It’s about the process,not the result: An fMRI approach to explore the encoding of explicit and implicit price information

This research examines the neurophysiological correlates of consumers’ price memory processes. We focus on the explicit and implicit dimensions of consumers’ price knowledge and use an experimental functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study to assess how the encoding of task-dependent price memory affects the choice process and neural activation. The findings of our study add to the field of consumer neuroscience by demonstrating how neural correlates of explicit and implicit task-dependent price memory can shed light on processes that guide consumer decision-making. Over the course of our experiment we found that consumers did not always make consistent decisions, but that their decisions were influenced by explicit components of price memory. Implicit price memory components seem to have a more supportive role in the decision-making process. In summary, we found that price memory is a dynamic construct that is influenced by unconscious and neurophysiological processes, and we conclude that a neurophysiological perspective can add value for consumer and marketing research.     

前瞻型环境战略对企业绿色形象的影响研究

从自然资源基础观出发,研究前瞻型环境战略对企业绿色形象的影响.提出前瞻型环境战略会通过影响绿色核心能力、绿色产品创新与绿色过程创新,进而对企业绿色形象产生积极影响,并创建了相关关系模型.研究表明,前瞻型环境战略会提升企业绿色形象,绿色核心能力与绿色创新在前瞻型环境战略与企业绿色形象间存在链式中介作用.另外,对比了提升企业绿色形象的不同路径,为企业构建高区分度的企业形象提供了新的思路和建议.     

Attitudes to debt among indebted undergraduates: A cross-national exploratory factor analysis

This paper reports the results of a cross-national study spanning England, New Zealand and the United States. A total of 496 first year undergraduates studying business or social science completed a 20-item questionnaire. This focused on their attitudes to their debt incurred while studying, as measured on a five-point Likert scale. A factor analysis model was developed, from which four consistent factors emerged, explaining 45 percent of the variation and consistent between countries. These factors were named: Anxiety, Utility-For-Lifestyle, Utility-For-Investment and Awareness. The first three factors were found to be uncorrelated with each other, but higher Awareness was associated with lower levels of Anxiety and Utility-For-Lifestyle and higher levels of Utility-For-Investment. The relationship with previous studies and implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Consumers’ credit card repayment decisions: The role of higher anchors and future repayment concern

We investigated two aspects of credit card repayment decisions: the extent to which the anchoring effect of minimum repayment information may be mitigated by information on alternative anchors, specifically repayments that would repay the balance in two years (Study 1) or nine months (Study 2); and the role of future repayment concern. In two experiments, three realistic credit card statements were presented with different outstanding balances. Participants, who were randomly allocated to one of four information conditions depending on supplementary information provided on the statements, stated how much they would repay that month. They were then asked about concerns they would have about repayment difficulties if they had a fixed consumer loan over three years. In Study 1 the alternative two-year repayment anchor had a negative effect on percent repayment, whereas in Study 2 the nine-month repayment anchor had a significant positive effect, especially for those with higher future repayment concern. Also, in both studies, future repayment concern had a direct inverse effect on repayment decisions which partially mediated the effect of disposable income. It is concluded that the addition to credit card statements of a table of cost and duration information for a range of repayment amounts may usefully support repayment decisions.     

Sustainable supply chain management and the transition towards a circular economy: Evidence and some applications

In the last decades, green and sustainable supply chain management practices have been developed, trying to integrate environmental concerns into organisations by reducing unintended negative consequences on the environment of production and consumption processes. In parallel to this, the circular economy discourse has been propagated in the industrial ecology literature and practice. Circular economy pushes the frontiers of environmental sustainability by emphasising the idea of transforming products in such a way that there are workable relationships between ecological systems and economic growth. Therefore, circular economy is not just concerned with the reduction of the use of the environment as a sink for residuals but rather with the creation of self-sustaining production systems in which materials are used over and over again.Through two case studies from different process industries (chemical and food), this paper compares the performances of traditional and circular production systems across a range of indicators. Direct, indirect and total lifecycle emissions, waste recovered, virgin resources use, as well as carbon maps (which provide a holistic visibility of the entire supply chain) are presented. The paper asserts that an integration of circular economy principles within sustainable supply chain management can provide clear advantages from an environmental point view. Emerging supply chain management challenges and market dynamics are also highlighted and discussed.     

