Search results for: consumer and producer price indices

Authors: Warunpun Kongsom, Chaiwat Kongsom

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The objective of this study was to investigate the awareness, knowledge and consumer behavior towards organic products in Thailand. For this study, a purposive sampling technique was used to identify a sample group of 2,575 consumers over the age of 20 years who intended or made purchases from 1) green shops; 2) supermarkets with branches; and, 3) green markets. A questionnaire was used for data collection across the country. Descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. The results showed that more than 92% of consumers were aware of organic agriculture, but had less knowledge about it. More than 60% of consumers knew that organic agriculture production and processing did not allow the use of chemicals. And about 40% of consumers were confused between the food safety logo and the certified organic logo, and whether GMO was allowed in organic agriculture practice or not. In addition, most consumers perceived that organic agricultural products, good agricultural practice (GAP) products, agricultural chemicals free products, and hydroponic vegetable products had the same standard. In the view of organic consumers, the organic Thailand label was the most seen and reliable among various organic labels. Less than 3% of consumers thought that the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) Global Organic Mark (GOM) was the most seen and reliable. For the behaviors of organic consumers, they purchased organic products mainly at the supermarket and green shop (55.4%), one to two times per month, and with a total expenditure of about 200 to 400 baht each time. The main reason for buying organic products was safety and free from agricultural chemicals. The considered factors in organic product selection were price (29.5%), convenience (22.4%), and a reliable certification system (21.3%). The demands for organic products were mainly rice, vegetables and fruits. Processed organic products were relatively small in quantity.

Keywords: consumer behavior, consumer knowledge, organic products, Thailand

Procedia PDF Downloads 271

Authors: Nadia Miranda Lorick, Neela Badrie, Marsha Singh

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Cassava (Manihot esculenta, Crantz) which is also known as ‘yucca’ or ‘manioc’ has been acknowledged as a millennium crop which has been utilized for food security purposes. The crop provides considerable amount of energy. The aim of the study was to assess consumer groups of both ‘fresh’ and ‘frozen’ in terms of their perceptions toward the quality and safety attributes of frozen cassava. The questionnaire included four sections: consumer demographics, consumer perceptions on quality attributes of ‘frozen’ cassava, consumer knowledge, awareness and attitudes toward food safety of ‘frozen’ cassava and consumer suggestions toward the improvement of frozen cassava. A face-to-face questionnaire was administered to 200 consumers of cassava between April and May 2016. The criteria for inclusion in the survey were that they must be 15 years and over and consumer of cassava. The sections of the questionnaire included demographics of respondents, consumer perception on quality and safety attributes of cassava and suggestions for the improvement of the value-added product. The data was analysed by descriptive and chi-square using SPSS as well as qualitative information was captured. Only 17% of respondents purchased frozen cassava and this was significantly (P<0.05) associated to income. Some (15%) of fresh cassava purchasers had never heard of frozen cassava products and 7.5% o perceived that these products were unhealthy for consumption. More than half (51.3%) of the consumers (all from the ‘fresh’ cassava group) believed that there were ‘no toxins’ within cassava. The ‘frozen’ cassava products were valued for convenience but purchasers were least satisfied with ‘value for money’ (50%), ‘product safety’ (50%) and ‘colour’ (52.9%). Cassava purchasers demonstrated highest dissatisfaction levels with the quality attribute: value for money (6.6%, 11.8%) respectively. The most predominant area outlined by respondents for frozen cassava improvement was promotion /advertising/education (23%). The ‘frozen’ cassava purchasers were ‘least satisfied’ thus most concern that clean knives and clean surface would not be used agro- processing. Fresh cassava purchasers were comparatively more knowledgeable on the potential existence of naturally occurring toxins in cassava, however with 1% respondents being able to specifically identify the toxin as ‘cyanide’. Dangerous preservatives (31%), poor hygiene (30%) and chemicals from the packaging (11%) were identified as some sources of contamination of ‘frozen’ cassava. Purchasers of frozen cassava indicated that the information on packaging label was unclear (P<0.01) when compared to ‘fresh’ cassava consumers.

Keywords: consumer satisfaction, convenience, cyanide toxin, product safety, price, label

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Authors: Nadia Fatima Zahra Malki

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The world has witnessed a great revolution in to field of technology and communication, especially after the opening of markets (globalization). This has led to a change from traditional marketing, which depends on direct selling and buying, to electronic marketing; consequently, different corporations have adopted this new concept so as to gain time, effort and money for the sake of the customer’s satisfaction. The main reason for this study is to know the impact of electronic marketing on consumer satisfaction in the fields of communication through practical studies of Ooredoo customers, where the descriptive analytical method was used with statistics to analyze the results of the survey. It concluded that e-marketing effectively contributes to customer satisfaction.

