The Impact of Pork Advertising on US Meat Demand in the Presence of Competing Beef Advertising and Food Safety Events

We examine the effects of domestic advertising and promotion expenditures on meat demand, extending previous efforts in several areas, including the use of more recent data, employing a complete demand system and simultaneously measuring the impacts of generic pork and beef advertising and food safety information on the demand for beef, pork, and poultry. Using the Generalized Almost Ideal Demand System (GAIDS), own- and cross- beef and pork advertising and own- and cross- beef, pork, and poultry food safety effects are measured jointly and consistently. To allow for a more complex dynamic response of advertising and food safety effects, the flexible distributed lag technique of Mitchell and Speaker (1986) is employed. The coefficients on pork advertising in the pork and poultry equations are highly significant. The coefficients on beef advertising are only statistically significantly different from zero in the poultry equation indicating the primary impact from these efforts is a cross-commodity effect. To investigate the economic significance of these effects, elasticities for price, expenditure, food safety and advertising are calculated and compared. Consistent with previous work we find the impacts of advertising and food safety effects to be economically small compared with price and expenditure effects.food safety, Generalized Almost Ideal Demand System, generic advertising, meat demand, polynomial inverse lag, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Understanding the U.S. Generic Advertising System and its Role in Information Management among Commodities and Food Systems

 Information is essential to growing demand and maintaining efficiency throughout the supply chain for any commodity. The U.S. model for facilitating producers and first handlers having a proactive role in the flow of information about their products is through commodity checkoff programs. These industry administrated programs fund generic advertising and promotions usually through a mandatory assessment. Success of any of these programs depend on the administrative structure, the message, the ability to judge performance, and the overall equity in sharing in the program created benefits

When Does Retargeting Work? Information Specificity in Online Advertising

Firms can now offer personalized recommendations to consumers who return to their website, using consumers' previous browsing history on that website. In addition, online advertising has greatly improved in its use of external browsing data to target Internet ads. Dynamic retargeting integrates these two advances by using information from the browsing history on the firm's website to improve advertising content on external websites. When surfing the Internet, consumers who previously viewed products on the firm's website are shown ads with images of those same products. To examine whether this is more effective than simply showing generic brand ads, the authors use data from a field experiment conducted by an online travel firm. Surprisingly, the data suggest that dynamic retargeted ads are, on average, less effective than their generic equivalents. However, when consumers exhibit browsing behavior that suggests their product preferences have evolved (e.g., visiting review websites), dynamic retargeted ads no longer underperform. One explanation for this finding is that when consumers begin a product search, their preferences are initially construed at a high level. As a result, they respond best to higher-level product information. Only when they have narrowly construed preferences do they respond positively to ads that display detailed product information. This finding suggests that in evaluating how best to reach consumers through ads, managers should be aware of the multistage nature of consumers' decision processes and vary advertising content along these stages.London Business School. Centre for MarketingNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (CAREER Award 1053398

A Genre-Based Analysis of Vietnam Tourist Attraction Brochures with Pedagogical Purposes

Tourism brochure is one of the most popular advertising channels in the tourism industry and an inevitable task of tourism staff’s work. In learning and teaching English for tourism, tourism brochures can be used as teaching materials and a way of exposing students to authentic texts.  In the new technology era, digital brochures play a vital role in tourism promotion. Therefore, this study aimed to explore digital attraction brochures’ generic structure for contributing to brochure writing and implications in English for tourism. In this research, 24 digital Vietnamese attraction brochures of highly reputed company websites in Vietnam were selected by purposive sampling for analysis based on Bhatia’s (2004) move-structural analysis. The findings were figured out with the generic structural model of the brochures, which comprised six moves, including (1) Captivating Titles, (2) Targeting Potential Tourists, (3) Attractions Information, (4) Establishing Credentials, (5) Directive Information, and (6) Soliciting Responses. The strategies for designing tourism brochures included four communicative purposes: attention getting, information supplying, persuasive messaging, and reaction reminding. Through the research findings, pedagogical implications were finally recommended as an English for tourism instruction

The Complexities of On-Line Mutual Fund Advertising: A Summary of the Relevant Regulations

As the investment marketplace advances with current technology, paper-based advertising has quickly been supplemented by on-line advertising. Interestingly, both the Securities Exchange Commission and the National Association of Securities Dealers are treating this new medium similarly to the old-fashioned paper-based medium. This iBrief discusses and summarizes the current regulations surrounding one emerging form of on-line advertising - that of mutual funds. This discussion is intended to form a solid foundation from which an interested party may delve further into this emerging area of e-commerce

An Ethical Analysis of the Role of Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising in the Health Care Process

