Price Preferences Research Articles

Research of price preferences of organic honey consumers in the region

Research of price preferences of organic honey consumers in the region

Sustainable compost and potting soil marketing: Private gardener preferences

Bioenergy represents a promising approach not only to sustainable energy but also to effective management of organic waste. As an end product of bioenergy production, digestate is often treated as another waste product, although it has substantial agricultural value. Efforts to integrate digestate-based compost products into the potting soil market for home gardeners have begun, but are hampered by a lack of insight into consumer preferences. We sought to investigate customer attitudes toward digestate-based compost products by simulating a real purchasing decision through a discrete choice experiment (DCE). We collected data on 6084 trade-offs made by 507 German home gardeners in the context of making a potting soil purchase. Potting soil attributes relevant to the purchasing decision were derived from part-worth utilities generated by Hierarchical Bayes Estimation. We applied Latent Class Analysis to the decision data and were able to identify five distinct groupings of consumer preferences, each distinguished by the relative importance given to the potting soil attributes by that group. Price emerged as the predominant attribute, with both budget-conscious and premium price preferences observed. Resource origin was the second most important factor, and again triggered both favourable and unfavourable responses. A peat-free and organically labelled product was attractive to many customers, but not to others. Our findings provide insight into home gardener preferences for potting soil attributes. These insights can help current and future bioenergy producers integrate digestate-based products into the potting soil market.

Corporate social responsibility, green credit, and corporate performance: an empirical analysis based on the mining, power, and steel industries of China

From the perspective of corporate social responsibility and environmental risk management, green credit will have an important impact on corporate performance. The influence of green credit policy on enterprises can be reflected by the borrowing ability and financing cost of the enterprises, which represent the support strength and price preference of green credit policy. Based on this, this paper considers data on long-term borrowing capacity, short-term borrowing capacity, corporate social responsibility report score, and assets’ return rate of 119 listed enterprises of mining, power, and steel industries in China, from 2010 to 2016, and uses a panel data model to estimates the general relationship between the corporate social responsibility, green credit, and corporate performance. We find that: First, taking the social responsibility can promote the enterprises’ long-term borrowing ability and reduce their financing cost, but it can inhibit their short-term borrowing ability. With a 1% improvement in corporate social responsibility score, the long-term borrowing ability of enterprises in three industries will be increased by 0.0867, 0.2688, and 0.0510%, respectively. Second, the positive undertaking of corporate social responsibility will promote the improvement in enterprise performance. The result of enterprise performance improvement for the sample industry is 0.05, 0.03, and 0.07%. Third, the long-term borrowing ability of enterprise green credit has a small promoting effect on the enterprises’ performance, with the coefficients being 0.1266, 0.0539, and 0.0306, respectively. This paper can be used as a reference to promote both implementation of green credit policy and corporate performance.

Future Implications of the Buy American-Hire American Executive Order and Domestic Preferences on U.S. Government Procurement and Trade Policies

This policy paper discusses the Buy American-Hire American Executive Order (Buy American EO) issued by U.S. President Donald Trump, and the predicted immediate and long-term effects of imposing and enforcing greater price preferences with respect to the Federal Government's procurement of goods of domestic origin over those of foreign origin. Global economic ramifications of expanding applicability of the Buy American laws is examined, as is the role of price preferences for domestic sourced goods as a back-door mechanism to restrict stateside competition from foreign manufacturers of goods' manufacturers. Imposition of such restrictions on the ability of foreign firms to compete with U.S. firms for U.S. Government contracts is expected to result in reciprocal trade restrictions imposed on U.S. manufacturers in foreign procurement markets. In addition, this paper examines the comparative impact of increased enforcement of domestic preference requirements prescribed by the Buy American laws. as compared to the increased implementation of anti-dumping and countervailing duties on foreign producers seeking to import goods into the U.S. Is there a benefit to the U.S. increasing its reliance on such tools of trade restraint notwithstanding the position under the GPA,to support and abide by free trade and open competition? Is there an inherent conflict between the U.S.’s stated commitment to free trade and the executive's decision to ramp up enforcement of trade barriers such as, inter alia, greater enforcement of anti-dumpling regulations? This policy paper also examines, in detail, several trade reform options that the Trump Administration could implement to advance U.S. interests in the area of procurement reform.. As of the date of this writing, the Trump Administration has already implemented some of these reforms. Therefore, both the immediate and prospective, future impacts of these implementations are ripe for analysis. Whether President Trump will implement other trade reform options remains to be seen. In addition to the Buy American EO, also addressed herein are the additional implications of the President’s subsequent Executive Order, issued in March 2017 and appropriately titled, Establishing Enhanced Collection of Anti-dumping and Countervailing Duties and Violations of Trade and Customs Laws. Arguments advanced by supporters of the President’s subsequent Executive Order mandating more rigorous enforcement of existing anti-dumping regulations are discussed as well as counter-arguments advanced by opposing stakeholders, some of whom characterize the March 2017 Executive Order as a tool contrived to create more trade barriers for foreign firms aiming to penetrate the government procurement market of the United States.

