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This study examined consumer preference and willingness to pay a premium price for indigenous chicken products in Ghana.

Data were obtained from 240 consumers in Ghana through the administration of a structured questionnaire. Probit regression was used to examine the factors influencing consumer preference for indigenous chicken products in Ghana. Ordered probit regression was employed to examine the factors influencing the percentage premium price a consumer is willing to pay for indigenous chicken products whereas the cluster analysis was used to segment the consumers.

Different sets of factors were identified to have influenced the decision to purchase indigenous chicken products and the willingness to pay for a premium price. In total, four market segments were identified in this study: shopper consumer segment, the conventional or ethnocentric consumer segment, the privilege consumer segment and the pleasure-seeker consumer segment.

The important factors to learn from this study are the following: examining the critical success factors for the promotion of indigenous chicken products in Ghana is an excellent opportunity for future research. Second, the choice of locally-produced exotic breeds/strains of chicken meat has not been examined in this study. Therefore, a comparative study of consumer preference of the locally-produced exotic breeds/strains of chicken in Ghana is another great opportunity for further research.

Regardless of the seemly opportunities in regional marketing, Ghana has not leveraged on this to promote a regional marketing brand for its local products – like indigenous chicken products – over imported chicken products. Besides, regionalism studies on agricultural products have received less attention in Ghana; therefore, this study contributes to a better understanding of consumer choice of indigenous chicken products, potentially, and the marketing of regional food products in Ghana.

The purpose of this article is to investigate urban and rural differences for online activities and e‐payment behavior patterns.

This study applied the MLCA model to investigate Internet usage patterns from 11 online applications among 10,909 Taiwan residents in 25 different regions.

The results showed that online behavior patterns exhibited regional differences, as the regional segments affected the individual segments of different use patterns. For instance, the urban area comprised a higher proportion of members who were accustomed to internet applications and skilled in online shopping by using a credit card. The rural area made up a higher proportion of members who only occasionally used online services. Moreover, rural region residents used other payment methods (excluding credit cards) more often than urban region residents. As expected, users’ personal characteristics also dictated the online behavior pattern. For instance, people with higher‐level income spent relatively more money for online shopping and often used various internet applications than others.

The findings herein should help Internet service providers form an applicable guideline for developing service strategies of higher service satisfaction regarding products and users’ needs.

This study implemented a multilevel latent class model to investigate online behavior patterns that exhibited urban and rural differences, with the goal of providing service providers an understanding and mastery of their target users.

A recent study found state bond bank participants continually realize considerable interest cost savings. Savings were calculated as differences in interest costs of bond bank loans and the bond offerings participants would have sold as alternatives to loans, (alternative market offerings). The present evaluation determines the sources of the savings. Savings are generated by not only differences in issue characteristics of bond bank issues and alternative market offerings, but also differential impacts of the same market forces and institutional factors on the interest costs of both types of sales. These findings verify that bond bank issues and alternative market offerings sell in different sub-markets, and confirm municipal bond market segmentation.

Improving the agricultural products market integration is conducive to developing provincial comparative advantage, optimization of agricultural and industrial organization and enhanced competitiveness. The relationship between the emergencies and the agricultural products market integration in the production and consumption provinces is of great significance for stabilizing market prices and improving the efficiency of agricultural resource allocation.

The authors reviewed the literature on the market integration of agricultural products. Then, they adopted a two-way fixed effect model to investigate the impact of emergencies on the poultry market integration in the production and consumption provinces in China.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) caused abnormal fluctuations in the poultry market price and decreased the poultry market integration. The negative impact of HPAI on poultry market integration was strengthened in the main production provinces and weakened in the main consumption provinces.

This is the first study that applies empirical analysis to identify the emergencies’ impact on the poultry market integration considering production and consumption characteristics. The results indicate that the impact of avian influenza is more serious in production provinces than in consumption provinces. Due to the heterogeneity of production and consumption provinces, the government implements precise compensation policies to resume production quickly after the disaster. It can be conductive to market integration and promote the development of agricultural products market.

The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical summary of UK housing policies. It aims to evaluate UK government's housing policies, before and after the publication of the Barker Review, to tackle affordability issues in the owner‐occupied sector. It examines the extent to which housing policy contributes to or alleviates the problem of the affordability of owner‐occupied housing.

This paper evaluates the impact of UK government housing policies since 2000 on housing affordability by analysing their impact on the dynamics of housing demand and supply.

The Barker Review, which applied simple economic ideas and techniques in analysing the owner‐occupied UK housing market, argued that increases in new housing supply would help to improve housing affordability. The second Barker Review suggested that changes to the planning system were needed in order not only to increase new housing supply, but to make housing supply more sensitive to changing demands. The Barker Reviews brought about a major re‐think in government policy towards housing, particularly relating to new build and the planning system. However, the heavy reliance on the private sector to provide additional housing has reduced the effectiveness of policy changes. In addition, the adoption by the government of “demand‐side” housing policies has done little to negate the volatility of UK house prices or to raise the overall affordability of owner‐occupied housing.

