The effects of regulatory focus and mixed valence imagery and analytical attributes on product decisions

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of regulatory focus (promotion vs prevention) and mixed valence attributes (positive imagery and negative analytical vs negative imagery and positive analytical) on consumers’ evaluation and purchase intention for a product. Design/methodology/approach A pre-test followed by a single between subject’s experiment was conducted to test the major hypotheses in the study. Findings Results show that promotion (prevention) focus prefers the product when it is described in terms of positive imagery but negative analytical (positive analytical but negative imagery) attributes in terms of both evaluation and purchase intention. Research limitations/implications Future research may validate and extend the current findings with other product or service categories, and study the underlying processes that guide decision making. Practical implications Findings from this study will help managers devise a range of marketing strategies in the areas of advertising, segmentation and product positioning. Originality/value The current research is novel as it addresses lack of research that engages imagery and analytical attributes with different valences, and fills in a gap as to how regulatory focus will rely on imagery (analytical) attributes with different valences while making product decisions. </jats:sec

The impact of regulatory focus and word of mouth valence on search and experience attribute evaluation

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the direct and interactive effects of regulatory focus (promotion versus prevention), attribute type (search versus experience) and word of mouth valence (positive versus negative) on consumption decision for a service and a product. Design/methodology/approach Three empirical studies (two laboratories and a field experiment) using “university” and “mobile phone” as the research setting were used to test the key hypotheses. Findings Promotion (prevention)-focused subjects preferred experience (search) attributes over their counterparts while making consumption decision. This preference was further reinforced for both promotion and prevention-focused people under positive word of mouth. Under negative word of mouth, in comparison to their counterparts, promotion-focused people still retained their preference for experience attributes, whereas prevention-focused subjects reversed their preference and maintained status quo. Research limitations/implications Future research may validate and extend authors’ findings by looking into the underlying process or studying additional word of mouth variables that may moderate the current findings. Practical implications The findings will help managers devise a range of marketing strategies in the areas of advertising and product positioning, especially for products/services that are showcased in terms of experience and search attributes. Originality/value The current research is novel as no prior research has proposed and tested the two-way interaction between regulatory focus and search/experience attributes, or its further moderation by word of mouth valence. </jats:sec

INNOVATION UNDER THE THREAT OF DIRECT FOREIGN INVESTMENT

We examine the implication of direct and indirect foreign competition on domestic innovation decision. In most of the existing theoretical analyses the foreign firms are assumed to enter the domestic-country market as an exporter and thus are subject to a tariff duty imposed by the local government. We consider a broader setting where the foreign firm also has the option of setting up a production unit in the domestic country to supply output to the domestic country. This enables it to avoid the tariff that it faces due to export. Once we allow for such a strategy option for the foreign firm, competition becomes more direct and intense since tariffs no longer discount for the technological inferiority of home firms. We show that innovation by the home firm will be discouraged at high tariffs under the threat of DFI. Again at low tariff rates exports by the foreign firm make market competition more intense and reduce the incentive for innovation. Hence the home firm always (never) innovates at low (high) R&D cost whatever be the tariff rate. For intermediate R&D cost the home firm innovates if the foreign firm opts for exports.Innovation, Tariff, Foreign Direct Investment, Foreign Competition

Namasudra Literature and the Politics of Caste in West Bengal

The paper examines the popular claim that West Bengal politics is ‘unique’ due to an absence of caste-based assertions in the post-colonial period. By taking Namasudra literature as the primary site, the paper argues that since the late twentieth century there is numerous literature written by low caste people in West Bengal on the issue of caste. These writings have created a literate Dalit public sphere operating at the grassroots level and mainly outside the framework of governmental party politics. One of the dominant themes of Namasudra literature is the visions of anti-caste utopia. By analysing a Namasudra writer and activist Manindranath Biswas’s texts Harichand Tattwamrita, the paper argues that Dalit’s writings on history don’t follow a linear or a mythical structure; rather, there is a political exigency for history, in which utopic past/future is often invoked through a logic of circularity and yet redemptive fulfilment of time

Point process convergence for branching random walks with regularly varying steps

We consider the limiting behaviour of the point processes associated with a branching random walk with supercritical branching mechanism and balanced regularly varying step size. Assuming that the underlying branching process satisfies Kesten-Stigum condition, it is shown that the point process sequence of properly scaled displacements coming from the n-th generation converges weakly to a Cox cluster process. In particular, we establish that a conjecture of Brunet and Derrida (2011) remains valid in this setup, investigate various other issues mentioned in their paper and recover the main result of Durrett (1983) in our framework.Comment: 22 pages, 2 figures, To appear in Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincar\'e (B) Probabilit\'es et Statistiques, Proof of Lemma 3.4 differs from previous versio

Recrystallization Behavior of Commercial Purity Aluminium Alloys

Recrystallization behavior of commercial purity aluminium alloys has been explained elaborately with different steps, process parameters and microstructural examination