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Climate change and digitisation are unquestionably the two defining features of this era. Both present immense challenges with unimaginable consequences for humankind while promising enormous rewards for those who can adequately address their adverse effects. These two critical factors must be considered while establishing strategies for the businesses' future operations. Hence, post-pandemic, especially with the rise of online commerce, packages and documents are delivered around the globe nearly every day, propelling the logistics industry's growth. This is not the critical challenge in logistics, the issue of sustainability, particularly as the returns are increasing exponentially, leading to a significant impact on transportation is and its reliance on fossil fuel has made it a prime target for society's growing environmental concerns. Thus, real-time visibility, collaboration and integration in reverse logistics (RL) are imperative for business sustainability. The most applicable Industry 4.0 technologies in RL are the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, blockchain and digital twin that enable the defragmentation of the RL market.

This chapter analyses the technological impact of Industry 4.0 on RL. This research investigates the challenges faced by the logistics industry in the context of sustainability and how digital transformation can bring many potential benefits across the entire value chain. This chapter also presents a guidance for a framework based on the literature review that tends to favour the development of elastic logistics, implying improved company responsiveness to market conditions. The study contributes to the body of literature and the establishment of the framework for planning on the application of various Industry 4.0 technologies in developing eco-friendly and sustainable reverse logistics framework.

Companies are starting to capitalize on the potential of experimental economics as a decision-making tool. Hewlett-Packard (HP) is one of such pioneering companies. Experiments, conducted at HP Labs, were used to test retailer contract policies in three areas: return, minimum advertised-price (MAP), and market development funds. The experimental design models the multifaceted contemporary market of consumer computer products. While the model is quite complex, participants were found to be effective decisions-makers and that their behavior is sensitive to variations in policies. Based on the experimental results, HP changed its policies; for example, it made the consequences for minimum advertisement price violations forward-looking as well as backward-looking. This line of research appears promising for complex industrial environments. In addition, methodological issues are discussed in the context of differences between business and academic economics experiments. Finally, the author speculates about potential future business applications.

The circular economy is a system that aims to conserve resources at every level for as long as possible with a minimization of waste. The core concept of the circular economy is to improve resource efficiency and prevent valuable materials from leaking out of the system. Better use of increasingly scarce resources can provide both economic and environmental benefits. When excess inventory, returned products, and end-of-life products are disposed of improperly, unnecessary waste is created, often with a detrimental impact to the environment. An effective system must exist to facilitate the proper handling of these products, and secondary markets are a crucial component in this system. In this chapter, we discuss the secondary markets’ role as an important mechanism for achieving a circular economy.

The COVID-19 bubonic plague, ravaging and reoccurring in waves globally, has impacted all aspects of human lives including the understanding and practice in the marketing discipline. The situation has pushed human behavior to its fringes with measures such as complete and partial lockdown of communities, cities and countries enforced to mitigate spread. Hence, consumers appeared to have subliminally reviewed their priorities in life as evident in the buying of essentials, neighbourhood shopping and the shift from offline to online buying behavior. Prior to the emergence of the viral disease, there has been a gradual change in consumer behavior, with respect to buying practices, and firm behavior with respect to distribution and supply chain management; largely induced by advances in technology and e-commerce. However, the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have raised the bar and accelerated behavioral change in consumers and marketing organizations. With the attendant economic instability, consumers and organizations are experiencing behavioral transformation in response to the perceived vanities of life, changes in market dynamics, market -competitiveness, and the larger economic indices. In addition, there has been observable decline in capacity utilization and employee retention in response to the forced drop in demand and corresponding supply. This book chapter, with the aid of an in-depth review of literature, discusses the effects of COVID-19 on consumer and firm behavior with emphasis on the consequences of the sustained economic disruption for marketing strategies and policies. This was hinged on the relativity of business down cycles to the present pandemic in providing a basis for future post-COVID-19 crisis studies in order to understand consumer sentiments to crisis and its implications in the marketing discipline.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

This article uses the Scholes and Wolfson (S&W) framework to describe the fundamental aspects of an income tax and a consumption tax and provides a means to compare these two tax regimes. It thereby gives instructors a structured means to discuss these concepts in a tax policy course and provides an application of the S&W models other than investment decision making. The article also employs the S&W models to compare C corporations and flow-through entities under income tax and consumption tax systems.

This paper examines why ordinary people engage in aberrant consumer behavior (ACB), and pays particular attention to the extent to which consumer perceptions of corporate ‘unfairness’ lead to a response in kind. The study examines five ethical scenarios including insurance claim exaggeration and software piracy, using data from 344 UK consumers. Ajzen's theory of planned behavior (TPB) provides an initial analytical framework. The study also adopts an additional variable, perceived unfairness, referring to the extent to which an actor is motivated to redress an imbalance perceived as unfair.

In comparison to TPB, the study reveals different components of ACB. Furthermore, analysis of variance indicates that consumer perceptions of unfairness by insurance companies provide a significant reason for claim exaggeration. This suggests that ACB is one form of market response to unfair corporate performance. Thus it is argued that an examination of ACB will not only help to understand which ethical aspects of corporate performance might be perceived as unfair, but also to evaluate the extent to which it contributes to a negative perception of particular industries and corporations. The closing discussion considers how a consumer negative response to corporate performance might relate to pricing, product attributes and customer relationships.