Evaluation of multi-objective optimization approaches for solving green supply chain design problems

This paper evaluates the applicability of different multi-objective optimization methods for environmentally conscious supply chain design. We analyze a case study with three objectives: costs, CO₂ and fine dust (also known as PM – Particulate Matters) emissions. We approximate the Pareto front using the weighted sum and epsilon constraint scalarization methods with pre-defined or adaptively selected parameters, two popular evolutionary algorithms, SPEA2 and NSGA-II, with different selection strategies, and their interactive counterparts that incorporate Decision Maker׳s (DM׳s) indirect preferences into the search process. Within this case study, the CO₂ emissions could be lowered significantly by accepting a marginal increase of costs over their global minimum. NSGA-II and SPEA2 enabled faster estimation of the Pareto front, but produced significantly worse solutions than the exact optimization methods. The interactive methods outperformed their a posteriori counterparts, and could discover solutions corresponding better to the DM preferences. In addition, by adjusting appropriately the elicitation interval and starting generation of the elicitation, the number of pairwise comparisons needed by the interactive evolutionary methods to construct a satisfactory solution could be decreased.     

Awareness of low self-control: Theory and evidence from a homeless shelter

Survey measures of self-control provide a potential low-cost alternative to incentivized elicitation. However, asking respondents to introspect on their self-control problems may instead measure their awareness of them, especially in populations with low self-control. We illustrate this with the Ameriks, Caplin, Leahy, and Tyler (2007) survey, which captures self-control problems through the deviation between self-reported ideal and predicted behavior (Expected Deviation, ED). Previous empirical evidence from high income or highly educated populations correlates larger ED with worse outcomes. We theoretically show that the reverse will be true in settings where awareness can play a large role: when self-control is low and costly commitment devices are available. We empirically show that, for residents of a homeless shelter, ED is positively correlated to savings in shelter lockboxes, a costly commitment device. This correlation is stronger for those likely to experience more self-control problems: individuals with past addiction problems.     

儿童玩具礼品包装设计的研究与思考

现如今礼品类高端产品由于自身的品牌效应，得到了市场上极高的受欢迎指数，因其包装精美和视觉鲜明的因素，越是在国际市场环境低迷的时候，越容易抢占市场。在中国的儿童玩具礼品领域，不单单需要效仿国际流行的设计趋势，而且还要积极提升国内自主品牌影响力，这才是中国当今发展儿童玩具礼品包装产业，缩小与国际水平之间的差距，夺回本土市场继而进军国际市场的必由之路。具体分别从消费群体和包装设计本身两方面进行调查和分析研究。     

Consumer trust repair: A critical literature review

Consumers are fundamental to organisational functioning and survival. Their loyalty, commitment, product acceptance and good long-term relationships with firms and brands are underpinned by their trust. Unfortunately, over the last decade or so, we have witnessed some of the more spectacular violations of consumer trust in the history of business. This has led to negative consequences, such as loss of competitive advantage, rage, lack of commitment and decrease in turnover. Consequently, study of trust repair has become an important theoretical concern for a growing number of trust scholars. This article reviews and synthesises existing theory and research on the topic. It first sketches general characteristics of the consumer trust repair literature, including its meta-theoretical underpinning. It then identifies specific strategies associated with consumer trust repair and synthesises them into five categories of trust repair strategies. In addition, this paper highlights theoretical processes that explain why/how trust repair strategies work. Third, the paper proposes six fruitful avenues for future research. This study contributes to the field of consumer trust repair research by critically reviewing and synthesising emerging theory and research on strategies associated with consumer trust repair, by showing why and how these strategies work and by identifying most fruitful research areas.     

The effects of information form and domain-specific knowledge on choice deferral

Three studies examined the effect of information form on choice deferral in consumer choice and explored the moderating role of knowledge about the product domain. Two theoretical approaches were contrasted: (1) The process approach predicting that choice deferral varies as a function of information form, and (2) the communication approach predicting an interaction of information form and domain-specific knowledge. Participants were presented with different laptops described in an absolute (e.g. ‘300 GB hard disc’), evaluative-numerical (e.g. ‘hard disc with 30 out of 100 points in an expert rating’) or evaluative-verbal (e.g. ‘bad hard disc’) information form, and they could choose to buy one of the laptops or defer. Domain-specific knowledge was also assessed. In Study 1, evaluative-numerical and evaluative-verbal values led to more deferral in people with high domain-specific knowledge. The pattern for evaluative-numerical and evaluative-verbal values was replicated for a different information organization in Study 2. Study 3 showed that absolute values led to more deferral the less knowledgeable participants were and demonstrated that domain-specific knowledge and deferral were unrelated when absolute and evaluative-verbal values were presented in combination. In sum, the results support the communication approach and have methodological implications for decision research and theoretical implications for understanding choice deferral in real-life decisions.