Price Sensitivity (price + sensitivity)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Price Sensitivity of the Demand for Medical Services for Minor Ailments: Econometric Estimates Using Information on Illnesses and Symptoms,

THE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 2 2002
MASAKO II
First page of article [source]


The influence of consumer decision-making styles on online apparel consumption by college students

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 6 2007
Kelly O. Cowart
Abstract Apparel purchases now constitute one of the fastest-growing segments of e-commerce. Thus, there are strong theoretical and managerial reasons to better understand consumer characteristics associated with buying apparel online. This paper investigates motivations for online apparel consumption using the Consumer Styles Inventory. Data from a sample of 357 US college students showed that quality consciousness, brand consciousness, fashion consciousness, hedonistic shopping, impulsiveness and brand loyalty were positively correlated with online apparel shopping. Price sensitivity was negatively correlated with online spending. [source]


Modeling market dynamics in competitive communication consumer markets

BELL LABS TECHNICAL JOURNAL, Issue 2 2008
Yuliy Baryshnikov
Emergence of converged multimedia services has led operators to seek clear tactical and strategic advantages in developing differentiated service offerings. Effectiveness of the offer strategies is influenced by factors such as service delivery investment, operations cost, market segment preferences, competitive multimedia offers, service pricing, and consumer price sensitivities. Differentiation in any of these factors in a competitive environment has a direct influence on market share and profitability of communication service providers. This paper describes a modeling approach that explicitly considers the factors mentioned. The model can be used to quantify the impact of operator's offer and the pricing strategies amid market share acquisition, churn reduction, and profitability. This paper presents the application of the model to various converged operator scenarios such as voice convergence, triple-and quadruple-play, and xVNO operators that may utilize services such as "targeted advertising" to subsidize telephony services. The study presented in this paper can be contrasted with the significant number of studies (in marketing literature, primarily) dedicated to the understanding of the market behavior of consumers, and of their reactions to price, features, or marketing campaigns. © 2008 Alcatel-Lucent. [source]


Policy options for alcohol price regulation: the importance of modelling population heterogeneity

ADDICTION, Issue 3 2010
Petra Sylvia Meier
ABSTRACT Context and aims Internationally, the repertoire of alcohol pricing policies has expanded to include targeted taxation, inflation-linked taxation, taxation based on alcohol-by-volume (ABV), minimum pricing policies (general or targeted), bans of below-cost selling and restricting price-based promotions. Policy makers clearly need to consider how options compare in reducing harms at the population level, but are also required to demonstrate proportionality of their actions, which necessitates a detailed understanding of policy effects on different population subgroups. This paper presents selected findings from a policy appraisal for the UK government and discusses the importance of accounting for population heterogeneity in such analyses. Method We have built a causal, deterministic, epidemiological model which takes account of differential preferences by population subgroups defined by age, gender and level of drinking (moderate, hazardous, harmful). We consider purchasing preferences in terms of the types and volumes of alcoholic beverages, prices paid and the balance between bars, clubs and restaurants as opposed to supermarkets and off-licenses. Results Age, sex and level of drinking fundamentally affect beverage preferences, drinking location, prices paid, price sensitivity and tendency to substitute for other beverage types. Pricing policies vary in their impact on different product types, price points and venues, thus having distinctly different effects on subgroups. Because population subgroups also have substantially different risk profiles for harms, policies are differentially effective in reducing health, crime, work-place absence and unemployment harms. Conclusion Policy appraisals must account for population heterogeneity and complexity if resulting interventions are to be well considered, proportionate, effective and cost-effective. [source]


Pharmaceutical promotion and GP prescription behaviour

HEALTH ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2006
Frank Windmeijer
Abstract The aim of this paper is to empirically analyse the responses by general practitioners to promotional activities for ethical drugs by pharmaceutical companies. Promotion can be beneficial as a means of providing information, but it can also be harmful in the sense that it lowers price sensitivity of doctors and it merely is a means of maintaining market share, even when cheaper, therapeutically equivalent drugs are available. A model is estimated that includes interactions of promotion expenditures and prices and that explicitly exploits the panel structure of the data, allowing for drug specific effects and dynamic adjustments, or habit persistence. The data used are aggregate monthly GP prescriptions per drug together with monthly outlays on drug promotion for the period 1994,1999 for 11 therapeutic markets, covering more than half of the total prescription drug market in the Netherlands. Identification of price effects is aided by the introduction of the Pharmaceutical Prices Act, which established that Dutch drugs prices became a weighted average of the prices in surrounding countries after June 1996. We conclude that GP drug price sensitivity is small, but adversely affected by promotion. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Dynamic Competition with Experience Goods

JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 1 2006
J. Miguel Villas-Boas
This paper considers dynamic competition in the case in which consumers are only able to learn about their preferences for a certain product after experiencing it. After trying a product a consumer has more information about that product than about untried products. When competing in such a market firms with more sales in the past have an informational advantage because more consumers know their products. If products provide a better-than-expected fit with greater likelihood, taking advantage of that informational advantage may lead to an informational disadvantage in the future. This paper considers this competition with an infinite horizon model in a duopoly market with overlapping generations of consumers. Two effects are identified: On one hand marginal forward-looking consumers realize that by purchasing a product in the current period will be charged a higher expected price in the future. This effect results in reduced price sensitivity and higher equilibrium prices. On the other hand, forward-looking firms realize that they gain in the future from having a greater market share in the current period and compete more aggressively in prices. For similar discount factors for consumers and firms, the former effect is more important, and prices are higher the greater the informational advantages. The paper also characterizes oscillating market share dynamics, and comparative statics of the equilibrium with respect to consumer and firm patience, and the importance of the experience in the ex post valuation of the product. [source]


Consumer benefits and acceptance of genetically modified food

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 3-4 2005
John G. Knight
Much of the resistance towards genetically modified foods appears to stem from public perceptions that they offer no consumer benefits. In order to test whether clearly defined consumer benefits would change behaviour, a purchasing experiment has been conducted in New Zealand, where the genetically modified issue has been highly politicized. Cherries labelled as spray free-genetically modified, organic or conventional were offered for sale in a roadside stall, with price levels manipulated to test price sensitivity of the different options. Approximately 27% of consumers proved willing to purchase genetically modified labelled cherries when all three types were priced at the prevailing market price, and this market share increased to 60% when the price was discounted by 15% and organic was priced at a 15% premium. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


When (not) to indulge in ,puffery': the role of consumer expectations and brand goodwill in determining advertised and actual product quality

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 6 2000
Praveen K. Kopalle
We analyze why some firms advertise product quality at a level different from the actual quality of a product. By considering the interacting effects of product quality and advertising, we develop a dynamic model of consumer expectations about product quality and the development of brand goodwill to determine the optimal values for the decision variables. The model parameters are determined based on prior literature and we use numerical techniques to arrive at the solution. We then derive conditions under which a firm will find it optimal to overstate or understate product quality. The results suggest that quality may be overstated in markets characterized by high price sensitivity, low quality sensitivity, low brand loyalty, and high source credibility, suggesting the need for vigilance on the part of consumers, upper level managers and regulatory authorities in such market conditions. This is important because current regulatory resources are insufficient to reduce deceptive advertising practices (Davis JJ. 1994. Ethics in advertising decision-making: implications for reducing the incidence of deceptive advertising. Journal of Consumer Affairs28: 380,402). Further, the law of deceptive advertising prohibits some advertising claims on the ground that they are likely to harm consumers or competitors (Preston IL, Richards JI. 1993. A role for consumer belief in FTC and Lanham Act deceptive advertising cases. American Business Law Journal31: 1,29). Also, Nagler (1993. Rather bait than switch: deceptive advertising with bounded consumer rationality. Journal of Public Economics51: 359,378) shows that deceptive advertising causes a net social welfare loss and a public policy effectively preventing deception will improve social welfare. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Survivorship in the US hospital services industry

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 5 2000
Rexford E. Santerre
Over the last two decades, changing state and federal regulations and increased price competition have dramatically changed the environment in which hospitals compete. This paper uses observations drawn at 5-year intervals from 1973 to 1993 for each of the 50 states to examine the specific effect of these factors on the size distribution of hospitals. It finds that Certificate of Need (CON) laws and rate review regulations have tended to favor large hospitals. The paper also finds that hospitals have responded to increased payer price sensitivity by seeking a medium bed-size capacity. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Firm Value and Hedging: Evidence from U.S. Oil and Gas Producers

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 2 2006
YANBO JIN
ABSTRACT This paper studies the hedging activities of 119 U.S. oil and gas producers from 1998 to 2001 and evaluates their effect on firm value. Theories of hedging based on market imperfections imply that hedging should increase the firm's market value (MV). To test this hypothesis, we collect detailed information on the extent of hedging and on the valuation of oil and gas reserves. We verify that hedging reduces the firm's stock price sensitivity to oil and gas prices. Contrary to previous studies, however, we find that hedging does not seem to affect MVs for this industry. [source]


Demand, Information, and Competition: Why Do Food Prices Fall at Seasonal Demand Peaks?

THE JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2000
James M. MacDonald
Prices for seasonal food products fall at demand peaks. Price declines are not driven by falling agricultural input prices; indeed, farm to retail margins narrow sharply. I use electronic scanner data from a sample of US supermarkets to show that seasonal price declines are closely linked to market concentration, and are much larger in markets with several rivals than where a single brand dominates. Seasonal demand increases reduce the effective costs of informative advertising, and increased informative advertising by retailers and manufacturers in turn may allow for increased market information and greater price sensitivity on the part of buyers. [source]


Sales and consumer inventory

THE RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2006
Igal Hendel
Temporary price reductions (sales) are common for many goods and naturally result in a large increase in the quantity sold. We explore whether the data support the hypothesis that these increases are, at least partly, due to demand anticipation: at low prices, consumers store for future consumption. This effect, if present, has broad economic implications. We test the predictions of an inventory model using scanner data with two years of household purchases. The results are consistent with an inventory model and suggest that static demand estimates may overestimate price sensitivity. [source]