country, and little of what researchers have uncovered seems to apply to Chile. The paper uses empirical data to systematically examine the various wine regions and routes in Chile, highlighting heterogeneities in demand and supply. One can classify winery business models into two broad strategies. The first is wineries that see wine tourism as a link in a long-distance, possibly inter-continental relationship marketing (RM) chain. The second is wineries that see wine tourism as their best hope of survival. The paper considers the implications of each strategy, both to Chile and to other wine-producing countries.     

源于地方保护的市场分割对市场结构的影响

根据SCP范式,市场结构对企业的经营行为和市场绩效具有决定性的影响力,而市场结构的形成又受到很多因素的作用,在我国的现阶段,源于地方保护的市场分割对市场结构具有重要的影响力,在市场分割的环境下市场集中度、进入壁垒、竞争强度和规模经济都表现出独特的特征。这些市场结构上的特征可能可以用来解释我国企业偏爱多元化经营的行为。     

The diffusion of mobile payments: Profiling the adopters and non-adopters,Roger's way

This study aims to establish various market segments based on consumers' attitudinal elements influencing the adoption of mobile payments (m-payments). It also examines the best discriminators between identified clusters of m-payment users. Three hundred and sixty m-payment users participated in the study. Cluster and discriminant analyses were employed for the analysis. The findings suggest that two segments are established, and strategies can be developed accordingly. The study provides marketers with numerous touchpoints to propagate the adoption of m-payment apps. It also comprehensively explains m-payment users in developing economies by superimposing the cohorts to Roger's diffusion of innovation model.     

Museum visitors’ heterogeneity and experience processing

This research examines the relationships between affective and cognitive antecedents and consequences of satisfaction under a market heterogeneity approach. It includes co-creation of preparatory activities. The sample consisted of 276 museum visitors in London. Two analysis have been conducted: structural equation model and latent class path analysis. The paper contributes to the development of a theoretical framework for further understanding of service experience in which co-creation plays an important role. Two segments were identified: 1) emotional (with lower degree of co-creation, equally distributed by age and nationality); 2) rational (higher degree of co-creation, younger and domestic visitors). Our research shows significant differences between the two segments regarding variables such as satisfaction, loyalty, service experience, emotion, positive disconfirmation and willingness to pay more.     

Unfolding implementation in industrial market segmentation

Market segmentation is an important method of strategic marketing and constitutes a cornerstone of the marketing literature. It has undergone extensive scientific inquiry during the past 50 years. Reporting on an extensive review of the market segmentation literature, the challenging task of implementing industrial market segmentation is discussed and unfolded in this article. Extant literature has identified segmentation implementation as a core challenge for marketers, but also one, which has received limited empirical attention. Future research opportunities are formulated in this article to pave the way towards closing this gap. The extent of implementation coverage is assessed and various notions of implementation are identified. Implementation as the task of converting segmentation plans into action (referred to as execution) is identified as a particularly beneficial focus area for marketing management. Three key elements and challenges connected to execution of market segmentation are identified — organization, motivation, and adaptation.     

Tourist market segmentation with linear and non-linear techniques

The need for in-depth knowledge of tourist market segments and the need to overcome the limitations of using linear techniques to analyse non-linear relationships requires a re-assessment of generally used approaches such as cluster analysis and multiple linear regression. The objectives of the research are (1) to consider the use of self-organising (SOM) neural networks for segmenting tourist markets and (2) to analyse the predictive ability of backpropagation (BP) neural networks for classifying tourists from follow-up surveys by using the output provided by a SOM neural network. The findings of the SOM neural network modelling indicate three natural clusters. In addition, the predictive ability of the BP neural network model appears to be superior to that of MLR static filter and logistic regression models. The BP neural network model developed for this application appears suitable for deployment (i.e. classification of tourists from follow-up surveys).     

劳动力市场分割、金融市场约束与迁移人口的结构变迁

我们通过世代交叠模型来研究中国劳动力市场分割背景下的城乡迁移的长期动态规律。研究表明,中国城乡之间的劳动力市场分割、城乡迁移成本和农村的金融约束共同塑造了中国城乡迁移的长期基本特征。农村人员迁移方式的选择不仅仅是其对城乡收入差距的静态反应,更多的反映了迁移人员对不同教育投资水平的长期理性选择。我们的定量化研究表明,打破城乡劳动力市场分割,深化户籍制度改革,改善中国农村的金融环境,可以不断的优化城乡劳动力迁移的数量结构和工资结构,完善迁移人员的人力资本投资和教育水平,降低城乡收入差距和全国收入不平等的程度,加速中国二元经济转型。