This paper reflects on government failures in UK housing policy in addressing the affordability of owner‐occupied housing. The findings will be of interest to policy makers and housing researchers.

Prior studies have confirmed market segmentation as an important shackle to China's macroeconomy upgrade, but the systematic analysis of microenterprise upgrade remains inadequate. This paper aims to investigate the nonlinear impact of market segmentation on microenterprise upgrade.

The price method was applied to calculate China's provincial market segmentation, including commodity, capital, labor and energy. The generalized method of moments was employed to examine the nonlinear impact of market segmentation on the upgrading of manufacturing enterprises based on microenterprise data from 2003 to 2019.

First, China’s heterogeneous market segmentations have been significantly reduced. Macroeconomics and policies are critical factors in market integration. Second, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between China’s total market segmentation and the upgrading of manufacturing enterprises. Third, the relationship between the commodity market segmentation, labor market segmentation, energy market segmentation and manufacturing enterprises' upgrade is shown as an inverted U-shaped. Nevertheless, the relationship between the capital market segmentation and upgrading of manufacturing enterprises exhibits a U-shape.

The impact of market segmentation on the upgrading of manufacturing enterprises in China performs nonlinearly. An inverted U-shaped relationship exists between market segmentation in commodity, labor and energy and the upgrading of manufacturing enterprises, while a U-shaped relationship prevails between capital market segmentation and the upgrading of manufacturing enterprises.

This chapter presents an investigation into the theory of labour market segmentation and income inequality in the Ghanaian mining sector. Mining activity especially gold mining has been a significant component of exports as well as employment and income earning in the three major mining regions of Ghana. While income growth is an economic benefit, the high incomes associated with the mining sector may lead to greater income inequality. This chapter provides an analysis of mining activity and income inequality in the Western, Eastern, and Ashanti regions of Ghana. The application of labour market segmentation and the Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality) for personal income are found to be significantly associated with the type and levels of mining employment. However, this observation is not linear as income inequality initially increases with mining activity before decreasing at medium to high levels of mining employment, thus following a Kuznets curve pattern. Segregating datasets for indigenous and expatriate staff reveals very different patterns of income inequality. It poignantly increases with indigenous and/or local community personnel relative to expatriate technical personnel at high levels of mining employment; income inequality is lower among the local community residents relative to nationals from other regions and/or from neighbouring countries. This means segmented labour markets (SLM) within the mining industry are likely to be a problem as they result in increased income inequality among locales relative to foreign expatriates.

The aim of this paper is to show that online learning behaviors are dictated by both personal characteristics and regional differences.

Data were collected from 16,133 users in 25 regions of Taiwan. The paper examined usage behaviors by looking at 11 items of categorical variables about online learning. This study implemented a multi‐level latent class model to investigate online learning behavior patterns that exhibit regional differences.

The results showed that online learning patterns do exhibit regional differences, as the regional segments are dictated by the individual segments of different use patterns. For instance, the urban area segment comprised a higher proportion of members who are good at using the internet. The rural area segment made up a higher proportion of members who occasionally use the internet. Interestingly, rural users went online more often than urban users when in search of e‐learning or entertainment. On the other hand, the individual segments are dictated by users' personal characteristics. For instance, younger people are good at employing online learning and entertainment services. Moreover, those who use many types of online applications pay less respect to intellectual property rights than those who only use a few types of applications.

By using a massive amount of survey data to show regional differences in online learning behavior patterns, the findings herein will help internet service providers form an applicable guideline for developing service strategies of higher service satisfaction between products and users' needs.

In the Northern Ireland context, even though the debate about whether Catholics have experienced discrimination has raged for over two decades, there has been little attempt to relate the wide‐ranging and sophisticated USA debate to circumstances within the province. Takes the first steps to redress this shortcoming by outlining the key themes in the USA debate about unequal labour market treatment.

This study attempts to identify and explicate the unique segmentation of the increasingly growing virtual reality (VR) user market based on the user experience. Consequently, it collects five hundred forty-five online survey questionnaires through the Prolific platform and deploys cluster analysis to identify mutually exclusive groups of VR users. The research variable, user experience, contains 16 indicators explained by four dimensions. As a result, this study is able to unveil three mutually exclusive markets which are labeled as (1) beginner, (2) aficionado, and (3) utilitarian. The unique features of these three groups are further compared based on their VR tour behaviors. In the conclusion section, it offers managerial implications for devising novel marketing strategies.