The impact that the retail format has on the level of individual motivation tends to be overlooked in discussions of the determinants of organic consumption, this neglect due to the tendency to model individual and contextual factors separately. Hence, the dominant research paradigm has...

With few exceptions, today's retailers sell products across multiple categories. One strategic consideration of such retailers is product location, which determines how easy or difficult different categories are for customers to access. For example, grocery or department stores determine which...

This paper proposes a framework for studying how consumer search frictions affect retail market structure. In our model single-product firms which supply different products can merge to form a multiproduct firm. Consumers wish to buy multiple products and value the one-stop shopping convenience...

Renewed interest in macroeconomic theories of search frictions in the goods market requires a deeper understanding of the cyclical properties of the intensive margins in this market. Using the American Time Use Survey we find that average time spent searching declined in the aggregate over the...

The purpose of this paper was to find out if Costco's “treasure hunt” strategy was effectively attracting customers and increasing spending per visit. It was an exploratory research to provide insights in the perceptions of Costco customers in reference to new, seasonal, and premium products...

A common view in retail electricity markets is that retailers discriminate based on consumers' loyalty: loyal consumers pay more. The premium is colloquially known as a “loyalty tax” or “loyalty premium”. Reflecting this understanding Australia's governments, regulators and consumer...

The emerging sharing economy is fueled by products that some consumers buy new. This paper introduces an overlapping-generations model to analyze consumers' consumption choices and the equilibrium in the sharing market. We derive a retailer's optimal pricing strategy and determine the payoff...

Price dispersion persists, even on the Internet where search costs are small. One reason may be that consumers prefer randomized prices to fixed prices, implying that retail price data will always show some degree of price dispersion

The Cashless Debit Card (‘CDC') was triggered by a recommendation in the 2014 Forrest Review, ostensibly to address substance abuse and gambling issues. The CDC applies to a broad range of social security payments, defined as ‘trigger' payments, including a Disability Support Pension (DSP)....

In settings where most workers have full-time schedules, hourly wages are appropriate primary indicators of job quality and worker outcomes. However, in sectors where full-time schedules do not dominate - primarily service-producing activities - total hours matter, in addition to hourly wages,...