Download or read book Three essays on consumer product returns written by Guangzhi Shang and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Risk adjusted Customer Lifetime Value and Returns to Search written by Shweta Singh and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third essay deals with consumer search for information and measuring the returns to search. In the past, results regarding the gains to search have been unclear and measures of returns to search have either been subjective or limited to price reductions. In this essay, we provide a more comprehensive approach to measuring returns to search. We measure returns to search in terms of the ability of consumers in buying a better quality product. We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to estimate our conceptual model of returns to search. Our findings indicate that Internet users and more experienced and educated consumers tend to make more efficient choices while consumer efficiency goes down with age.

Download or read book Three Essays on Consumer Information and Product Quality written by Astri Birgitta Chamberlain Muren and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Product Returns written by John Andrew Petersen and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Consumer Behavior Under Uncertainty written by Koichi Yonezawa and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is well understood that decisions made under uncertainty differ from those made without risk in important and significant ways. Yet, there is very little research into how uncertainty manifests itself in the most ubiquitous of decision-making environments: Consumers' day-to-day decisions over where to shop, and what to buy for their daily grocery needs. Facing a choice between stores that either offer relatively stable "everyday low prices" (EDLP) or variable prices that reflect aggressive promotion strategies (HILO), consumers have to choose stores under price-uncertainty. I find that consumers' attitudes toward risk are critically important in determining store-choice, and that heterogeneity in risk attitudes explains the co-existence of EDLP and HILO stores - an equilibrium that was previously explained in somewhat unsatisfying ways. After choosing a store, consumers face another source of risk. While knowing the quality or taste of established brands, consumers have very little information about new products. Consequently, consumers tend to choose smaller package sizes for new products, which limits their exposure to the risk that the product does not meet their prior expectations. While the observation that consumers purchase small amounts of new products is not new, I show how this practice is fully consistent with optimal purchase decision-making by utility-maximizing consumers. I then use this insight to explain how manufacturers of consumer packaged goods (CPGs) respond to higher production costs. Because consumers base their purchase decisions in part on package size, manufacturers can use package size as a competitive tool in order to raise margins in the face of higher production costs. While others have argued that manufacturers reduce package sizes as a means of raising unit-prices (prices per unit of volume) in a hidden way, I show that the more important effect is a competitive one: Changes in package size can soften price competition, so manufacturers need not rely on fooling consumers in order to pass-through cost increases through changes in package size. The broader implications of consumer behavior under risk are dramatic. First, risk perceptions affect consumers' store choice and product choice patterns in ways that can be exploited by both retailers and manufacturers. Second, strategic considerations prevent manufacturers from manipulating package size in ways that seem designed to trick consumers. Third, many services are also offered as packages, and also involve uncertainty, so the effects identified here are likely to be pervasive throughout the consumer economy.

Download or read book Three Essays on Marketing and Consumer Behavior of Ambigrous Products written by Jie Li and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Empirical Studies of Consumer Behavior written by An-Shih Liu and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is an empirical study of demand and supply in differentiated products markets using supermarket scanner data on two particular product categories - canned tuna and hot-breakfast cereals. First, I study the impact of retailers' price promotions on consumer demand and retailer profits in the canned-tuna product category. Since canned tuna is storable, I examine whether consumers stock up during sales. The results suggest that only a limited amount of stockpiling exists in this product category. Since inventory is not very important, consumer demand is thus modeled by a static demand model with a random-coefficients-nested-logit specification, which is estimated by the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. The unit-sales decomposition results show that on average 36% of the demand response to price promotions comes from brand-switching, so market expansion effects due to consumers switching from the outside good and to higher quantities usually dominate the brand-switching effect. Using the demand estimates, I compute optimal retail prices assuming that stores are local monopolists and choose prices to maximize static category-level profits. I find that regular prices at "high-low" stores are typically at or slightly below the optimal prices, but that regular prices at "every-day-low-price" stores are substantially below the optimal prices. These results suggest that retail price levels and price promotions are more likely related to local market conditions such as retail competition. In addition, I study the effects of store-brand (SB) entry on the demand elasticities of incumbent national brands (NB), consumers' substitution patterns for national and store brands, and the implications for consumer welfare in the hot-breakfast-cereals product category. A random-coefficients model of consumer demand is estimated by the generalized-method-of-moments approach. The empirical findings are: (1) After the entry of SB's, demand becomes more elastic for non-imitated NB's, and either more elastic or shows no change for imitated NB's; (2) in general, substitution patterns for NB's and SB's are asymmetric, i.e., when the prices of their favorite products increase, most NB buyers tend to substitute to other NB products, but SB buyers will substitute to the corresponding imitated NB's; (3) the increase in consumer surplus due to SB entry is trivial for an individual consumer, but the aggregate benefit could be quite substantial.

