Structuring Consumer Preferences with the SEM Method

Structuring preferences has been developed with econometric models using functional flexible parametric form and the exploring the perceptions about expressed and latent needs using different multivariate approaches. Purpose of this research is to explore the demand for a new drink using the mean-end chain (MEC) theory and multivariate SEM procedure. The first part is dedicated to description of specialty foods for their capacity to create new niche markets. The MEC theory is introduced to explain the relations between attributes and consumers' perceptions of secondary needs revealed as benefit and values. The second part is dedicated to the empirical investigation of demand of a drink obtained from the "Olivello spinoso" a spontaneous plant. Empirical data were collected with "face to face sensorial test", and used to test the consumer perceptions for the product's attributes and preferences using the SEM approach. Conclusive remarks are in terms of suggestions about the modification of the product's attributes to increase the demand.Demand, Mean-End Chain, multivariate analysis, Specialty products, Niche market, customer satisfaction, SEM, Consumer/Household Economics,

The visual preferences for forest regeneration and field afforestation : four case studies in Finland

The overall aim of this dissertation was to study the public's preferences for forest regeneration fellings and field afforestations, as well as to find out the relations of these preferences to landscape management instructions, to ecological healthiness, and to the contemporary theories for predicting landscape preferences. This dissertation includes four case studies in Finland, each based on the visualization of management options and surveys. Guidelines for improving the visual quality of forest regeneration and field afforestation are given based on the case studies. The results show that forest regeneration can be connected to positive images and memories when the regeneration area is small and some time has passed since the felling. Preferences may not depend only on the management alternative itself but also on the viewing distance, viewing point, and the scene in which the management options are implemented. The current Finnish forest landscape management guidelines as well as the ecological healthiness of the studied options are to a large extent compatible with the public's preferences. However, there are some discrepancies. For example, the landscape management instructions as well as ecological hypotheses suggest that the retention trees need to be left in groups, whereas people usually prefer individually located retention trees to those trees in groups. Information and psycho-evolutionary theories provide some possible explanations for people's preferences for forest regeneration and field afforestation, but the results cannot be consistently explained by these theories. The preferences of the different stakeholder groups were very similar. However, the preference ratings of the groups that make their living from forest - forest owners and forest professionals - slightly differed from those of the others. These results provide support for the assumptions that preferences are largely consistent at least within one nation, but that knowledge and a reference group may also influence preferences.Väitöskirjassa tutkittiin ihmisten maisemapreferenssejä (maisemallisia arvostuksia) metsänuudistamishakkuiden ja pellonmetsitysten suhteen sekä analysoitiin näiden preferenssien yhteyksiä maisemanhoito-ohjeisiin, vaihtoehtojen ekologiseen terveyteen ja preferenssejä ennustaviin teorioihin. Väitöskirja sisältää neljä tapaustutkimusta, jotka perustuvat hoitovaihtoehtojen visualisointiin ja kyselytutkimuksiin. Tapaustutkimusten pohjalta annetaan ohjeita siitä, kuinka uudistushakkuiden ja pellonmetsitysten visuaalista laatua voidaan parantaa. Väitöskirjan tulokset osoittavat, että uudistamishakkuut voivat herättää myös myönteisiä mielikuvia ja muistoja, jos uudistusala on pieni ja hakkuun välittömät jäljet ovat jo peittyneet. Preferensseihin vaikuttaa hoitovaihtoehdon lisäksi mm. katseluetäisyys, katselupiste ja ympäristö, jossa vaihtoehto on toteutettu. Eri viiteryhmien (metsäammattilaiset, pääkaupunkiseudun asukkaat, ympäristönsuojelijat, tutkimusalueiden matkailijat, paikalliset asukkaat sekä metsänomistajat) maisemapreferenssit olivat hyvin samankaltaisia. Kuitenkin ne ryhmät, jotka saavat ainakin osan elannostaan metsästä - metsänomistajat ja metsäammattilaiset - pitivät metsänhakkuita esittävistä kuvista hieman enemmän kuin muut ryhmät. Nämä tulokset tukevat oletusta, että maisemapreferenssit ovat laajalti yhteneväisiä ainakin yhden kansan tai kulttuurin keskuudessa, vaikka myös viiteryhmä saattaa vaikuttaa preferensseihin jonkin verran. Nykyiset metsämaisemanhoito-ohjeet ovat pitkälti samankaltaisia tässä väitöskirjassa havaittujen maisemapreferenssien kanssa. Myöskään tutkittujen vaihtoehtoisten hoitotapojen ekologisen paremmuuden ja niihin kohdistuvien maisemallisten arvostusten välillä ei ollut suurta ristiriitaa. Kuitenkin joitakin eroavaisuuksia oli; esimerkiksi sekä maisemanhoito-ohjeiden että ekologisten hypoteesien mukaan säästöpuut tulisi jättää ryhmiin, kun taas ihmiset pitivät eniten yksittäin jätetyistä puista. Informaatiomalli ja psyko-evolutionaarinen teoria tarjoavat mahdollisia selityksiä uudistushakkuisiin ja pellonmetsitykseen kohdistuville preferensseille, vaikkakaan tutkimuksen tuloksia ei voida täysin selittää näillä teorioilla

