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TV commercials play an important role for consumers¡¦ purchasing behavior. As the competition being fierce in the financial goods market, the banks weight the commercial effect with the sales of issued cards. What kind of commercials elicit the most effective advertising result? A successful commercial precisely transmits the message to the target consumers, and it must be logical and convincing for consumers¡¦ demand. What kind of TV commercials will attract the desire of purchasing? This study is based on content analysis approach to analyze 49 TV commercials about cash cards in Taiwan, intends to probe the commercial types for the corporations to meet the consumers¡¦ need efficiently. After statistical analysis, find it as follows mainly: 1. Cash card commercials are mostly drama-oriented expression, and the main purpose is for promotion or service. The ¡¥static¡¦ type is vocal and narrative. 2. Commercial contexts are physical surroundings indoors and outdoors, designed for the interpersonal interaction of more than three people, with voice-over to communicate, and provide abundant information. 3. Commercials show the most powerful influence on symbolic needs, which are the needs for social relationship and the sense of self-achievement. 4. Commercials shape the cash cards as perceptual and low-involvement goods.

This study illustrates the use of ACNielsen Homescan Panel (HSD) in three separate demand analyses of dairy products: (1) the effect of using cross-sectional data in a New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) study of ice cream firm mergers in San Antonio; (2) the estimation of hedonic price models for fluid milk by quart, halfgallon and gallon container sizes; (3) the estimation of a demand system including white milk, flavored milk, carbonated soft drinks, bottled water, and fruit juice by various container sizes. In the NEIO study a standard LA/AIDS demand system was used to estimate elasticities evaluating seven simulated mergers of ice cream manufactures in San Antonio in 1999. Unlike previously published NEIO work, it is the first to use crosssectional data to address the issue associated with inventory effects. Using the method developed by Capps, Church and Love, none of the simulated price effects associated with the mergers was statistically different from zero at the 5% confidence level. In 1995 Nerlove proposed a quantity-dependent hedonic model as a viable alternative to the conventional price-dependent hedonic model as a means to ascertain consumer willingness to pay for the characteristics of a given good. We revisited Nerlove’s work validating his model using transactional data indigenous to the HSD. Hedonic models, both price-dependent and quantity-dependent, were estimated for the characteristics of fat content, container type, and brand designation for the container sizes of gallon, half- gallon, and quart. A rigorous explanation of the interpretation between the estimates derived from the two hedonic models was discussed. Using the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS), a matrix of own-price, crossprice, and expenditure elasticities was estimated involving various container sizes of white milk, flavored milk, carbonated soft drinks, bottled water, and fruit juices, using a cross-section of the 1999 HSD. We described price imputations and the handling of censored observations to develop the respective elasticities. These elasticities provided information about intra-product relationships (same product but different sizes), intrasize relationships (different products same container size), and inter-product relationships (different products and different sizes). This container size issue is unique in the extant literature associated with non-alcoholic beverage industry.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Hikaru H. Peterson / Farmer-to-consumer direct marketing institutions have expanded significantly in the last decades. In particular, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has developed exponentially in the US and in Europe. CSAs consist of a contract in which the consumer buys a share of the farm production at the beginning of the season and receive in exchange a bundle of products regularly. CSAs still account for a marginal share of food sales today and many questions remain unanswered, such as the level of knowledge of the general public about CSA, the potential size of the market, its consumer characteristics, and the main motivations and barriers that lead consumers to either join or not join CSAs. This study focused on addressing these questions for the Kansas City area and the central region in France. Another objective was to give recommendations to farmers on how to develop CSAs. Two versions of the surveys were designed and conducted in the US and in France to address the objectives. Particularly, two types of questions were used in order to elicit willingness to pay (WTP): an open-ended question and a choice experiment. A Tobit model and discrete choice models were run to analyze results from the open-ended question and the choice experiment, respectively. Results show that around 80 percent of the population knew little about CSAs. The understanding of the demand for CSAs shows that a potential market, accounting for around 25 percent of the population, exists, but consumers are very exigent and farmers need to provide well-considered contracts to attract consumers. Recommendations to farmers are presented following the 4P method. For the Product, the variety offered seems to be the most important point. For Price, it has been estimated from the demand at $300 in the US and €400 in France for a basic share. Promotion would need to focus on education. Having various delivery locations would be the best option concerning Place; home delivery was found to be unnecessary. Tendencies found in the US and in France were similar except for educational activities: the French are looking more for these opportunities than Americans who care more about convenience.

