Search results

This paper aims to study a retailer’s decision on the price and inventory when facing strategic consumer behavior and demand uncertainty. Price protection is a kind of rebate that the retailer provides to consumers when the price drops during the selling season. The research investigates whether price protection can bring the retailer advantages. This paper compares price protection’s impact with price commitment. In addition, the paper studies the price protection’s impacts on supplier of the supply chain.

In this model, there are three alternative strategies for retailer: no price protection policy, full price protection policy and partial price protection policy. The selling season is divided into two periods: regular period and sale period. In the regular period, the products are sold at a regular price. In the sale one, the products are sold at a lower price. By adopting rational expectations equilibrium, this paper analyzes retailer’s optimal price and order quantity under each policy and compares optimal decisions and maximum profits of three policies.

This paper finds that the price protection has a positive influence on the retailer. Strategic consumers are induced to purchase at the regular period. It can simultaneously increase retailer’s profit and reduce inventory risk. Meantime, full price protection is chosen as the optimal policy. By comparing full price protection’s impacts with price commitment, full price protection is considered as the most profitable strategy, while price commitment can bring lower inventory risk. In addition, the profit of supplier would decrease because of price protection.

This research provides a new method to address the negative effects of strategic consumer behavior. It also brings some managerial insights to some retailers, especially online ones, on whether to adopt price protection.

This chapter introduces the fundamentals of portfolio and financial consumer protection from frauds in the cryptoasset space. Cryptoassets pose new risks to portfolios and financial consumers: idiosyncratic risks stemming from their unique features and systematic risks arising from transitioning from centralized to decentralized finance. Market experience indicates that these risks threaten every portfolio and financial consumer holding cryptoassets. In the consumer protection framework, cryptoasset risks are higher than traditional asset risks. Cryptoassets fall outside the regulatory domain in many jurisdictions. Moreover, their decentralized nature, technological attributes, and the momentum of financial technology cause asymmetric technology, disarming system-based portfolio and consumer protection mechanisms against frauds and abuses. Hence, the idiosyncratic and systematic risks of cryptoassets highlight the importance of developing more vigilant self-protection mechanisms.

Drawing on protection motivation theory (PMT) and expectancy theory, this study aims to investigate consumers’ lodging consumption intentions during a pandemic crisis.

The research survey was conducted during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (August, 2020) in the USA to investigate consumers’ lodging intentions amidst the pandemic crisis. PLS-SEM and multiple regression were conducted to explore answers to proposed research questions.

The research finds that, during the pandemic crisis, consumers’ lodging consumption intentions are subject to both their internal protection motivation evaluations and the external prevention practices implemented by the lodging facilities regardless of property types and travel purposes. Notably, the research finds that consumers are willing to make efforts and pay extra for a safe stay at lodging facilities.

This research contributes to the literature regarding the applications of PMT and expectancy theory from a crisis management perspective, and it provides implications and guidelines to the crisis management practices in the lodging industry.

The current research examines the specific protection motivation appraisal factors and prevention practices significantly impacting consumers’ decisions in terms of willingness to stay at various lodging facilities (hotels and non-hotel homestay/short-term rental properties) for different purposes (business and leisure) and to pay premiums for a safe stay.

Hisbah is one of the distinguished institutions that had emerged since the early days of the Islamic empire. Based on its cardinal duty to enjoin good and prohibit evil, over time, its functions gradually expanded, and its responsibilities increasingly grew. In light of the contemporary trend in establishing institutional framework for consumer protection, entrusting an agency with multifarious tasks may not be the best and effective way in handling consumer protection issues. Thus, this chapter attempts to explore the new paradigm of hisbah as a consumer protection institution in Malaysia with a special reference to the Islamic consumer credit industry. While utilising the doctrinal legal research methodology, relevant sources of law have been examined and analysed. This research finds that the classical hisbah institution provides a good reference point in establishing regulatory agency and dispute management body. Nevertheless, some modifications are required to remain relevant especially in terms of specialisation of role and function. Likewise, it is viewed that adjustment of the hisbah institution is also necessary regarding the characteristic of the muhtasib (ombudsman).

The purpose of this paper is to examine the approaches to consumer protection in UK financial services before and after the global financial crisis.

This paper reviews the literature on behavioural economics and psychology, and uses it as the basis for a critique of the UK's approach to the supervision of financial services firms and the protection of their consumers.

Non‐interventionist approaches to consumer protection, which are based on the traditional theories of the law and economics movement, have failed. As a result, there is now a shift in thinking towards more interventionist approaches.

By understanding the likely impact of the regulatory reforms the academic research community can assist the regulator to understand the best way to ensure desirable outcomes for users (consumers) of financial services.

The moves to reform UK financial regulation after the crisis have only recently got under way and a lot of the reforms have not been widely debated or written on.