Qualitative Preliminary Approach for the Development of a Sensory Vocabulary for Actinidia arguta Fruits

Actinidia arguta fruits (baby kiwi) have recently been introduced and marketed in Italy under the Nergi® brand. The freshness of fruits and the maintenance of their quality after the harvest time influence the perception of taste and the sensory attributes for final acceptance by the consumer. In this work, we propose to use recently introduced sensory methods to create a sensory vocabulary not yet available for the two varieties covered by the brand: cv. Hortgem Rua® and cv. Hortgem Tahi®. The check-all-that-apply (CATA) method was performed with 15 trained tasters of Sata s.r.l. company (Alessandria, Italy) and a set of attributes were defined through a focus group (recruited at DISAFA, University of Turin) with habitual fruit consumers. The results obtained by CATA identified different profiles for the two varieties marketed under the brand, offering the opportunity to better position and communicate the taste characteristics of the product to the consumer

Preference Heterogeneity in Relation to Museum Services

The prevailing trends in the management of European museums underline the importance of additional museum services in fostering and encouraging the optimisation of cultural assets, while facilitating the collection of the necessary resources for conservation. The paper considers the case of the archaeological site of Paestum (Salerno) and presents an analysis of individual preferences in relation to specific policies of cultural heritage management, each characterised by the supply of different museum services. Since the diversity of these services can prompt different individual preferences, the analysis allows for heterogeneity of parameters among individuals.cultural goods; heterogeneous preferences; stated preference data; conjoint analysis; mixed logit;

Implementing Holistic Criticism Model Based On Multicultural Approach In Art Appreciation Subject

The practices in our teaching and learning setting suggests that art appreciation subject at school does not emphasize on exploring visual art forms and relevant critics on them as most teachers only present information about the artwork. Such teaching and learning activity cannot effectively improve students’ understanding, awareness, and sensitivity towards the cultural diversity that Indonesia owns. In response to this issue, the researcher conducts a research and development study to apply holistic criticism model in teaching art appreciation. The research begins with a preliminary study as a need and content analysis that consists of several stages: (1) identifying the difficulties that teachers face in developing art appreciation subject, (2) exploring relevant references, expert’s testimony, and FGD followed by a collaborative work with teachers in the field to decide the conceptual structure to implement holistic criticism model based on multicultural approach in art appreciation. The results show that: (1) the level of difficulty or the problems that hinder the teachers to develop and implement art appreciation subject is quite complex, (2) as an output of the study, the researcher produces a guidebook, a student book, and a worksheet that contain the conceptual structure of holistic criticism model based on multicultural approach. Keywords: holistic approach, multicultural, art appreciation

Attendance and Public Participation in the Performing Arts: A Review of the Empirical Literature

While audience and participation surveys, as well as econometric demand studies, generally confirm that performing arts audiences are relatively elite, there are surprises. Education (despite conflicting causal interpretations) is a stronger determinant than income, but that evidence is more reliable from survey results than from econometric estimation, and arts training is often distinguished from formal education. The arts as luxury goods can only be confirmed by those rare studies controlling for the value of time, and price elasticities are often higher than expected, especially when more disaggregated data are examined. Price inelastic demand is more likely the result of low pricing strategies of non-profit arts managements rather than any inherent result of an acquired taste for the arts, while cross-price elasticity evidence is relatively weak, even within the performing arts. Arts demand cannot adequately be estimated without also considering "life-style" variables, or non-standard socioeconomic factors such as sexual orientation, gender and socialization processes, and even the role of age has been notably complex. Quality of arts performance or organization seems important, but the econometric results are mixed. Habit formation must be distinguished from learning-by-consuming and rational addiction in examining dynamic determinants. Sociologists, psychologists, and marketing specialists, as well as economists, have contributed to this literature, which remains unusually enigmatic despite about forty years of increasingly sophisticated analysis. Working Paper 06-2

