Search results

Japan has been suffering from a decline in the rate of young adults homeownership for a long time. The reduction of the homeownership rate for young adults suggests a delay of tenure transition from renting to owning a home. Such delays further imply that there is insufficient wealth accumulation and a low level of welfare. This paper examines these influences of the credit rationing and the credit rationing impact on the reduction in the young adults’ homeownership rate.

Credit rationing impacts the timing of house purchases and the value of the houses at the same time. This paper estimates these impacts jointly using a simultaneous equation system (minimum distance estimation) and the micro data on Japan.

This paper divides the effect of credit rationing on the timing into direct and indirect effects. The former is the rationing effect on timing, keeping the other variables constant, while the latter is the effect via changes in house values. This paper finds that the indirect effect reduces the rationing effect on the timing by decreasing house values. Furthermore, the results show that credit rationing delays home acquisition by prospective young owners (direct effect) and necessarily lowers the quality of houses they purchase.

In the previous papers, the endogeneity among the variables related to the housing purchase was not addressed. To separate the endogeneity of the timing from the house value, this paper applies the simultaneous equation model. Furthermore, this paper exhibits that there are direct and indirect effects of credit rationing on the timing of housing purchase made by young households. None of the previous papers recognize these two effects.

Reducing purchasing costs remains an ongoing concern for most organizations. The standard purchasing process that works well for large purchases, however, generates proportionately much higher overhead and administrative costs for small purchases leading to purchase delays, high error rate, and poor vendor participation. There is a need to develop separate purchasing processes for small and large purchases and evaluate underlying factors that affect such process transformation. This paper aims to analyze a successful purchasing process transformation conducted at a utility company for small purchases.

It uses a case study methodology to examine the transformation in detail and understand related issues such as benefits realization, resistance to change, and risk management involved in such transformation projects.

It compares original and transformed purchasing processes and identifies resultant benefits to the company, participating vendors, banks, and employees. It finds that a company receives many operational, informational, and accounting benefits in addition to purchasing cost savings.

It provides guidelines for similar restructuring for small purchases in other organizations.

The paper offers a generic business process model for small purchases and employs equity‐implementation model to explain the factors leading to the success in this purchasing process transformation and possibly other similar organizational transformations.

This study attempts to determine the relative contribution of each of the causes of the bullwhip effect and to identify which causes of the bullwhip effect have relatively significant impacts on the variability of orders in supply chains.

Computer simulation models are developed. A fractional factorial design is used in collecting data from the simulation models. Statistical analyses are conducted to address the research objectives.

When all of the nine possible causes of the bullwhip effect are present in the simulation models, the following six factors are statistically significant: demand forecast updating, order batching, material delays, information delays, purchasing delays and level of echelons. Among these six factors, demand forecast updating, level of echelons, and price variations are the three most significant ones.

Simulation models for the beer distribution game are developed to represent supply chains. Different supply chain structures can be constructed to examine the causes of the bullwhip effect.

In order to mitigate the bullwhip effect, supply chain managers need to share actual demand information and coordinate production and distribution activities with their partners.

This study measures the relative contribution of each of the causes of the bullwhip effect and provides evidence that transparent and accurate information flow and supply chain coordination could be a key to reduce the amplification of demand in supply chains.

This paper aims to examine the factors leading to and resulting from procrastination under high price uncertainty and provide recommendations for how managers can reduce consumer procrastination, thus decreasing consumer regret, anger and retaliatory behaviors.

Hypothesized relationships were tested through two scenario-based experiments using student samples. Data was analyzed using general linear model, path analysis and Wald chi-square test.

Long time limits, price uncertainty and price consciousness, all increase the likelihood of procrastination. Prestige seeking reduces procrastination, but only when time limits are short. When one delays a purchase and later the price of the item gets increased or one makes a purchase and later the price gets further reduced, procrastination and purchase decision both equally can lead to anger, which then increases the probability of exit, voice or word of mouth (WOM); however, procrastination has a much stronger impact than deciding to purchase on self-responsibility and regret, which in turn increases negative WOM.

This paper provides a greater understanding of antecedents and consequences of procrastination as well as the drivers of retaliatory behavior. Further, the findings highlight differential consequences of consumer regret and anger on consumption behaviors.

