Retail management of store brands (SBs) has focused on achieving positioning in value and creating associations of smart or expert shopping. The result is that value-conscious consumers and market mavens are the main targets of these brands. This study proposes and contrasts empirically a...

The main goal of this study-and its potential to add to the policy debate-is to cast light on the network of voices that influence the narrative about inflation and monetary policy in South Africa. To that end, this paper first identifies the main individuals (journalists, domestic policy...

Although prices are the most discussed topic in consumer conversations, research has mostly neglected the field of price-related word-of-mouth (WOM). The present study picks up this research gap by analyzing the effects of price-WOM valence and price change communicated by WOM on consumer price...

We study a dynamic model of opinion formation in social networks. In our model, boundedly rational agents update opinions by averaging over their neighbors' expressed opinions, but may misrepresent their own opinion by conforming or counter-conforming with their neighbors. We show that an...

We investigate the role of manipulation in a model of opinion formation. Agents repeatedly communicate with their neighbors in the social network, can exert effort to manipulate the trust of others, and update their opinions about some common issue by taking weighted averages of neighbors'...

The paper analyzes the incidence, the severity and the determinants of household poverty in Ukraine during transition using two comparable surveys from 1996 and 2004. We measure poverty using income and consumption and contrast the effects of various poverty lines. Poverty in both periods...