Consumer Expenditures and Home Production at Retirement – New Evidence from Germany

Abstract. This paper investigates consumer expenditures of German households pre‐ and post‐retirement. The widely observed distinct drop in spending upon retirement entry poses an empirical puzzle since life cycle theory predicts smoothing of the marginal utility of consumption over time. As one explanation, I explore the role of home production as a substitute for consumer expenses. Taking a combined look at consumer expenditures and time use pre‐ and post‐retirement, I find a significant drop of about 17% of pre‐retirement expenses at retirement which coincides with an increase in time spent on home production of an additional 89 minutes per day, accounting for 21% of average home production.     

Choice, price competition and complexity in markets for health insurance

The United States and other nations rely on consumer choice and price competition between competing health plans to allocate resources in the health sector. While a great deal of research has examined the efficiency consequences of adverse selection in health insurance markets, less attention has been devoted to other aspects of consumer choice. The nation of Switzerland offers a unique opportunity to study price competition in health insurance markets. Switzerland regulates health insurance markets with the aim of minimizing adverse selection and encouraging strong price competition. We examine consumer responses to price differences in local markets and the degree of price variation in local markets. Using both survey data and observations on local markets we obtain evidence suggesting that as the number of choices offered to individuals grows, their willingness to switch plans given a set of price dispersion differences declines, which allows large price differences for relatively homogeneous products to persist. We consider explanations for this phenomenon from economics and psychology.     

Combining stated and revealed choice research to simulate the neighbor effect: The case of hybrid-electric vehicles

According to intuition and theories of diffusion, consumer preferences develop along with technological change. However, most economic models designed for policy simulation unrealistically assume static preferences. To improve the behavioral realism of an energy–economy policy model, this study investigates the “neighbor effect,” where a new technology becomes more desirable as its adoption becomes more widespread in the market. We measure this effect as a change in aggregated willingness to pay under different levels of technology penetration. Focusing on hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs), an online survey experiment collected stated preference (SP) data from 535 Canadian and 408 Californian vehicle owners under different hypothetical market conditions.Revealed preference (RP) data was collected from the same respondents by eliciting the year, make and model of recent vehicle purchases from regions with different degrees of HEV popularity: Canada with 0.17% new market share, and California with 3.0% new market share. We compare choice models estimated from RP data only with three joint SP–RP estimation techniques, each assigning a different weight to the influence of SP and RP data in coefficient estimates. Statistically, models allowing more RP influence outperform SP influenced models. However, results suggest that because the RP data in this study is afflicted by multicollinearity, techniques that allow more SP influence in the beta estimates while maintaining RP data for calibrating vehicle class constraints produce more realistic estimates of willingness to pay. Furthermore, SP influenced coefficient estimates also translate to more realistic behavioral parameters for CIMS, allowing more sensitivity to policy simulations.     

Consumer confidence and consumption expenditure in Indonesia

We estimate several competing regressions and find that confidence predicts consumption expenditure in Indonesia. Our estimations employ data on two measures of confidence, namely consumer and business confidence indexes, consumption and three standard predictors of consumption, namely labour income, stock price, and interest rate. We show that there are economic and statistical gains from consumption growth frameworks that account for consumer and business sentiments. Specifically, we show that policymakers can improve their forecast accuracy by between 4% and 13% by incorporating consumer and business sentiments into their forecasting frameworks.     

广告文化与广告的有效传播

在咨询越来越丰富、信息内容越来越多的今天,广告通过文化叙述,为产品(服务)延伸出一个观念,添加一种与众不同的、新的附加值,从而引起消费者的注意,这是提升广告传播有效性的重要途径。但有文化附加值的广告不一定都能奏效,也不一定与销售指数的上升成正比,有的甚至成为败笔。所以需要认真地研究,关注广告的文化品位,注意广告文化诉求在内容和形式上的明晰一致,特别要了解广告文化诉求对象———消费者的文化心理,以使广告的文化诉求可以更好地抵达消费者心中。     

消费需求与经济增长关系的计量经济分析

消费需求是拉动经济增长的三驾马车之一,足以说明消费需求在经济增长中的重要地位.改革开放以来,伴随国民经济的快速发展和消费者收入的增加,我国的消费总量呈现出显著增加的趋势,消费结构得到不断的优化.本文基于计量经济学的基本理论,依据消费需求与经济增长之间的辨证关系,选用1978年以来我国经济发展和消费需求的32年数据,使用不同的计量经济方法,从经济增长的因素分析、经济增长对消费需求的影响和消费需求对经济增长的影响三个方面验证了消费需求与经济增长之间的数量关系和相互影响作用,同时利用格兰杰因果关系检验的方法确认了消费需求与经济增长之间互为因果的影响关系.数量关系的确立,为探求二者之间的变化趋势,进行科学决策提供了数量依据.     

后金融危机阶段消费者行为变化研究

2008年由美国次贷危机引发的全球性金融危机,不仅对全球的经济、社会、文化产生了巨大影响,而且促使消费者行为发生了明显的变化.采取网络问卷调查的方式对金融危机前后我国消费者消费行为变化进行对比发现:消费者在购买介入程度方面以高度介入为主,消费者购买行为相对危机前更加理性,同时消费者购买渠道多样化趋向明显.而产生这些变化的原因是后金融危机阶段消费者收入的减少、人们消费观念的变革、政府政策的引导以及消费者个人心理的变化等因素共同作用的结果.由于消费对生产具有反作用,消费行为的变化对人们消费方式的变革、经济结构的调整以及整个国民经济的发展具有重要的影响.研究消费者行为的变化,可以为企业和政府制定相关决策提供参考.     

Triggers for virtual customer integration in the development of medical equipment — From a manufacturer and a user's perspective

Virtual customer integration (VCI) involves customers throughout all stages of the new product development process. Firms across industries have started to experiment with virtual user integration and expect to utilize their knowledge, creativity, and judgment. However, little research exists that looks at the motivations of customers and managers to engage in virtual product development projects. In this paper we try to identify the triggers for virtual customer integration (VCI) from the manager's as well as from the customer's perspective. Using Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior we aim at explaining managers' motivation for the adoption of VCI based on a sample of 104 managers engaged in the product development process of manufacturing firms of medical technology. Drawing on motive research, we test six categories of customer motivations to engage in VCI projects on a sample of 105 users of medical technology. The results show that for mangers subjective norms and attitude predict the intention to use VCI. For customers, interest in innovation and product improvement are the most important drivers, whereas monetary compensation and prestige are not significant, and surprisingly the desire to help people even has a negative impact on the participation of VCI.     

满意度测评结果分类分析

满意指数已经成为许多国家衡量经济产出质量的重要指标，为宏观经济管理提供了有效的决策参考依据，但是，如何进一步开发利用满意指数调查信息，加大对微观层面的经济组织经营管理活动的指导作用，仍然是满意度研究的重要课题。本文利用真实的用户满意指数测评调查数据，对营销管理中用户类型划分问题进行了分析，结果表明，用户满意指数测评调查数据，可以准确地将用户划分为逃离型、趋利型、受制型和忠诚型。