Search results

This chapter analyzes consumers’ social representations associated with food waste and their influence on their behavior. A series of semi-structured face-to-face interviews was conducted with 22 individuals, who were heterogeneous in terms of age (21–64, mean age 42), gender, SPC, geographical location, and family situation. The second set of data collection involved administering a questionnaire to 76 consumers aged between 19 and 37 in France. They were asked to give four synonyms on the basis of key words (waste and food waste) and to classify 20 terms presented to them from the most to the least significant as regards the theme of food waste. The results show that food waste depends on the individual’s emotional and gustatory, health-related, economic and/or symbolic, and moral representations. The central core of social representations is around the nature/culture of food. Managerial action should focus on the revalorization of foods and to restoring meaning to the eating/food relationship, orienting consumers toward the hedonic, ethical and symbolic values of food products, and experiences.

In every industry there are resources. Some are moving, others more fixed; some are technical, others social. People working with the resources, for example, as buyers or sellers, or users or producers, may not make much notice of them. A product sells. A facility functions. The business relationship in which we make our money has “always” been there. However, some times this picture of order is disturbed. A user having purchased a product for decades may “suddenly” say to the producer that s/he does not appreciate the product. And a producer having received an order of a product that s/he thought was well known, may find it impossible to sell it. Such disturbances may be ignored. Or they can be used as a platform for development. In this study we investigate the latter option, theoretically and through real world data. Concerning theory we draw on the industrial network approach. We see industrial actors as part of (industrial) networks. In their activities actors use and produce resources. Moreover, the actors interact − bilaterally and multilaterally. This leads to development of resources and networks. Through “thick” descriptions of two cases we illustrate and try to understand the interactive character of resource development and how actors do business on features of resources. The cases are about a certain type of resource, a product − goat milk. The main message to industrial actors is that they should pay attention to that products can be co-created. Successful co-creation of products, moreover, may require development also of business relationships and their connections (“networking”).

This chapter uses a welfare-based conceptual framework for the assessment of costs and benefits associated with nontariff measures in the presence of market imperfections such as asymmetric information and environmental or health externalities. The framework allows for evidence-based comparative assessments of alternative regulatory approaches addressing these imperfections. The conceptual work is illustrated with an empirical case study of labeling internationally traded fish products.

This chapter investigates the relationship between heterogeneous social preferences and charitable giving under alternative prices of giving and types of subsidies. Using 10 allocation decisions, we categorize participants’ social preferences as self-interested, inequity averse, or social surplus maximizing. In subsequent charitable giving treatments, analysis of within-person decision-making gives support for several predictions consistent with social preference types: social surplus maximizers are most likely to give to a charity that increases production; inequity averters give more to charity than do other groups; all preference types give more when the price of giving declines; and social surplus maximizers are more responsive to the price of giving than are inequity averters.

We formally investigate the effects of an inspection system influencing safety of foreign and domestic food products in the domestic market. Consumers purchase domestic and imported food and value safety. Potential protectionism à la Fisher and Serra (2000) can arise: inspection frequency imposed on foreign producers set by a domestic social planner would be higher than the corresponding policy set by a global social planner treating all producers as domestic. The domestic social planner tends to impose most if not all of the inspection on foreign producers, which improves food safety for consumers and limits the production loss for domestic producers. Despite this protectionist component, inspections address a potential consumption externality such as health hazard in the domestic country when unsafe food can enter the country undetected. We then calibrate the analytical framework to the U.S. shrimp market incorporating key stylized facts of this market. Identifying protectionist inspection requires much information on inspection, safety, damages, and costs. We also investigate how to finance the inspection policy from a social planner perspective. Financing instruments differ between the domestic and international welfare-maximizing objectives.

The growth of research on the cognitive origins of market performance has focused on the impact of categories as a primary cognitive mechanism by which exchange occurs. In this research, performance outcomes are typically reduced when firms and products fail to meet audiences’ expectations about membership into categories. The ensuing literature has focused on spanning categories as evidence of not meeting audience expectations while largely ignoring the specific study of expectations themselves. This chapter argues that expectations for market behavior are important in their own right, and can impact market outcomes even when categorical boundaries are respected. Using the market for engagement rings as a setting, I show how lack of adherence to expectations can both increase and decrease market value even as the engagement rings adhere to categorical boundaries. Rather than simply focusing on category spanning as evidence that audience expectations have not been met, the findings suggest that expectations should be considered explicitly, with implications for competitive strategy.