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Presents the results of a study in which judgement of quality and purchase value of three different product categories were obtained from 173 purchasing managers and 190 household consumers. The products varied according to the country where they were designed, the country where they were assembled, their brand name, their price and their warranty. In addition, the respondents rated 13 developed and newly industrializing countries by their capacity to design and assemble products in general. Indicates that the respondents′ perceptions of newly industrializing countries are more negative than their perceptions of developed countries. However, when additional information concerning the product′s brand name, price and warranty is available, their perceptual differences between developed and newly industrializing countries are considerably reduced. Shows significant differences between household and organizational buyers in the relative importance given to country‐of‐origin and other product cues. Discusses strategic implications of these findings for global marketing.

This study aims to question the conventional wisdom that brands compete for customers, especially in mature industries such as soft drinks. Rather than engaging in price wars or promotion wars, brands coexist in the markets by focusing on their own brand loyal customers.

Consumer panel data of carbonated beverages are examined using Markov chains to measure switching between two brands: Coke and Pepsi. Switching rates are conducted for all Coke households (n = 10,474) and Pepsi households (n = 7,227). This is further examined with respect to heavy half (upper median) consumers of each brand who make up approximately 86 per cent of volume purchases.

Households that made a majority of their purchase volume in either Coke or Pepsi products stayed with their preferred brands in subsequent quarters: 85 to 97 per cent of households. These findings are validated at all levels of the brand architecture (family brands, product brands and modified brands), even though both brands engage in similar marketing mix tactics (advertising, price cuts, distribution, product offerings). Loyalty was even higher among the heavy user households.

The research was conducted using two well-known brands in a mature industry. Services or non-mature markets may exhibit different loyalty patterns.

The study extends prior research on competition, loyalty and branded offerings to show that brand loyalty remains high despite marketing efforts to switch the brand buying behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the efficacy of a community‐based outreach initiative, piloted in Worcester, Massachusetts, to reduce children's exposure to toxic chemicals in common household products by changing parental behavior regarding product purchase and use.

The program model was based on the premise that community health workers have the potential to deliver health education messages with particular effectiveness. Community health workers in Worcester received customized training to learn about the impact of toxic chemicals on children's health and strategies to reduce children's exposure to toxics in household products. The health workers then delivered this information to low‐income parents in English or Spanish. Through follow‐up interviews, the health workers used short surveys to collect data regarding the effect, if any, of the outreach on parental behavior regarding household product purchase and use.

Parents were receptive to receiving technical information about toxics and household products from outreach workers who could convey the message at an appropriate comprehension level. Parents' responses to the survey questions suggest that the outreach efforts increased their awareness and understanding of how toxics affect their children's health.

Design and implementation aspects of the initiative – notably the size of the cohort recruited to the project – make it difficult to draw robust conclusions from the survey data. Nevertheless, the data do reflect at least a modest degree of parental behavior change regarding household product purchase and use.

Outreach efforts that reach parents individually in their homes are effective at communicating targeted information but do not necessarily result in parental behavior change. As consumers, many parents need to hear the message more than once before they will change their behavior regarding product use and purchase.

This paper describes a health education model that addresses an important but often overlooked area of risk to children's health: their exposure to toxics in common household products.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how the typical purchasers of products with nutrition symbols differ from other purchasers with respect to socio-demographic characteristics. Furthermore the authors examine if the typical purchaser is similar across six product types in Denmark and in the Netherlands.

The authors estimate probit models using a representative panel of households registering all their daily purchases during a year, three years after the introduction of a nutrition symbol in Denmark and the Netherlands (the Keyhole and the Choices). The purchase data are matched with information about labelling status. Other product and purchase characteristics, such as store-type and organic, are controlled for.

Households with children tend to have a lower probability of purchasing labelled products compared to other household types, while urbanity increases the probability. This holds both across countries and across products. In Denmark education is positively correlated with label purchase, while in the Netherlands it is income. Generally, the observable characteristics of the consumers are poor in explaining the probability of purchasing labelled products which suggests that other aspects as the underlying attitudes and general health awareness may be of greater importance in identifying these consumers.

There is a lack of studies analysing the effect of front-of-pack symbols on households’ product choices based on observed data as most previous studies are based on stated observation or purchase intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of price and income changes on food and nutrient demand of rural households by including own-produced food and production-side effects in the demand estimation to correct potential measurement bias in the income and price elasticities for rural households in underdeveloped areas. Simulation results of income and grain price changes on food and nutrition security are provided for economic nutrition security policy applications.

This study analyzes survey data of 1,555 households from underdeveloped rural areas of China to find out how price and income changes affect food and nutrition insecurity of rural households. The authors employ the quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS) in a two-stage budgeting framework, using quality adjusted prices that were retrieved with regressions of the difference between the unit value surveyed at household level and its village average on household characteristics. The bias correction is implemented by using an augmented IV (instrumental variable) method, in which each market price is instrumented with farm-specific variables. Important macro- and micronutrient elasticities are computed for (a) households with agriculture as main income and (b) other households (of which still many have agriculture as a side business). Finally, the authors use these elasticities to simulate how changes in income or grain prices affect the food and nutrition security in the studied areas.

