Establishing the internet channel : short-term pain but long-term gain ?.

The emergence of the Internet has pushed many established companies to explore this radically new distribution channel. Like all market discontinuities, the Internet creates opportunities as well as threats - it can be performance-enhancing as readily as it can be performance-destroying. One industry where this certainly holds is the newspaper industry, where several players have rushed to supplement their traditional channels with an Internet channel, in spite of a lingering fear of cannibalizing their existing business. Making use of event-study methodology, we assess the net impact of setting up an additional Internet channel on a firm's stock market return, a measure of the change in expected future cash flows. We find that, on average, Internet channel investments are positive net-present-value investments: the present value of the expected cash inflows is greater than the present value of the anticipated cash outflows. We then identify firm, introduction-strategy, and marketplace characteristics that influence the direction and magnitude of the stock-market reaction. More specifically, our results indicate that powerful firms with fewer direct channels achieve greater gains in financial performance than less powerful firms with a broader direct channel offering. In terms of introduction timing, early followers have a competitive advantage vis-à-vis both innovators and later followers. We also find that firms which provide additional advertising support to their Internet channel introduction achieve greater financial gains. Finally, in terms of marketplace characteristics, firms operating in fast-growing Internet environments benefit more than players operating in less munificent markets.Time series;

Stimulating referral behavior may backfire for men: The effect of referral failure on susceptibility to persuasion.

We present the referral-backfire effect, reflecting the phenomenon that consumers become less susceptible to persuasive attempts when they experienced referral failure. In two lab studies and one field study, we provide evidence for the effect and for the hypothesis that the effect occurs because referral failure is interpreted as a sign that the sender's social relations are threatened.Claim; Cognitive; Control; Control theory; Demand; Effects; Ego depletion; Implications; Model; Performance; Research; Self-control; Theory; Behavior; Studies; Field; Field study; Sign;

Optimal policy design for the sugar tax

Healthy nutrition promotions and regulations have long been regarded as a tool for increasing social welfare. One of the avenues taken in the past decade is sugar consumption regulation by introducing a sugar tax. Such a tax increases the price of extensive sugar containment in products such as soft drinks. In this article we consider a typical problem of optimal regulatory policy design, where the task is to determine the sugar tax rate maximizing the social welfare. We model the problem as a sequential game represented by the three-level mathematical program. On the upper level, the government decides upon the tax rate. On the middle level, producers decide on the product pricing. On the lower level, consumers decide upon their preferences towards the products. While the general problem is computationally intractable, the problem with a few product types is polynomially solvable, even for an arbitrary number of heterogeneous consumers. This paper presents a simple, intuitive and easily implementable framework for computing optimal sugar tax in a market with a few products. This resembles the reality as the soft drinks, for instance, are typically categorized in either regular or no-sugar drinks, e.g. Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Zero. We illustrate the algorithm using an example based on the real data and draw conclusions for a specific local market

Self-control performance enhances self-control performance at similar tasks.

In this paper we claim that the well-established reduction in self-control performance following prior exertion of self-control (the so-called ego depletion effect) is a consequence of people's adaptation to situational demands. Consistent with this claim that follows from cognitive control theory, we show that (1) self-control performance improves during tasks that are typically used as resource depletion tasks and that (2) typical depletion effects occur only when the nature of the response conflicts in the two subsequent tasks is different. When the nature of the response conflicts in the two subsequent tasks is similar, we found that exerting self-control improves subsequent self-control performance. Implications for the self-control strength model are drawn and avenues for future research are sketched.Claim; Cognitive; Control; Control theory; Demand; Effects; Ego depletion; Implications; Model; Performance; Research; Self-control; Theory;

The Exchange Component of IIASA's Food and Agriculture Model for the European Economic Community

Understanding the nature and dimensions of the world food problem and the policies available to alleviate it has been the focal point of IIASA's Food and Agriculture Program (FAP) since it began in 1977. National food systems are highly interdependent, and yet the major policy options exist at the national level. Therefore, to explore these options, it is necessary both to develop policy models for national economies and to link them together by trade and capital transfers. Over the years FAP has, with the help of a network of collaborating institutions, developed and linked national policy models of twenty countries, which together account for nearly 80 percent of important agricultural attributes such as area, production, population, exports, imports and so on. The remaining countries are represented by 14 somewhat simpler models of groups of countries. The European Community (EC) is a major actor on the world market. An aggregate food and agriculture model of the EC, in which the EC is treated as one nation has been developed by the FAP, as part of the IIASA/FAP basic linked system. In addition, development of a detailed model of the EC, in which the member nations of the EC are represented by separate models which interact among themselves within the framework of the common agricultural policy (CAP) of the EC, was initiated in 1978. This was begun in collaboration with the University of Goettingen, which received a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation. The work on model development was transferred to IIASA in 1982, where it continued until the end of 1984, under a grant from the Centre for World Food Studies (CWFS) of the Netherlands. In this paper, which is one of a series of papers reporting the work on the development of the detailed EC model, Erik Geyskens describes the exchange component of the model

When temptation hits you : the influence of weak versus strong food temptations.

In daily life, people are often exposed to food temptations, such as ads for chocolate or friends offering cookies. This article examines how consumers respond to such food temptations. We investigate whether food temptations, differing in strength (weak vs. strong), lead consumers to eat more or rather help them in exerting self-control. The results of three experiments suggest that weak food temptations activate food-related thoughts, and lead to overconsumption. Strong food temptations, on the other hand, inhibit this desire to eat, and help consumers to control their food-intake.Research; Self-control;

The backdoor to overconsumption: the effect of associating 'light' food with health.

Marketers present compromise food products (e.g. light chips) as a way to reduce consumers' conflict between the short-term desire of wanting a snack and the long-term goal of a healthy body. Policy makers welcome compromise products as a way to fight the obesity epidemic. Compromise products are typically associated with health. Two experiments and a survey were conducted to explore the effects of health references on the consumed amount of compromise products. Health references appear to increase consumption of compromise products for consumers with relatively weak food restriction goals, such as dietary restrained young women and dietary unrestrained older women. This suggests that associating compromise products with health messages may enhance rather than solve the obesity problem.Cognitive load; Consumption; Disinhibition; Effects; Food consumption; Health goals;