Marketing Strategies and Market Prospects for Environmentally-Friendly Consumer Products1

Recent evidence suggests that the extent of consumer adoption of ‘green’ products is much less than would be indicated by the enthusiastic opinion poll evidence concerning public attitudes towards environmentally-friendly consumption. This paper reports on an empirical analysis of firms' marketing strategies and their influence on consumer demand for green products. In twenty 2–3 hour interviews with senior managers, four representative groups of markets were analysed household detergents, paper (recycled), petrol (unleaded) and automobile technology (focusing on catalytic converters). According to managers, firms' marketing strategies influenced consumer demand by making green technologies available in the fwst instance. However, barriers to supplying green products that show panty with, or better performance than, conventional technologies constrain pricing and communication efforts Managers stressed that, in the absence of clarity of green products' environmental benefits, product performance and other attributes, not green benefits, remain the main determinants of product preference and choice. Promotions focused much more on consumers than distribution channels, yet channel acceptance and support of green innovations are paramount in facilitating sales. Firms see the costs of generating and promoting desirable green technologies as barriers to diffusion in the immediate future. Legislation and/or economic incentives may help, but manufacturers are not optimistic that future green consumption rates will accelerate. The results also highlight several propositions concerning the discrepancy between consumer environmental concerns and purchasing actions which warrant further testing: there is mis-specification of green products in relation to consumers'needs; there are barriers to perceptions of green products' environmental impact and consumers' free ride due to individual self-interest.     

CAN LONG‐RUN RESTRICTIONS IDENTIFY TECHNOLOGY SHOCKS?

Galí's innovative approach of imposing long‐run restrictions on a vector autoregression (VAR) to identify the effects of a technology shock has become widely utilized. In this paper, we investigate its reliability through Monte Carlo simulations using calibrated business cycle models. Overall, Galí's methodology appears to be fruitful: the impulse responses derived from the artificial data generally have the same sign and qualitative pattern as the true responses, and the approach can be informative in discriminating between alternative models. However, our results reveal some important quantitative shortcomings, including considerable estimation uncertainty about the impact of technology shocks on macroeconomic variables. More generally, the conditions under which the methodology performs well appear considerably more restrictive than implied by the key identifying assumption. This underscores the importance of using economic models to guide in the implementation of the approach, in interpreting the results, and in assessing its limitations. (JEL: C32, E32, O33)     

Quality Assessment of the Oncology Health Service in a Public Hospital

Quality assessment is a crucial issue in the strategic management of the public health sector. The objective of this study is to investigate the patients’ perception of the health system quality and explore the relationships between doctors and long-term cancer patients. The data under study have been collected during a survey conducted with long-term cancer patients who follow an oncological therapy in a Public Hospital. In the study, exploratory factorial analysis is developed and two structural equation models are proposed. The first model describes the service quality as perceived by the patients, which is influenced by four important factors, namely tangible aspects, reliability, empathy (doctor–patient human relations) and hospital organization. The second model describes the relationship between doctors and long-term cancer patients, which is influenced by three factors, that is reliability, empathy and hospital organization. The discussion highlights the contribution that the results of the study may make to the investigation of the possible strategies for improving health care service quality.

     

A visual narrative analysis of children’s baby loss remembrance drawings

Children experiencing the death of baby brother or sister have reported individual, familial, and communicative challenges. Siblings also have indicated that the loss of a baby in their family enriched their lives despite their pain. The present study extends this work by focusing not only on siblings but also other children enmeshed in the family system. Additionally, we heed the call for the use of arts-based methods in family communication by performing a visual narrative analysis of children’s baby loss remembrance drawings. This analysis of 131 drawings completed by children ages zero to 18 yielded three main themes, including narration of identity, narration of life and death, and narration of growing sense-making. Two continua capture these themes, including the subject of narrativization and the mode of narrativization. In presenting these findings, we provide a unique (means of) understanding children’s experience of baby loss in the family.     

A multiple buyer – supplier relationship in the context of SMEs’ digital supply chain management*

Abstract

By underlining the relevance of the use of ICTs, knowledge sharing and electronic markets for SMEs, it emerges the need for stimulating a debate on digitisation process of supply chain management (SCM). Electronic infrastructure in the service sector are reducing each kind of cost and improving multiply buyer–supplier relationships, facilitating negotiations and transactions. However, since the coordination costs are still high, the use of ICTs is limited. This phenomenon thus attracts the interests of scholars and practitioners. Although it still needs to further investigate. Especially, the optimal use of ICTs within SMEs’ SCM have not been studied yet. Therefore, by leveraging on four proxies: ICTs specialised human resources, knowledge sharing activities, buyer–supplier relationships, adoption of electronic markets this optimal was analysed via structural equation modelling based on a sample of 1254 SMEs operating in the service sector in Italy.     

Intimate Partner Violence in Young Adult Dating,Cohabitating, and Married Drinking Partnerships

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examined intimate partner violence (IPV) and drinking partnerships in 741 young adults in male‐female dating, cohabitating, and married relationships. Cluster analyses revealed four similar kinds of drinking partnerships: (a) congruent light and infrequent, (b) discrepant male heavy and frequent, (c) discrepant female heavy and infrequent, and (d) congruent moderate/heavy‐frequent drinkers. Overall, there were no significant main effect differences across relationship type and clusters. The type of relationship and the type of drinking partnership interacted with contexts examined (i.e., type of violence severity, gender, and whether the violence was perpetration or victimization). Given the severity of IPV in couple relationships, additional empirical attention to drinking partnerships is warranted.     

“I want to move once I have got things straight”: Voluntary sector chief executives' career accounts

This article reports investigation into chief executives' career perceptions, experiences, and aspirations in small and mediumsized organizations in England, using career history and biographical narrative techniques. Career accounts from sixty chief executives—twenty‐seven women and thirty‐three men—were gathered and analyzed, drawing on career theory and typologies of career characterization. A typology for voluntary sector chief executives' career stances was developed: the Paid Philanthropists, the Careerists, and the Nonaligned. Within this typology, women chief executives appeared as predominantly Careerists, outnumbering male chief executives by two to one. Implications for developing career theory in voluntary sector contexts is discussed and directions for future research suggested.     

Risk preferences and child investments: evidence from Mexico

This paper examines how parental risk aversion influences child investments. Using an experimental measure of risk aversion from the Mexican Family Life Survey, I find that boys have higher weight-for-age and BMI-for-age in households where the mother is highly risk averse. The higher BMI is not necessarily healthy because the boys are more likely to be in the overweight range and less likely to be in the normal range. I also find evidence that risk averse mothers spend more on their son’s schooling related expenditures such as materials, uniforms, and spending money. A comparison of siblings reveals a gender gap in child investments that is increasing in maternal risk aversion.     

Closing the Circle: Social Workers' Responses to Multi-Agency Procedures on Older Age Abuse

Correspondence to Professor Michael Preston-Shoot, School of Law and Applied Social Studies, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, L7 4DN, UK. E-mail: m.prestonshoot{at}livjm.ac.uk Summary This paper reports findings from a project which examined howinter-agency procedures on older age abuse in domestic settingswere used in one local authority. Observations about the useof procedures and about practice with older people who had beenabused are placed in the context of national policy developmentsand are reviewed alongside the available literature. The researchquestions the extent to which guidance is effective in providingdirection for practitioners who encounter older age abuse, andhow well guidance and practice combine to protect victims.