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“Buy X Get X Free” promotions are popular across retail settings. Retailers promote a variety of products using this promotional frame. However, past research contains mixed findings about the effectiveness of this promotion compared to the straightforward discount on a single unit of a product. The goal of this research is to employ a theoretical lens to examine the effectiveness of “Buy X Get X Free” promotions.

The theoretical framework was tested in two experiments using different products and samples. The data collected from each experiment were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential techniques to assess support for the theoretical arguments.

Findings reveal that at identical levels of per-unit discount, the “Buy X Get X Free” promotion is perceived less favorably by consumers than a straightforward single-unit discount. Consumers perceive lower transaction value and acquisition value and, thereby, a lower purchase intention, from the “Buy X Get X Free” promotion compared to a single-unit discount.

This research was conducted keeping in mind the popularity of the “Buy X Get X Free” promotion in the real world. The findings caution retailers against indiscriminately using this promotional frame.

Using a theoretical lens, this research proposes and validates a framework to systematically examine consumers' perceptions of the two popular discount frames. The proposed theoretical framework provides a richer understanding of the underlying consumer psychology that drives the evaluation of these promotions. Further, primary data from lab experiments validates the framework. The research also helps advance the understanding of consumer evaluation of sales promotions in general.

This article aims to investigate the role of socioeconomic factors and individual time preferences in the demand for fast-food in Russia. An individual discount rate shows the ability of a person to postpone utility from consumption to future periods.

An individual discount rate is measured through a hypothetical money experiment. The database is the special survey of the Levada analytical center conducted in 2017. Multivariate probit model enables the authors to consider the possible endogeneity of individual discount rate and reveal the relationship between socioeconomic factors and frequent fast-food consumption.

Results show that a higher individual discount rate is related to frequent consumption of fast-food. At the same time, there are factors that provoke both a higher individual discount rate and the refusal of frequent consumption of fast-food. Findings advise the prioritization of measures highlighting the short-term benefits of healthy eating and the short-term costs of avoiding it.

To the authors' knowledge, this article is the first one which presents comprehensive investigation of microeconomic factors of fast-food consumption in Russia including individual time preferences of consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the opaque inventory information disclosure strategy for an online retailer who sells two substitutable products to customers in two selling periods.

The authors develop a two-period model where an online retailer sells two substitute products with two inventory composition structures to maximize profits. The authors investigate the optimal inventory disclosure decision from both ex post and ex ante perspectives. Sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the effects that discount rate, transaction cost and the probability of agreeable inventory situation have on the equilibrium disclosure outcome. The authors also consider risk-averse customers and horizontally differentiated products to highlight the robustness of our results.

The authors find that the online retailer will choose the opaque information disclosure when attempting to increase revenue and reduce the mismatch of supply and demand in both ex post and ex ante inventory information conditions. Comparing with ex post disclosure strategies, ex ante opaque disclosure is optimal in a larger price region, and the total revenues gap between opaque disclosure and complete disclosure gradually increase as discount rate, transaction cost or the probability of agreeable inventory situation decreases. Furthermore, strategic customers may tend to be risk neutral when faced with opaque inventory information in a two-period sales setting.

This current paper is the first paper to study the online retailer's inventory information disclosure strategy in two selling periods. Moreover, this paper presents the conditions under which the online retailer should share complete or opaque inventory information with customers to maximize the online retailer's total revenues.

Although Public Research Institutions (PRIs) are large technology producers, they lack automated information tools that follow technical and scientific criteria for assessing and valuing patents. The assessment and valuation processes are stages of technology transfer (TT) that make it possible to obtain productive arrangements and guide the efforts of those involved in the development, maintenance and negotiation. This study aims to analyze the hybrid model of assessment and valuation of technologies by Soares (2018), applying the ‘Valorativo' software. In addition to patent value and indicator scores, the methods allow an understanding of the technology portfolio and its management.

This research is quali-quantitative, following an approach of applied nature and descriptive objectives. The research has bibliographical, documental and case study features based on the software development methodologies described in the study and the theoretical framework.

The Valorativo software assisted in the analysis of ten patents on PRIs. With the data collection and patent analysis, PAT1 scored highest among engineering patents, PAT3 scored highest among pharmaceutical patents and PAT10 scored highest among biotechnology patents. Five of the assessed patents resulted in a surplus of net present value (NPV), final net present value (NPVF) and royalties; revenue expectations outpaced investments.

The authors based the developed software on Soares’s (2018) methodology, with additional calculations and graphs. The Web software and the spreadsheet with Visual Basic for Application (VBA) were developed to deal with the patents assessment and valuation, helping in the analysis of their Legal Value, Technological Value and Market Conditions in the assessment process, and the Discounted Cash Flow and NPV in the valuation process.

The software helps with patent analysis and can generate indicators for traders, technology holders and researchers. Thus, it was necessary to understand and develop a theoretical-applied framework to outline and replicate the methodology clearly and easily.

Robotic process automation (RPA) has recently emerged as a technology focusing on the automation of repetitive, frequent, voluminous and rule-based tasks. Despite a few practical examples that document successful RPA deployments in organizations, evidence of its economic benefits has been mostly anecdotal. The purpose of this paper is to present a step-by-step method to RPA investment appraisal and a business case demonstrating how the steps can be applied to practice.

The methodology relies on design science research (DSR). The step-by-step method is a design artefact that builds on the mapping of processes and modelling of the associated costs. Due to the longitudinal nature of capital investments, modelling uses discounted cashflow and present value methods. Empirical grounding characteristic to DSR is achieved by field testing the artefact.

