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To provide an overview of the Japanese publishing industry and to compare it with the publishing industry in the United Kingdom to see whether similarities and differences are industry- or culture-specific.

The paper provides detailed descriptions of the activities of the three main players in the Japanese publishing industry (publishers/editors; distributors; and booksellers). This tripartite structure of the industry encourages divide-and-rule mechanisms also found in the Japanese advertising industry. At the same time, a comparison with the UK publishing industry reveals certain structural differences between it and the Japanese publishing industry.

Three developments that have affected trade relations in the UK publishing industry (retail chains, literary agents, and mergers and acquisitions) do not have such great impact in Japan. In Japan, wholesale distributors are extremely powerful – something not noted, but possibly overlooked, by Thompson for the UK publishing industry. Comparative material between Japan and the United Kingdom, as well as across industries within Japan, suggest certain cultural influences prevail in the organization of Japanese publishing.

The Japanese publishing industry appears to operate under certain cultural constraints that inhibit cross-cultural comparison, while enabling cross-industry comparison within Japan. Why this is so needs further research. Can the parallels between advertising and publishing industries be extended to other forms of cultural production in Japan? In particular, the way in which money is circulated within an industry has an influential effect upon its structure.

A useful source of information for practitioners and academics interested in the functioning of a non-Western publishing industry. The paper also provides food for thought for those interested in trying to better the organization of publishing in Japan and/or the United Kingdom.

A hitherto undocumented comparative study in English of the Japanese publishing industry.

Consumer online resale is becoming an increasingly common method of both buying and selling goods. When an item can be easily resold online, consumers' subjective estimation of the value of that item changes in complex ways based on consumption cost and resale return. This in turn can affect consumers' decisions to purchase new products. The authors aim to apply the principles of mental accounting to investigate how consumers' economic psychology associated with buying a new product is affected when an awareness of the possibility of online resale is aroused.

Three studies with between-subjects designs were conducted online to examine the effects of consumer awareness of a resaleable item on purchase intention of a new item under different situations.

The results indicate that: consumers' awareness of the resale value of an already possessed product can influence their decision to purchase a new product; and when the product to be resold is the same type as the desired new item (e.g. an old idle mobile phone and a new mobile phone), the influence of resale awareness on purchase intention is greater than when the two items are distinct types but share similar functions and therefore could be categorized in the same mental account in terms of budget planning (e.g. an old idle digital camera and a new mobile phone) and when the short-used new product to be resold is exactly the same one to be purchased (e.g. buy and resell the same new mobile phone shortly after purchase).

The participants were all from a single Taiwanese online community. More and a greater variety of participants (e.g. both online and offline consumers, even those from traditional secondhand markets) should be included in future studies to gain a better understanding of consumer purchasing and resale behavior. Although the authors' studies are relatively theory-driven, the findings might be subject to cultural difference in the online resale environment.

Consumers prefer to dispose of items in their homes and that this elevates the purchase intention for new products. Thus, marketers should look favorably upon and implement strategies to exploit secondary markets.

By notifying consumers of the future chance to resell a good, the awareness and expectation for an online resale could be prompted, which in turn enhances the intention to purchase a new good. Therefore, the authors suggest that online resale awareness and expectation are important factors affecting consumers' purchasing and reselling behaviors.

This research draws on drive reduction theory and mental accounting theory to understand how the prospect of reselling used items can influence consumer feelings of consumption guilt and impact their willingness to purchase new products.

We conducted two studies with between-subjects designs to explore this relationship. In Study 1, we examined the correlation between consumers' perceived guilt and their willingness to buy a new product, considering their awareness of the product’s resale potential. Study 2 delved into the aspect of reselling a similar old product already owned by the consumer.

The findings suggest three key insights. First, consumers' awareness of resale potential significantly affects their guilt perception and purchasing decisions. Second, the resale reference price (RRP) can decrease guilt perception but increase the intention to buy a new product. Lastly, when consumers are aware of the resale value of a previously owned product that is similar to the desired new product, the effect of the RRP on their purchasing intent is mediated by consumer guilt.

This research fills a theoretical gap by empirically exploring the emotional motivations behind consumer resale behavior. It presents a novel perspective on how resale activities can shape feelings of guilt and impact purchasing decisions. This offers important implications for understanding the dynamics of consumer behavior in the second-hand market.

As franchisees are independent entrepreneurs, one important part of the business format that franchisors are not allowed to impose on their franchisees is resale prices. They are only allowed to indicate a recommended or a maximum price. This study aims to look further into the capabilities underlying the calculation of resale prices and suggests that price-setting is part of both the “business know-how” transferred to franchisees and the “organizational know-how,” that is, capabilities developed and kept at the franchisor level.

This study adopted a qualitative methodology with a total of 65 interviews, 19 with franchisors and 46 with franchisees, all operating in the French market.

The findings show that resale pricing is a process that involves know-how. The complexity of pricing leads to develop specialized and broad capabilities. The first type of know-how, i.e., business know-how transferred to franchisees, deals with operational implementation of recommended resale prices in the stores. The second type, i.e., organizational know-how, not transferred as a safeguard against opportunism, connects across other functions of the franchise chain such as R&D and communication.

This study confirms the existence and relevance of another kind of know-how apart from the business know-how that is transferred to the franchisees. Organizational know-how at the chain level, though often neglected, is a necessary determinant of sustaining a competitive advantage. This know-how is not transferred to the franchisees but contributes to the success and sustainability of the franchisor/franchisee relationship. Franchisors should thus work on improving their capabilities to better support their franchisees. Moreover, this study highlight the complexity and extreme importance of setting the right resale price.

