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1 – 10 of 156Elvira Caterina Parisi and Francesco Parisi
Social media networks make their services freely available to all users. Users pay for the service received with the time and attention taken by the advertisements. This chapter…
Abstract
Social media networks make their services freely available to all users. Users pay for the service received with the time and attention taken by the advertisements. This chapter argues that social media platforms are a unique form of monopoly driven by “the more the merrier” effect (i.e., network effects) in users' consumption. These monopolies exercise market power, not by charging higher prices to users but by “tying” larger amounts of advertising to their content. Traditional antitrust instruments designed to address excessive pricing and reduced output by monopolies need to be reframed to tame the attention economy problems in the social media industry. This chapter discusses five antitrust instruments grouped in three categories: structural, behavioral, and market-based remedies. Market-based solutions are the least explored in the literature, despite being the most promising instruments to lower the attention costs imposed on users, while preserving the economies of scope in production and the network effects in consumption, and possibly maintaining free access to social media, as we know it today.
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Donald P. Addison, Tony Lingham, Can Uslay and Olivia F. Lee
The purpose of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurial practice of intellectual capital sharing (ICS) with client organizations and assess its potential for collaborative…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurial practice of intellectual capital sharing (ICS) with client organizations and assess its potential for collaborative business-to-business (B2B) relationship building. B2B collaborations within the traditional marketing paradigm are restricted due to perceived opportunism.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is based on the grounded theory approach and involves 22 semi-structured interviews with the employees of a focal organization and its five client organizations regarding 36 implemented projects. Interviews were transcribed, coded and analyzed via constant comparison to surface codes, categories, concepts and themes from which the authors developed propositions based on the particular context of this study.
Findings
ICS approach helps customers to reconstruct sellers’ identity from one characterized by opportunism and arm’s length relationships to one defined by openness and collaboration. Identified benefits of ICS include higher trust, commitment, social bonding, value co-creation, individual and organizational performance and learning. Eight propositions and a model of ICS consequences are presented.
Research limitations/implications
The context of the study is limited to a single industry – financial services – however, the findings should be highly relevant for other sales contexts characterized by low buyer trust.
Practical implications
Entrepreneurial marketers can engage in ICS approach quickly at minimal cost, as the capabilities and talent are typically already internal to the organization.
Originality/value
This paper examines a unique relational approach to serving clients called ICS that de-emphasizes the sale. Subject matter experts help buyers overcome challenges outside the scope of the traditional marketing paradigm.
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Mara Manente and Maria Carla Furlan
The authors' approach to quality is in contrast to the usual view found in economics. They analyse the quality of tourism as a system which includes final consumption…
Abstract
The authors' approach to quality is in contrast to the usual view found in economics. They analyse the quality of tourism as a system which includes final consumption, product‐based market services, the natural environment and cultural resources at no cost, and the impact of the local society, all from the macroeconomic point of view. They point out that if optimal use is to be made of resources in the sense of achieving sustainable system quality, this use must be compatible with carrying capacity.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on how 1999–2001 dot-com crisis and 2007–2009 subprime crisis affect the gains from international diversification from…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on how 1999–2001 dot-com crisis and 2007–2009 subprime crisis affect the gains from international diversification from the perspective of US investors.
Design/methodology/approach
A conditional international CAPM with asymmetric multivariate GARCH-M specification is used to estimate international diversification gains.
Findings
The authors find that over the entire sample period, the average gains from international diversification is statistically significant and about 1.253 percent per year. During the subprime crisis period, the average gains decreases to about 0.567 percent per year, but it increases to 2.829 percent per year during the dot-com crisis.
Research limitations/implications
These research findings although confirm the conjectures that international financial turmoil tends to increase the co-movements among global financial markets, are in contrast to the conjectures that international diversification does not work during the financial crisis as evidence from the dot-com crisis. Therefore, future research on international diversification should not just focus on the correlation among international financial markets and should adopt a fully parameterized asset pricing model to study this research topic.
Practical implications
Given the empirical results found in this paper that international diversification gains may be decreasing or increasing during the financial crisis, as long as investors are not able to predict international financial crises, it is the average gains from international diversification over the longer periods that should encourage investors to diversify, regardless of potentially lower benefits over the shorter periods of time.
Originality/value
The major value of this paper is that although the increase in the conditional correlation during the financial turmoil is consistent with previous studies, the empirical results clearly show that the impact of a financial crisis on the gains from international diversification cannot be solely determined by the correlation between domestic and world stock market returns since the gains also depend on the unsystematic risk from the domestic stock market. Consequently, it is premature for previous studies to conclude that the gain from international diversification is diminishing due to an increasing correlation among international stock markets during the financial crisis.
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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the relatively new concept of sustainable finance, although very apt and timely, needs to address many major issues for it to be…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the relatively new concept of sustainable finance, although very apt and timely, needs to address many major issues for it to be meaningful and if it is to achieve its desired objectives.
Design/methodology/approach
The study identifies some of the major issues that need to be clarified and addressed including: defining the kind of sustainability that is envisaged; examining issues relating to the use of high‐discount rates and its compatibility with the goals of sustainability; the case of excessive pollution due to adverse selection, moral hazard and lobbying; and specialisation and path dependent systems that are detrimental to future production.
