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This study aims to identify the determinants of transport mode choice and the constraints on shifting freight in New Zealand (NZ) from road to rail and/or coastal shipping, and to quantify the trade-off between factors affecting shippers’ perceptions, to assist in increasing the share of freight moved by non-road transport modes.

A revealed preference survey of 183 freight shippers, including small and medium enterprises and freight agents in NZ, is used to investigate whether freight shippers’ characteristics affect their ranked preference for attributes related to mode choice and modal shift. Additionally, a rank-ordered logistic (ROL) model is estimated using the ranking data.

The results reveal several distinct types of transport mode choice behaviour within the sample and show how the preferences for timeliness, cost, accessibility, damage and loss, customer service, and suitability vary between industry groups and business types. Also, the ROL method allows us to identify heterogeneity in preferences for mode choice and mode shift factors for freight within NZ.

The results imply that NZ shippers ranked transport time as the most significant constraint upon distributing goods by rail, while accessibility and load size were the most significant constraints upon using coastal shipping. The study also identifies how NZ shippers’ modal shift constraints vary according to the firm’s individual or logistical characteristics.

This study informs freight transport policy makers about the needs of NZ shippers by providing quantitative measures of the intensity of preference for the various mode choice factors.

Those involved in freight transport have a better basis for formulating transport policy.

The main purpose of this research is to investigate acceptability of different delivery methods in e-grocery (home delivery, pick-up from store, pick-up from locker) and the respective willingness of customers to pay for them using a stated preference ranking experiment.

Data collected involved two countries (Greece and UK) with different level of e-grocery development and two different distribution conditions (weekly and urgent order). Rank-ordered logit model is used to analyse the ranking experiment and calculate the willingness-to-pay (WTP) measures. Delivery mode, cost and time window are used as independent variables.

Results indicated that home delivery and picking-up from locker appear to be clearly preferable than picking-up from store. However, home delivery seems to hold a stronger competitive position over the other delivery methods, especially in the weekly order and in the UK market. The pick-up from locker option appears to be a competitive delivery mode for consumers who are cost sensitive and shop under urgent conditions. Willingness to use and pay for picking-up from locker increases significantly in the context of same-day delivery.

The information provided in this study will help retailers to design and implement distribution schemes that can meet consumers' preferences for e-grocery. WTP differences among the consumer groups and the distribution conditions examined can have a considerable impact on the evaluation of marketing and pricing strategies applied by e-retailers.

Consumer preference and the respective WTP for different delivery methods in e-grocery, especially for the pick-up from locker option, have not been systematically investigated.

With this study we investigate the preferences of an important category of consumers of organic products (regular consumers of organic food or RCOFs) allowing for preference heterogeneity. A survey instrument was developed to elicit preferences for important qualitative and quantitative attributes of extra virgin olive oil. The survey was administered via questionnaire to a random sample of 198 RCOFs in organic food stores of Naples, Italy. The choice task was organised around a fractional factorial main effects orthogonal design. Each respondent made eight choices to rank‐order nine product profiles in terms of their individual preference. Product attributes included price, origin of production, type of certification and visual appearance. Interestingly, the set of observed responses appears to display significant preference heterogeneity for origin of production and price. Once heterogeneity and correlation among repeated choice by the same respondent are accounted for by means of random‐parameter panel logit models, the fit increases dramatically with respect to the more restrictive fixed‐parameter logit models. Results also suggest that price plays an important role as quality proxy, while visual appearance is not significant in preference modelling and the type of certification programme has a fixed effect.

Recently, several regional protected geographical indications (PGI) have been introduced in Italy for extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) with the aim of coping with the substantial failure of protected designations of origin (PDO). This study aims to identify which characteristics consumers expect, in order to anticipate the market success.

In this study, a survey has been used on a sample of consumers from Sicily, one of the first regions which recently developed a regional PGI for EVOO. Data have been analyzed with a rank-ordered logit model.

Results yielded that consumers would accept this new product and their expectations correspond to a product with attributes such as: green color, not filtered, not with a sweet taste and with a known brand. A possible target can be represented by young men.

