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The paper proposes investigating the timing of consumer requests for price‐matching refunds, the relationship between the refund timing and consumer repeat store purchase and the reasons for buying from the price‐matching store when a lower competitive price is found before purchase.

In Study 1, qualitative research (consumer interviews) was conducted; Study 2 uses a shopping simulation in which the timing of consumer refund‐seeking behavior is observed, and Study 3 involves a consumer survey in which information on consumer refund‐seeking behavior at real stores is gathered.

The paper finds that consumers request price‐matching refunds more frequently at the time of purchase than after the purchase. Seeking (and receiving) the price‐matching refund is associated with higher repeat store purchase behavior than not having had a refund‐seeking experience. Key reasons for buying from the price‐matching retailer when a lower competitive price is found before purchase include convenience, tangible extras, and store reputation/service quality.

A student convenience sample was used. In Study 2, fictitious stores were used. In Study 3, the timing of refund seeking may have been different on other (not reported) occasions. Ability to seek the refund was not accounted for.

The majority of the retailer's price‐matching cost will come from issuing at‐the‐time‐of‐purchase refunds, when consumers possess more bargaining power. A positive refund‐seeking experience may create a more loyal customer. In addition to being a low‐price signal, price‐matching policies can serve as signs of retailers' customer orientation.

This research fills the gap in understanding the consumer price‐match refund‐seeking behavior and offers practical implications for retailers employing price‐matching guarantees.

Research on price extremes and overreactions as potential violations of market efficiency has a long tradition in investment literature. Arguably, very few studies to date have addressed this issue in cryptocurrencies trading. The purpose of this paper is to consider the extreme value modelling for forecasting COVID-19 effects on cryptocoin markets. Additionally, this paper examines the importance of technical trading indicators in predicting the extreme price behaviour of cryptocurrencies.

This paper decomposes the daily-time series returns of four cryptocurrency returns into potential maximum gains (PMGs) and potential maximum losses (PMLs) at first and then tests their lead–lag relations under an econometric framework. This paper also investigates the non-random properties of cryptocoins by computing the incremental explanatory power of PML–PMG modelling with technical trading indicators controlled. Besides, this paper executes an event study to identify significant changes caused by COVID-19-related events, which is capable of analysing the cryptocoin market overreactions.

The findings of this paper produce the evidence of both market overreactions and trend persistence in the potential gains and losses from coins trading. Extreme price behaviour explains volatility and price trends in crypto markets before and after the outbreak of a pandemic that substantiate the non-random walk behaviour of crypto returns. The presence of technical trading indicators as control variables in the extreme value regressions significantly improves the predictive power of models. COVID-19 crisis affects the market efficiency of cryptocurrencies that improves the usefulness of extreme value predictions with technical analysis.

This paper strongly supports for the robustness of technical trading strategies in cryptocurrency markets. However, the “beast is moving quick” and uncertainty as to the new normalcy about the post-COVID-19 world puts constraint on making best predictions.

The paper contributes substantially to our understanding of the pricing efficiency of cryptocurrency markets after the COVID-19 outbreak. The findings of continuing return predictability and price volatility during COVID-19 show that profitable investment opportunities for cryptocoin traders are prevailing in pandemic times.

The paper is unique to understand extreme return reversals behaviour of cryptocurrency markets regarding events related to COVID-19 breakout.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of three price-matching guarantee (PMG) variables, including refund depth, refund period and competitive scope, on consumer response; the moderating role of consumer search costs is also examined.

This study uses a scenario simulation method with a 2×2×2 factorial design to test the research model and hypotheses.

The results indicate that refund depth has a significant effect on price perception and purchase intention, while competitive scope has a significant effect on purchase intention. In addition, the effects of both refund depth and competitive scope on price perception are moderated by consumer search costs.

This study is a pioneering effort to explore the effects of PMGs variables on consumer response in the context of online retailing. These findings provide several important theoretical and practical implications for the PMG strategy of online retailing.