Keywords: e-marketing, consumer, consumer behavior, satisfaction

Procedia PDF Downloads 26

Authors: Ganesh B. Shinde, Vijaya B. Musande

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Cotton crop identification based on the timely information has significant advantage to the different implications of food, economic and environment. Due to the significant advantages, the accurate detection of cotton crop regions using supervised learning procedure is challenging problem in remote sensing. Here, classifiers on the direct image are played a major role but the results are not much satisfactorily. In order to further improve the effectiveness, variety of vegetation indices are proposed in the literature. But, recently, the major challenge is to find the better vegetation indices for the cotton crop identification through the proposed methodology. Accordingly, fuzzy c-means clustering is combined with neural network algorithm, trained by Levenberg-Marquardt for cotton crop classification. To experiment the proposed method, five LISS-III satellite images was taken and the experimentation was done with six vegetation indices such as Simple Ratio, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Enhanced Vegetation Index, Green Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index, Wide-Dynamic Range Vegetation Index, Green Chlorophyll Index. Along with these indices, Green Leaf Area Index is also considered for investigation. From the research outcome, Green Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index outperformed with all other indices by reaching the average accuracy value of 95.21%.

Keywords: Fuzzy C-Means clustering (FCM), neural network, Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm, vegetation indices

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Authors: Mona Rezaei, Habib Honari, Mehrzad Hamidi, Fatemeh Kiani

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Make strong brands has become a priority for many organizations in marketing. Brand is an important indicator of marketing status. Brand Strength is in kept customer, profit, brand development and gain competitive advantage and In fact it is a concept that was created from a consumer perspective. It is assumed that the creation of a strong brand is creating numerous marketing benefits. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric characteristics of the questionnaire the most strong sports brands in the consumer society. Questionnaire was conducted to a sample of 340 customers of sports brands. Psychometric parameters were determined by using appropriate statistical methods. The results of the factor analysis and Varimax rotation revealed five factors of strong brands. The results confirms that questionnaire structure have acceptable associated to the data and confirmed all indicators of the model. Reliability (859/0) was satisfactory. According to calculated psychometric indices, this questionnaire could be appropriate to assess the most strong sports brands.

Keywords: reliability, strong brand, sport brands, psychometric

Procedia PDF Downloads 329

Authors: Mohammad Irfan

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship among the key macroeconomic variables and Islamic stock market in India. This study is based on the time series data of financial years 2009-2015 to explore the consistency of relationship between macroeconomic variables and Shariah Indices. The ADF (Augmented Dickey–Fuller Test Statistic) and PP (Phillips–Perron Test Statistic) tests are employed to check stationarity of the data. The study depicts the long run relationship between Shariah indices and macroeconomic variables by using the Johansen Co-integration test. BSE Shariah and Nifty Shariah have uni-direct Granger causality. The outcome of VECM is significantly confirming the applicability of best fitted model. Thus, Islamic stock indices are proficiently working for the development of Indian economy. It suggests that by keeping eyes on Islamic stock market which will be more interactive in the future with other macroeconomic variables.

Keywords: Indian Shariah Indices, macroeconomic variables, co-integration, Granger causality, vector error correction model (VECM)

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Authors: Eszter Hamza

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The competitiveness of economic operators is based on interoperability, which is relatively low in Hungary. The development of co-operation is high priority in Common Agricultural Policy 2014-2020. The aim of the paper to assess co-operations in Hungarian agriculture, estimate the economic outputs and benefits of co-operations, based on statistical data processing and literature. Further objective is to explore the potential of agricultural co-operation with the help of interviews and questionnaire survey. The research seeks to answer questions as to what fundamental factors play role in the development of co-operation, and what are the motivations of the actors and the key success factors and pitfalls. The results were analysed using econometric methods. In Hungarian agriculture we can find several forms of co-operation: cooperatives, producer groups (PG) and producer organizations (PO), machinery cooperatives, integrator companies, product boards and interbranch organisations. Despite the several appearance of the agricultural co-operation, their economic weight is significantly lower in Hungary than in western European countries. Considering the agricultural importance, the integrator companies represent the most weight among the co-operations forms. Hungarian farmers linked to co-operations or organizations mostly in relation to procurement and sales. Less than 30 percent of surveyed farmers are members of a producer organization or cooperative. The trust level is low among farmers. The main obstacle to the development of formalized co-operation, is producers' risk aversion and the black economy in agriculture. Producers often prefer informal co-operation instead of long-term contractual relationships. The Hungarian agricultural co-operations are characterized by non-dynamic development, but slow qualitative change. For the future, one breakout point could be the association of producer groups and organizations, which in addition to the benefits of market concentration, in the dissemination of knowledge, advisory network operation and innovation can act more effectively.

