nep-mkt New Economics Papers
on Marketing
Issue of 2015‒02‒05
six papers chosen by
João Carlos Correia Leitão
Universidade da Beira Interior

  1. Consumer search: evidence from path-tracking data By Fabio Pinna; Stephan Seiler
  2. GlobaliFusion, The First Worldwide, Holistic, Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) and Big Data Aggregation Approach to Social Media Marketing By Greg Sand; Leonidas Tsitouras; George Dimitrakopoulos; Vassilis Chatzigiannakis
  3. Video killed the radio star? Online music videos and digital music sales By Tobias Kretschmer; Christian Peukert
  4. “Sustainability” a semi-globalisable concept for international food marketing - Consumer expectations regarding sustainable food – An explorative survey in industrialised and emerging countries By von Meyer-Höfer, Marie; Spiller, Achim
  5. Why people drink shampoo? Food imitating products are fooling brains and endangering consumers for marketing purposes By Frédéric Basso; Philippe Robert-Demontrond; Maryvonne Hayek; Jean-Luc Anton; Bruno Nazarian; Muriel Roth; Olivier Oullier
  6. A quantitative analysis of the used-car market By Alessandro Gavazza; Alessandro Lizzeri; Nikita Roketskiy

  1. By: Fabio Pinna; Stephan Seiler
    Abstract: We estimate the effect of consumer search on the price of the purchased product in a physical store environment. We implement the analysis using a unique data set obtained from radio frequency identification tags, which are attached to supermarket shopping carts. This technology allows us to record consumers' purchases as well as the time they spent in front of the shelf when contemplating which product to buy, giving us a direct measure of search effort. Controlling for a host of confounding factors, we estimate that an additional minute spent searching lowers price paid by $2.10 which represents 8 percent of average trip-level expenditure.
    Keywords: Consumer search; in-store marketing; path data
    JEL: D12 D83 L11 L15
    Date: 2014–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:60447&r=mkt
  2. By: Greg Sand (Molloy College, USA); Leonidas Tsitouras (GlobaliFusion, USA); George Dimitrakopoulos (GlobaliFusion, USA); Vassilis Chatzigiannakis (GlobaliFusion, USA)
    Abstract: The internet and Social Media have been playing a vital role in almost everyone’s communication and interactions. The same holds true for a company’s two-way communication with its consumers. This tremendous flow of information can drastically increase any company’s exposure to its consumers and shoppers. Consequently, it can decisively affect consumers’ opinion about products and services. Molloy College in Rockville Centre, New York is the home of GiF, the first worldwide, holistic ICT-based approach to managing the Big Data issue in Social Media Marketing. GlobaliFusion (GiF) aims at bringing together entrepreneurs and companies of all sizes with their consumers by aggregating insights from Social Media and online publications in order to translate them into return-on-investment (ROI) positive marketing strategies and to accelerate their growth, applying technologically innovative and efficient marketing practices. Over the last five years there has been a tremendous shift of investments by marketing departments of major corporations, focusing on Social Media and digital marketing solutions versus traditional media. Despite the abundance of Social Media marketing solutions, there is no concrete framework on how to actually listen to people interacting in Social Media and to use these insights to perform and monitor Integrated Marketing campaigns. Furthermore, monitoring Social Media campaigns’ impact on public opinion and decisions through Social Media channels, and assisting companies accelerate their growth accordingly with novel integrated tools and strategies has been an unexplored field. GiF is striving to be established as the global leading platform for increasing the intelligence of companies through social media management and through a group of innovative ICT-based solutions for realizing ROI positive business strategies and tactics.
    Keywords: Social Media Marketing, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Big Data, Opinion Mining (also known as Sentiment Classification), Augmented Reality (AR).
    JEL: M31
    Date: 2015–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pes:wpaper:2015:no2&r=mkt
  3. By: Tobias Kretschmer; Christian Peukert
    Abstract: Sampling poses an interesting problem in markets with experience goods. Free samples reveal product quality and help consumers to make informed purchase decisions (promotional effect). However, sampling may also induce consumers to substitute purchases with free consumption (displacement effect). We study this trade-o_ in the market for digital music where consumers can sample the quality of songs by watching free music videos online. Identification comes from a natural experiment in Germany, where virtually all videos that contain music are blocked on a popular video platform due to a legal dispute with representatives of the rights-holders. We show that promotional and displacement effects cancel out in the sales performance of individual songs, whereas online music videos trigger sales of albums.
