Sustainable product innovation and changing consumer behavior: Sustainability affordances as triggers of adoption and usage

This conceptual paper argues that for sustainable product innovation to make a contribution to addressing sustainability issues, we need to understand not only why consumers adopt sustainable products but also what makes them use these in sustainable way. To explain how specific product features can change the ways in which consumers engage with sustainable products in the adoption and usage phase, we draw on affordance theory. Affordances refer to the potential for agentic action of users in relation to a technological object. We develop a conceptual framework that explains how sustainable product innovation can lead to the design of sustainability affordances that stimulate adoption and sustainable usage. The framework shows how three forms of agency—material, firm, and user agency—interact and together influence a product's sustainability affordances that drive adoption and a change in consumer behavior. The framework explains how trade-offs between a product's environmental features and consumer expectations regarding desired functionalities and user experience can be overcome.     

Modelling with flexibility through the business cycle: using a panel smooth transition model to test for the lipstick effect

ABSTRACT

Consumer spending typically declines during periods of economic distress, but observers have noted that lipstick purchases appear to increase during recessions, which is often referred to as the lipstick effect. However, the existence of such effect has remained empirically unconfirmed. Using weekly retail scanner data on lipstick sales from 2006 to 2016 in the United States, we applied a Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) demand model to test the relationship between economic distress and lipstick sales. This flexible demand specification allows regression coefficients to vary as a function of an exogenous macroeconomic variables and fluctuate asymmetrically, non-linearly, and time-varyingly across an unlimited number of regimes. Empirical results show the income elasticity of demand for lipstick decreased rapidly from 0.31 to 0.05 during the 2007–2009 recession, then slowly rebounded to 0.31 by the second quarter of 2014, thus first empirically confirming the existence of the lipstick effect.     

Contrasting Developments in UK Energy Regulation: Retail Policy and Consumer Engagement

This article explores the role of regulation as a supporting institution for an energy market. Two aspects are examined: first, the role of regulation in promoting a competitive market for the retail supply of energy, and second, the role of regulation in providing access to the transmission and distribution networks, assumed to be monopolies, that provide services for the retail suppliers. UK regulation promoted retail energy competition until 2008, but in that year changed direction, and since then has been restricting retail competition. In contrast, UK regulation since 2008 has encouraged more customer engagement in the network part of the energy sector. This offers the prospect, at least, of the emergence of a form of competition and choice in the process of setting price controls.     

改革与完善我国现行消费信贷制度的几点思考

在我国，消费信贷发展缓慢，其原因是：消费者承贷能力较弱；消费信贷操作不够规范；缺乏消费信贷的防范机制和完善的社会保障制度。若扩大消费信贷就必须营造有利于消费信贷发展的法制环境，并借鉴西方发达国家经验。     

整合营销传播学的行销主张与马克思主义经济理论观点的相关联系

整合营销传播学是一门源于美国的新兴的营销学传播理论。它所主张的“一切以消费者为中心”展开营销传播的思想理念,改变了传统营销理论中“以生产和销售为中心”的企业营销策略,顺应了知识经济时代的市场发展趋势,并与马克思主义经济理论观点具有某些相关性联系。本文就此提出探讨,同时结合我国市场经济转轨中企业经营观念的相关问题进行了思考。     

消费品市场有效供给不足的成因及对策

在买方市场条件下 ,我国消费品市场有效供给不足表现为 :消费品市场上的商品价位与消费者的市场收入层次错位、名优品牌和知名品牌商品少、城乡消费鸿沟加深。造成消费品市场有效供给不足的原因是 :消费品生产的市场定位出现误差、生产技术含量低、市场营销能力不强等。要达到消费品市场均衡 ,必须要做好市场定位、提高产品的技术含量、推进名牌战略、降低经营成本     

Joint confidence region for the parameters of pareto distribution

The Pareto distribution is commonly used by economists as a model for the distribution of incomes. Separate confidence intervals or approximate confidence intervals for the parameters of Pareto distribution were discussed by some authors. This paper discusses exact joint confidence region for the parameters of Pareto distribution. The method can be used for both complete samples and type II censored samples.     

Fuzzy measurement of income inequality: Some possibility results on the fuzzification of the lorenz ordering

Summary This paper starts from the premise that the concept of income inequality is ill-defined, and hence, it studies the measurement of income inequality from a fuzzy set theoretical point of view. It is argued that the standard (fuzzy) transitivity concepts are not compatible with fuzzy inequality orderings which respect Lorenz ordering. For instance, we show that there does not exist a max-min transitive fuzzy relation on a given income distribution space which ranks distributions unambiguously according to the Lorenz criterion whenever they can actually be ranked by it. Weakening the imposed transitivity concept, it is possible to escape from the noted impossibility theorems. We introduce some alternative transitivity concepts for fuzzy relations, and subsequently, construct a class of fuzzy orderings which preserve Lorenz ordering and satisfy these alternative transitivities. It is also shown that fuzzy measurement can be used to construct confidence intervals for the crisp conclusions of inequality indices.I wish to thank Ashish Banerjee, Kaushik Basu, Larry Blume, Gary Fields, Semih Koray, Tapan Mitra, Antony Shorrocks, Sinan Unur and two anonymous referees of this journal for insighthul comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to the participants of the 1993 Midwest Mathematical Economics Conference held in University of Wisconsin at Madison and the 2nd International Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare held in University of Rochester.     

Forecasting U.S. money growth using economic uncertainty measures and regularisation techniques

This paper examines the out-of-sample forecasting properties of six different economic uncertainty variables for the growth of the real M2 and real M4 Divisia money series for the U.S. using monthly data. The core contention is that information on economic uncertainty improves the forecasting accuracy. We estimate vector autoregressive models using the iterated rolling-window forecasting scheme, in combination with modern regularisation techniques from the field of machine learning. Applying the Hansen-Lunde-Nason model confidence set approach under two different loss functions reveals strong evidence that uncertainty variables that are related to financial markets, the state of the macroeconomy or economic policy provide additional informational content when forecasting monetary dynamics. The use of regularisation techniques improves the forecast accuracy substantially.     

The Media's Role in Influencing Perceptions of Housing Values and the Resulting Impact on the Macroeconomy

The housing market is a major component of the economy and persistent negative media reports can adversely affect perceptions and expectations of homeowners as to the value of their home. As a result, households reduce their expenditures and increase their savings in an effort to rebuild lost wealth. In the short run the economy suffers and the recession is magnified. This paper demonstrates, through an empirical study, how negative media reports regarding the deteriorating conditions of the national housing market affects what households feel their housing is worth.