Keywords: agriculture, co-operation, producer organisation, trust level

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Authors: Sisi Xia, Dezhuan Tao, Junyan Yang, Weiting Xiong

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Under the background of Chinese urbanization changing from incremental development to stock development, the completion of urban public service facilities is essential to urban spatial quality. As public services facilities is a huge and complicated system, clarifying the various types of internal rules associated with the land market price is key to optimizing spatial layout. This paper takes Wuxi City as a representative sample location and establishes the digital analysis platform using urban price and several high-precision big data acquisition methods. On this basis, it analyzes the coupling relationship between different public service categories and land price, summarizing the coupling patterns of urban public facilities distribution and urban land price fluctuations. Finally, the internal mechanism within each of the two elements is explored, providing the reference of the optimum layout of urban planning and public service facilities.

Keywords: public service facilities, land price, urban spatial morphology, big data

Procedia PDF Downloads 180

Authors: Mingming Leng

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Wal-Mart has allocated considerable human resources for its quality assurance program, in which the largest retailer serves its supply chains as a quality gatekeeper. Asda Stores Ltd., the second largest supermarket chain in Britain, is now investing £27m in significantly increasing the frequency of quality control checks in its supply chains and thus enhancing quality across its fresh food business. Moreover, Tesco, the largest British supermarket chain, already constructed a quality assessment center to carry out its gatekeeping responsibility. Motivated by the above practices, we consider a supply chain in which a retailer plays the gatekeeping role in quality assurance by identifying defects among a manufacturer's products prior to selling them to consumers. The impact of a retailer's gatekeeping activity on pricing and quality assurance in a supply chain has not been investigated in the operations management area. We draw a number of managerial insights that are expected to help practitioners judiciously consider the quality gatekeeping effort at the retail level. As in practice, when the retailer identifies a defective product, she immediately returns it to the manufacturer, who then replaces the defect with a good quality product and pays a penalty to the retailer. If the retailer does not recognize a defect but sells it to a consumer, then the consumer will identify the defect and return it to the retailer, who then passes the returned 'unidentified' defect to the manufacturer. The manufacturer also incurs a penalty cost. Accordingly, we analyze a two-stage pricing and quality decision problem, in which the manufacturer and the retailer bargain over the manufacturer's average defective rate and wholesale price at the first stage, and the retailer decides on her optimal retail price and gatekeeping intensity at the second stage. We also compare the results when the retailer performs quality gatekeeping with those when the retailer does not. Our supply chain analysis exposes some important managerial insights. For example, the retailer's quality gatekeeping can effectively reduce the channel-wide defective rate, if her penalty charge for each identified de-fect is larger than or equal to the market penalty for each unidentified defect. When the retailer imple-ments quality gatekeeping, the change in the negotiated wholesale price only depends on the manufac-turer's 'individual' benefit, and the change in the retailer's optimal retail price is only related to the channel-wide benefit. The retailer is willing to take on the quality gatekeeping responsibility, when the impact of quality relative to retail price on demand is high and/or the retailer has a strong bargaining power. We conclude that the retailer's quality gatekeeping can help reduce the defective rate for consumers, which becomes more significant when the retailer's bargaining position in her supply chain is stronger. Retailers with stronger bargaining powers can benefit more from their quality gatekeeping in supply chains.

Keywords: bargaining, game theory, pricing, quality, supply chain

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Authors: Fauzia Dianawati, Riska W. Purnomo

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Food and agricultural sector become the biggest sector contributing to inflation in Indonesia. Especially in Wonogiri district, red cayenne pepper was the biggest sector contributing to inflation on 2016. A national statistic proved that in recent five years red cayenne pepper has the highest average level of fluctuation among all commodities. Some factors, like supply chain, price disparity, production quantity, crop failure, and oil price become the possible factor causes high volatility level in red cayenne pepper price. Therefore, this research tries to find the key factor causing fluctuation on red cayenne pepper by using ARCH/GARCH method. The method could accommodate the presence of heteroscedasticity in time series data. At the end of the research, it is statistically found that the second level of supply chain becomes the biggest part contributing to inflation with 3,35 of coefficient in fluctuation forecasting model of red cayenne pepper price. This model could become a reference to the government to determine the appropriate policy in maintaining the price stability of red cayenne pepper.