Download or read book Three Essays on Distribution Channels and Pricing Strategy written by Hongyan Shi and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation involves three essays, studying firms' decision-making on marketing mix variables. Specifically, the first essay (Chapter 2) studies the effects of distribution channels on firms' advertising content decision. In many markets, consumers may not have full information of product features and prices when they shop. While consumers can search to acquire such information, manufacturers and retailers often advertise price, product, or both types of information to help resolve consumers' uncertainty. This chapter studies manufacturers' and retailers' advertising content decisions in either a centralized channel or a decentralized channel, in a market where advertising affects consumers' search behaviors and purchase decisions. I show that in a decentralized channel, advertising may include more information than in a centralized channel. Specifically, when a retailer in a decentralized channel makes its advertising decision before the manufacturer and the retailer decide on prices, it prefers more price-product advertising than in a centralized channel; otherwise, it prefers more price-only advertising and more price-product advertising than in a centralized channel. I also show that in a decentralized channel where the manufacturer decides on product advertising and the retailer decides on price advertising, there will be more price-only advertising than in a centralized channel. Finally, I examine the consequent effects of advertising strategies in different distribution channels on channel members' profitability, consumer welfare and social welfare. The second essay (Chapter 3) studies the effects of channel structure and types of consumer heterogeneity on a manufacturer's product quality decision. I show that a manufacturer's product quality decision depends on both its channel structure and the type of consumer heterogeneity. When consumers are heterogeneous either vertically on their willingness-to-pay for product quality or horizontally on their transaction costs, a manufacturer will provide the same or lower product quality in a decentralized channel than in a centralized channel. However, when consumers are heterogeneous on both their willingness-to-pay for product quality and transaction costs, a manufacturer may even offer higher product quality in a decentralized channel than in a centralized channel under certain conditions, and consumers, as well as the distribution channel, can benefit from an increase of consumer transaction cost. The third essay (Chapter 4) studies how firms with high service quality (i.e. the high-type) can use tipping policy to signal their service quality and distinguish from firms with low service quality (i.e. the low-type) when consumers are comprised of informed and uninformed consumers. I characterize the conditions under which tipping policy together with complete information price can be effective signal device. In addition, I show that when the ratio of the informed consumers to uninformed consumers is low, if the high-type's optimal decision is to choose to have a tipping policy under complete information, it will signal with a tipping policy together with a distorted price. Furthermore, I show that even when the high-type's optimal decision is non-tipping policy under complete information, it might strategically adopt a tipping policy to signal its service quality.

Download or read book Three Essays on Consumer Co production written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ABSTRACT: Numerous terms have been used, often interchangeably, to describe the circumstances whereby consumers play a role in crafting the goods and services they ultimately consume. Chapter 1 answers the question "What is co-production?" by providing a review of the terminology relevant to this phenomenon. The perspectives of researchers hailing from a wide variety of disciplines are cited and summarized, providing a foundation for the three essays that follow.

Download or read book Three Essays on Rational Consumer Behavior written by David Yong Shim and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Applied Microeconomics Product Differentiation Consumer Preference and Reputation written by Huan Zhao and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My third paper focuses on online shopping in China. The data set is about the sales record of a certain line of cell phones on the biggest B2C and C2C platform of China. It comes with seller properties, consumer properties and other supporting information. We investigate how reputation and launch of true description will impact consumers' decision. We also examine consumers' willingness to pay for reputation through a hedonic model.