Findings
The paper demonstrates why the concept of sustainable finance is timely and why it is necessary to take into account the potential major issues that need to be considered and adequately addressed.
Research limitations/implications
The challenges that lie ahead are many, and the sooner they are addressed, the more credible and potent sustainable finance will be.
Practical implications
This paper discusses the major issues and examples of pollution and biodiversity degradation that need to be considered with sustainable finance. The paper also shows why economic growth without considering pollution impacts and path dependent systems is detrimental to future production, which violates the concept of sustainable finance.
Originality/value
Sustainable finance is a relatively new concept that is fast becoming important as financial investments are increasingly required to prove sustainability credentials. However, despite its increasing popularity many major issues need to be dealt with if this concept is to be truly meaningful and potent in achieving its objectives.
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John Bowman Dinsmore, Scott A. Wright and Daria Plotkina
The freemium pricing model is dominant in digital products such as mobile applications. While limited evaluation of a product such as when a consumer is under time pressure, has…
Abstract
Purpose
The freemium pricing model is dominant in digital products such as mobile applications. While limited evaluation of a product such as when a consumer is under time pressure, has been found to increase consumer preference for the free version (“the zero price effect”), this paper aims to explore moderators that attenuate or reverse that effect.
Design/methodology/approach
Three experiments test the role of anchoring effects induced by time pressure in moderating the zero price effect.
Findings
The studies offer evidence that anchoring effects induced by time pressure can be directed to reduce preference for free versions of products. In addition, these effects are mediated by the perceived performance risk of a product and an upper boundary condition for monetary price level is found.
Research limitations/implications
This research demonstrates exceptions to time pressure’s role in intensifying the zero price effect. Future research could focus on additional moderators of the effect such as the need for certainty and examine time pressure’s effect on in-app purchases.
Practical implications
These findings can be directly applied by marketers of digital products using a freemium pricing model who wants to use time pressure to create urgency with customers without pushing them toward the free version of a product.
Originality/value
This paper finds exceptions to the zero price effect where consumers exhibit a stronger preference for the paid (vs free) version of a product when under time pressure.
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Argues regulations should establish a geographically comprehensive lattice of competing, independently owned, network interconnection points from which telephony operators are…
Abstract
Argues regulations should establish a geographically comprehensive lattice of competing, independently owned, network interconnection points from which telephony operators are required to provide zero‐price telephony call termination. Concludes that intrusive regulation of intercompany interconnection and access, such as mandatory co‐location, loop unbundling and line sharing, should be avoided or rapidly phased out.
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Alper Altinanahtar, John R. Crooker and Jamie B. Kruse
This paper aims to estimate a supply response to monetary incentives to donate organs using a survey based on Adams, Barnett and Kaserman.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to estimate a supply response to monetary incentives to donate organs using a survey based on Adams, Barnett and Kaserman.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses bootstrap techniques to estimate the characteristics of individuals and their willingness to accept monetary compensation for an organ donation commitment. It uses the estimates to fuel a simulation that examines the relationship between a market‐clearing price and the usability rate. The usability rate is the proportion of deaths that result in tissues that are viable for transplant.
Findings
By analyzing the relationship between usability rate and market‐clearing price, the paper identifies three important ranges. When the usability rate is about 5 percent, a donation‐only system (zero price) should clear the market. At a usability rate between 2 and 5 percent, modest monetary incentives can attract a supply response that will clear the market. When the usability rate is less than 2 percent, supply becomes sufficiently inelastic so that even large monetary incentives will not solve the shortage problem.
Practical implications
If the market mechanism were capable of yielding a greater number of organs for transplantation than the current system, then its adoption would save numerous lives and significantly reduce the cost of treating a variety of serious diseases. Also, it is useful in a benefit‐cost analysis framework designed to measure the social value of refinements in the coordination system.
Originality/value
By relating the market‐clearing price of organs to their usability rates, this paper draws attention on the importance of interdisciplinary studies.
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Alexander C. Larson, Rita L. Reicher and David William Johnsen
– The purpose of this research is to test for price threshold effects in the demand for high-involvement services for small businesses.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to test for price threshold effects in the demand for high-involvement services for small businesses.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use a stated preference choice-based conjoint study of small business telecommunications demand. Using survey data, individual-level parameter estimates for a demand model are achieved via the Hierarchical Bayes method of estimation.
Findings
For demand for small business telecommunications services, the authors find very strong positive impacts of nine-ending and zero-ending prices on the demand for a common bundle of telecommunications services (wired telephone service, broadband internet, and cellular telephone service), even at prices so high a shift in the left-most digit does not occur.
Practical implications
The advertising, brand, or product manager or statistician who assumes threshold effects are not extant in high-involvement service demand may find conventional demand estimation methods lead to erroneous conclusions and less effective pricing strategies.
Originality/value
In the statistical literature on price-ending effects on product demand, most products for which demand is modelled are low-involvement consumer products priced at less than ten monetary units per unit of product. There is a lacuna in this price-ending effects literature regarding small businesses and high-involvement services offered at three-digit prices via monthly subscription. This research indicates that testing for threshold effects should be de rigeur in the methodology of demand estimation for telecommunications or other high-involvement services.
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