The results obtained anticipate whether this product would be accepted and provides direct indications for producers who wish to enter the market with a PGI EVOO.

This work focuses on consumer behavior toward products that are specifically certified with a recently introduced PGI label, and they still are not so common on the market.

Despite the privatization of its various components, the bidding process and the preparations for the Olympics are still initiated and tightly managed by central governments. Moreover, intentionally and unintentionally, governments use mega sports events such as the Olympics as a soft power medium in which to pursue their goals such as economic development and social integration and a lot of literature has already reviewed the economic and sociocultural impact of hosting the event. This chapter argues that the Olympics have been used as the medium to assist in the formation of legitimacy for a weakened authoritarian leader in the early phase of democratization in Korea. In addition, the chapter tries to explain how the bureaucracy contributed to the success of the national event and how it eventually impacted political modernization and the attitude of bureaucrats. To these ends, first, this chapter explores the influence of soft power on international competition by providing an empirical statistical analysis. Specifically, the chapter analyzes the process by which countries compete with one another for the privilege of hosting the Olympic Games as an important field of global interaction between political actors Further, the chapter discusses which components of soft power can affect international competition. To investigate the explanatory power and concrete applicability of soft power theory, the chapter looks at the influence of democratic and government dimensions of soft power on the selection of Olympic host cities and the role of bureaucracy during that process.

The purpose of this paper is to examine rice attributes that are valued by the urban consumers of Cambodia and identifies the factors that influence consumers’ decisions on a set of rice attributes.

The study uses incomplete ranking choice data, gathered from a stated preference survey conducted from 350 consumers of two cities in Cambodia, to model consumers’ alternative choices of rice traits in a setting of a random utility framework. Empirically, a rank-ordered logistic regression is fitted to identify the factors influencing consumers’ perception on a set of rice attributes.

The results suggest that the probability of choosing rice that is soft is highest for consumers in Cambodia. The second and third most preferred rice attributes are taste and aroma, respectively. The results also indicate that rice consumption is significantly affected by location, economic class of consumers, family size and educational attainment.

The research was carried out using consumers in two urban cities in Cambodia as a case study; therefore, the findings might not represent all consumers’ preferences for rice traits in the country.

The present study contributes to the overall rice grain preference literature examining consumers’ perceptions on rice traits and the factors influencing their decision in choosing rice traits. The results originating from this study will help to guide rice breeders in developing new varieties with traits that will be acceptable to consumers and other value chain actors.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the perceptions of Nigerian banking customers regarding customers’ evaluation of their banks service quality based on their banks actual performance on current banking service delivery.

A survey has been used to collect primary data and 1,245 usable questionnaires were used in the analysis. A conjoint analysis with stated preference data were used to construct the consumers’ behavior, while discrete choice method was employed to evaluate the preferences. More information was obtained by in cooperating heterogeneity into the model by the random coefficient and the test variance with the primary attributes and social demographics and individual characteristics.

Discrete choice analysis shows that bank management should focus on: reduction of transaction errors, transaction cost, waiting time and initial online learning time. This four attributes have strong impact on customer’s satisfaction depending on quality performance. Relative to other services the reduction in waiting time and transaction cost are the most important services to the Nigerian banking customers. Other findings of willingness to pay and consumer preference for other attributes reveal more information for improved banking policies.

The sample only focussed on the urban areas and did not consider rural dwellers. Future research should aim to improve on these by including a variable in the utility set up that captures the distance of the respondent to the main city.

Nigerian banking customers do not care about a friendly smile as customer care. Rather, they value more on the waiting time and transaction cost showing that convenience and cost dimensions have strong and direct effect on service quality. Other dimensions identified includes, reliability, product portfolio, security and privacy, ease of use, accessibility, and competence and credibility.

This study has drawn on a sample of 1,245 Nigerian banking customers and evaluating how the survey respondents perceive their respective banks’ performance by their evaluation of the current banking service delivery.