Overview: A prominent debate that is currently sweeping the field of health care is the practice of direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertising by pharmaceutical companies. Two primary perspectives on the issue, those in favor of the advertising and those who oppose the advertising, continually clash over the implications that DTC advertising has on the health care process. Taking into consideration the various arguments presented from each of the competing viewpoints, it is evident that direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising should hold a place in society. DTC pharmaceutical advertising (DTCPA) can be a crucial factor in benefiting the health care process, and can positively influence and alter how health care is perceived. Accordingly, this paper will examine (1) background information and the history of DTC prescription drug advertising, (2) common arguments presented for and against DTC advertising, and how DTCPA is an ethical dilemma, and lastly (3) how an ethical analysis of the practice can demonstrate why DTC pharmaceutical advertising is an important part of the health care process. Author\u27s Reflection: My name is Brian Verbickas and I am currently a sophomore here at St. John Fisher College. I am a chemistry major on a pre-pharmacy track, and have just recently been accepted into the Wegmans School of Pharmacy class of 2020. I will be starting Pharmacy school in fall of 2016. Overall, I found the writing process to be rather rewarding. Personally, the most rewarding aspect of the writing process was finally being able to see a semester’s worth of work come together to develop my final paper. Of course, however, there were several challenges I encountered along the way. For me, a challenging aspect of the writing process was finding a way to accept arguments that opposed my own opinions, so that I could incorporate them into my paper to strengthen my thesis. Until this paper, I had never written a piece that so heavily considered the opposing arguments. Even more challenging than simply including the naysayer arguments was defending my thesis against each specific piece of opposition. By addressing and providing a potential solution to some of the common arguments against my opinions, I was able support my thesis to an even greater extent. It is safe to say that I am now much more confident in my writing abilities after completing the 199 course. I now have a better understanding of the writing process as a whole, and have learned what it takes to create a solid research paper. The majority of controversial topics are not simply black and white, rather they are multi-dimensional, meaning there are more than two ways to view it. By addressing an ethical issue in my paper, I have also learned to appreciate every side to a disagreement in order to develop my own opinions regarding the topic. The 199 experience will surely have a lasting impact on my writing for years to come

Controlling Costs and Increasing Access to Prescription Drugs: State and Federal Solutions

Spending on health care in the United States continues to increase rapidly, consuming a greater share of the total economy each year. Over the past decade, prescription drug spending has been the fastest growing component of health care expenditures both nationwide and in Washington state. The federal government, state governments, individuals and employers all pay for prescription drugs, and everyone is affected by rising costs. While it is true that overall drug prices have gone up, and in many cases at more than triple the rate of inflation, price increases alone do not account for the drastic increase in spending on pharmaceuticals. The three biggest cost drivers, in order, are:1) the average person fills more prescriptions than ever before (increased utilization),2) new classes of drugs arrive on the market in high demand and at high prices, and3) pharmaceutical companies hike prices on existing drugs. Double-digit increases in total prescription drug costs create two interrelated problems. First, higher prices mean less access for uninsured individuals, and often a difficult choice for the poor: to treat or eat? Second, increased drug spending forces state governments to face a similar choice: to continue funding drug coverage for seniors, the disabled and others at escalating prices and pay for it by cutting teacher salaries, raising taxes, and underfunding firehouses, or to roll back drug benefits and eligibility for already vulnerable groups? While Congress has thus far failed to pass Medicare prescription drug or generic drug legislation, and the executive branch has taken a hands-off approach, the states have taken the lead in designing innovative policies to reduce manufacturer prices and expand access to necessary drugs. Legislation in Washington state, debated in 2002 and expected to be reintroduced in 2003, would allow the state to evaluate the benefits and costs of various and competing prescription drugs, negotiate price discounts for the best-value drugs, and pass the savings on to those who lack prescription drug coverage. Allowing the state to shop smarter is a sensible, near-term way for Washington to address the related problems of access and cost. Furthermore, an emerging consensus among states may drive more fundamental policy changes at the federal level

A systemic approach to automatic metadata extraction from multimedia content

There is a need for automatic processing and extracting of meaningful metadata from multimedia information, especially in the audiovisual industry. This higher level information is used in a variety of practices, such as enriching multimedia content with external links, clickable objects and useful related information in general. This paper presents a system for efficient multimedia content analysis and automatic annotation within a multimedia processing and publishing framework. This system is comprised of three modules: the first provides detection of faces and recognition of known persons; the second provides generic object detection, based on a deep convolutional neural network topology; the third provides automated location estimation and landmark recognition based on state-of-the-art technologies. The results are exported in meaningful metadata that can be utilized in various ways. The system has been successfully tested in the framework of the EC Horizon 2020 Mecanex project, targeting advertising and production markets