Download or read book Three Essays on Consumer Information and Product Quality written by Astri Birgitta Chamberlain Muren and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Customer Chemistry written by Michael Breazeale and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The focus of much marketing research for the past two decades has been on the role of consumption in consumers' lives. Relationships with products, brands, and favorite possessions have captured the interest of researchers and practitioners. More recently the concept of brand love has emerged to describe the lengths to which some consumers will go to maintain relationships with certain consumed objects. But is consumer love contained only to favorite brands or might there be different types of love as in interpersonal relationships? This dissertation presents a case for the development of one type of consumer love - customer chemistry, the consumer process of forming a positive, environmentally-derived attachment to a retailer. Because the concept of customer chemistry is new, this dissertation employs a methodical approach necessary for building theory. Essay One (Chapter Two) explores the reactions of consumers to a select group of retailers. Through analysis of their reactions to various retail servicescapes, the researcher draws conclusions regarding the levels of importance that consumers place on specific elements of the retail experience. Essay Two (Chapter Three) delineates the bridging laws that allow for theory development. Conclusions from the previous essay inform the creation of a model that describes the customer chemistry process and allows for prediction of specific antecedents and outcomes. The model is tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). With customer chemistry established empirically, Essay Three (Chapter Four) explores the purpose that customer chemistry serves in consumers' lives. Modified consumer life histories describe customer chemistry in the context of life narratives, suggesting that customer chemistry plays an important role in identity construction. While the concept of consumption serving an identity creation purpose for consumers is not new, the idea that a place (in this case, a retail store) can serve that purpose is unique to this research. This dissertation argues for a better understanding of consumers' relationships with loved retailers and suggests several avenues for future research. The surface of a broad phenomenon has only been scratched, but important groundwork is laid for the development of a rich stream of research, one that can benefit researchers, practitioners, and consumers.

Download or read book Three Essays and Three Revolutions written by Francis Goskowski and published by Strategic Book Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you have ever wondered why American Catholics and American Protestants in the mainline denominations in 2011 believe and worship in very similar ways; why Democrats and Republicans accept the necessity of governmental intervention to secure the "safety net" of services citizens may need to access at various times in their lives; and why average American workers in their pivotal role as producers and consumers of goods and services "own" the nation's economy; Three Essays and Three Revolutions is the book for you.Author Francis Goskowski argues that Martin Luther, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Karl Marx, three "Founding Fathers" of the modern world, are responsible for the "big ideas" that have shaped current thinking in religion, politics, and economics. By closely examining one important work of each thinker, the author shows how the revolutionary concepts Luther, Rousseau, and Marx advanced, provoked fierce opposition within the prevailing order, but ultimately gained acceptance in all circles, evidenced by the fundamental agreement on religious liberty, civic equality, and economic justice apparent throughout the Western world today.This eloquently written, thought-provoking, and sensibly priced collection of essays...is timely and long overdue. Three Essays and Three Revolutions is the sort of wonderful book of which any aspiring writer might wish to claim authorship. I am sure that it will be wisely read, thoughtfully debated, and much treasured in the years ahead. - John Quentin Feller, Ph.D., K.H.S., former professor of history and historical consultant to the late Cardinal Lawrence J. Shehan and retired Cardinal William H. Keeler, 12th and 14th Archbishops of Baltimore respectively.

Download or read book Three Essays on Productivity RLE Business Cycles written by Mark J. Lasky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-27 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The behaviour of US productivity since this book was originally publishedin 1994, has added new relevance to the relationship between profits and productivity. In the long run, productivity growth determines the economic standard of living. This book is divided into three parts: the basis of the first is the empirical finding that, controlling for normal business cycle effects, productivity grows faster when profits have been low than otherwise. The second part discusses how to measure marginal cost using time series data and the third tests a basic assumption that productivity growth is exogenous to labour and capital.