This paper provides practical suggestions for reducing consumers’ procrastination through leveraging the effects of purchase time limit and price uncertainty in general, and more specifically, for prestige-seeker and price conscious consumers. The findings provide evidence for a silent path from procrastination to retaliation and highlight the importance of possible remedies or interventions by the companies to mitigate consumer emotions resulting from procrastination.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to apply temporal motivation theory in the context of consumer behavior under price uncertainty, and examine consequences of consumer procrastination in terms of thoughts, feelings and retaliatory behavior.

The psychic distance often hinders the interaction between cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) and consumers. This paper aims to discuss the issues of psychic distance of consumers in the CBEC. In addition, it attempts to explain the factors that affect psychic distance from three dimensions of culture, economy and politics and the two different shopping behaviors caused by psychic distance.

This research incorporates both theoretical and empirical studies. In this study, 249 validated questionnaires were selected from 300 Chinese CBEC consumers by snowball sampling, and the relationship between variables was tested using structural equation model (SEM). This was done through online research, and it is ensured that the data obtained are first-hand information.

The paper suggests the theoretical model operationalizing CBEC psychic distance and the empirical analysis results show that all the six influencing factors have a positive impact on the psychic distance of consumers. Logistics infrastructure barriers in the economic dimension are confirmed as the major influencing factor, and the significance of the political dimension is relatively small. Based on consumers' uncertainty of various kinds of information, psychic distance subconsciously causes consumers to deviate in the cross-shopping process.

Currently, research on e-commerce mainly focuses on saving trade costs and improving consumer welfare, while research on the internal impact of CBEC on consumers is insufficient. Psychic distance is a new concept in the field of cultural and social research. The originality of this paper is that the concept of psychic distance has been extended from overseas invested enterprises to research with CBEC consumers as the selected object. The obstacles of CBEC have been widely studied, but few are related to the closeness of consumers, or the inner feelings of consumers are ignored. In the context of CBEC, this paper lists the actual external factors and potential threats that may affect consumers' consumption concerns of CBEC from three dimensions. The real emotions of consumers in the face of these difficulties indirectly affect the purchase satisfaction and reduce the purchase desire. Consumer psychic distance is a real phenomenon in cross-border shopping, and it is almost inevitable for these difficulties. On the premise of inevitability, high psychic distance will slow down cross-border shopping in the eyes of consumers.

Although various booking platforms have been contributing to the dramatic growth of hotel industry, little research has been conducted to understand consumer psychological processes and behaviors in online hotel booking. To fill this gap, the current study examines the effect of switching barriers (switching cost and alternative attractiveness) on consumers' decision postponement and repurchase intention. Additionally, the moderating effect of time pressure in different phases of booking decision is investigated.

A total of 352 samples was collected through an online platform. Data analysis was conducted via Amos 23 (structural equation modeling) and SPSS 24 (descriptive analysis and PROCESS macro).

Results show that switching cost and alternative attractiveness are two significant drivers of decision postponement and repurchase intention. Meanwhile, time pressure only has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between switching cost and decision postponement.

The findings of this research reveal that hotel operations need to implement strategies to prevent customers' delayed booking decisions and overcome the influence of time pressure on customer decision-making.

These findings stress the importance of consumer perceptions of switching barriers and time span when making hotel reservations online. Hotel practitioners are encouraged to provide multiple human–computer interaction applications to attract novice consumers and increase their familiarity with booking process.

Online purchases might be delayed. In some cases, this postponement could be a privileged, an adequate, or an efficient strategy. Online consumer procrastination is the voluntary and rational delay of a planned online purchase. The purpose of this research is to develop a measure of this behavior.

The Churchill's paradigm adapted by Roehrich was adopted. A total of 77 items were generated from 27 interviews. This set of items was reduced to 23 after dropping out redundant or not representative items. In a pilot study, factor analysis on the 23‐item scale yielded a two‐factor structure scale of five items with a reliability ranging from 0.715 to 0.809. The Online Consumer Procrastination Scale (OCPS) was statistically confirmed and validated, in a subsequent investigation.

Findings revealed a reliable and valid five‐item scale. Its dimensions are online deal‐proneness and online rationality.

This research allows a better conceptualization of the online consumer procrastination. Future research should assess the OCPS validity across different product categories.

OCPS will make easier the recognition of e‐shoppers who delay the achievement of online purchase intentions.