In general, food income elasticities of agricultural households are at a higher level than those for other households, and so are the food price elasticities. Income changes also have a greater nutritional effect on agricultural households than on other households. Nutrient income elasticities ranged from 0.22 (energy) to 0.27 (Vitamin A) for agricultural households and from 0.19 (energy) to 0.23 (Vitamin A) for other households. Grain price increases have greater effect on nutritional status of non-agricultural households, while a grain price reduction is not clearly favoring the nutritional situation of a particular household group.

This demand study contributes to the literature by taking into account differences in consumption of own production between households and the potential endogeneity of prices resulting thereof. The authors also demonstrate that merely reporting nutrient elasticities might not be sufficient for policy recommendations, and simulations should be reported as a valuable addition.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between access to rural product markets and the extent and nature of child labor. It is built on the view that if physical markets can shape rural development through, for instance, influencing prices, household production decisions, and employment, the associated activity growth could increase child labor.

Using the Uganda National Household Survey, the author combines two methodological approaches: first, a probit model to estimate the probability of a child engaging in labor, and second, a double-hurdle model to analyze the hours of child work.

The author finds that children increase time in domestic work when local product markets are distant, while their time in economic activity declines. A similar pattern is observed for the incidence of child labor. The likelihood of child labor in domestic activity increases for each extra hour of travel to the market, while child labor in economic activity declines. This could reflect the possibility that households may switch child work from market-oriented activities to domestic work when they are remotely located from markets. Results confirm findings from earlier cross-country studies that access to product markets may be detrimental to children. Second, they demonstrate that the effect of the markets varies, depending on the age of children, as well as the nature of the work they engage in.

No part of this work has been published anywhere before.

China's remarkable income growth has changed the food landscape in recent years. Chinese consumers are demanding greater food quantity and quality and changing the nutrient content of their diets. Most food demand studies are based on data from earlier time periods before these structural changes had taken hold. The purpose of this paper is to show how the rapid change in food markets and surprisingly slow growth of food imports warrants a new assessment of food demand in China.

Engel equations measuring elasticities of food quantity and quality purchases with respect to household income are estimated. These estimates are then converted to nutrient elasticities to show how the availability of nutrients varies with income based on the Engel demand relationship.

The income elasticities diminish as income rises. Households in the top tier of the income distribution appear to have reached a saturation point in the consumption of most food items. As income rises, most additional spending is on foods with higher unit values that may reflect better cuts of meat or branded items. The pattern of food purchases for households at different income levels suggests that protein, saturated fat, and cholesterol intake rises with increased income. The change in diets prompted by rising income is most pronounced for low‐income households.

This paper applies a unique approach to measure income, quality, and nutrient elasticities within the same framework of Engel relationship. The finding has important implications for opening new market opportunities of imported foods and understanding dietary change in China.

This study investigates the influence of consumption values on green Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) purchase behaviour in the context of green household cleaning products in the Western Province of Sri Lanka.

We used the survey strategy and 326 effective responses as the sample of this study.

Our findings reveal that specific consumption values, specifically functional, conditional and epistemic values, significantly impact green FMCG purchase behavior towards green household cleaning products. However, social and emotional values did not substantially influence this behavior.

The results of our study suggest practical implications for green FMCG marketers aiming to boost consumer adoption of green household cleaning products in Sri Lanka. To achieve this, marketers should focus on enhancing consumer value perceptions and strategically emphasize the consumption values consumers prioritize. Green FMCG marketers have a competitive advantage in the Sri Lankan market by doing so.

This research addresses a notable gap in the literature concerning green FMCG purchase behavior related to green household cleaning products within international and local contexts. Furthermore, this study distinguishes itself by adopting the Theory of Consumption Values as its foundational theory, offering fresh insights compared to previous research employing alternate theories, such as the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Theory of Reasoned Action, to examine similar phenomena.

This paper examines influence in husband/wife purchasing decisions for durable goods among Mexican consumers in three income groups. Results indicate traditional husband dominance in less affluent households, and female participation through joint decision making in middle class households. A set of demographic variables in addition to income further differentiate traditional from joint influence households. Findings by product provide further distinctions between husband dominant and joint influence groups.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact on household and farming systems of government efforts to modernise production, build scale and develop specialisation in the Tibet dairy industry.

An overview of policy strategies and industry developments is used to frame detailed micro-level analysis of household and farming systems where impacts on households are explored from both a comparative static and dynamic perspective.

Specialisation and intensification improve household returns but elicit major changes in the farming and household systems and engagement with external markets. For instance, scaling up from three to ten improved cows increases returns from farm activities by one-half but shifts households from a state of food self-sufficiency to one where they need to sell two-thirds of their dairy products and buy three-fifths of their livestock feed.

The diversity among Tibetan farm households and the dynamic changes occurring in farm productivity, product markets and agrarian systems means that the empirical results are used as illustrative rather than definitive.

Relative to the large attention on the Chinese dairy industry with regard to food safety and industry development, the impacts of dairy specialisation on smallholders especially in western China have been overlooked. The case highlights several issues relevant to agrarian transition and development including changing labour use, risk exposure and engagement with external markets.