The importance of aesthetics on customers' intentions to purchase smartphones

This thesis examines how an aesthetic appreciation of a smartphone influences perceived value and purchase intention. A review of the aesthetics, perceived value and purchase intention literature helped in shaping two key issues: 1. What are the physical attributes of aesthetics? 2. How does aesthetics influence purchase intention? To investigate these questions and drawing on the available literature, a model is developed that helps explain how aesthetic appreciation of an object formed from different dimensions of value perceived by viewing a smartphone with these aesthetic properties, influences customers’ purchase intention. The research design used mixed methods led mainly by a quantitative approach. The first research phase was exploratory, involving a focus group with respondents from different age groups in Australia. Analysis of the transcribed data was used to refine the theoretical framework of this thesis. In the second stage, a survey methodology was employed. Initially, a pilot study was undertaken with 65 respondents from different age groups who were volunteer UWS students and /or employees. Results from the pilot study were used to revise and rephrase measurement items. Following the pilot study, the main study was undertaken by recruiting an online panel of 415 respondents in Australia. Data were analysed and hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling techniques (PLS-SEM). The findings of this research address the central research questions. Firstly, shape, colour, design and touch were found as the four different criteria of aesthetic measurement of a smartphone. The findings for the second research question showed that while aesthetics can have a direct link with purchase intention, it cannot be a strong determinant of purchase intention. In addition, for a growing array of fairly standardised technology products such as smartphones, functional value is no longer the only determinant of purchase intention. Customers no longer rely on functional attributes of a smartphone as a criterion that influences their purchase intention. However, the use of social value as a mediator in the link between aesthetics and purchase intention could lead to purchase intention. Aesthetics could explain more than 60% of the variance in purchase intention. Findings from this study showed that approval from a person’s social network of an aesthetically pleasing object increases the likelihood of purchase intention. Following social value, emotional value was found as the second determinant of purchase intention and a mediator that increases the possibility of intention to purchase an aesthetically pleasing object. The primary contribution arising from this study is the development and testing of a multidimensional concept of aesthetics, which is then used to verify two alternate paths by which aesthetics can influence consumer purchase intention. This finding strengthens the argument that, for a growing array of relatively standardised technology products such as smartphones and tablets, aesthetics has become an important criterion by which consumers evaluate and differentiate between product and service offerings to make purchasing decisions (Jordan, Thomas & McClelland 1996; Kalins 2003; Postrel 2003). The study concludes that aesthetics can impact purchase intention directly, but the effect is stronger when mediated by different dimensions of value customers may perceive by viewing an aesthetically pleasing object. Only a handful of studies (e.g., Swilley 2012; Cox & Cox 2002; Stich 2004; Lam & Mukherjee 2005) have viewed aesthetics as a construct and there is a paucity of research about how aesthetics can influence different components of perceived value and purchase intention for a product with mainly utilitarian attributes. An online panel was used to collect data for this study. This involved the identification and explanation of all steps to ensure the quality of the data gathered. Accordingly, the other contributions of this study are the guidelines for future researchers who might be interested in using an online web-based survey for data collection. The guidelines provide a framework for assuring the validity and reliability of the responses. THESIS RESTRICTED TO ABSTRACT ONLY UNTIL 25/02/202

Altered multisensory temporal integration in obesity

Eating is a multisensory behavior. The act of placing food in the mouth provides us with a variety of sensory information, including gustatory, olfactory, somatosensory, visual, and auditory. Evidence suggests altered eating behavior in obesity. Nonetheless, multisensory integration in obesity has been scantily investigated so far. Starting from this gap in the literature, we seek to provide the first comprehensive investigation of multisensory integration in obesity. Twenty male obese participants and twenty male healthy-weight participants took part in the study aimed at describing the multisensory temporal binding window (TBW). The TBW is defined as the range of stimulus onset asynchrony in which multiple sensory inputs have a high probability of being integrated. To investigate possible multisensory temporal processing deficits in obesity, we investigated performance in two multisensory audiovisual temporal tasks, namely simultaneity judgment and temporal order judgment. Results showed a wider TBW in obese participants as compared to healthy-weight controls. This holds true for both the simultaneity judgment and the temporal order judgment tasks. An explanatory hypothesis would regard the effect of metabolic alterations and low-grade inflammatory state, clinically observed in obesity, on the temporal organization of brain ongoing activity, which one of the neural mechanisms enabling multisensory integration

Aesthetic Sensitivity

[eng] Aesthetic sensitivity is a central idea in the field of empirical aesthetics. The present research contributes a historical-critical review of its origin and development through the history of the discipline, a new theoretical approach aligned with current knowledge, novel methodological tools to investigate this and other relevant psychological constructs, and empirical evidence based on this conception that advances scientific understanding of sensory valuation.[spa] La sensibilidad estética es una idea central en el campo de la estética empírica. La presente investigación aporta una revisión histórico-crítica de su origen y desarrollo a través de la historia de la disciplina, un nuevo enfoque teórico de acuerdo con los conocimientos actuales, novedosas herramientas metodológicas para investigar éste y otros constructos psicológicos relevantes, y evidencia empírica basada en esta concepción que avanza la comprensión científica de la valoración sensorial.[cat] La sensibilitat estètica és una idea central en el camp de l'estètica empírica. La present investigació aporta una revisió històric-crítica del seu origen i desenvolupament a través de la història de la disciplina, un nou enfocament teòric alineat amb els coneixements actuals, noves eines metodològiques per investigar aquest i altres constructes psicològics rellevants, i evidència empírica basada en aquesta concepció que avança la comprensió científica de la valoració sensorial