Discussion: The Recent Reappearance of the Homotheticity Restriction on Preferences

A model linking final demand (sales) with intermediate manufactures is estimated and simulated over the course of a business cycle. The results show that prices fluctuate more for early-stage manufactures than for later-stage products at the manufacturing and retail level. This is found to be largely due to inventory and unfilled orders fluctuations, particularly those of inventories of primary manufactured products held by finished goods manufacturers. Since these inventory fluctuations lead the cycle in final demand, prices of primary manufactures lead business activity. Another result is that inventories of materials and supplies, including those of retailers for resale, exhibit more instability than producers' inventories of finished goods.     

零售商自有品牌与消费者购买意愿因素研究——以山东省零售企业为例

当前中国零售业快速发展,发展自有品牌成为零售商获取竞争优势的重要途径.在总结国内外有关研究的基础上,从感知价值、感知质量、感知价格、感知风险、店铺形象、品牌形象以及品牌知名度七个维度探究其对自有品牌消费者购买意愿和忠诚度影响,并通过对山东省零售企业问卷调查实证分析对模型进行验证,为本土零售商开发和推广自有品牌提供营销策略上的依据和借鉴.     

基于购买行为RFM及评论行为RFMP模型的客户终身价值研究

在Web2.0时代,越来越多的消费者在购物网站、点评类网站以及社交类网站上发表自己对产品或服务的相关看法,由此对企业产生了巨大的影响。针对用户在线评论行为所产生的价值,以传统的RFM模型为基础构建了基于评论行为的RFMP模型。同时将购买RFM和评论RFMP模型进行结合,提出了适用于线上企业的客户终身价值评价方法,采用熵值法进行了指标权重的确定,并最终选取大众点评网的实际用户数据进行了传统客户终身价值与改进客户终身价值的对比。通过对用户群进行细分,为企业提供了更加精准的营销决策及管理建议。     

Common threshold in quantile regressions with an application to pricing for reputation

The paper develops a systematic estimation and inference procedure for quantile regression models where there may exist a common threshold effect across different quantile indices. We first propose a sup-Wald test for the existence of a threshold effect, and then study the asymptotic properties of the estimators in a threshold quantile regression model under the shrinking threshold effect framework. We consider several tests for the presence of a common threshold value across different quantile indices and obtain their limiting distributions. We apply our methodology to study the pricing strategy for reputation through the use of a data set from Taobao.com. In our economic model, an online seller maximizes the sum of the profit from current sales and the possible future gain from a targeted higher reputation level. We show that the model can predict a jump in optimal pricing behavior, which is considered as “reputation effect” in this paper. The use of threshold quantile regression model allows us to identify and explore the reputation effect and its heterogeneity in data. We find both reputation effects and common thresholds for a range of quantile indices in seller’s pricing strategy in our application.     

Stockouts and Restocking: Monitoring the Retailer from the Supplier’s Perspective

Suppliers and retailers typically do not have identical incentives to avoid stockouts (lost sales due to the lack of product availability on the shelf). Thus, the supplier needs to monitor the retailer’s restocking efforts with the available data. We empirically assess stockout levels using only shipment and sales data that is readily available to the supplier. The model distinguishes between store stockouts (zero inventory in the store) and shelf stockouts (an empty shelf but some inventory in other parts of the store), thereby identifying the cause of the stockout to be either a supply chain or a restocking issue. We find that, as suspected by the supplier, the average stockout rate is much higher than published averages. In addition, stockout rates vary widely between stores. Moreover, almost all stockouts are shelf stockouts. The model identifies stores that may have restocking issues.     

Bayesian Inference for Assessing Effects of Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing has been an increasingly important tool for today’s businesses. In this article, we propose a counting-process-based Bayesian method for quantifying the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns in conjunction with customer characteristics. Our model explicitly addresses the seasonality of data, accounts for the impact of customer characteristics on their purchasing behavior, and evaluates effects of email offers as well as their interactions with customer characteristics. Using the proposed method, together with a propensity-score-based unit-matching technique for alleviating potential confounding, we analyze a large email marketing dataset of an online ticket marketplace to evaluate the short- and long-term effectiveness of their email campaigns. It is shown that email offers can increase customer purchase rate both immediately and during a longer term. Customers’ characteristics such as length of shopping history, purchase recency, average ticket price, average ticket count, and number of genres purchased also affect customers’ purchase rate. A strong positive interaction is uncovered between email offer and purchase recency, suggesting that customers who have been inactive recently are more likely to take advantage of promotional offers. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