Download or read book Three Essays on Strategic Considerations for Product Development written by James Winslow Sawhill and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is composed of three essays focused on strategic considerations for product development. In chapter I, I address the question of whether consumers equally weigh capital and operating costs when purchasing durable goods. This trade off is important to manufacturers as they determine how much of their product design and production costs should be dedicated to keeping operating costs low. I test this empirically using data from the automobile industry. Chapter II is also an empirical study which explores whether consumers are willing to pay for socially responsible products. The answer to this question is important for firms to address in their product development process as they decide whether they will gain more market share by producing a socially responsible product with somewhat higher costs or a low cost product which does not incorporate socially responsible practices. In this case, I use data on retail sales in coffee industry using fair trade practices as an exemplar of social responsibility. Chapter III addresses the question of how durable or reliable manufacturers of durable goods should make their products. Consumers will likely want to pay more for a more durable product, yet increased durability depresses replacement demand. I attempt to gain insight into this trade off by developing an analytical model of the interplay between consumers and a monopolist manufacturer of durable goods. The remainder of the abstract provides a more detailed summary of each of these chapters in turn. Chapter I explores whether consumers behave as if they are optimally trading off capital and operating costs when purchasing a durable good. I study this question using data on gas prices and automobile sales over the 20 year period, 1971-1990. This question is important for three reasons. First, it is interesting from a theoretical basis if consumers make this trade off optimally. Many theoretical models in marketing and economics make the fundamental assumption that consumers equally weigh current and future events when making decisions today. Yet there is some evidence, mostly from laboratory experiments, that consumers underweight future events. I attempt to explore this question in a market setting where the stakes are considerably higher. This research adds evidence to the debate about how much weight consumers place on future events when making choices today. Second, it is interesting to firms making product design decisions. If consumers underweight future events, then when making purchase decisions, consumers will view operating costs as less important than the upfront capital cost of the product. Finally, the answer to this question informs public policy. Many have argued that there is a need for the US to reduce gasoline demand per capita. Lower gasoline consumption would reduce environmental pressures, potentially dampen inflation, and allow more foreign policy flexibility in dealing with antagonistic regimes in oil-exporting states. While these rationale for reducing gasoline consumption have a normative flavor, and reasonable people may disagree as to the validity and motivations of this goal, it will nonetheless be useful to know the relative effectiveness of different policy levers in curbing gasoline consumption. For example, if consumers underweight fuel costs during the vehicle purchase decision, then a gas tax will be relatively less effective than a tax on gas guzzling vehicles. To study this question I develop a choice model of the automobile industry. I identify the weight the consumer places on capital v. operating costs by determining how much of the variation in automobile market share can be explained by variation in each of these two factors holding other product attributes constant. We use data from the period 1971-1990, a period over which gas prices and thereby operating costs experienced considerable variation. In order to model operating costs which are not known at the time of purchase, I account for the expectations of consumers about car usage and gas prices. I assume that consumers are aware that they will respond to changes in the gasoline prices with changes in their driving patterns. Consumers also know that gasoline prices are not stable, and need to form expectations about future gasoline prices at the time of the automobile purchase. To take account of this effect, I estimate an ARIMA model of US gasoline prices from 1960-1995, that is used as the by consumers in their expectations formation process. Taking car usage and gas price expectations together enables an estimate of future gasoline costs of operating the car in the future. I also account for consumer heterogeneity in miles driven, sensitivity to automobile price, and sensitivity to operating costs. Finally, I recognize that prices are not exogenously determined and attempt to model prices as market outcomes. Based on the results of the model developed, I find no evidence to support behavioral theories that consumers systematically underweight the cost of future events in real market settings. However, I find significant evidence that large portions of the population are not making the trade-off optimally. Some consumers underweight future operating costs (SUV drivers) while others appear to overweight them (hybrid drivers). Conservatively, at least 30% of the population is either drastically underweighting or overweighting operating costs when purchasing a new car. Chapter II addresses the question of whether consumers are willing to pay for corporate social responsibility(CSR). This question is important in an environment where CSR is ubiquitous, yet it is unclear that these programs actually pay off for the firms that sponsor them. For example, consider Target's program to donate 1% of all retail sales to United Way local charities. Do consumers really want their money spent this way? Are consumers happily paying 1% higher prices or are they switching to a competitor which does not donate a portion of revenues to charity? Who is making the donation in the end, Target's shareholders or customers? From a social planner's perspective, the point is largely moot, yet to the shareholders of Target and many other firms practicing CSR, the question is crucially important. I endeavor to study this question within the context of the coffee industry, an important and sizeable commodity market. In particular, I explore the impact of Fair-Trade (FT) certification on the retail coffee market. FT is a social and ethical movement that supports the ethical production of coffee and other products largely in third world countries. Coffee can be FT certified by adhering to FT standards. Once certified, FT coffee is distinguished from non-FT by distinctive labeling visible to the consumer who is deciding which coffee product to select from the supermarket shelf. The analytical strategy for this paper is to first estimate the price premium commanded by FT coffee over non-FT coffees through ordinary least squares (OLS) and Fixed Effects hedonic price regressions. However, these tools do not allow us to disentangle the portion of the price premium which is due to supply considerations (i.e., FT certification costs) from the portion which is due to consumers' willingness to pay for FT coffee because they want to support socially responsible coffee production. To parse out willingness to pay from the overall price premium, I specify a brand choice model similar to the model used in chapter I. Using hedonic price regressions I establish that FT coffee carries a price premium of $1.74 per 12-16 oz. It seems likely that at least a portion of this premium is due to increased consumer willingness to pay for FT coffee. However, I cannot rule out the possibility that the price premium is a result of the added costs associated with that FT practices. The choice model specified in this paper should enable the allocation of the cause of the price premium we have now established for FT coffee to demand v. supply considerations. I hope to estimate this model in future research. Chapter III addresses the problem of how durable or long lasting manufacturers should they make their products. On the one hand a more durable product will be more desirable to consumers, since it will provide benefits over a longer period. Thus, a longer-lived product will command a higher price. However, it seems likely that unit production costs will increase as a product is made more durable due to the increased cost of more reliable materials and more exacting quality standards. In addition, a product which is more durable will be replaced less frequently. Ceteris paribus, less frequent replacement is less desirable to manufacturers, as the periodicity of the revenue stream increases. Manufacturers can trade off the benefits of durability with the costs to determine the optimal reliability or life for the goods they produce. In some sense, this problem is a classic trade-off between quality and cost. What distinguishes the durable goods reliability problem is that increasing quality depresses replacement demand. A common anecdote is that light bulbs could easily be manufactured to last longer, but are not in order to increase replacement sales. This question is important for manufacturers to understand from several perspectives. First, a manufacturer of a product with technology that is fairly static (e.g., light bulbs), needs to consider replacement demand in developing product designs. When technology is not static (e.g., computers), it is important to understand how the rate of technology advance will stimulate replacement demand. Should the products be designed to be more or less durable in the face of technological advance? An additional complication arises when the rate of technological advance may only be partially observable to the consumer (e.g. golf clubs). Finally, manufacturers need to consider "buying back" used durable goods from the.