Effect of Environmental Enrichment and Herbal Compounds-Supplemented Diet on Pig Carcass, Meat Quality Traits, and Consumers' Acceptability and Preference.

Simple SummaryInterest in animal welfare has increased and been considered a relevant attribute for the concept of the ethical quality of pig products. The present study suggests that consumers would appreciate particular improvements on animal welfare such as providing environmental enrichment or herbal compounds. The provision of those welfare improvement strategies did not have a significant effect on technological carcass and meat quality parameters. However, the strategies used in this study that can increase animal welfare in production systems were valued by consumers.Animal welfare can be considered an ethical attribute of product quality, but consumers should appreciate its added value. The aim of this study was to evaluate consumer’s acceptability, preference, and the meat and carcass quality of pigs reared with two stress-reducing strategies: supplementation of an herbal compound (HC) containing Valeriana officinalis and Passiflora incarnata, and environmental enrichment (EE) by the provision of hemp ropes, sawdust, and rubber balls. A total of 56 pigs were divided in four treatments in two pens of seven pigs per treatment (2 × 2 factorial design). Meat and carcass quality were evaluated. Consumer’s acceptability and preference were analysed with a sensory test and a conjoint analysis in 110 consumers. Before slaughter, control pigs (no EE and no HC) presented lower live weight compared with other treatments (p = 0.0009). Although acceptance was the same for all of the treatments, consumers preferred systems aiming to increase pig welfare. The most important factor was production system, with a preference for those improving welfare, followed by feeding system, with a preference for those with natural herbs supplementation. Although price was the least important factor, a segment of consumers showed a clear preference for lower prices. These results suggest that welfare improvements could be appreciated by particular consumer segments.

“FREE SHIPPING” OR “DOLLAR OFF”? THE MODERATING EFFECTS OF LIST PRICE AND E-SHOPPING EXPERIENCE ON CONSUMER PREFERENCE FOR ONLINE DISCOUNT

The use of online shopping has grown exponentially over the last decade. Although traditional and internet shopping behaviors are similar in some ways, there are some significant differences. To this end, this paper investigates the role of different types of pricing discounts in shaping consumer evaluations when shopping online. In particular, we examine the moderating effects of the list price value and online shopping experience on the consumer evaluation of “free shipping” and “dollar off” discounts. Past research suggests that the free shipping offer will be more attractive than the dollar-off offer when they are of the same economic value. This study contributes to our understanding of research by examining the moderating effects of changes in list price and the consumers’ online shopping experience. The results of the quasi-experimental design suggests that the free shipping offer works better than a dollar-off discount for lower-priced goods, but there is no difference between the two for higher-priced goods. Additionally, seasoned online shoppers are more receptive to both types of pricing discounts, no matter the list price, than are novice online shoppers. To cite this document: Shimi Naurin Ahmad and Michael Callow, FREE SHIPPING” OR “DOLLAR OFF”? THE MODERATING EFFECTS OF LIST PRICE AND E-SHOPPING EXPERIENCE ON CONSUMER PREFERENCE FOR ONLINE DISCOUNT , International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies, Vol.9, No.1, pp.55-70, 2018. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/ijecs.1542

Product attributes and consumer attitudes affecting the preferences for infant milk formula in China – A latent class approach