Pervasive mobile games (PMG) expand the game context into the real world, spatially, temporally and socially. The most prominent example to date is Pokémon Go (PGo), which in the first 12 months of its launch achieved over 800 million downloads and huge revenues for Pokémon, its majority owner Nintendo, and its developer Niantic. Like many mobile apps and innovative services, PGo's revenue structure requires continual usage (through in-app purchases and sponsorships) as it is free to download. Thus, as many players discontinued after initial adoption, substantial drops in Nintendo's share price occurred alongside the damage to brand equity. Such a case highlights the need to extend scholarship beyond traditional ‘adoption’ and begin to truly illustrate and explain the consumer behaviour phenomenon of ‘discontinuance’, particularly in the emerging and lucrative domain of PMGs.

Like many emerging marketing channels before it, large-scale discontinuance of PGo occurred and still remains unexplained in the academic literature. Herein, we address this shortcoming through a consumer case study methodology analysing a variety of data sources pertaining to PGo in Australia.

The development of the P2D_PMG model provides a new conceptual framework to illustrate the distinct forms discontinuance manifests in, for the first time. Scholarly rigour of the P2D_PMGs is achieved through validating and extending Soliman and Rinta-Kahila's (2020) framework for ‘discontinuance’ through its five forms. These forms are revealed as access and on-boarding (rejection), disconfirmation and hedonic adaptation (regressive discontinuance), technological, social, third parties, and personal issues (quitting), re-occurrences of hedonic adaptation (temporary), and alternatives and iterations (replacement).

Conceptual contributions are made in developing a model to explain what drives PMG discontinuance and when it occurs. This is particularly crucial for products with revenue structures built on continual usage, instead of initial adoption. In deriving data from actual players and aggregate user behaviour over an extended time period, the innovative case study methodology validates new discontinuance research in a manner other methods cannot. Managerial implications highlight the importance of CX, alpha/beta testing, promotion and research, gameplay design and collaboration/community engagement.

The aim of this chapter is to show the limits of the European policy model and to support the existence, through straightforward empirical analysis, of an inverse relationship both in the short run and in the long run between trust in institutions and unemployment. The empirical methodology relies on dynamic panel data techniques allowing measuring in a single equation both the long-run relationship and the short-run speed of adjustment among variables. This connection appears to be valid both in the Eurozone considered as a whole and in particular in peripheral countries, where the macroeconomic dynamics have been, under this respect, much more divergent from the average. This outcome allows proofing that to consolidate the European process of integration in the long run, institutions should have as main objective not only inflation but especially unemployment.

Seeks to study the effect of a low‐price guarantee (PG) on store price image and store patronage intention. Two kinds of low‐price guarantee are studied: a price‐matching guarantee (PMG) where the price difference is refunded and a price‐beating guarantee (PBG) where a retailer offers an additional compensation.

A questionnaire is used to collect information on 180 non‐student respondents in an experimental framework where low‐price guarantee dimension is manipulated through three advertisements for printers.

Findings are: first, that PG indeed lowers store price image, increases the confidence that the store has lower prices and increases patronage intention; second, that, compared with a PMG whose effects are positive but rather small, a PBG further lowers the store price image on the low prices dimension without increasing the intention to search for lower price, this intention being already rather high in the PMG condition; third, that a larger effect is observed for non‐regular customers.

Research limitations are associated with the data collection. For greater reality the study uses an existing retail chain, so specific effects coming from this chain could influence the results but this bias cannot be evaluated as the experiment involves one retailer only.

Practical implications are that price image can be manipulated without any change in pricing policy by a low‐price guarantee and that the interest to adopt a price‐beating guarantee is real.

The contribution of this study lies in its focus on a large PBG level that retailers already apply and in demonstrating that a PG depends on the relationship between the consumer and the retailer with a stronger effect on non‐regular customers.

Motivated by recent rapid exchange rate depreciations, shrank economic growth, high inflation, and persistent trade deficits, this study examines the trade balance (TB) in the face of the recent dynamics of the stated macroeconomic factors, which are also important determinants of the TB. The symmetric test of the J-curve phenomenon for the selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries is revisited in this regard. The study uses panel data from 1970 to 2020 for ten of these countries for the longitudinal panel analysis with the TB as the dependent variable and the real exchange rate, foreign and domestic national incomes, and trade openness as the set of independent variables.

Because the underlying data set involves a heterogeneous panel of relatively short N and long T, the pooled mean group (PMG) and mean group (MG) heterogeneous panel models are employed based on the Hausman test for parameter consistency in heterogeneous panels.