This study aims to analyze whether and how condominium shared utilities and facilities (e.g. community spaces), of which buyers assume a share of the ownership upon acquisition of a residential unit, affect the condominium unit price over time.

The transaction price of each unit reflects the quality of the residential unit and the properties of the shared facilities. Based on the hedonic pricing method, this study assesses the impact of shared amenities on unit resale prices, using an original data set on condominium unit resale transactions and the status of housing characteristics for both condominium units and condominium buildings.

Results show that holding other conditions constant, a meeting room and an external space that can host events increase the unit resale price by approximately 7 and 16 per cent, respectively. Some community amenities such as a meeting room may increase its impact later in the condominium’s lifetime.

Because of the proprietary nature of data, the analysis focuses on high-end condominium properties in central Tokyo. Although it is difficult to single out the shared amenities’ effects on condominium resale prices from potentially confounding factors, this study partially overcomes this issue by including explanatory geographical variables (e.g. ground heights).

The results suggest that a shared facility that hosts social interactions among residents significantly affects the resale market value of housing units and that their magnitudes may change over time.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study provides the first empirical evidence of the impacts of shared structures on condominium unit sales using micro-level transaction data in Japan.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

In France, the consumer prices of major industrial brands have been rising for a number of years, while the price differential between these brands and the retailers' ones has widened. These consequences were attributed to the French legislation, particularly to the Galland Act, enacted in 1996, which regulated the banning of below cost resale. The aim of this paper is to explain the effects of the legislation on price competition within the grocery sector and to analyse the effects of the Dutreil Act, enacted in 2005, which modified the Galland Act.

The paper carried out an analysis of economic, strategic and marketing literature, as well as professional surveys, statistical data, balance sheets of the main retail groups and the authors did some interviews with retail and industry professionals.

This paper highlights the fact that, although price competition has been partially restored by the Dutreil Act (2005), the latter still has had some very negative consequences on industry/distribution relationships, on negotiations and on development of retailers' expertise. According to the authors, the same consequences will continue in the future, even after the new Chatel Act enactment (December 2007), unless the government will modify the existing regulation of negotiations.

The empirical data that would enable an evaluation of the impact of the legislation – such as retail prices and gross margins of different kinds of brands and retail formats, specially the size of merchandising and promotion fees (marges arrières) – are limited (and some of them controversial). Moreover, the explanation given in the paper is not sufficient to distinguish the inflationary impact of the legislation from that of other factors, which may have contributed to the same effect.

The main value of the paper is the explanation of the continuous negative impact – in terms of transaction costs and juridical risks – of legislation on negotiation practices between industry and distribution. The paper highlights the links between legislation, the negotiation practices and the price definition by retail and manufacturing firms.

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

– Warren Buffett

Value pricing can be a successful means to maximize profit by pricing products and services based on their value to end users. Using this approach necessarily means that customers are segmented, with some receiving better prices than others. However, many companies mistakenly believe that U.S. law requires that all customers receive the same price or a “fair and equitable” price, an unrealistically high standard that is a self-imposed roadblock to value-based differentiation.

Not only is the law supportive of segmentation and the economic discrimination that goes with it, but, where resellers are involved, the law also permits value pricing to be facilitated and preserved through the use of non-price vertical restrictions and resale price setting. In addition, price signaling can be a lawful way to avoid sending wrong messages to the marketplace that jeopardize value pricing strategies.

Shared equity homeownership is a form of subsidised, resale-restricted housing through which lower-income households can sustain their affordability. This paper aims to distinguish two types of affordability within shared equity homeownership: “entry affordability” indicates how affordable subsidised housing is when a household first becomes a subsidised owner; while “exit affordability” means how affordable private housing is after a household has enjoyed subsidised homeownership for a period of time.

Using price-to-income ratios, this study compares the entry and exit affordability of shared equity homeownership programs in Australia, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Norway, the UK and the USA. Based on these international comparisons, this study generalises two distinct types of shared equity homeownership models, namely, the models of “share-to-buy” and “share forever”. A new model, “follow-as-you-go”, is further suggested to increase the elasticity of potential affordable housing supply by providing incentives for existing subsidised homeowners to move.

A key finding of this study is that while shared equity homeownership programs can improve entry affordability, homeowners’ exit affordability is weak when subsidised homeowners have to share their capital gain with the government. While many housing policy discussions around the world that support shared equity homeownership focus only on the improvement of entry affordability, these discussions usually ignore the importance of exit affordability. This study attempts to fill the void in the understanding of these two types of affordability.

Shared equity homeownership policy is not only about offering low-income households but also an affordable housing option. It is also about facilitating well-off subsidised homeowners to move up the housing ladder so that the affordable housing option can be freed up for others in need. In a word, it is not only entry affordability but also exit affordability that matters.

Interest is increasing in sustainable consumption, including the purchase of used products instead of new ones. This study aims to examine customer behaviors in the context of resale websites. Specifically, it aims to identify the relative role of multidimensional perceived benefits associated with customer attitudes.

Data are derived from a survey conducted among 169 resale website customers in the USA. Structural equation modeling (using SmartPLS software) is used to examine the hypothesized relationships.

Results show that epistemic benefits mostly serve to create positive attitudes, followed by economic and functional benefits. However, emotional and social benefits from purchase experience with resale websites fail to influence customers' positive attitudes.

The main limitation of the study lies in the generalizability of findings given that the results and conclusions are based on the study of a single industry. More studies would help to provide a deeper understanding of sustainable consumption across different types of product categories.

This study shows that customers' positive attitudes increase their intention to repurchase from resale websites, suggesting an area of opportunity for resale service providers to design websites to facilitate customer self-expression, to reinforce economic efficiency and to highlight the performance of products and services.