Keywords: ARCH/GARCH, forecasting, red cayenne pepper, volatility, supply chain

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Authors: Simone Tedeschi, Francesco Crespi, Paolo Liberati, Massimo Paradiso, Antonio Sciala

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This paper aims at contributing to the understanding of smokers’ responses to cigarette prices increases with a focus on heterogeneity, both across individuals and price levels. To do this, a stated preference quasi-experimental design grounded in a random utility framework is proposed to evaluate the effect on smokers’ utility of the price level and variation, along with social conditioning and health impact perception. The analysis is based on individual-level data drawn from a unique survey gathering very detailed information on Italian smokers’ habits. In particular, qualitative information on the individual reactions triggered by changes in prices of different magnitude and composition are exploited. The main findings stemming from the analysis are the following; the average price elasticity of cigarette consumption is comparable with previous estimates for advanced economies (-.32). However, the decomposition of this result across five latent-classes of smokers, reveals extreme heterogeneity in terms of price responsiveness, implying a potential price elasticity that ranges between 0.05 to almost 1. Such heterogeneity is in part explained by observable characteristics such as age, income, gender, education as well as (current and lagged) smoking intensity. Moreover, price responsiveness is far from being independent from the size of the prospected price increase. Finally, by comparing even and uneven price variations, it is shown that uniform across-brand price increases are able to limit the scope of product substitutions and downgrade. Estimated price-response heterogeneity has significant implications for tax policy. Among them, first, it provides evidence and a rationale for why the aggregate price elasticity is likely to follow a strictly increasing pattern as a function of the experienced price variation. This information is crucial for forecasting the effect of a given tax-driven price change on tax revenue. Second, it provides some guidance on how to design excise tax reforms to balance public health and revenue goals.

Keywords: smoking behaviour, preference heterogeneity, price responsiveness, cigarette taxation, random utility models

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Authors: Lydia Nkechi Philip

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Due to its well-documented commitment to sustainability across diverse global markets, Unilever, a multinational consumer goods powerhouse, serves as a compelling case study. The study's goal is to critically examine Unilever's CSR initiatives, assessing their alignment with international standards and the impact on consumer perceptions and loyalty. The study investigates how Unilever's CSR practices resonate with consumers in various regions using a mixed-methods approach that includes surveys and interviews. The conceptual framework considers the role of sustainable marketing practices as a bridge builder in the CSR-consumer relationship. The findings are expected to provide valuable insights for businesses seeking to navigate the complex terrain of global markets while remaining ethical and sustainable. As consumers place a higher value on socially responsible brands, this study examines Unilever's CSR impact on consumer behavior. The abstract captures the essence of the study, providing a sneak peek at the methodology, key objectives, and anticipated contributions to our understanding of CSR's role in shaping consumer attitudes and loyalty in the global marketplace.

Keywords: Unilever, consumer loyalty, sustainable marketing practices, consumer loyalties

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Authors: Kawpong Polyorat

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Since the outbreak of mad cow disease and bird flu, consumers have become more concerned with meat quality and safety. As a result, meat traceability is adopted as one approach to handle consumers’ concern in this issue. Nevertheless, in Thailand, meat traceability is rarely used as a marketing tool to persuade consumers. As a consequence, the present study attempts to understand consumer trust in the meat traceability system by conducting a study in this country to examine the impact of three types of consumer knowledge on this trust. The study results reveal that out of three types of consumer knowledge, marketplace knowledge was the sole predictor of consumer trust in meat traceability and it has a positive influence. General product class knowledge and knowledge in meat products with traceability, however, did not significantly influence consumer trust. The research results provide several implications and directions for future study.

Keywords: consumer knowledge, marketing, product knowledge, traceability

Procedia PDF Downloads 296

Authors: Malki Fatima Zahra Nadia, Kellal Chaimaa, Brahimi Houria

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The world has witnessed a great revolution in to field of technology and communication, especially after the opening of markets (globalization) . Which has led to a change from traditional marketing, which depends on direct selling and buying to electronic marketing, consequently different corporation have adopted this concept so as to gain time , efforts and money for the sake of the customer’s satisfaction. It is the main reason of the study, which is to know the impact of electronic marketing on the consumer’s satisfaction in the fields of communication through practical studies of Ooredoo customer’s where the descriptive analytical method has been used with statistics to analyze the results of the survey. It concluded that e-marketing effectively contributes to customer satisfaction.

