Assessing cost‐effectiveness when environmental benefits are bundled: agricultural water management in Great Barrier Reef catchments

Using economic analysis to prioritise improvements in environmental conditions is particularly difficult when multiple benefits are involved. This includes ‘bundling’ issues in agricultural pollution management, where a change in management action or farming systems generates multiple improvements, such as reductions in more than one pollutant. In this study, we conceptualise and compare two different approaches to analysing cost‐effectiveness when varying bundles of benefits are generated for a single project investment. Each approach requires data to be transformed in some way to allow the analysis to proceed. The index approach requires the transformation on the benefits side so that the effects of multiple pollutant changes can be combined into a measure for each project which can then be compared to costs. By comparison, the disaggregation approach requires the transformation on the costs side where costs for each project have to be apportioned across the different pollutants involved. The paper provides novel insights with an application to agricultural water quality improvements into the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, demonstrating that while both approaches are effective in prioritising projects by cost‐effectiveness, the disaggregation approach provides more insightful results and values that may be relevant for use as upper value guidelines in future project selection.     

Bundling attractions for rural tourism development

Tourism is often regarded as a viable solution to economic crisis, especially for remote areas without many development options. While many tourism destinations have strong cultural or heritage assets, not all destinations have primary attractions that can bring visitors to the region. Rather than developing special interest “themes”, rural areas that do not have enough of any one type of tourism resource to act as a primary draw may consider bundling different attraction types to increase visitation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the preferences of visitors to secondary heritage sites and explore the relationship between heritage tourism and alternative, non-heritage activities in rural areas. Findings revealed that motivation to visit small-scale heritage sites consisted of two dimensions: learning and recreation. The two motivational dimensions influenced visitors’ interest in different heritage attractions and likelihood of visiting heritage tourism “scenarios”. As for alternative activities, there was a cluster of “popular” activities that were enjoyed by both learning-oriented and recreation-oriented respondents, but recreation-oriented visitors were more interested in nature-based activities and sport-related activities than learning-oriented visitors. Findings can help rural communities improve secondary attractions and diversify their tourism product by bundling heritage attractions with non-heritage activities.     

Maximizing customer value via mass customized e-consumer services

While the Internet provides an ideal marketplace for customized services, its strategic potential has yet to be fully realized. In particular, multi-seller (or “cross retail”) partnerships are the key to a largely unexploited Internet strategy for mass customizing bundles of goods or services as value-added solutions to individual customer needs. This article uses mass customization successes to advance cross retailing as a comprehensive strategy that frames current Web initiatives specifically in terms of customer value. Exploiting the strategy will necessitate an understanding of the enablers and dimensions of mass customized “e-consumer services” (i.e., e-tail services, as well as service-related consumer products, that are defined and sold via the Internet). The overall success of the broader Internet marketplace will be determined not just by industry-wide cooperation, but also by the development of rich standards that allow for the highly customized bundling of products. More importantly, service providers will be differentiated by their ability to employ powerful Web interfaces within a strategy that comprehensively supports and extends a customer-controlled customization process.     

Sequential versus Bundle Auctions for Recurring Procurement

We compare sequential and bundle procurement auctions in a framework of successive procurement situations, where current success positively or negatively affects future market opportunities. We find that in bundle auctions procurement cost is lower and less risky than in sequential standard auctions, but still higher than in the optimal sequential auction. Only a sequential second price auction leads to the efficient outcome.     

Competition, Externalities, and Input Substituting Technologies

The period 1997–2000 saw a rapid global consolidation of crop seed companies. The emerging companies are applying genetic engineering to exploit complementarities and substitutabilities between seed and other crop inputs. This article develops a model of competing technologies where one substitutes for a conventional input. A monopolist may cross-subsidize a technology that substitutes for an input in order to price discriminate between user types. In duopoly, a socially excessive or insufficient share of acres may be subject to an input substituting technology. Welfare improving regulations are identified in the case where a technology substitutes for an externality generating input.     

网络信息产品市场的定价模式

信息产品的特性要求产品定价依据从边际成本转向消费者支付意愿，但消费者对信息产品的支付意愿往往差别很大，这要求供应商通过产品差别化与差别定价获得尽量多的消费者剩余，保证收回成本与实现利润最大化。信息产品特性和网络市场的技术特点决定了差别定价将是网络信息产品市场的主要定价模式。本文主要介绍了版本划分和捆绑销售等差别定价模式在网络信息产品市场的应用。     

公司金融业务与个人金融业务捆绑销售研究

在商业银行同质化竞争进一步加剧,社会金融需求日益多元化的外部环境下,推行公司金融业务与个人金融业务捆绑销售是商业银行适应市场发展,提高营销效果,增强竞争能力的现实要求和必然趋势.以中国工商银行江西省分行为例,捆绑销售作为一种新的营销模式,尽管目前具备了一定的现实基础,也作了一些初步尝试,但要进一步完善和发展,需要从营销理念、运行平台、作业流程及保障机制等方面综合着力,以充分发挥工商银行综合资源优势,凝聚两大主体业务市场联动营销合力,全面打造核心竞争力,带动并促进各项业务规范、高效地发展.     

试论手机文化对高校思想政治教育工作的影响及对策

对于高校思想政治教育工作来说,手机文化具有正反两方面的作用。其积极方面表现为:使思想政治教育受教育者更加广泛;创新思想政治教育工作方法;促进个体社会化进而推动高校思想政治教育工作的顺利开展。     

On the optimality of pure bundling for a monopolist

This paper considers a monopolist selling two objects to a single buyer with privately observed valuations. We prove that if the virtual valuation for each object is non-negative for all possible types, then the optimal price schedule is such that the objects are sold only in a bundle. Under an additional regularity condition, pure bundling is the optimal sale mechanism among all individually rational and incentive compatible mechanisms.     

Exploring event bundling: The strategy and its impacts

The objectives of this article are to explore the strategy of event bundling from the perspectives of varied event stakeholders including event organizers, event attendees, and destination marketing organizations (DMOs); and to examine the strategy's impacts on the relationships between perceived event value and visitors' trip outcome (perceived trip value and destination loyalty intention). Based on a mixed-method approach, the research first investigates stakeholders' perceptions and perceived value of event bundling from a qualitative approach in Study 1. It further tests a proposed framework through a quantitative approach in Study 2, in which two well-known events in Macau, China were chosen as an event bundle and a large sample of over 800 respondents were surveyed. Findings from the research advance the literature on event tourism and tourism product bundling practices. They further provide insights for DMOs and event planners in event policymaking and destination marketing.