OCPS is the first scale measuring the reasonable delay in an online purchase context.

Online retailers have become gradually popular to offer consumers installment payment services in the past few years. This paper aims to study how to determine the duration and rate of installment payment services, as well as the price of products to increase online retailers’ profits.

By modeling the utility functions, the behavior of consumers for strategic choosing the payment method and payment timing is analyzed. Thus, the market segments are obtained through the comparison of the consumer’s utilities. Combined with the given assumptions, the installment payment strategies for online retailers is investigated. This paper focuses on the impact of installment payment services on consumers’ purchasing behavior and online retailers’ profits by modeling and comparative analysis. No installment payment service as a benchmark, it is demonstrated whether online retailers can obtain more profits by offering installment payment services or what are the applicable conditions for installment payments.

If the installment payment service is offered, online retailers can gain more profits and need to adopt appropriate strategies based on different market conditions. During the depression or the peak shopping season, online retailers should take the strategy of free installment rate, and moderately increasing the product price of no installment service. When market demand is stable or during non-peak season, online retailers need to set a higher installment rate and maintain the product price without installment service. Finally, online retailers should determine the maximum duration of installments they can afford based on own risk control cost and allow consumers to freely choose the length of the installment within the duration limit.

First, the authors deeply analyze consumers’ payment and purchase behavior when the online retailer offers the installment payment service. Then, it is theoretically proved why many online retailers have offered installment payment services to consumers from a profit perspective. Finally, this paper proposes the optimal duration of installments, installment rate and product price in different market environments for online retailers, to provide theoretical basis and managerial insights for the development of installment payment service in online shopping.

The purpose of this case is to allow students the opportunity to examine how the recent changes to depreciation incentives in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (P.L. 115-97, Dec. 22, 2017) may affect the purchase of capital assets. Bonus depreciation has been extended to allow an immediate 100% deduction for eligible property, which also now includes used property. This bonus depreciation will be phased out over a nine-year period. Additionally, the progressive marginal tax rate used for business income has been eliminated and replaced by a flat 21% tax rate, representing a 14% drop in the tax rate on businesses.

Specifically, this case will examine how a change from 50% to 100% bonus depreciation affects purchasing decisions between asset classes, due to the exaggerated impact on the net present value for longer lived assets. In keeping with the evolution of accounting in academia, students will be asked both to solve a realistic problem and to communicate their investment decisions effectively. To prepare students for the assignment, the informational building blocks are presented in modules following Bloom’s taxonomy – culminating in the application of the concepts in a decision-making scenario. The learning method applied in this case has been tested in the classroom, with quantifiable results showing a positive learning outcome. Pre- and post-case assessment questions were administered with significant improvement in students reported understanding across all six measures. Based on these results, this case achieves the dual goals of teaching students how to apply the concept of bonus depreciation to maximize value and how to communicate this information effectively.

This study aims to deal with supplier selection problem. The supplier selection problem has significantly become attractive to researchers and practitioners in recent years. Many real-world supply chain problems are assumed as multiple objectives combinatorial optimization problems.

In this paper, the authors propose a multi-objective model with fuzzy parameters to select suppliers and allocate orders considering multiple periods, multiple resources, multiple products and two-echelon supply chain. The objective functions consist of total purchase costs, transportation, order and on-time delivery, coverage and the weights of suppliers. Distance-based partial and general coverage of suppliers makes the number of orders of products more realistic. In this model, the weights of suppliers are determined by fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method, as a multi-criteria decision analysis method, in the objective function. Also, the authors consider the parameters related to delays as triangular fuzzy numbers.

A small-sized numerical example is provided to clearly show the proposed model. The exact epsilon constraint method is used to solve this given multi-objective combinatorial optimization problem. Subsequently, the sensitivity analysis is conducted to testify the proposed model. The obtained results demonstrate the validity of the proposed multiple objectives mixed integer mathematical programming model and the efficiency of the solution approach.

In real-life situations, supplier selection parameters are uncertain and incomplete. Hence, the fuzzy set theory is used to tackle uncertainty. In this paper, a multi-objective supplier selection problem is formulated taking into consideration the coverage of suppliers and suppliers’ weights. Integrating coverage of suppliers to select and allocate the order to them can be mentioned as the main contribution of this study. The proposed model considers the delay from suppliers as fuzzy parameters.