Keywords: e-marketing, consumer, consumer behavior, satisfaction

Procedia PDF Downloads 45

Authors: Chin Tangtarntana

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The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of animation in offensive product advertising. Experiment was conducted to collect consumer responses toward animated and static ads of offensive and non-offensive products. The study was conducted by distributing questionnaires to the target respondents. According to statistics from Innovative Internet Research Center, Thailand, majority of internet users are 18 – 44 years old. The results revealed an interaction between ad design and offensive product. Specifically, when used in offensive product advertisements, animated ads were not effective for consumer attention, but yielded positive response in terms of attitude toward product. The findings support that information processing model is accurate in predicting consumer cognitive response toward cartoon ads, whereas U&G, arousal, and distinctive theory is more accurate in predicting consumer affective response. In practical, these findings can also be used to guide ad designers and marketers that are suitable for offensive products.

Keywords: animation, banner ad design, consumer responses, offensive product advertising, stock exchange of Thailand

Procedia PDF Downloads 243

Authors: H. C. Chinwenyi, H. D. Ibrahim, F. A. Ahmed

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In modern financial mathematics, valuing derivatives such as options is often a tedious task. This is simply because their fair and correct prices in the future are often probabilistic. This paper examines three different Stochastic Differential Equation (SDE) models in finance; the Constant Elasticity of Variance (CEV) model, the Balck-Karasinski model, and the Heston model. The various Martingales option price valuation formulas for these three models were obtained using the replicating portfolio method. Also, the numerical solution of the derived Martingales options price valuation equations for the SDEs models was carried out using the Monte Carlo method which was implemented using MATLAB. Furthermore, results from the numerical examples using published data from the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE), all share index data show the effect of increase in the underlying asset value (stock price) on the value of the European Put Option for these models. From the results obtained, we see that an increase in the stock price yields a decrease in the value of the European put option price. Hence, this guides the option holder in making a quality decision by not exercising his right on the option.

Keywords: equivalent martingale measure, European put option, girsanov theorem, martingales, monte carlo method, option price valuation formula

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Authors: Gizem İntepe, Eti Mizrahi

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Investment and financing decisions are influenced by various economic features. Detailed analysis should be conducted in order to make decisions not only by companies but also by governments. Such analysis can be conducted either at the company level or on a sectoral basis to reduce risks and to maximize profits. Sectoral disaggregation caused by seasonality effects, subventions, data advantages or disadvantages may appear in sectors behaving parallel to BIST (Borsa Istanbul stock exchange) Index. Proposed logistic indices could serve market needs as a decision parameter in sectoral basis and also helps forecasting activities in import export volume changes. Also it is an indicator of logistic activity, which is also a sign of economic mobility at the national level. Publicly available data from “Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications” and “Turkish Statistical Institute” is utilized to obtain five logistics indices namely as; exLogistic, imLogistic, fLogistic, dLogistic and cLogistic index. Then, efficiency and reliability of these indices are tested.

Keywords: economic activity, export trade data, import trade data, logistics indices

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Authors: Tom D. Gedeon, Ujala Rampaul

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The evaluation of electronic consumer goods are most often done from the perspective of analysing the latest models, comparing their advantages and disadvantages with respect to price. This style of evaluation is often performed by one or a few product experts on a wide range of features that may not be applicable to each user. We instead used a scenario-based approach to evaluate a number of e-readers. The setting is similar to a user who is interested in a new product or technology and has allocated a limited budget. We evaluate the quality and usability of e-readers available within that budget range. This is based on the assumption of a rational market which prices older second hand devices the same as functionally equivalent new devices. We describe our evaluation and comparison of four branded eReaders, as the initial stage of a larger project. The scenario has a range of tasks approximating a busy person who does not bother to read the manual. We found that navigation within books to be the most significant differentiator between the eReaders in our scenario based evaluation process.