The chapter is prepared on the basis of previous scientific developments of the author, as well as the current legislation of the United States of America. The following laws were studied: Truth in Lending Act; Electronic Fund Transfers Act; Fair Credit Reporting Act; Consumer Leasing Act; Consumer Protection Act; Equal Credit Opportunity Act; Fair Debt Collection Practices Act; Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act; Privacy of Consumer Financial Information Act; Home Mortgage Disclosure Act; Alternative Mortgage Parity Act; Code of Arbitration Procedure for Customer Conflicts – Customer Code; and Code of Arbitration Procedure for Industry Conflicts. One of the new US laws was analyzed – Arbitration Fairness Act, 2017. Data was also used from the Final Report to Congress on the use of pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer financial services contracts, 2015, and information resources available on the websites of financial regulators: the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Currency Comptroller, the National Administration of Credit Unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Agency for Housing Finance, the Financial Bureau Consumer Protection, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and American Arbitration Association.

Methodologically, the research is based on the author's materialistic worldview, which is implemented meaningfully in a positivist approach to the scientific article. In preparing the chapter, general scientific methods were applied: formal logic, system-functional, historical, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction; special methods: mathematical, and statistical. Also the author applied private scientific methods of jurisprudence: normative-dogmatic, method of legal and technical design, interpretation of law, and others.

This study aims to discover the legal borderline between licit online marketing and illicit privacy-intrusive and manipulative marketing, considering in particular consumers’ expectations of privacy.

A doctrinal legal research methodology is applied throughout with reference to the relevant legislative frameworks. In particular, this study analyzes the European Union (EU) data protection law [General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)] framework (as it is one of the most advanced privacy laws in the world, with strong extra-territorial impact in other countries and consequent risks of high fines), as compared to privacy scholarship on the field and extract a compliance framework for marketers.

The GDPR is a solid compliance framework that can help to distinguish licit marketing from illicit one. It brings clarity through four legal tests: fairness test, lawfulness test, significant effect test and the high-risk test. The performance of these tests can be beneficial to consumers and marketers in particular considering that meeting consumers’ expectation of privacy can enhance their trust. A solution for marketers to respect and leverage consumers’ privacy expectations is twofold: enhancing critical transparency and avoiding the exploitation of individual vulnerabilities.

This study is limited to the European legal framework scenario and to theoretical analysis. Further research is necessary to investigate other legal frameworks and to prove this model in practice, measuring not only the consumers’ expectation of privacy in different contexts but also the practical managerial implications of the four GDPR tests for marketers.

This study originally contextualizes the most recent privacy scholarship on online manipulation within the EU legal framework, proposing an easy and accessible four-step test and twofold solution for marketers. Such a test might be beneficial both for marketers and for consumers’ expectations of privacy.

Despite the special attention given to consumers by the business and academic literature, the dissatisfaction of Brazilian consumers has increased significantly. This manifest mainly through the initiation of complaints’ procedures against companies at Procon and other civil society consumer protection organizations (CPOs) that began to take over these issues complementarily to governmental action. This paper aims to examine the accomplishments and relevance of these organizations in protecting consumers and in preparation of related public policies.

A qualitative case study was conducted involving an in-depth collection of information about a restricted system, which included multiple sources. The information was obtained through semi-structured interviews conducted with CPOs’ executives and documents from the other participating organizations in the consumer protection field.

The CPOs have been positively evaluated by participants from the consumer protection field, for their effective action in the intermediation of complaints and in proposing laws and regulations on consumer protection. However, this picture is contrasted with the difficulties imposed by the practices of other field logics, such as legal procedures, media priorities and business interests that, however, collaborate in various occasions.

CPOs’ relevance is more easily evaluated through social legitimation such as endorsements and declarations by the media, the public, by the CPOs’ own publicity and so on. As consumers can choose from alternative channels for redress, firms should be updated with the different procedural norms of each.

This paper draws a picture of the work developed by CPOs and indicates a possible assessment of their relevance in a scenario of logics complexity, which can be useful for policy makers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the regulatory framework of e-money transactions in terms of consumer protection approach, the base for regulatory and supervisory system.

This research is based on descriptive-qualitative studies in electronic and cyber commerce. The authors have first explained the importance of regulation for consumer protection and have then showed the position of regulation in e-money; thus, the authors have noted two important and predominant concepts of consumer protection: safe arrangement in e-money and problem of information secrecy and asymmetry. The leading approach in this paper is for efficient allocation of resources between dealers and player of this scope and the authors find consumer protection as the best regulation instrument in this way.

The paper argues that e-money is an efficient and user-friendly payment system and might be used as a general means of payment in the real and virtual worlds. This finding provides a major reason for regulatory frameworks in e-money.

Some important regulation applications in this new scope of commerce involve indirect interference and making orders in transactions. In this paper, the authors have focused on consumer protection regulation that may have a positive effect on dealers, businessmen and women in the long run; thus, this approach also compares other studies within the scope of e-money.

Makes recommendations for protecting users in cyberspace, which relate to commercial communications, relationships between the service provider and consumers, and data protection. Concludes that initiatives involving trust and confidence are a means of developing confidence in electronic commerce.