Independent of the left-right model of ideological structure, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food and agriculture are resented across the political spectrum in Switzerland. In the absence of any real experience with genetically modified (GM) food but faced with continuous exposure to...

Group buying enables collective bargaining opportunity that individual buyers lack to negotiate prices with sellers. This potential negotiation capability has two opposing effects. On the one hand, the prospect of the group being able to negotiate price with its rival forces each seller to lower...

We revisit the classical result that taxation of private consumption is distortionary and therefore precludes the efficient provision of public goods. We introduce a nonlinear consumption tax which we call a `tax lottery'. Under this scheme, an ad-valorem consumption tax is supplemented with a...

Advancements in online shopping for consumers requires consistent government support policies and the introduction of substantial government laws and regulations. In order to establish innovative developments in online shopping market environment that makes online shopping faster and stable, the...

The present study aimed to explore whether personality traits influence buying behaviour and if this influence differs depending on a different culture. The author focused on a cross-cultural investigation of Poland and the UK. Data were collected via an online questionnaire which measured...

We study consumption behaviour in systems with heterogeneous interacting agents. Two different models are introduced, respectively with long and short range interactions among agents. At any time step an agent decides whether or not to consume a good, doing so if this provides positive utility....

Online communities generate marketing value for both firms and consumers, and their sustainability relies on continuous user engagement. In an environment in which competition for engagement is fierce, digital platforms seemingly favor the use of negative emotion to engage users. Yet, the impact...

The standard microeconomic assumption of a household utility function raises two theoretical problems: it contradicts methodological individualism and it ignores economic phenomena such as income and consumption sharing, division of labor, externalities and altruism within a household. This...

A tremendous amount of news coverage and analysis of privacy issues has been driven by surveys of consumers showing high levels of concern. For this study, the authors reviewed 23 privacy surveys to assess their real usefulness to policymakers. Polls rarely play as large a role in policymaking...

We examine the effect of direct mail (commonly referred to as junk mail) advertising on individual financial decisions by studying consumer choice of home equity debt contracts. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that financial variables underlying the relative pricing of debt...