A series of food safety incidents has led to low levels of trust in the safety of domestically produced Chinese infant milk formula. Concerned parents in China increasingly source ‘foreign-produced’ brands and use a range of authenticity cues as assurance of the safety and authenticity of infant formula products. However, the effectiveness of authenticity cues in providing assurance to Chinese consumers has not been evaluated. The aim of this study is to analyse the importance of various authenticity cues for infant milk product choices. Latent class models were used to analyse responses to an online choice experiment with 350 consumers of European infant formula in three Chinese cities: Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu. The model included respondents’ preferences for different labels, authenticity cues and price along with perceptions, attitudes, and socio-demographic characteristics. We identified two consumer segments, with one preferring lower priced infant formula and the second choosing higher priced products. All authenticity cues, including price, appear to serve as indicators of food quality and safety, and all were found to be highly important information sources for the respondents when making purchase decisions. In general, Chinese consumers are prepared to pay a premium for authenticity assurance. Chinese policy makers and the infant formula industry should continue to improve quality control systems to increase consumers’ trust in food value chains. These control systems should comprise the whole food supply chain, from production to marketing, and should focus on building trust and communicating credibility.

Should RIA Business Models Change?

Recent strong performance of financial markets could be masking unfavorable longer-term trends for RIA firms. Lack of organic growth, changing client pricing preferences, and rising compensation costs pose challenges for existing business models. The effects of these trends may take years to reach a significant level, but firms that want to be well positioned should start considering strategic planning.

A DDS-Based Energy Management Framework for Small Microgrid Operation and Control

The smart grid is seen as a power system with real-time communication and control capabilities between the consumer and the utility. This modern platform facilitates the optimization in energy usage based on several factors including environmental, price preferences, and system technical issues. In this paper, a real-time energy management system (EMS) for microgrids or nanogrids was developed. The developed system involves an online optimization scheme to adapt its parameters based on previous, current, and forecasted future system states. The communication requirements for all EMS modules were analyzed and are all integrated over a data distribution service Ethernet network with appropriate quality-of-service profiles. The developed EMS was emulated with actual residential energy consumption and irradiance data from Miami, Florida, and proved its effectiveness in reducing consumers’ bills and achieving flat peak load profiles.

Large-Scale Price Interval Prediction at OTA Sites

With the rapid growing proliferation of online travel agent (OTA) services, personalized recommendations are highly valuable as they can improve customer experiences by preventing the information overload problem. The accurate prediction of users’ expectations for price plays an important role in the personalized recommendation of hotels in OTA platforms. Considering that customers’ preferences for hotel prices are actually acceptable ranges and traditional point estimations may neglect some informative aspects of the prediction, interval estimation is more suitable for the problem investigated in this paper. However, existing related methods are not applicable due to some specific issues. To provide a better personalized recommendation of hotels in OTA platforms, this paper proposes a novel interval forecasting solution to improve the accuracy of predicting users’ price preferences. The novel interval forecasting solution first puts forward a customized objective function which could directly measure the quality of constructed intervals, while also allowing for adjustable tradeoffs between interval tightness and prediction reliability. Then, it combines alternating direction optimization and the gradient boosting framework to efficiently aggregate weak individual predictors to optimize the introduced learning objective. Empirical comparisons conducted on several benchmark standard datasets and a large-scale dataset shared with us by a major Chinese OTA site demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Agent-based simulation of competitive performance for supply chains based on combined contracts

To investigate the competitive performance of supply chains in the real world, this paper presents a multi-agent model of four three-level supply chains that apply different types of combined contracts by taking into account the effects of vertical and horizontal competition between supply chains. We considered four experimental scenarios, such as no change in the market, a change in consumer price preferences, a change in service preferences and demand uncertainty. We then analyzed the impact that coordinating the combined contracts had on the competitive performance of four supply chains and the relevant members in each scenario, which was based on the results of agent-based simulation. The simulation results indicate that the combined contracts have no significant impact on the overall profits or profit stability of the supply chains with coordination, but different coordination mechanisms have different impacts on the profits and profit stability. The aim of this paper is to provide suggestions to choose the appropriate types of combined contracts for multi-level supply-chains and their members under a complex market environment.

How to Generalize from a Hierarchical Model?

