Eighteenth-Century Evolutionary Thought and its Relevance in the Age of Legislation

This essay revisits the evolutionist writingsof the eighteenth century to clarify their key ideas concerninglegal and social evolution and to assess their relevance in thepresent era of pervasive legislation. The discovery of the principleof the accumulation of design is traced to these writings andthe continuity of twentieth century spontaneous-order theoryand new institutional economics with this tradition is noted.While highlighting the contributions of other institutional theoriststo the elucidation of the role of purposive action in legal evolution,the author argues that input designing does not alter the fundamentalnature of legal emergence as postulated by the eighteenth centuryscholars. The essay supports the ideal of legal generality, freespeech, property and contractual freedom as normative implicationsof the evolutionary viewpoint.     

Side constraints and non-price attributes in markets

In most real-world (electronic) marketplaces, there are additional considerations besides maximizing immediate economic value. We present a sound way of taking such considerations into account via side constraints and non-price attributes, and show that side constraints (such as budget, limit on the number of winners, and exclusive-or) have a significant impact on the complexity of market clearing.     

Economic impact of cruise activity: the case of Barcelona

ABSTRACT

This article shows the methodology and the main figures of the local and regional economic impact generated by cruise activity. This article is pioneering in combining different issues: estimating the impact of the cruise port activity, presenting these impacts disaggregated at a sectoral level, using a rigorous methodology and carrying out extensive fieldwork. It is demonstrated that all sectors, not just traditional tourism-related sectors, benefit from cruise tourism. In order to test and apply our methodology we focus the analysis on the Port of Barcelona, which has become the leading cruise port in the Mediterranean area.     

Getting from “just-in-case” to “just-in-time”: Insights from a simple model

Many factory managers are hesitant about implementing a just-in-time system due to concern about the dip in productivity that occurs. Here, a simple analytic model is used to study the trade-off between disruption and learning/improvement on a production line. While simple, the model is shown to capture many of the effects of just-in-time mentioned in the literature.Using insights from the model, an attempt is made to identify those factors to which successful implementation of just-in-time is most sensitive.     

“Made in Country” Versus “Made in County”: Effects of Local Manufacturing Origins on Price Perceptions

Consumers often use an array of extrinsic and intrinsic attributes to infer product quality and to assess monetary sacrifice. However, literature reveals little about how and if consumers would use information on product's manufacturing origins differently if it was national rather than local. In two studies, the role played by uncertainty in judgments of the quality of locally made products is examined. It is shown that when consumers are motivated to process information and quality ratings are high, local identity effects are elicited and monetary sacrifice perceptions are diminished. These results suggest that favorable quality ratings need to be prominently featured when promoting locally made products, and that locally made products are preferred to national ones only when quality is not a concern.     

ROLLING DICE FOR THE FUTURE OF THE PLANET

In an influential paper published in Science, Nordhaus employs an integrated climate-economy model to study climate change. He finds that optimizing climate change policy requires low levels of controls on emissions of greenhouse gases. This paper follows his pioneering methodology but challenges his conclusions. Nordhaus's results depend crucially on certain parameters such as the discount rate and the autonomous decline in energy intensity of production. However, choosing a set of different though equally plausible values for these parameters causes the control rate to rise substantially. This translates into a greater level of action for slowing climate change.     

Red price? Red flag! Eye-tracking reveals how one red price can hurt a retailer

Retailers present prices in red color to signal savings. Past research has shown that presenting all prices in red increases perceived savings from the store. However, in practice, retailers often present just one price in red in promotion materials with multiple prices. Will consumers perceive higher savings from the store even if only one price is presented in red? This research examines this prevalent retail practice using a theoretical lens. The theoretical framework predicts that two unique learned associations with red color (red: Savings and red: Stop) play a key role in shaping consumers' perception of savings from stores that highlight only one price in red. This research proposes and empirically demonstrates that consumers perceive lower savings from stores that present only one price in red. The theoretical framework is validated using a multi-method approach that combines the strengths of behavioral and physiological (eye-tracking) methods. Findings from this research suggest that presenting only one price in red lowers perceived savings from the store, which may hurt sales.     

On melodic contour and number preferences: The effects of musical melody on the processing of numerical information

In this paper, we utilize three exploratory studies to examine the effects of musical melody on accompanying numerical information used in an advertisement. We find that when melody (i.e., in the form of melodic “contour”) corresponds to—or is congruent with—the numerical information in an ad, consumers will have greater recall and more favorable predispositions toward that information. These favorable predispositions, in turn, may impact such downstream variables such as purchase intentions. We posit that “contour” effects occur because individuals process the scalar steps between musical notes in a manner similar to the way they process the differences between numbers in common numerical stimuli such as customer service numbers, prices, purchase amounts, and so forth. This expectation implies that there is cognitive consistency in terms of the spatial representation of number and the spatial depiction of pitch. Thus the latter may impact the former by facilitating ease of processing, thereby leading to a number familiarity effect.     

Effects of service setting and other consumers’ age on the service perceptions of young consumers

Services are often delivered in settings where many consumers are present at the same time, yet the issue of how other consumers affect service perceptions has received little attention. We study young adults’ response to fellow consumers who are middle-aged and old, testing predictions based on recent research suggesting that stereotypes are context dependent, and that stereotypes of older adults vary depending on the person attributes considered. Varying the age of the other consumers and service settings we find that the presence of older consumers affects young adults’ attitude to the service as well as their patronage intentions. Young consumers’ attitude to the service deteriorated in the presence of older consumers for services requiring physical attributes, but this was less so for services requiring personal expressive attributes.     

Under the sway of a mobile device during an in‐store shopping experience

Mobile device technology is transforming the retail shopping experience. Today's consumers are mobile dependent, preferring to consult with their phone, instead of using the salesperson, while shopping at the retail store. In the absence of literature investigating how the salesperson might sell to this omni‐channel, mobile‐connected consumer, this paper proposes a conceptual model and tests its proposed linkages. The empirically tested model presents a dyadic view of the omni‐channel consumer and the salesperson. Uniquely contributing to the omni‐channel and marketing literature, samples from an emerging economy (India) and developed (United States) economy represent the contexts. Specifically, the research examines the salesperson's role in selling to a mobile‐dependent consumer who uses mobile technology to search for information during the sales meeting. Findings show that adaptive selling can affect purchase intention and customer predisposition to comply with salesperson input. Results also reveal how perceived control, mobile dependence, and customer predisposition to comply with mobile device input affect purchase intention. Managerial and research implications specifically appropriate for the omni‐consumer retail setting are offered.