This thesis comprises three principal essays, each of which provides a contribution to the literature on the nonparametric approach to demand analysis. In each essay, I develop novel techniques that follow in the revealed preference tradition, and apply them to tackle a series of questions that concern the mechanisms underlying consumer spending decisions. Each technique developed is tightly linked to a particular nonparametric theory of choice behaviour and is explicitly designed for use with a finite set of observations. My work draws heavily upon results from finite mathematics, into which I integrate insights from information theory and integer programming. The output of this endeavor is a set of methodologies that are largely free of auxiliary assumptions over the form of the unobserved structural functions of interest. Providing greater detail on the work to come, my first essay extends and clarifies the nonparametric approach to forecasting demand behaviour at new budget regimes. Using insights from information theory and integer programming, I construct an operational nonparametric definition of global rationality and develop a methodology that facilitates the recovery of globally rational individual demand predictions. This is the first attempt in the literature to develop a systematic methodology to impose global rationality on nonparametric demand predictions. The resulting forecasts allow for unrestricted preference heterogeneity in the population and I demonstrate how these predictions can be used for coherent welfare analysis. In my second and third essays, I prove new revealed preference testability axioms for models that extend the traditional neoclassical choice framework. Specifically, in my second essay, I address the intertemporal allocation of spending by collectives, whilst my final essay integrates taste variation into the utility maximisation framework. In both of these essays, I develop my testable results into practical algorithms that allow one to recover salient features of individual preferences. In my second essay, a methodology is developed to recover the minimal intrahousehold heterogeneity in theory-consistent discount rates, whilst my final essay develops a quadratic programming procedure that facilitates the recovery of the minimal interpersonal and intertemporal heterogeneity in tastes that is required to rationalise observed choice patterns. Applying these techniques to consumption micro-data yields new empirical insights that are of relevance to the applied literatures on time discounting, family economics and the public policy debate on tobacco control.

There are many models used to estimate demand elasticities. We present a complex review of these studies in our thesis. Our empirical goal is to compare LES, Translog and QUAIDS demand systems according to their performance. In parallel, we estimate the elasticities of meat demand in the Czech Republic for the period 2010 - 2015 using the data of the household budget survey. Comparing the systems by the Akaike and Schwarz criterion, LES demonstrates the best fit for this kind of data. The average of price elasticity for different kinds of meat in the examined period is -0.99, income elasticity then equals to 1.12. These results can have important implications for tax policy, or for commercial use. JEL Classification F12, F21, F23, H25, H71, H87 Keywords Demand, comparison, LES, Translog, QUAIDS, meat Author's e-mail 55606678@fsv.cuni.cz Supervisor's e-mail milan.scasny@czp.cuni.cz

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Glynn Tonsor / Few things facing the U.S. meat industry in recent years have garnered more attention of economic researchers than food safety events, policies, and mitigation efforts. This dissertation has two main essays and themes focusing on both domestic and international food safety issues. Contributing new insights to this situation, the impacts of FSIS (Food Safety Inspection Service) recalls on consumer meat demand in the United States are estimated by a series of Rotterdam models in the first study using monthly grocery-scanner data. Multiple model specifications are employed to further assess effects across meat products and geographic regions. Recall variables are constructed separately as beef E. coli recall, beef non-E. coli recall, pork recall, and poultry recall variables to facilitate finer assessment of demand impacts. Results suggest beef E. coli recalls significantly reduce the demand for ground beef contemporaneously among most, but not all, regions in the United States. The ultimate finding of food safety effects neither being fully homogeneous nor entirely heterogeneous warrants appreciation. In order to protect domestic consumers and meat industries from potential food safety hazards, some member countries of the WTO implement sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures as non-tariff barriers. The second study focuses on investigating the determinants of red meat trade patterns and associated impacts of SPS regulations. This analysis uses multiple product-level gravity equation models and PPML (Poisson Pesudo Maximum-likelihood estimators to overcome sample selection bias and heteroscedasticity and examine the trade relationship among other factors. Results indicate that, trade values of frozen beef and pork are significantly reduced by the implementation of SPS measures. Also, the spillover effects across meat products on trade were detected which provides essential information to the meat industry, policy makers, and trade representatives.