Models of consumer heterogeneity play a pivotal role in marketing and economics, specifically in random coefficient or mixed logit models for aggregate or individual data and in hierarchical Bayesian models of heterogeneity. In applications, the inferential target often pertains to a population beyond the sample of consumers providing the data. For example, optimal prices inferred from the model are expected to be optimal in the population and not just optimal in the observed, finite sample. The population model, random coefficients distribution, or heterogeneity distribution is the natural and correct basis for generalizations from the observed sample to the market. However, in many if not most applications standard heterogeneity models such as the multivariate normal, or its finite mixture generalization lack economic rationality because they support regions of the parameter space that contradict basic economic arguments. For example, such population distributions support positive price coefficients or preferences against fuel-efficiency in cars. Likely as a consequence, it is common practice in applied research to rely on the collection of individual level mean estimates of consumers as a representation of population preferences that often substantially reduce the support for parameters in violation of economic expectations. To overcome the choice between relying on a mis-specified heterogeneity distribution and the collection of individual level means that fail to measure heterogeneity consistently, we develop an approach that facilitates the formulation of more economically faithful heterogeneity distributions based on prior constraints. In the common situation where the heterogeneity distribution comprises both constrained and unconstrained coefficients (e.g., brand and price coefficients), the choice of subjective prior parameters is an unresolved challenge. As a solution to this problem, we propose a marginal-conditional decomposition that avoids the conflict between wanting to be more informative about constrained parameters and only weakly informative about unconstrained parameters. We show how to efficiently sample from the implied posterior and illustrate the merits of our prior as well as the drawbacks of relying on means of individual level preferences for decision-making in two illustrative case studies.

Optimal Charging and Discharging Scheduling for Electric Vehicles in a Parking Station with Photovoltaic System and Energy Storage System

The economic and environmental benefits brought by electric vehicles (EVs) cannot be fully delivered unless these vehicles are fully or partially charged by renewable energy sources (RES) such as photovoltaic system (PVS). Nevertheless, the EV charging management problem of a parking station integrated with RES is challenging due to the uncertain nature of local RES generation. This paper aims to address these difficulties by deploying an energy storage system (ESS) in parking stations and exploiting the charging and discharging scheduling of EVs to achieve better utilization of intermittent PVS for EV charging. A real-time charging optimization scheme is also formulated, using mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) to coordinate the charging or discharging power of EVs along with the power dispatches of power grid and ESS based on the vehicles’ charging or discharging priorities and electricity price preferences. Extensive simulations show that the proposed approach not only maximizes the satisfaction of EV owners in terms of fulfilling all charging and discharging requests, but also minimizes the overall operational cost of the parking station by prioritizing the utilization of energy from PVS, ESS, and scheduling of every EV’s charging and discharging.

Diverging Influences of Money Priming on Choice: The Moderating Effect of Consumption Situation.

Prior research on money priming has suggested two seemingly contradicting findings. On the one hand, money has been shown to highlight the importance of cost saving, leading to the choice of a low-quality/low-price option. On the other hand, individuals primed with money as a symbol of social status, and capabilities may focus on social value of money, e.g., higher spending symbolizes higher status and prefer an option with high quality/high price. Current research proposes and demonstrates that whether money priming will lead different choices depends on the nature of the consumption context. Specifically, when the product is to be consumed privately, money priming will highlight the importance of cost, thus increasing the preference for lower price at a lower quality. However, when the product is to be consumed publicly, reversed pattern of consumer preference will be found.

Protection in government procurement auctions

Discrimination against foreign bidders in procurement auctions has typically been achieved by price preferences. We demonstrate that in the bidding game, each level of protection via a price preference can be achieved by an equivalent tariff. When government welfare depends only on net expenditures, this equivalence carries over to the government's decision. As such, this equivalence provides a justification that agreements to eliminate price preferences to be taken in tandem with agreements to lower tariffs; e.g., the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) in the broader context of the WTO.

