When a new brand is launched, consumers are initially both uncertain of and not inertial to the new brand. Though these barriers may disappear on their own over time, a savvy brand manager who knows the relative importance of both can use relevant marketing levers to increase profits in the long run. This paper studies exactly these barriers and measures their relative effects on the launch of ...

Inflation-adjusted farm prices and farm-wholesale marketing margins for beef and pork have declined over several decades. For example, from 1970 to 1998, real slaughter steer and hog prices declined by 50% and 66%, respectively, while real beef and pork farm-wholesale (FW) marketing margins declined by 57% and 65%, respectively (Figures 1 and 2). These changes have been attributed to declining ...

FEWS NET is a USAID-funded activity. The authors' views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the view of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. Anomaly – is a deviation from the norm or average. Arbitrage – is taking advantage of a price differential. The two most common types of arbitrage related to food security are spatial ...

Emissions mitigation policies affect prices, including prices for fossil fuels and agricultural products. Consumer prices for coal and natural gas are expected to rise when climate policy is implemented, while oil prices may be reduced or remain the same in comparison to a no policy scenario. Impacts on agricultural prices are more controversial as reduced negative productivity impacts on yield...

Past research has explored how external reference prices affect consumer perceptions (i.e., their “internal” reference price) and consequently the price they are willing to pay for a product or service. Historically, research has examined the effects of exposure to prices for the same product, the same brand, or at the very least products within the same category as price cues. This research ex...

We consider a distribution grid interconnecting a number of consumers with flexible power consumption. Each consumer is under the jurisdiction of exactly one balancing responsible party (BRP), who buys energy at a day-ahead electricity market on behalf of the consumer. We illustrate how BRPs can utilize the flexibility of the consumers to minimize the imbalance between the consumed and the purc...

We model unobserved preference heterogeneity in demand systems as random Barten scales in utility functions. These Barten scales appear as random coefficients multiplying prices in demand functions. Consumer demands are nonlinear in prices and may have unknown functional structure. We therefore prove identification of additive Generalized Random Coefficients models, defined as additive nonparam...

Internet shopbots are automated tools that allow customers to easily search for prices and product characteristics from online retailers. Some market observers have predicted that shopbots will benefit consumers at the expense of retailers. In this view, shopbots will radically reduce consumer search costs, reduce retailer opportunities to differentiate their products, and as a result will driv...

In the information age, the availability of data on consumer profiles has opened new possibilities for companies to increase their revenue via data mining techniques. One approach has been to strategically set prices of various products, taking into account the profiles of consumers. We study algorithms for the multi-product pricing problem, where, given consumer preferences among products, the...