    Keywords: Sampling; displacement; promotion; natural experiment
    JEL: D83 L82 M37
    Date: 2014–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:60276&r=mkt
  4. By: von Meyer-Höfer, Marie; Spiller, Achim
    Abstract: Today’s global food production and consumption often stand in sharp contrast to the objectives of sustainable development. Sustainable food products, characterised by higher environmental or ethical standards than conventional equivalents, are therefore an essential mean of addressing this global challenge. However, to ensure uptake of these products it is crucial for agri-food market actors to understand consumer expectations regarding sustainable food, so they can appropriately tailor their differentiation and communication strategies. To explore these consumer expectations, data from an online survey in three industrialised and three emerging countries is used. The results show that consumers around the globe have quite diverse expectations regarding sustainable food products. Only very few attributes such as “environmental friendly production”,“no chemical pesticides”, “naturalness” and “safety” can be used to meet a range of international consumers’ expectations regarding sustainable food. International food marketers should thus try to get to know their consumers in each country better and learn how to address them specifically, i.e., by semi-global marketing strategies.
    Keywords: sustainable food consumption, consumer expectations, international marketing, semiglobalisation, Environmental Economics and Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Q13, Q18,
    Date: 2014–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:gagfdp:182513&r=mkt
  5. By: Frédéric Basso; Philippe Robert-Demontrond; Maryvonne Hayek; Jean-Luc Anton; Bruno Nazarian; Muriel Roth; Olivier Oullier
    Abstract: A Food Imitating Product (FIP) is a household cleaner or a personal care product that exhibits food attributes in order to enrich consumption experience. As revealed by many cases worldwide, such a marketing strategy led to unintentional self-poisonings and deaths. FIPs therefore constitute a very serious health and public policy issue. To understand why FIPs are a threat, we first conducted a qualitative analysis on real-life cases of household cleaners and personal care products-related phone calls at a poison control center followed by a behavioral experiment. Unintentional self-poisoning in the home following the accidental ingestion of a hygiene product by a healthy adult is very likely to result from these products being packaged like foodstuffs. Our hypothesis is that FIPs are non-verbal food metaphors that could fool the brain of consumers. We therefore conducted a subsequent functional neuroimaging (fMRI) experiment that revealed how visual processing of FIPs leads to cortical taste inferences. Considered in the grounded cognition perspective, the results of our studies reveal that healthy adults can unintentionally categorize a personal care product as something edible when a food-like package is employed to market nonedible and/or dangerous products. Our methodology combining field (qualitative) and laboratory (behavioral and functional neuroimaging) findings could be of particular relevance for policy makers, as it can help screening products prior to their market release – e.g. the way they are packaged and how they can potentially confuse the mind of consumers – and therefore save lives.
    JEL: J1
    Date: 2014–09–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:59224&r=mkt
  6. By: Alessandro Gavazza; Alessandro Lizzeri; Nikita Roketskiy
    Abstract: We quantitatively investigate the allocative and welfare effects of secondary markets for cars. An important source of gains from trade in these markets is the heterogeneity in the willingness to pay for higher-quality (newer) goods, but transaction costs are an impediment to instantaneous trade. Calibration of the model successfully matches several aggregate features of the U.S. and French used-car markets. Counterfactual analyses show that transaction costs have a large effect on volume of trade, allocations, and the primary market. Aggregate effects on consumer surplus and welfare are relatively small, but the effect on lower-valuation households can be large.
    JEL: N0 L91 L96 L81
    Date: 2014–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:55720&r=mkt

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