Interdependent Consumer Choice and the Oval of Cassini

This paper follows a theory of Nicosia and Hibshoosh regarding the choice by social consumer unit who is facing conflicting institutional norms. The paper presents a duo-centric consumer residential choice model with special disutility function. The properties of the Oval of Cassini play a key role in the parstmonious modeling of this phenomenon and in the analysis. Specifically, we develop a residential consumer choice model where the consumer utility is affected by conflicted demands for activities of work and non-work institutions. The consumer unit is simultaneously attracted to two predetermined centers of work and non-work, while making its residence choice. We trace the consequences of these assumptions for optimal consumer choice of residential location, and for the size and price of property, level of a composite good, the level of identifies a preference for setting at the edges of a region along its main corridor in a two dimensional region. It also indicates a pattern of specifically directed curved regional growth in the periphery, with lesser development in the region\u27s center

Advertising Budget And Sales Paths Under The Dynamics Of The Student Work Control Problem And Regularity Requirements

Consider a firm promoting a product in a fast expanding industry by using advertising as its single promotional tool. The firm\u27s objective is to minimize the overall cost of advertising necessary for reaching certain target sales of the product by the end of a given planning period. We adopt the Student Work Control problem (SWC) framework for modeling this marketing context, in general, and the advertising-sales response function, in particular. We compare the SWC\u27s optimal control budgeting principle with the solutions of equally effective, alternative advertising budgeting principles, which require strong regularity conditions on the path of either the advertising outlays or sales. In contrast to the other principles, SWC\u27s optimal sales path is highly convex to the point that the firm may deliberately accept decreasing sales at the earliest periods. However, its optimal solution requires the firm to advertise in every period and to continue to accelerate its advertising outlays. The resulting Advertising Sales Response function, too, may therefore have a convex section with declining sales, a finding contributing to an optimization-driven explanation of threshold in advertising effect on sale

A Planning Template for Nonwork Travel and Transit Oriented Development, MTI Report 01-12

The Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San José State University assigned a project team to design a planning template for transit-oriented development (TOD) that incorporates an understanding of nonwork travel, that is, trips for shopping, eating out, and engaging in recreational and cultural activities. Nonwork trips are growing in signifigance and now account for four of every five trips. At the same time, TOD has become a popular planning response to the impacts of metropolitan growth. Some planners believe that TOD will induce more pedestrian and transit trips and will reduce the average length and frequency of household auto travel. This effect is assumed to result from improved accessibility to employment and nonwork venues located in compact, mixed-use centers. Planning professionals in many MPOs also suggest that if multiple centers are linked by high quality transit, such as light or heavy rail, access is enabled to the broad range of nonwork activities. The project arrived at these essential findings: (1) Venues for nonwork activities are very numerous and geographically dispersed. 2) The spatial environment for nonwork activities is the result of growing prosperity, technical innovation, and a dynamic, competitive marketplace. (3) The consumer marketplace will provide many more places to go than mass transit can cost-effectively serve. (4) Current metropolitan planning methods and modeling tools focus on the work trip and do not adequately account for the complexity of nonwork trips and their linkage to work trips. These findings support the need for a new regional planning process to complement current methods. One recommended approach is that metropolitan communities establish a Nonwork Travel Improvement Planning Process using a multidisciplinary expert advisory group interacting with a core, Internet-enabled, professional transportation planning staff. An iterative interaction across varied but relevant skill sets could be achieved through a Backcasting Delphi process. The focus of the interaction would be on understanding the ramifications of consumer and retail industry behavior for TOD and other new transportation strategies, and then assessing the available strategies for cost-effectiveness in reducing the impacts of growth and automobility in a complex and uncertain metropolitan market

Price Discrimination by Coupons Restriction

In this paper we show how the use of a restricted number of coupons in the presence of different types of customers is an effective means of implementing a price discriminating policy. Hence, firm profits can be increased even when traditional price discrimination is forbidden.Price Discrimination, Coupons, Loyal Customers, Deal Prones,