Download or read book Three Essays on Product Quality and Pricing written by Cristina Daniela Nistor and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays on product quality and pricing. Essay 1: Pricing and Quality Provision in a Channel: A Model of Efficient Relational Contracts The first essay analyzes how quality concerns affect relationships in a channel. A firm concerned about uncontractible quality for a customizable good has to pay higher prices to sustain a relationship with the supplier. If the customizable good has very volatile demand, premium payments on this good cannot be sustained. Instead, the downstream firm pays a premium for a good with more stable demand that is correlated with demand for the customizable good. I use a novel dataset containing sales made by a wholesaler to Asian restaurants in the Southeastern United States to test this prediction empirically. As predicted by the proposed model, if customizable goods have very volatile demand, the high end restaurants do not pay a premium on those goods but instead pay a premium for other goods with more stable demand. Essay 2: Third Party Marketing Approvals The second essay measures the effect of competition in a certifier market. When customers purchase new products, there is often a degree of uncertainty about their quality. A common solution is to rely on a third-party certifier to provide some form of accreditation that signals quality. However, the incentives of a third-party certifier may not be completely benign. Competitive certification markets may lead the certifiers to provide unduly positive evaluations of quality to gain market share or provide unduly negative evaluations in order to gain credibility with end-users. This paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to evaluate the extent to which third-parties can be relied upon to correctly report product quality. It focuses on the FDA's decision to allow third parties to prepare certifications for certain medical devices, and observes how this decision to introduce competition at the reviewer stage has affected the quality of products allowed to go to market. There is evidence that allowing third party certification leads to significantly lower product quality. However, experience with using a third party reviewer in the past diminishes the negative effect of reviewer competition. Essay 3: Layaway and the Quasi-Endowment Effect of Installment Payments The third essay explores the quasi-endowment effect. The paper evaluates how much consumers are willing to prepay for a purchase which will be experienced in the future. In particular, the results indicate that prepaid installment plans allow the consumer to start deriving utility for the purchase from the moment of the first payment. This quasi-endowment effect is felt only for goods that are purchased for own consumption.