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Drug cryptomarkets increase information available to market actors, which should reduce information asymmetry and increase market efficiency. This study aims to determine whether cryptomarket listings accurately represent the advertised substance, weight or number and purity, and whether there are differences in products purchased from the same listing multiple times.

Law enforcement drug purchases – predominantly cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA and heroin – from Australian cryptomarket vendors (n = 38 in 2016/2017) were chemically analysed and matched with cryptomarket listings (n = 23). Descriptive and comparative analyses were conducted.

Almost all samples contained the advertised substance. In most of these cases, drugs were either supplied as-advertised-weight or number, or overweight or number. All listings that quantified purity overestimated the actual purity. There was no consistent relationship between advertised purity terms and actual purity. Across the six listings purchased from multiple times, repeat purchases from the same listing varied in purity, sometimes drastically, with wide variation detected on listings purchased from only one month apart.

In this data set, cryptomarket listings were mostly accurate, but the system was far from perfect, with purity overestimated. A newer, larger, globally representative sample should be obtained to test the applicability of these findings to currently operating cryptomarkets.

This paper reports on the largest data set of forensic analysis of drug samples obtained from cryptomarkets, where data about advertised drug strength/dose were obtained.

The preferences and adoption of recycled materials by consumers are subject to a variety of factors, such as enablers and barriers. Despite this, there exists a paucity of research concerning stakeholders' perceived value and real purchase decision towards recycled products. Consequently, this research study aims to fill this gap by investigating stakeholders' perceived value of recycled products derived from construction and demolition (C&D) waste and its effect on purchase decisions.

Research data were collected from 219 valid questionnaires completed by Chinese stakeholders. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was then employed to test eight hypotheses.

The results show intrinsic cue (materials) and extrinsic cue (brand) influence the stakeholders’ judgment on C&D waste recycled products’ value and then their purchase intention. However, cues such as quality, word-of-mouth, price, policy and advertised have not play a significant role in practice.

This research study verified the significance of brand and material cues on decision making for purchasing C&D waste recycled products, providing new insights to policy making to enhance the uptake of C&D waste recycled products in construction industry.

This study aims to investigate the fit of a promotion (prevention) focus with malicious (benign) envy and how this fit influences positive and negative behaviours, depending on the context.

Four empirical studies (two laboratory and two online experiments) were used to test key hypotheses. Study 1 manipulated regulatory focus and envy in a job application setting with university students. Study 2 engaged similar manipulations in a social media setting. Studies 3 and 4 extended the regulatory focus and envy manipulations to the general population in pay-what-you-want (PWYW) and pay-it-forward (PIF) restaurant contexts.

The findings showed that a promotion (prevention) focus fits with the emotion of malicious (benign) envy. In the social media context, promotion and prevention foci demonstrated negative behaviour, including unfollowing the envied person, when combined with malicious and benign envy. In the PWYW and PIF contexts, combining envy with a specific type of regulatory focus encouraged both positive and negative behaviours through influencing payments.

Future research could validate and extend this study’s findings with different product/service categories, cross-cultural samples and research methods such as field experiments.

The four studies’ findings will assist managers in formulating marketing strategies to enhance their positioning of target products/services, possibly leading to higher prices for PWYW and PIF businesses.

The conceptual model is novel as, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior research has proposed and tested the fit between envy type and regulatory foci.

The development of the digital age has made data and information more transparent, enhancing the strategic perspectives of both buyers (strategic waiting) and sellers (price fluctuations) in their decision-making. This research investigates the optimal dynamic pricing strategy of the content product developer in relation to their consideration of consumer fairness concerns to elucidate the impact of consumer fairness concerns on the dynamic pricing strategy of the developer.

This paper assumes that monopolistic content developers implement a dynamic pricing strategy for the content product. Through constructing a two-period dynamic pricing game model, this research investigates the optimal decisions of the content developer, contingent upon their consideration or disregard of consumer fairness concerns. In the extension section, the authors additionally account for the influence of myopic consumers on these optimal decisions.