Keywords: eReader, scenario based, price comparison, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Sony, technology adoption

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Authors: Saleh Alzahrani, Halim Boussabaine

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The majority of Public Private Partnership (PPP) are developed based on the rationale that the design, construction, operation, and financing of a public project is to be awarded to a private party within a single contractual framework. PPP project risks normally include the development and construction of a new asset as well as its operation for decades. Undoubtedly the most serious consequences of risks during the construction period are price and time overruns. These events are amongst the most broadly used scenarios in value for money analysis risks. The sources of risk change over the life cycle of a PPP project. In traditional procurement, the public sector normally has to cover all price distress from these risks. At least there is plenty evidence to suggest that price distress is a norm in some of the projects that are delivered under traditional procurement. This paper will find the impact of construction risk factors into actual construction price into PPP projects. The paper will present a brief literature review on PPP risk pricing strategies, and then using system dynamics (SD) to analyses of the risks associated with the estimated project price. Based on the finding from these analyses a risk pricing association model is presented and discussed. The paper concludes with thoughts for future research.

Keywords: Public Private Partnership (PPP), Risk, Risk Pricing, System Dynamics (SD), construction price

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Authors: Amal Abdelhadi

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Consumer misbehavior evaluation can be markedly different based on a number of variables and different from one environment to another. Using three aberrant consumer behavior (ACB) scenarios (shoplifting, stealing from hotel rooms and software piracy) this study aimed to explore Libyan seller and consumers of ACB. Materials were collected by using a multi-method approach was employed (qualitative and quantitative approaches) in two fieldwork phases. In the phase stage, a qualitative data were collected from 26 Libyan sellers’ by face-to-face interviews. In the second stage, a consumer survey was used to collect quantitative data from 679 Libyan consumers. This study found that the consumer’s and seller’s evaluation of ACB are not always consistent. Further, ACB evaluations differed based on the form of ACB. Furthermore, the study found that not all consumer behaviors that were considered as bad behavior in other countries have the same evaluation in Libya; for example, software piracy. Therefore this study suggested a newly developed classification of ACB based on marketers’ and consumers’ views. This classification provides 9 ACB types within two dimensions (marketers’ and consumers’ views) and three degrees of behavior evaluation (good, acceptable and misbehavior).

Keywords: aberrant consumer behavior, Libya, multi-method approach, planned behavior theory

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Authors: Abinet Tilahun Aweke

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In Europe, there is a growing interest in food produced ethically and with a broader benefit for society. Consumers could consider numerous extrinsic and intrinsic quality attributes, including organically produced, when selecting meat to purchase. Many studies recorded various reasons why consumers may choose to pay the premium price for organic foods, although willingness to pay (WTP) for organic meat and motives behind the WTPs differ depending on the meat type/cut and place. Employing state of the art stated preference (SP) method, this study seeks to find out how environmental attitudes and health concerns shape the demand for organic agriculture in Norway. More specifically, this paper contributes to the existing knowledge on consumer preferences by exploring if consumer's attitude towards carnivore-sheep conflict affects the willingness to pay (WTP) for organic meat. This study will also have a methodological contribution by investigating whether having environmental attitude and carnivore-livestock conflict questions prior to the organic meat WTP question will significantly affect the will to pay and the amount paid. Understanding the effect of the content of the auxiliary questions posed before WTP questions will help to improve future CV survey designs and hence the validity of the results obtained.

Keywords: attitude, consumer reference, contingent valuation, meat, organic, stated preference, survey design

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Authors: Rosa Amalia Safitri, Ine van der Fels-Klerx, Henk Hogeveen

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Halal is a dietary law observed by people following Islamic faith. It is considered as a type of credence food quality which cannot be easily assured by consumers even upon and after consumption. Therefore, Halal certification takes place as a practical tool for the consumers to make an informed choice particularly in a non-Muslim majority country, including the Netherlands. Discrete choice experiment (DCE) was employed in this study for its ability to assess the importance of attributes attached to Halal beef in the Dutch market and to investigate consumer utilities. Furthermore, willingness to pay (WTP) for the desired Halal certification was estimated. Four most relevant attributes were selected, i.e., the slaughter method, traceability information, place of purchase, and Halal certification. Price was incorporated as an attribute to allow estimation of willingness to pay for Halal certification. There were 242 Muslim respondents who regularly consumed Halal beef completed the survey, from Dutch (53%) and non-Dutch consumers living in the Netherlands (47%). The vast majority of the respondents (95%) were within the age of 18-45 years old, with the largest group being student (43%) followed by employee (30%) and housewife (12%). Majority of the respondents (76%) had disposable monthly income less than € 2,500, while the rest earned more than € 2,500. The respondents assessed themselves of having good knowledge of the studied attributes, except for traceability information with 62% of the respondents considered themselves not knowledgeable. The findings indicated that slaughter method was valued as the most important attribute, followed by Halal certificate, place of purchase, price, and traceability information. This order of importance varied across sociodemographic variables, except for the slaughter method. Both Dutch and non-Dutch subgroups valued Halal certification as the third most important attributes. However, non-Dutch respondents valued it with higher importance (0,20) than their Dutch counterparts (0,16). For non-Dutch, the price was more important than Halal certification. The ideal product preferred by the consumers indicated the product serving the highest utilities for consumers, and characterized by beef obtained without pre-slaughtering stunning, with traceability info, available at Halal store, certified by an official certifier, and sold at 2.75 € per 500 gr. In general, an official Halal certifier was mostly preferred. However, consumers were not willing to pay for premium for any type of Halal certifiers, indicated by negative WTP of -0.73 €, -0.93 €, and -1,03€ for small, official, and international certifiers, respectively. This finding indicated that consumers tend to lose their utility when confronted with price. WTP estimates differ across socio-demographic variables with male and non-Dutch respondents had the lowest WTP. The unfamiliarity to traceability information might cause respondents to perceive it as the least important attribute. In the context of Halal certified meat, adding traceability information into meat packaging can serve two functions, first consumers can justify for themselves whether the processes comply with Halal requirements, for example, the use of pre-slaughtering stunning, and secondly to assure its safety. Therefore, integrating traceability info into meat packaging can help to make informed decision for both Halal status and food safety.