The findings largely support the domestic income growth– TB worsening and the foreign income growth– TB improvement hypotheses. Trade openness is found to mostly augment the TB performance of the countries. The results also validated the J-curve effect for only 3/10 and 2/10 countries in the PMG and MG models, respectively. The divergence for most of the countries is attributed to possible import compression and institutional structure of SSA countries.

Given the favorable effects of trade openness on the TB performance of SSA countries, it is recommended that SSA countries place much emphasis on import-substitution industrialization and value addition to their natural resources as well as investment-driven growth policies to improve the competitiveness of their exports and reverse the chronic deficits in their TBs.

This paper is unique for invoking heterogeneous panel models to analyze the TB in light of recent dynamics of its determinants, as well as providing an update on the symmetric test of the J-curve phenomenon for the selected SSA countries.

This study aims to examine the nexuses between economic growth, trade openness, renewable energy consumption and environmental degradation among organization of petroleum exporting countries (OPEC) members over the period 1990–2019.

The empirical strategy for the study includes dynamic heterogeneous panel pooled mean group (PMG), mean group (MG) estimators and dynamic panel threshold regression (TR) analysis. For clarity, PMG and MG are used to explore the long-run relationship between the variables, whereas TR is used to uncover the actionable and complementary policy thresholds in the nexuses between green growth and environmental degradation.

The empirical evidence is based on the significant estimates from PMG and TR. First, using PMG, the study finding revealed a long-run relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation via the PMG estimator. Second, using TR, the study revealed an actionable threshold for carbon dioxide emissions (CO₂) metrics tons per capita (mtpc) not beyond a critical mass of 4.88mtpc, and the complementary policy threshold of 85% of the share of trade to gross domestic product, respectively.

The policy relevance of the thresholds is apparent to policymakers in the cartel and for policy formulation. The policy implication of this study is straightforward.

The novelty of this study stalk in the extant literature on providing policymakers with an actionable threshold for CO₂ emissions with the corresponding complementary threshold for trade policies in the nexuses between green growth and the environment.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyse how different exchange rate regimes affect the links between monetary fundamentals and exchange rates in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Using the Pedroni method for panel cointegration, mean group and pooled mean group and the panel vector autoregressive technique, this study empirically investigates whether monetary fundamentals impact exchange rates similarly in both regimes. Thus, the author acquires needed and credible empirical data.

The result suggests that the impact is dissimilar. In the floating regime, an increase in relative money supply and relative real output depreciates and appreciates the nominal exchange rate in the long run whereas in the non-floating regime, the evidence is mixed. Thus, exchange rates bear a theoretically consistent relationship with monetary fundamentals across SSA countries with floating regimes but fails under non-floating regimes. This provides evidence that regime choice is important if the relationship between monetary fundamentals and exchange rates in SSA are to be theoretically consistent.

This study empirically incorporates the dissimilarities in exchange rate regimes in a panel framework and study the links between exchange rates and monetary fundamentals. The focus on how exchange rate regimes might alter the equilibrium relationships between exchange rates and monetary fundamentals in SSA is a pioneering experiment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine two popular price promotion strategies – price matching guarantees (PMGs) and everyday low prices (EDLP) – and their effects on Chilean consumer behavior in terms of consumer perceptions of low prices, search behavior and purchase intention.

A quasi experiment with three scenarios was conducted to test price promotion effects. Subjects were instructed to respond a questionnaire that included the dependent variables.

Results show that EDLP and PMG strategies increase perceptions of low prices and affect purchase intentions. These effects are significantly higher for stores offering EDLP than PMG. However, when consumers are exposed to two or more price promotion strategies (rather than one) they reduce their purchase intentions for a specific store and increase their search intentions.

This is an initial study exploring the effects of price promotion strategies on consumers. Future research could test the hypotheses advanced in the study across different samples and contexts (supermarkets, department stores, convenience stores, and other retailers) and might privilege external validity, using experiments mimicking decisions with real consequences.

Retailers and marketers in Latin America – particularly those companies stressing price or value as their differential advantage – should consider the use of price promotions when designing marketing strategies. On the other hand, retailers should be aware that an intensive use of these of promotions could lead to increases in consumer search behavior.

While findings from the USA suggest that price promotion strategies can be effective in several contexts, there has been a limited number of studies addressing whether such strategies are effective in other countries, particularly in Latin America and emerging nations.