Our findings reveal that the degree of consumer fairness concerns significantly influences the developer’s optimal dynamic pricing decision. When a developer offers content products with lower depth, there is a propensity for the developer to refrain from incorporating consumer fairness concerns into a dynamic pricing strategy. Conversely, in cases where the developer offers a high-depth content product, consumer fairness concerns benefit the developer. Furthermore, our analysis reveals a consistent benefit for the developer from the inclusion of myopic consumers.

Few studies have delved into the conjoined influence of consumer fairness concerns and strategic behavior on dynamic pricing strategy. Our findings indicate that consumer fairness concerns can enhance the efficiency of the value chain for content products under specific conditions. This paper not only enriches the existing literature on dynamic pricing by incorporating consumer fairness concerns theoretically but also offers practical insights. The outcomes of this research can guide content product developers in devising optimal dynamic pricing strategies.

This paper aims to clarify the effect of discount discrepancy (DD) on consumers’ purchase intention (PI). The authors propose, test and provide evidence and explanations about the moderation of justification in the relation between consumers’ perceived DD and PI.

The authors conducted three experimental studies with a 2 × 2 factorial design, focusing on consumers’ processing of price discounts. Participants were informed that this study aimed to gather opinions on fashion, clothing and retail sales promotions. They accessed the questionnaire via Qualtrics. Each participant took part in only one study. The experimental conditions were manipulated through scenarios.

Study 1 tested and supported the moderation of justification on the effect of DD on PI. Study 2 tested and supported the moderation of the type of justification for the effect of DD on PI. Study 3 confirmed the findings in Study 2 and revealed the more effective type of justification.

The authors focused on a typically hedonic product category (fashion clothing). Further research should include a wider variety of goods and services, which could lead to different explanations or generalizations.

Sales promotions must refrain from generating DD between the initial price discount and the subsequent smaller discounts. Practitioners must evaluate the gains of an initial, more considerable percentage discount to attract consumers to the store and sell them other products versus the cost of losing sales because of DD. Management should recognize the importance of giving the correct justification for perceived DD, aligning the firm’s justification with the consumer’s motivation to buy the product.

The authors offer subsidies for effective consumer protection policies.

By studying the influence of justification on the effect of DD on PI, the authors propose a mechanism that would reduce the negative effect of DD on consumers’ PI.

There is a lot of talk about the electric car today, but these vehicles are not new. Indeed, thebeginning of the 20th century saw electricity and the automobile take hold in North American society, so that by 1910, the electric car was everywhere. Until the turn of the 1920s, a new era dawned for transportation in the USA, but without the electric car. The purpose of this study is to question Why did it happen.

This paper develops such a comparison, not of the cars themselves, through a detailed engineering analysis, but rather of the marketing of electric vehicles in the USA in 1910 and 2010, as it appeared in the marketing strategies of the manufacturers.

There are many technical and economic reasons for this, but not only; there are also commercial strategy reasons. The position of manufacturers, especially through advertising and the press, can tell us about this golden age of the electric car, what precipitated its fall, and its reappearance a century later.

It is a comparison of images, of how electric vehicles had been and are proposed to the public, through the exploration of mainly promotional material and newspaper articles.

Marketing is a hot topic, and the purpose of this study is to investigate how shareholding strategies can be applied to achieve strategic synergy between firms in vertical supply chains to improve retailers’ marketing efforts from a long-term perspective.

This study constructs Stackelberg models to analyze the operating mechanisms of shareholding supply chains under forward, backward and cross-shareholding strategies. The authors analyze the effects of shareholding on prices, marketing efforts and profits, and explore the strategic preferences and outcomes of different supply chain members.

Forward/backward shareholding plays the same role as cross/nonshareholding in supply chains because the effect of the retailer’s shareholding is offset by the power status of the manufacturer, and the retailer can still profit when wholesale prices are higher than selling prices in certain cases. A manufacturer’s shareholding in a retailer can benefit consumers and improve marketing efforts by reducing retailers’ marketing costs, while a retailer’s shareholding in a manufacturer has no such effect. None of all shareholding strategies can coordinate the interests of all members; however, an effective rebate policy can resolve this problem.