Keywords: consumer utilities, discrete choice experiments, Halal certification, willingness to pay

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Authors: Jingxian An, Wei Yu

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Australia and New Zealand are neighboring countries in the New World wine industry, and their Pinot Noir wines have gained both production and reputation in recent years, competing in the international market. Consumer perception is heavily influenced by wine expertise, which plays a significant role in shaping their perceptions. This study aims to investigate the effects of country of origin and wine expertise on consumer perceptions. The results indicate that consumers' perceptions of Pinot Noir wines' astringency, sourness, sweetness, clarity, and bitterness are impacted by both country of origin and wine expertise. Of the five sensory attributes, sourness was found to have a more significant influence on consumer perceptions, while clarity had a minimal impact. Additionally, the study found that the country of origin had a greater impact on consumer perceptions than wine expertise.

Keywords: Australia, country of origin, consumer perception, New Zealand, wine expertise

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Authors: Hy Dang, Bo Mei

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The development of machine learning methods and techniques has opened doors for investigation in many areas such as medicines, economics, finance, etc. One active research area involving machine learning is stock market prediction. This research paper tries to consider multiple techniques and methods for stock movement prediction using historical price or price factors. The paper explores the effectiveness of some deep learning frameworks for forecasting stock. Moreover, an architecture (TimeStock) is proposed which takes the representation of time into account apart from the price information itself. Our model achieves a promising result that shows a potential approach for the stock movement prediction problem.

Keywords: classification, machine learning, time representation, stock prediction

Procedia PDF Downloads 118

Authors: Narong Anurak

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This study aimed to find out the hair-care purchasing behavior at hypermarkets and to investigate two factors, package design and advertising channels, that influenced hair-care purchasing behavior. The subjects of the study consisted of 100 housewives aged between 20-60 who usually shopped at Big C Tiwanon. They were selected by accidental sampling, and were asked to complete a questionnaire. The main findings of the survey were that the majority of respondents regarding their brand selection of hair-care products, they gave priority to the product quality followed by a reasonable price, and fragrance, respectively. Besides, more than half of the respondents had brand loyalty while the rest were attracted by an attractive package design and advertising promotion campaigns. The respondents who were attracted by the package design said that the information on the labels influenced their purchasing decision the most, and television was a medium that best reached them as well.

Keywords: advertising channels, consumer purchasing decisions, hair-care market, package design

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Authors: Eti Mizrahi, Gizem İntepe

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The geographical location of Turkey that stretches from Asia to Europe and Russia to Africa makes it an important logistics hub in the region. Although logistics is a developing sector in Turkey, the stock market representation is still low with only two companies listed in Turkey’s stock exchange since 2010. In this paper, we use the daily values of these two listed stocks as a benchmark for the logistics sector. After modeling logistics stock prices, an empirical examination is conducted between the existing logistics indices and these stock prices. The paper investigates whether the measures of logistics stocks are correlated with newly available logistics indices. It also shows the reflection of the economic activity in the logistics sector on the stock exchange market. The results presented in this paper are the first analysis of the behavior of logistics indices and logistics stock prices for Turkey.