The step-by-step method is comprised of a preparatory step, three modelling steps and a concluding step. The modelling consists of compounding the interest rate, discounting the investment costs and establishing measures for comparison. These steps were applied to seven business processes to be automated by the case company, Estate Blend. The decision to deploy RPA was found to be trivial, not only based on the initial case data, but also based on multiple sensitivity analyses that showed how resistant RPA investments are to changing circumstances.

By following the provided step-by-step method, executives and managers can quantify the costs and benefits of RPA. The developed method enables any organization to directly compare investment alternatives against each other and against the probable status quo where many tasks in organizations are still carried out manually with little to no automation.

The paper addresses a growing new domain in the field of business process management by capitalizing on DSR and modelling-based approaches to RPA investment appraisal.

To replicate and extend research on psychopathy and intrinsic interpersonal preferences under the broader umbrella of affiliation, intimacy and antagonism, this paper aims to examine motivational correlates of psychopathy in a nonclinical sample (N = 125).

We used a multimethod design, including self-reports, a behavioral task and a physiological assessment of motive dispositions (automatic affective reactions to stimuli of interpersonal transactions measured with facial electromyography).

Results showed that self-reported psychopathy was negatively associated with self-reported intimacy motive. In the same vein, via the social discounting task, this paper found a negative association between psychopathy and a tendency to share hypothetical monetary amounts with very close others. Finally, regarding fEMG findings, multilevel analyses revealed that although individuals with low levels of psychopathy reacted more positively to affiliative stimuli, individuals with high levels of psychopathy reacted equally positively to both affiliative and antagonistic stimuli, and these results were robust across psychopathy measures. Results remained mostly unchanged on the subscale level.

These findings highlight the contribution of multimethod assessments in capturing nuances of motivation. Implicit physiological measures might be particularly sensitive in capturing motive dispositions in relation to psychopathy. Identifying mechanisms that foster positive connections between psychopathic traits and nonprosocial tendencies may be theoretically and clinically informative, with implications for forensic and penal practices.

While the existing studies largely suggest that valuation uncertainty benefits acquirers, who apply discounts to targets' value attributable to information asymmetry, the authors argue that the opposite may be the case.

Through multivariate econometric analysis of transaction data, the authors establish the link between the degree of valuation uncertainty measured by targets' track of public listing and acquisition premia. The authors use text-mining tools to measure acquirer–target similarity and control for its role in intermediating the posited empirical relationships.

Having analyzed 618 acquisitions involving listed targets from China, the authors find that acquirers pay higher valuation premia for the more recently listed and relatively younger companies than for those with a longer history since floatation. Similar patterns apply to valuation multiples. Higher valuations are partially attributable to premia for control, as acquirers are likelier to buy a majority stake in the recently listed firms, especially if the latter are similar to them. Such transactions take less time to complete and involve a transfer of larger share blocks despite the higher degree of information asymmetry and a frequent lack of targets' operational profitability. The authors also observe a significant premium for target–acquirer similarity: acquirers appear to rush deal completion due to possible overestimation of targets' potential and familiarity bias.

The authors show that acquisition premia may be driven by acquirers' proclivity to place risky investment bets on the growth potential of opaque targets. This pattern may partially explain frequent failures of mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

This paper aims to study vehicle-type strategies for the manufacturer's car sharing by accounting for consumers' behavior and the subsidy.

The authors develop a game model, in which a monopoly manufacturer that can produce gasoline vehicles (GVs) or energy vehicles (EVs) not only sells vehicles in the sales market, but also rents them out in the sharing market by the self-built platform. The manufacturer strategically chooses which type of vehicles based on consumers' behavior and whether the government provides the EVs’ subsidy.

When consumers' low-carbon awareness is relatively high or the marginal cost is low, the manufacturer chooses EVs. The manufacturer chooses GVs when the low-carbon awareness and the marginal cost are low. Only when the low-carbon awareness and the subsidy are not too low, the manufacturer who originally chose GVs launches EVs. When the low-carbon awareness is high, the excessive subsidy discourages the manufacturer from entering the sharing market. If the government provides the subsidy, the manufacturer launches high-end EVs. Otherwise, the manufacturer launches low-end EVs. Moreover, the subsidy increases consumer surplus and social welfare since the high subsidy makes EVs’ sharing market demand be negative.

This study enriches the literature on vehicle-type strategies for the manufacturer's car sharing, owns a practical significance to guide the manufacturer's operation management in the car sharing market and provides advice on whether the government should provide EVs’ subsidy.

This paper aims to develop an optimal buyback promotion strategy for enterprises, including multibuyback strategy and self-buyback strategy, taking both the consumer's multichannel psychological acquisition attributes and remaining market into account.

Based on the game theory and Hotelling model, the authors formulate a new model to study the equilibrium of different buyback models, given the utility maximization of the consumers, the profit maximization and the constraint on nondecreasing market share of the enterprises, and the authors conduct comparative analysis.

Intuitively, enterprises buying back products of other brands would appeal to some consumers. However, the authors find that after implementing the multibuyback scheme, enterprises may not be able to seize competitors' markets or even lose their original customer base in the context considered in this article counterintuitive. In addition, the size of remaining market share and the consumer's multichannel psychological acquisition affect the choice of buyback promotion strategies. Moreover, after implementing multibuyback scheme, customers with old products subsidize those who receive additional discounts. Finally, the authors point out that the buyback strategy choices of companies with different goal-oriented are diverse.

This study has a very solid realistic background and provides guidance for enterprises to implement buyback promotion strategies. In addition, the authors unearth new influencing factors to provide a reasonable explanation for different buyback strategies in reality.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to explore the multibuyback promotion strategy as a new buyback method, where the two influencing factors the authors have not been proposed so far.