时间序列分析在经济预测中的应用

社会消费品零售总额是一项重要、敏感的政府统计。定期发布的消费品零售统计资料,常常引起国内外的强烈关注,间或还会引发一些疑义和争议。文章拟通过运用EXCEL及SAS软件建立季节分解模型和季节哑变量、ARIMA模型,对我国的社会消费零售总额的情况进行预测分析,从初步确定几个不同的模型中,把拟合效果最好的模型保留,并对模型的实用性进行了探讨。     

能效标识对节能产品选择的引导效用分析——基于京东家电线上销售的实证检验

搜集冰箱、洗衣机、空调三种大家电的线上销售数据,通过描述性分析、组间差异比较、多元回归分析等方式分析能效标识的市场引导效果。结果显示消费者对不同等级家电产品的选择量存在差异,但不同能效等级间消费者满意度并无明显差异,能效等级并非是影响消费者选择和满意度的显著因素。     

A new nonlinear asymmetric cointegration approach using error correction models

In this article, two new powerful tests for cointegration are proposed. The general idea is based on an intuitively appealing extension of the traditional, rather restrictive cointegration concept. In this article, we allow for a nonlinear, but most importantly a different, asymmetric convergence process to account for negative and positive changes in our cointegration approach. Using Monte Carlo simulations we verify, that the estimated size of the first test depends on the unknown value of a signal-to-noise ratio q. However, our second test—which is based on the original ideas of Kanioura and Turner—is more successful and robust in the sense that it works in all of the different evaluated situations. Furthermore it is shown to be more powerful than the traditional residual based Enders and Siklos method. The new optimal test is also applied in an empirical example in order to test for potential nonlinear asymmetric price transmission effects on the Swedish power market. We find that there is a higher propensity for power retailers to rapidly and systematically increase their retail electricity prices subsequent to increases in Nordpool's wholesale prices, than there is for them to reduce their prices subsequent to a drop in wholesale spot prices.     

双向搭便车下双渠道零售商服务努力水平决策

全渠道营销背景下,零售商提供的服务同产品本身的特性一样影响着顾客需求。由于双渠道零售商线上线下两个渠道之间存在服务搭便车效应,文章考虑服务成本和渠道价格竞争关系,研究不同实体和网络渠道关系下双向搭便车行为对产品售价和服务努力水平的影响,并提出零售商最优服务努力水平的决策策略。     

Statistical Analysis of Marginal Count Failure Data

Manufacturers want to assess the quality andreliability of their products. Specifically, they want to knowthe exact number of failures from the sales transacted duringa particular month. Information available today is sometimesincomplete as many companies analyze their failure data simplycomparing sales for a total month from a particular departmentwith the total number of claims registered for that given month.This information—called marginal count data—is, thus,incomplete as it does not give the exact number of failures ofthe specific products that were sold in a particular month. Inthis paper we discuss nonparametric estimation of the mean numbersof failures for repairable products and the failure probabilitiesfor nonrepairable products. We present a nonhomogeneous Poissonprocess model for repairable products and a multinomial modeland its Poisson approximation for nonrepairable products. A numericalexample is given and a simulation is carried out to evaluatethe proposed methods of estimating failure probabilities undera number of possible situations.     

我国社会消费品零售额ARIMA预测模型

2005年年底中央经济工作会议提出了我国2006年经济工作的八项主要任务,其中“扩大消费需求”列各项任务之首。消费是社会再生产的终点和新的起点,消费需求是最终需求。目前我国投资每增加1%,可以拉动GDP增长0·2%:居民消费每增加1%,可以拉动GDP增长0·8%(详见参考文献1),我们必须将消费作为拉动经济增长的根本动力。随着人们对消费需求的热烈讨论,社会消费品零售总额这个指标频繁出现在各种文献之中。社会消费品零售总额是指批发和零售业、餐饮业、新闻出版业、邮政业和其他服务业等,售予城乡居民用于生活消费的商品和社会集团用于公共消…     

Bayesian semi-parametric analysis of Poisson change-point regression models: application to policy-making in Cali,Colombia

A Poisson regression model with an offset assumes a constant baseline rate after accounting for measured covariates, which may lead to biased estimates of coefficients in an inhomogeneous Poisson process. To correctly estimate the effect of time-dependent covariates, we propose a Poisson change-point regression model with an offset that allows a time-varying baseline rate. When the non-constant pattern of a log baseline rate is modeled with a non-parametric step function, the resulting semi-parametric model involves a model component of varying dimensions and thus requires a sophisticated varying-dimensional inference to obtain the correct estimates of model parameters of a fixed dimension. To fit the proposed varying-dimensional model, we devise a state-of-the-art Markov chain Monte Carlo-type algorithm based on partial collapse. The proposed model and methods are used to investigate the association between the daily homicide rates in Cali, Colombia, and the policies that restrict the hours during which the legal sale of alcoholic beverages is permitted. While simultaneously identifying the latent changes in the baseline homicide rate which correspond to the incidence of sociopolitical events, we explore the effect of policies governing the sale of alcohol on homicide rates and seek a policy that balances the economic and cultural dependencies on alcohol sales to the health of the public.     