The thesis addresses the research question of how and why ‘prosuming' solar electricity evolves over time among social housing tenants with prepayment electricity meters. Prosuming is defined here as deliberately and simultaneously producing and consuming electricity. Using a Social Practice Theory framework, but also drawing on Time Geography, the thesis analyses prosuming as a ‘project'. This sees practitioners actively mobilising elements (meanings, skills and materials), as well as orchestrating everyday practices (i.e. laundering) and projects (i.e. 'Feeding-the-Meter') to the fulfilment of the 'Prosuming Project'. The overarching research question is ‘How and why does prosuming evolve for social housing tenants?' It is broken down into four subsidiary questions that firstly explore the period before solar panels, and then the three stages of the conceptual framework – adopting, establishing and committing to the Prosuming Project. The first question addresses how householders use electricity prior to the installation of solar panels and the role of two dominant, institutional projects: 'Feeding-the-Meter' and 'Maintaining-Family-Routines'. The second examines the features of households adopting the Prosuming Project and the need to mobilise a set of elements from within a disadvantaged community. The third question explores how the establishing phase is marked by a complex relationship between prosuming as a secondary, voluntary project, and dominant, institutional projects. This is further complicated by the role of synchronicity, finances and the changing seasons. The final subsidiary question addresses how a new vocabulary of elements emerged as practitioners committed to the Prosuming Project. It also explores how a transformative process took place both for practitioner and the project itself. In particular it highlights the potential in the future for an Energy Shifting, Storing, Saving & Sharing Project that could support disadvantaged communities, if they are able to mobilise the elements they need to perform it. This case study adopts an in-depth qualitative methodology, using serial interviews with seven households over ten months. The interviewees live in an area that in 2010 was ranked as within the ten percent most deprived in England, according to English Indices of Deprivation (DCLG). The research explores their lived experiences of the Prosuming Project. The thesis focuses on UK social housing tenants, who appear not to have been researched before for a prosuming-focused, social practice study. This enables the research to contribute to topical debates about future sustainability ‘winners and losers'. It also offers methodological insights into undertaking a social practice case study that explored lived experiences within a disadvantaged community. The research provides insights into how prosuming solar power is embedded in everyday life: how it can be supported or challenged by dominant projects, and how householders may develop new skills, understandings, and ways of using materials as their performances evolve.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Hikaru H. Peterson / This study investigates consumers’ preferences for organic baby meals. The growth of the U.S organic industry has been notable during the last two decades. The U.S. organic farmers do not produce enough quantity to meet the increasing U.S demand for organic food, and increasingly more organic foods are manufactured from organic ingredients produced outside the U.S. Tensions have emerged in the organic sectors as large-scale companies have seized opportunities to sell products differentiated with the organic label. The study aimed to estimate U.S. consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for selected attributes (type of brand, production attributes, and origin of ingredients) of baby meal products using a choice-based conjoint analysis. The organic offerings represent a nontrivial share of this market. In recent years, offerings under store brands have also been increasing. The study identified that consumers preferred a major national brand with a large market share such as Gerber (80%) to the other types of brands including store brands. In terms of product characteristics, pesticide free and non-GMO products were seen as consumers’ top priorities. Consumers would not buy products that did not exhibit these two characteristics. Minimally processed products seemed not to matter for the majority of consumers, and these products (sold frozen) were expected to be a niche market. Besides, a product made with U.S ingredients (organically or non-organically grown) was associated with a higher utility. Firms can run a cost-benefit analysis to see if sourcing U.S. ingredients could increase profit. Running experimental auctions are recommended to firms that want to elicit WTP for U.S grown ingredients and implement an efficient marketing strategy. This study is a preliminary analysis that highlighted consumers’ preferences in the baby food market, and future analysis would complement the findings.