Search results

The purpose of this paper is to determine if the level of payment required for consumption changed the relationship between a consumer’s overall evaluation of a hedonic consumption experience and the evaluation of first, middle, last piece and peak consumption experiences.

Diners at an all-you-can-eat restaurant were either charged $4 or $8 for an Italian lunch buffet. Their taste, satisfaction and enjoyment evaluation of each piece of pizza they had was taken along with other measures of behavior and self-perceptions. Using regression analysis, we examine the relationship between these single event evaluations and their overall evaluations of the experience.

For the diners who paid $4 for their buffet, overall taste, satisfaction and enjoyment evaluation depend on the taste of the last piece of the pizza and the peak taste consistent with prior findings. For those paying $8 for the buffet, the first piece of pizza is more important in predicting the overall taste, satisfaction and enjoyment ratings.

Consumers do not evaluate their meal experience based on every moment of their experience. Rather, just a few moments appear to impact overall evaluation. Firms that sell access to a series of experiences, such as an all-you-can-eat buffet, should focus on leading customers to the best experience first particularly when prices may be considered moderate to high.

In this paper, we seek to unravel the relationship between price paid and the peak-end heuristic by examining the importance of peak and end experiences under two different pricing regimes. Our study also indicates that the peak-end rule may depend on specific contextual factors.

Little work has directly addressed the potential to control food waste. This chapter focuses on behavioral nudges and their potential to reduce food waste and, in turn, implications for food security.

Key methodological and definitional challenges that must be met to make effective use of interventions to reduce food waste are examined. Chief among these challenges are determining welfare measures that are robust to the behavioral anomalies and apparently inconsistent preferences observed under behavioral interventions.

Targeted reductions in food waste can be significantly impacted by simple behavioral interventions either in institutional settings or within the home. Some evidence suggests that food waste is rampant not only in developed countries, but also among developing countries.

Our findings highlight the need to create a research program addressing the behavioral causes of food waste both in developed and developing country contexts.

This paper aims to clarify the relationship between wealth and trustworthiness with the goal of understanding why micro‐lending institutions grant loans to poor individuals countering well‐known models of credit markets and credit rationing, such as those proposed by Stiglitz and Weiss. Micro‐credit markets appear to be based on two conjectures: the poor are trustworthy, and their willingness to pay for credit is relatively high.

The paper simulates trust‐based lending in an experimental setting to determine whether the conjecture that the poor are trustworthy is plausible. By conducting the experiments in the USA, a wealthy developed country, and China, a developing country where formal micro‐finance institutions have not established a visible presence, it is possible to test the conjecture and draw cross‐cultural comparisons.

The paper finds that while the absolute level of family income had no significant effect on repayment behavior, US borrowers that perceived themselves as having a family income that was relatively lower than other US households repaid at higher rates. Therefore, evidence was found that trustworthiness might be a function of perceived relative wealth or social status rather than the absolute level of wealth or income.

The research results may be difficult to generalize because of the experimental approach and use of students as participants.

The paper includes implications for the administration of micro‐credit loans in China and other developing nations.

This paper experimentally tests a conjecture which appears to be the foundation of micro‐credit markets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the gender composition of a fund management team influences investment decision-making behavior. Specifically, we focus on how portfolio choice is affected by team risk aversion and loss aversion.

Using an experimental economics approach, the paper examines the relationship between gender diversity and investment decisions. Teams of four persons each were given the task of making investment portfolio management decisions.

The paper finds that team composition does influence financial decisions with regard to the assessment of risk and loss. The paper finds evidence that a male presence increases the probability of selecting a higher risk investment. However, the all male teams are not the most risk seeking. Moreover, having a male presence can increase loss aversion.

In the context of workforce composition, these results could have important implications for team investment decisions driven by the assessment of risk and return tradeoffs. To curb excessive risk taking and loss aversion, the findings would suggest that understanding the role of gender diversity in risk management would be useful in effecting change.

In an effort to save his business, Paul Marciano, the owner of Italian family restaurant Maria’s Ristorante, runs a number of experiments focused on improving the customer experience around his target customer segment. These experiments lead to a better understanding about his business and cause him to make specific changes to his business model that ultimately improve things across the board. The experiments are based on research from the academic literature on the use of behavioral variables to manage customer perceptions.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.