Investigation of behavior of consumers with choice of means for intimate hygiene

In modern conditions, increasing competition in the cosmetic market of Ukraine in particular to means for intimate hygiene is an important task for every domestic manufacturer is to achieve its own Competitiveness, increased sales volumes, profit and profitability of sales.Aim was conducted the questionnaire survey of consumers and features of their behavior in choice and consumption of means for intimate hygiene were analysed.Materials and methods. We have sociological studies of consumers have been conducted that allow to analyze the features of their behavior in the choice and consumption of means for intimate hygiene.Results. Identified factors which are crucial in the choice of means for intimate hygiene, discovered price preferences of consumers and factors that hamper the purchase of the study group in cosmetics.Conclusions. Conducted researches are the basis for coordinating the activities of pharmaceutical manufactures, distributors and retailers, improving program design, positioning and promotion on the market means for intimate hygiene, improving the provision of information to consumer.

Recommend products with consideration of multi-category inter-purchase time and price

This study focuses on diversifying recommendations and improving recommendation accuracy by incorporating multi-category purchase interval and price in a novel way. We suggest a method to model the drift of a user’s interest for different categories based on sequential pattern mining. Additionally, we propose a new approach to model personalized multi-category inter-purchase interval for the user. By employing fuzzy set theory, we also put forward an approach to model the price preferences for each user. We propose a recommender system that incorporates the methods mentioned above. The experimental results based on real purchase records show that the proposed recommendation algorithm has high stability and superior performance in recommending products with different characteristics. The results also demonstrate the effectiveness of incorporating purchase interval and price factor in recommender systems. This study demonstrates the existence of particular inter-purchase intervals among different categories, and indicates that price is an important factor influencing customers’ decision making.

Does managerial personality influence pricing practices under uncertainty?

PurposeWhile marketing and management research suggests that managers’ individual characteristics influence pricing decisions, the influence of personality traits in this context remains unclear. This study aims to explore the relationship between the five basic personality traits of the five-factor model (extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness and neuroticism) and three basic pricing practices (value-, competition- and cost-informed).Design/methodology/approachOn the basis of a non-experimental decision-making scenario, the analysis examines the pricing decisions of 57 managers in relation to a new business service.FindingsThe results suggest that managers’ conscientiousness and openness to experience are positively related to preference for value-informed pricing. Similarly, managers’ agreeableness is positively related to preference for competition-informed pricing and managers’ openness to experience and agreeableness are positively related to preference for cost-informed pricing.Research limitations/implicationsThe cross-sectional study design does not support causal inference, and the modest sample size may limit the external validity of the findings.Practical implicationsBy increasing awareness of the influence of personality on pricing preferences, the findings are of relevance to managers who are directly involved in pricing decisions. Additionally, the findings are informative for managers who must assign responsibility for pricing authority within firms.Originality/valueThis empirical exploration of the relationship between certain personality traits and specific pricing practices contributes to the literature on psychological aspects of pricing theory by showing how managerial personality influences pricing preferences under uncertainty.

Boosting Recommendation in Unexplored Categories by User Price Preference

State-of-the-art methods for product recommendation encounter a significant performance drop in categories where a user has no purchase history. This problem needs to be addressed since current online retailers are moving beyond single category and attempting to be diversified. In this article, we investigate the challenging problem of product recommendation in unexplored categories and discover that the price, a factor comparable across categories, can improve the recommendation performance significantly. We introduce the price utility concept to characterize users’ sense of price and propose three different utility functions. We show that user price preference in a category is a distribution and we mine typical user price preference patterns based on three different types of distance between distributions. We fuse user price preference through regularization and joint factorization to boost recommendation performance in both browsing and buying shopping orientations. Experimental results show that fusing user price preference improves performance in a series of recommendation tasks: unexplored category recommendation, product recommendation under a given unexplored category, and product recommendation under generic unexplored categories.

Measuring customer preferences in the German statutory health insurance.

This paper investigates consumer preferences in the German statutory health insurance market. It further aims to test whether preferences differ by age and health status. Evidence is provided by a discrete choice experiment conducted in 2014 using the six most important attributes in sickness fund competition and ten random generated choice sets per participant. Price is found to be the most important attribute followed by additional benefits, managed care programmes, and distance to nearest branch. Other positive attributes of sickness funds are found to balance out a higher price, which would allow a sickness fund to position itself as high quality. However, significant differences in preferences were found between age and health status group. In particular, compromised health is associated with higher preference for illness-related additional benefits and less distance to the lowest branch, but lower preference for a lower price. Based on these differences, a distinct sickness fund offer could be constructed that would allow passive risk selection.