Keywords: forecasting, logistic stock exchange, modeling, Africa

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Authors: S. Habte, K. Ouazzane, P. Patel, S. Patel

Abstract:

The dynamic and highly competitive nature of the consumer electronics retail industry means that businesses in this industry are experiencing different decision making challenges in relation to pricing, inventory control, consumer satisfaction and product offerings. To overcome the challenges facing retailers and create opportunities, we propose a generic data warehousing solution which can be applied to a wide range of consumer electronics retailers with a minimum configuration. The solution includes a dimensional data model, a template SQL script, a high level architectural descriptions, ETL tool developed using C#, a set of APIs, and data access tools. It has been successfully applied by ASK Outlets Ltd UK resulting in improved productivity and enhanced sales growth.

Keywords: consumer electronics, data warehousing, dimensional data model, generic, retail industry

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Authors: Mst Ilme Faridatul, Bo Wu

Abstract:

Multi-temporal urban land cover mapping is of paramount importance for monitoring urban sprawl and managing the ecological environment. For diversified urban activities, it is challenging to map land covers in a complex urban environment. Spectral indices have proved to be effective for mapping urban land covers. To improve multi-temporal urban land cover classification and mapping, we evaluate the performance of three spectral indices, e.g. modified normalized difference bare-land index (MNDBI), tasseled cap water and vegetation index (TCWVI) and shadow index (ShDI). The MNDBI is developed to evaluate its performance of enhancing urban impervious areas by separating bare lands. A tasseled cap index, TCWVI is developed to evaluate its competence to detect vegetation and water simultaneously. The ShDI is developed to maximize the spectral difference between shadows of skyscrapers and water and enhance water detection. First, this paper presents a comparative analysis of three spectral indices using Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM), Thematic Mapper (TM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) data. Second, optimized thresholds of the spectral indices are imputed to classify land covers, and finally, their performance of enhancing multi-temporal urban land cover mapping is assessed. The results indicate that the spectral indices are competent to enhance multi-temporal urban land cover mapping and achieves an overall classification accuracy of 93-96%.

Keywords: land cover, mapping, multi-temporal, spectral indices

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Authors: Chih-Hsiang Chang, Chia-Ching Tsai

Abstract:

The aim of this study is to examine the stock price effect of the enterprises being classified as socially responsible. We explore the stock price response to the announcement that an enterprise is selected for the Taiwan Corporate Sustainability Awards. Empirical results indicate that the announcements of the Taiwan Corporate Sustainability Awards provide useful informational content to stock market. We find the evidence of insignificantly positive short-term and significantly positive long-term price reaction to the enterprises being classified as socially responsible. This study concludes that investors in the Taiwan stock market tend to view an enterprise being selected for the Taiwan Corporate Sustainability Awards as one with superior quality and long-term price potential.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility, stock price effect, Taiwan stock market, investments

Procedia PDF Downloads 134

Authors: Ramandeep Kaur M. Malhi, Prashant K. Srivastava, G.Sandhya Kiran

Abstract:

Quantitative estimates of foliar biochemicals, namely chlorophyll content (CC), serve as key information for the assessment of plant productivity, stress, and the availability of nutrients. This also plays a critical role in predicting the dynamic response of any vegetation to altering climate conditions. The advent of hyperspectral data with an enhanced number of available wavelengths has increased the possibility of acquiring improved information on CC. Retrieval of CC is extensively carried through well known spectral indices derived from hyperspectral data. In the present study, an attempt is made to develop hyperspectral indices by identifying optimum bands for CC estimation in Butea monosperma (Lam.) Taub growing in forests of Shoolpaneshwar Wildlife Sanctuary, Narmada district, Gujarat State, India. 196 narrow bands of EO-1 Hyperion images were screened, and the best optimum wavelength from blue, green, red, and near infrared (NIR) regions were identified based on the coefficient of determination (R²) between band reflectance and laboratory estimated CC. The identified optimum wavelengths were then employed for developing 12 hyperspectral indices. These spectral index values and CC values were then correlated to investigate the relation between laboratory measured CC and spectral indices. Band 15 of blue range and Band 22 of green range, Band 40 of the red region, and Band 79 of NIR region were found to be optimum bands for estimating CC. The optimum band based combinations on hyperspectral data proved to be the most effective indices for quantifying Butea CC with NDVI and TVI identified as the best (R² > 0.7, p < 0.01). The study demonstrated the significance of band characterization in the development of the best hyperspectral indices for the chlorophyll estimation, which can aid in monitoring the vitality of forests.

Keywords: band, characterization, chlorophyll, hyperspectral, indices

Procedia PDF Downloads 124