The results reveal the operational mechanism of shareholding supply chains and provide reference values for managers who want to improve marketing efforts and economic performance using a shareholding strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the unexplored part of the historical evolution of travel agencies in Spain, from the end of the 20th century to the 21st century. When examining promotion strategies, the study focuses on the change in marketing and public relations strategies based on the incorporation of information and communication technologies and, in particular, the use of the internet.

This study draws on a qualitative analysis of the different strategies used by traditional agencies and online agencies in Spain from the mid-19th century to the present. This analysis shows how traditional communication strategies survived at the beginning of the 21st century, together with other more innovative ones, while some disappeared, being eliminated by the new online travel agencies, which created a particular conception of marketing and communication. This paper is divided into the following parts: the introduction; the beginnings of travel agency promotion in the 20th century; the evolution of promotion in travel agencies since the late 20th century; communication innovation at the beginning of the 21st century; online travel agencies; and conclusions.

This study shows that although online agencies did not manage to position themselves with a large turnover, they generated advantages and sharpened their imagination to create a new, more economical advertising model, eliminating the costs of public relations and advertising campaigns. In addition, they allowed clients to have greater independence when making their reservations, while enabling them to monitor the tastes of potential and real clients and add blogs so that consumers could express their degree of satisfaction with the product or services provided by the agency.

The focus of attention is the travel agency sector in Spain and, more specifically, communication. Studies on travel agencies and their marketing have been very scarce and partial, impeding professionals in the tourism sector from having a broad vision to direct their promotional and public relations actions. The originality of this article lies in its making a comparison between two different visions of tourism marketing and, specifically, of travel agencies, that is, the traditional vision and the innovative one. It thus helps all professionals in the sector to value and improve their marketing and communication strategies.

We investigate the extended service strategy choices of competing manufacturers and examine their impact on the retail platform.

We construct a supply chain model with a retail platform as the leader and manufacturers as the followers. Manufacturers face differential consumer preferences on the same agency retail platform, and they can sell a bundled extended service product and sell a separate product without any extended service.

The sale of extended warranty services on the retail platform leads to lower pricing of the manufacturers' products and changes in the product market structure in response to differences in consumer preferences. The retailing platform tends to provide an extended warranty conditionally. The sale of extended warranty services on a retail platform would be detrimental to the interests of the manufacturer who sells products with extended warranty services and in favor of the manufacturer who sells products without them.

The equilibrium results of the retail platform’s non-sales and sales of extended warranty services for the no-extended warranty product under the same commission rate and differential commission rate models are discussed, and the product structure of the market is investigated, respectively.

With rapidly changing marketing landscape, nowadays, the formulation of various marketing strategies is increasingly focused on how consumers tend to make decisions. To meet the highly demanding consumer expectations, market segmentation can be used as an important marketing strategy. Due to gender marketing concept familiarity in the contemporary world, gender difference is one of the reference features in the process of market segmentation for marketers. This research is aimed to examine various determining factors that foster consumer purchase decision-making and the differences between consumers of different genders while making shopping and purchase decisions with special reference to an emerging economy, i.e. Pakistan.

Based on a cross-sectional sample of 367 consumers, the study adapted Sproles and Kendall's (1986) Consumer Style Inventory (CSI) to scrutinize the decision-making of both genders in Pakistan. For data analysis, the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in addition to the structural equation modeling has been used.

The study emphasized that, with the exception of quality awareness, brand consciousness, fashion consciousness, option overload and price consciousness greatly affect buying decisions. In addition, when it comes to consumer purchase decision-making, significant gender variations were discovered for both fashion consciousness and price consciousness.

Drawing upon the distinctive cultural characteristics of Pakistan and its people, in-depth research was conducted on purchasing behaviors of Pakistani consumers and the decision-making characteristics of customers of different genders were summarized. The outcomes are expected to make a significant contribution to the field of gender marketing by organizations.