The impact of sales promotions on store performance: a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) approach.

The paper analyses the impact of sales promotions on store performance, in the short and long term, from the retailer’s point of view. Relationships among promoted and regular sales in the hypermarkets of a large-scale retail chain of national importance, are investigated by means of a structural vector autoregressive model (SVAR). Statistically significant effects of sales promotions in the heavy household section on store sales are found in the short-run; these promotions produce additional sales and thus act as an attractive factor. Promotions in textile category, on the contrary, produce an immediate negative effect on net sales. In the long-run, negative statistically significant effects on regular sales are detected when continuative promotions are implemented within perishables’ category.promotional effectiveness, retail promotions, structural VAR, short and long-term effects.

The impact of sales promotions on store performance: a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) approach

The present paper analyses the impact of sales promotions on store performance, in the short and long term, from the retailer’s point of view. Relationships among promoted and regular sales in the hypermarkets of a large-scale retail chain of national importance, are investigated by means of a structural vector autoregressive model (SVAR). Statistically significant effects of sales promotions in the heavy household section on store sales are found in the short-run; these promotions produce additional sales and thus act as an attractive factor. Promotions in textile category, on the contrary, produce an immediate negative effect on net sales. In the long-run, negative statistically significant effects on regular sales are detected when continuative promotions are implemented within perishables’ category

The effects of marketing activities on fast moving consumer good purchases : the case of yoghurt Italian market.

This paper examines whether sales promotions effectiveness depends upon the consumer’s brand loyalty and her buying behaviour and whether consumer’s behavioural characteristics in term of purchase frequency and level affect the response to promotional activities and moderate the effect of brand loyalty during the consumer choice process. Different specifications for the utility function, exploiting information on selling price, promotional activities such as displays usage, ad features in the store, 3x2 and discount, and differently brand loyalty measures have been estimated into a discrete choice framework, that is into the rational brand choice paradigm, paying attention to their effects on individuals’ probabilities to choose the specific brand during each purchase occasion. The application is run on a ACNielsen dataset of Italian households consumer panel, observed to buy at least two yoghurt packages during a year, matched to store panel data with respect to quantities, prices and promotions.promotional effectiveness, brand loyalty, purchase volume, purchase frequency, random utility model, multinomial logit,

An analysis of the role of liking on the memorial response to advertising

After the publication of the results of the Advertising Research Foundation’s Copy Research Validity Project, ad liking has been extensively used as copy test predictor of campaign’s performance. Less favourable findings have been recently presented on the basis of its delayed effects. This paper addresses the question of carryover effects of ad liking on the recall, jointly modelling the patterns of recall, ad pressure and ad liking, by means of the specification of a vector autoregressive model with GRPs acting as exogenous variable. The approach is innovative since literature has mainly investigated until now only the simultaneous relationship between advertising, recall and liking. The analysis is carried out for the markets of small automobiles, deodorants and shampoos. Main empirical findings for the analysed categories highlight that: 1) carryover effects of ad liking on the recall measures may be detected but not systematically, and 2) the ad liking role of ad likeability on memorial responses varies among product categories. Moreover 3) a further finding shows that, whereas positive influences are thoroughly retrievable (in the small car category), ad likeability influences more advertising than brand awareness and more total than unaided awareness.Advertising effectiveness; Ad Liking; Recall; VARX models;

Analysis of european stock returns: evidence of a new risk factor

Due to increasing importance of industry diversification we analyse the sector risk structure of European stock markets. The presence of a new factor correlated to the new economy statistically explains returns variability in recent years.

Estimating a stochastic volatility model for DAX-Index options

The paper examines alternative strategies for pricing and hedging options on German DAX-index. To this purpose an affine stochastic volatility model is estimated directly on objective probability system through a three step approach. Errors obtained by the implementation of the stochastic volatility model and Black and Scholes with different historical and implied volatility measures are compared and the performance is evaluated in terms of out-of-sample pricing and hedging. The results for DAX-index options market support the estimation on the affine stochastic volatility model in pricing as well as in hedging procedures.

A Comparison of forecasting Volatility startegies into ARCH Class throughPricing

Daily data on the German market index return are used to consider multiple issues in a forecasting comparison of ARCH-type specifications. first, attention is paid to the impact of different sample sizez, different horizons and fitting of historical versus implied data. Secondly, the issue of volatility transmission is addressed by modelling French and Germany market indexes into simultaneous conditionally heteroskedasticity framework. Errors obtained by updating the Black and Scholes formula with the different volatility forecasts are compared. The findings support, if no implied volatility is available, the use of the simplest GARCH specification estimated on short recent sample.

The effects of marketing activities on fast moving consumer good purchases: the case of yoghurt Italian market

This paper examines whether sales promotions effectiveness depends upon the consumer’s brand loyalty and her buying behaviour and whether consumer’s behavioural characteristics in term of purchase frequency and level affect the response to promotional activities and moderate the effect of brand loyalty during the consumer choice process. Different specifications for the utility function, exploiting information on selling price, promotional activities such as displays usage, ad features in the store, 3x2 and discount, and differently brand loyalty measures have been estimated into a discrete choice framework, that is into the rational brand choice paradigm, paying attention to their effects on individuals’ probabilities to choose the specific brand during each purchase occasion. The application is run on a ACNielsen dataset of Italian households consumer panel, observed to buy at least two yoghurt packages during a year, matched to store panel data with respect to quantities, prices and promotions

Rapporto sul mercato del lavoro della provincia Bologna : anno 2009

The Report examines the labor market dynamics of the Province of Bologna during 2009, highlighting weaknesses and deepening the structural features of the labor system. The study is developed by integrating information drawn by the many available statistical sources which describe different aspects of provincial economy with the elaboration of the proprietary data extracted by the databases SILER (Labour informative system of Emilia-Romagna) and CIP (Centres for the Employment) Il Rapporto esamina l’andamento del mercato del lavoro della provincia di Bologna nel corso dell’anno 2009, segnalando le debolezze registrate e approfondendo le caratteristiche sistemiche. La analisi è svolta integrando le numerose fonti statistiche disponibili che descrivono i differenti aspetti dell’economia provinciale con l’elaborazione dei dati di fonte provinciale tratti dal database del Sistema Informativo del Lavoro dell’Emilia-Romagna (SILER) e dei Servizi dei Centri per l’Impiego (CIP).mercato del lavoro; crisi economica; provincia di Bologna; lavoro temporaneo labour market; economic crisis; province of Bologna; temporary job

Estimating accruals models in Europe: industry-based approaches versus a data-driven approach

Accruals models have been estimated using a variety of approaches, but the industry-based cross-sectional approach currently seems to be the standard method. This estimation approach cannot be easily used in the vast majority of European countries where several industry groups do not have sufficient yearly observations. Using data from France, Germany, Italy and the UK, we artificially induce earnings manipulations to investigate how the ability to detect those manipulations through accruals models is affected by the use of different industry classifications. Moreover, we propose an alternative estimation approach based on a data-driven statistical procedure that provides an optimal choice of estimation samples. Our analyses show that enlarging the industry classification and/or pooling observations across years reduces the probability of discovering earnings manipulations but allows for the estimation of abnormal accruals (AA) for more firms. The data-driven approach, however, in most cases outperforms the industry-based estimation approaches without sample attrition. This result suggests that there is still ample room for improving the accruals model estimation process for capital markets of European countries. Furthermore, the analysis documents which accruals model outperforms the others in each of the four countries and the probabilities to detect earning management in a high variety of circumstances