Organic Food Quality: Can it exist without Measurement?

Abstract - Consumers who purchase organic foods are motivated primarily by the health benefits. What assurances are there that defining organic products based on inputs, methods, and ingredients will meet or exceed consumer expectations if there are no re-quirements to define, measure, and meet product quality standards? The future of the organic industry will depend on understanding and quantifying con-sumer expectations and then defining metrics for assessing organic product quality that satisfies these expectations. After establishing quantifiable product quality targets, the next challenge will be to correlate farming and processing methods so that the product quality criteria and consumer expectations are satis-fied

The KK-theory of amalgamated free products

We prove a long exact sequence in KK-theory for both full and reduced amalgamated free products in the presence of conditional expectations. In the course of the proof, we established the KK-equivalence between the full amalgamated free product of two unital C*-algebras and a newly defined reduced amalgamated free product that is valid even for non GNS-faithful conditional expectations. Our results unify, simplify and generalize all the previous results obtained before by Cuntz, Germain and Thomsen.Comment: V.3, the paper has been splitted into two papers, this is the first part on amalgamated free product

A prescriptive approach to qualify and quantify customer value for value-based requirements engineering

Recently, customer-based product development is becoming a popular paradigm. Customer expectations and needs can be identified and transformed into requirements for product design with the help of various methods and tools. However, in many cases, these models fail to focus on the perceived value that is crucial when customers make the decision of purchasing a product. In this paper, a prescriptive approach to support value-based requirements engineering (RE) is proposed, describing the foundations, procedures and initial applications in the context of RE for commercial aircraft. An integrated set of techniques, such as means-ends analysis, part-whole analysis and multi-attribute utility theory is introduced in order to understand customer values in depth and width. Technically, this enables identifying the implicit value, structuring logically collected statements of customer expectations and performing value modelling and simulation. Additionally, it helps to put in place a system to measure customer satisfaction that is derived from the proposed approach. The approach offers significant potential to develop effective value creation strategies for the development of new product

Direct and mediated impacts of product and process characteristics on consumers’ choice of organic vs. conventional chicken

There is a lack of research into why consumers value process characteristics. In this study, we test the hypothesis that the impact of process characteristics such as organic and free-range on consumers’ choices of food products is at least partly mediated through expected eating quality or taste expectations. In other words, the process characteristics partly function as cues to (eating) quality. Using a traditional metric conjoint approach based on an additive model, four product characteristics (production method, price, size and information about farmer and rearing conditions) were varied in a fractional factorial conjoint design, creating nine profiles of whole chickens. 384 respondents rated the nine different chickens in terms of taste expectations and willingness to buy. Since the nine records for each respondent are not independent, we used linear mixed modelling for the mediation analysis, We find that, as expected, taste expectations are a strong predictor of willingness to buy. As hypothesized, the impact of both product and process characteristics on willingness to buy is at least partly mediated through taste expectations. Hence, the study shows that process characteristics are important for consumers, not only in and off themselves, but partly because consumers make inferences about eating quality from knowledge about such process characteristics

Are Inflation Expectations Rational?

Several recent papers report evidence of an apparent statistical bias in inflation expectations and interpret these findings as overturning the rational expectations hypothesis. In this paper, we investigate the validity of such an interpretation. We present a computational dynamic general equilibrium model capable of generating aggregate behavior similar to the data along several dimensions. By construction, model agents form "rational" expectations. We run a standard regression on equilibrium realizations of inflation and inflation expectations over sample periods corresponding to those tests performed on actual data and find evidence of an apparent bias in inflation expectations. Our experiments suggest that this incorrect inference is largely the product of a small sample problem, exacerbated by short-run learning dynamics in response to infrequent shifts in monetary policy regimes.Regime changes; Learning dynamics; Monte Carlo exp eriments; Sample size.

Consumer expectations of product lifetimes around the world: a review of global research findings and methods

This paper presents the findings of research to identify and evaluate current studies into consumer expectations of product lifetimes across durable goods. Following a literature review, studies were classified using a product categorisation scheme formulated at Nottingham Trent University and a product lifetime expectations typology adapted from Oguchi et al. (2016a) was developed. The results would appear to suggest that consumer expectations of product lifetimes are in decline, and that those in the United Kingdom appear to be lower than those in other parts of the world. However, identifying differences in consumer expectations of product lifetimes is hindered by the different methods employed in studies, as face-to-face interviews, and online, telephone and postal studies all have the potential to produce different results. Three key challenges to furthering research into consumer expectations of product lifetimes were identified: Product coverage, definitions of consumer expectations and sampling strategies. Only if these challenges can be addressed will researchers be able to draw meaningful conclusions on both personal and cultural trends in expected product lifetimes and make a positive contribution to addressing both material and social aspects of the circular economy

Good benefactors managing design expectations

Product design graduates can present themselves as over confident, unrealistic and even arrogant to potential clients. They seem to assume knowledge about their benefactors and have some false expectations of what it means to be a designer. Design courses should provide opportunities for students to explore their own background and experience. They need to develop an understanding the importance of social networks and be able to work with a wider range of organizations. It is vital that they understand the value of intellectual property and its central role in design exchange today. There is more than one design career route open to them and they must be able to change and adapt and be ready to take up opportunities. This paper is written from the viewpoint of a design historian and design manager, who has a fractional post teaching Contextual Studies on a Product Design course, at The University of Northampton, whilst running a specialist design consultancy. Those teaching design should learn to be good benefactors and manage their undergraduates' expectations

"Silver" product design: Product innovation for older people

Aging populations challenge companies across different countries and industries to respond to the changing needs, demands and expectations of their growing shares of older customers. This opens room for improving or developing innovations - products as well as services - that correspond to the diverse expectations. New product development for older customers or 'Silver' product design is one way to approach the 'silver' market - without explicitly excluding younger customers. Research in this field is still in its infancy. Silver product design focuses on individual autonomy, representing an elementary aspect of good life, disappearing in a more or less continuous manner over the life cycle of a human being. Offering solutions that will allow people to maintain or recover autonomy and to use products and services in an independent manner therefore seems to be a promising avenue for companies innovating across different industries. The general concept of autonomy can be perceived as a boundary-spanning argument and a common denominator for starting development initiatives leading to innovations targeting the silver market. Cross-case analysis based on four different product innovations addressing typical needs of older people are used to present how firms in different industrial contexts and user-settings address such needs, which have their roots in a need to stay autonomous and independent. Technological, marketing and strategy-related observations as well as communalities and differences of the cases are being discussed and very first implications for managing the front end of silver product development sketched. --Demographic change,aging,older users,silver market,innovation management,silver product design,individual autonomy

Investigating Rare Events by Transition Interface Sampling

We briefly review simulation schemes for the investigation of rare transitions and we resume the recently introduced Transition Interface Sampling, a method in which the computation of rate constants is recast into the computation of fluxes through interfaces dividing the reactant and product state.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, contributed paper to the proceedings of NEXT 2003, Second Sardinian International Conference on News and Expectations in Thermostatistics, 21-28 Sep 2003, Cagliari (Italy