Heterogeneous credit union production technologies with endogenous switching and correlated effects

Credit unions differ in the types of financial services they offer to their members. This article explicitly models this observed heterogeneity using a generalized model of endogenous ordered switching. Our approach captures the endogenous choice that credit unions make when adding new products to their financial services mix. The model that we consider also allows for the dependence between unobserved effects and regressors in both the selection and outcome equations and can accommodate the presence of predetermined covariates in the model. We use this model to estimate returns to scale for U.S. retail credit unions from 1996 to 2011. We document strong evidence of persistent technological heterogeneity among credit unions offering different financial service mixes, which, if ignored, can produce quite misleading results. Employing our model, we find that credit unions of all types exhibit substantial economies of scale.     

用函数型数据分析网络团购市场的结构与市场发展

以美团网为例,使用函数型数据研究网络团购市场的结构与发展。首先将从网络采集到的团购离散数据,根据分析目的构造成函数化数据,然后对函数化的数据进行描述统计分析和函数主成分分析,并对不同种类的团购与不同地区的团购进行比较。最终得出区别于以往研究团购的结论:当期团购市场仍以美食类为主,购物类团购逐渐被大家认同,休闲类团购集中度下降;上海与北京都属于团购发展较快地区,而北京地区相对变动较大;热门地区团购销售额的集中度随着团购地区的扩张而被稀释。     

Market channel selections by US nursery plant producers: a multivariate nonparametric fractional regression analysis

Availability of market channel alternatives has helped the growth of ornamental plant sales in the United States. To identify the factors affecting the choice and allocation of outputs to different market channels by nursery producers, we first use a mixture of experts model to select clusters of homogenous subpopulations of US nursery producers based on a 2009 National Nursery Survey. The impact of growers’ business characteristics on shares of sales to these channels was estimated using multivariate parametric and nonparametric fractional regression models. Specification tests indicated a nonparametric model was superior to a parametric model in some clusters. Important explanatory variables affecting the sales volume to different channels were sales of plant groups, kinds of contract sales, promotional expenses, and farm size. Results indicated the existence of clear market segmentation of nursery producers in the United States.     

Hazards regression for freemium products and services: a competing risks approach

We propose a competing risks approach to analyse customer behaviours in freemium products and services. The event of interest is when a customer starts to pay for additional features or functionalities. The observation of such an event may be preempted by an event where the customer quits using the product before paying and consuming the additional features or functionalities. One such freemium service is the online game category. The Fine-Gray regression model was implemented for an online game player activity data to study how covariates affect the paying hazard. Some covariates are hypothesized to have different discrete effects at multiple change points. We extend the model to allow for possible change points in the analysis.     

The impact of sales promotions on store performance: a structural vector autoregressive approach

The present paper analyses the impact of sales promotions on store performance, in the short and long term, from the retailer's point of view. Relationships among promoted and regular sales in the hypermarkets of a large-scale retail chain of national importance, are investigated by means of a structural vector autoregressive model (SVAR). Statistically significant effects of sales promotions in the heavy household section on store sales are found in the short-run; these promotions produce additional sales and thus act as an attractive factor. Promotions in textile category, on the contrary, produce an immediate negative effect on net sales. In the long run, negative statistically significant effects on regular sales are detected when promotions are repeatedly implemented within perishables category.     

中国城市居民婴幼儿奶粉品牌选购行为研究——以北京市为例

以北京市城市消费者为调查对象,运用统计描述法和Logit回归模型,分析消费者对不同品牌婴幼儿奶粉的选购行为及其影响因素。研究结果表明:与国内婴幼儿奶粉品牌相比,国外品牌占据明显优势,82.7%的消费者购买国外品牌;从消费者自身的认知出发,质量安全是其购买国外品牌的主要原因。Logit模型回归结果表明,风险感知、收入、家中小孩数和性别是影响消费者品牌选购的主要影响因素。