Thesis advisor: Richard McGowan / The Fair Trade movement is not new. Its roots go all the way back to the 1940s, and since its inception many Fair Trade organizations have arisen to offer this alternative strategy for doing business. Coffee is most commonly associated with Fair Trade, and it is the product this paper seeks to explore. In a broad sense, this investigation will look at how close Fair Trade Coffee certification programs actually come to being fair. The working definition of fairness is the ability to provide economic opportunities to marginalized workers. A fair economy would properly reward hard-working farmers for their intense labors. Many Fair Trade initiatives argue this is not what exists. As a result, they pay a living wage and offer opportunities to coffee farmers—some of the poorest people in the world—with hopes that this will help advance them out of poverty. To see if this successfully promotes fairness in economics, this paper will focus on the benefits of certification to small-scale farmers, mainly regarding income, and on the development of the Fair Trade Coffee market. Ultimately, this research will demonstrate that this movement is at least somewhat successful at improving the economic situation of marginalized workers. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics.

A global trend of decreased Willingness to pay(WTP) price premiums for national brands prevails.In this paper, the authors shed light on how national brands(NBs) can best defend their pricepremiums towards Private labels(PLs). This is done through studying what factors drives the WTPprice premiums for national brands and what attributes are important when consumers buy meatproducts.With inputs from the literature and conducted focus groups, a questionnaire testing our constructedhypothesis and the importance of attributes were collected from 163 respondents. A connection ismade to the theory of positioning using a customer-based brand equity concept.The results show that the WTP is driven by high perceived risk, perceived quality gap between NBsand PLs, is moderated by consumer involvement and mediated through PL experience. Swedishmeat, good animal husbandry, supporting farmers and locally produced meat were all importantattributes national brands should associate with their brands.

Firms invest significant resources to improve the quality of their products but also to communicate to consumers about their efforts. However, information regarding quality of product offerings is now increasingly being generated by short or long term users of products or services. The growing popularity of critical reviews has prompted attention from both academics and practitioners alike. Current academic findings do not seem conclusive with respect to the impact critical reviews have on product performance on the market. The current dissertation aims to clarify the role critical reviews have in relation to economic outcomes such as sales, category market share, price premiums and product success. Using four years of cross-sectional data from the automobile market, the first essay of this dissertation conceptualizes consumer and expert ratings as market-based signals and investigates the impact critical reviews have on product performance of new and used automobiles. Results show that both consumer and expert ratings are positively related to market performance (sales and category market share of new automobiles) but they exhibit a non-synergistic interaction. More specifically, at higher levels of consumer ratings, the impact of expert ratings on product performance is decreased and viceversa. Furthermore, results show that critical ratings are significantly associated with the firm's ability to command higher price premiums. Comparatively, a firm-based driver of product performance, product improvement failed to show a significant association with product market performance but it exhibited a non-linear relationship with price premiums. Moreover, the impact of expert ratings proved to be significantly higher for utilitarian products than hedonic products whereas consumer ratings do not have a differential effect across product types. Finally, the results did not show that the impact of consumer ratings on sales of used automobiles is increasing over time. The second essay focuses on expert reviews (entertainment critics) and provides a more nuanced examination of the role of critics and critical reviews and their impact on probability of product success. Based on qualitative data, two types of expert reviews are distinguished to be influential (opinions and evaluations), however, their role differs in importance over time. The hypotheses are tested using data from the fourth season of American Idol. Results show that on average, opinions are significantly impacting the probability of success whereas evaluations do not. Moreover, the numbers of statements that contain evaluation negatively impact the success in early periods. Overall, the results highlight the facts that critical reviews from both experts and consumers should be monitored, that they are a key driver of product market-success and that select expert reviews may influence product success in early stages of product existence.

This dissertation examines between-brand price premiums from an information processing perspective. A literature review is conducted in which price premiums are shown to depend on consumer's ability, motivation and opportunity to process information relevant to making between-brand judgments of value. A conceptual model is developed that incorporates these three constraints on brand information processing, but focuses on the antecedents of the motivation construct. An experiment is conducted that tests the effects on information processing of four antecedents to motivation: involvement, brand evaluation motive, economic concern, and need for cognition. Results show that involvement interacts with motive in its effect on information processing amount, but not on processing style. Need for cognition is positively related to both amount and style of processing, but the economic concern results were mixed. Finally, implications of the results are discussed and future research directions suggested. / Ph. D.

This thesis aims to explore if the existence of portfolio price premiums can be verified and if they differ in time and over property segments. The purpose is to contribute with valuable insights within the field of portfolio premiums in the real estate industry. In order to explore this further a regression model was developed. The model includes six portfolio variables controlling for size in the aspect of transactional value and number of properties included in the portfolio. We further test if the premium varies over property segments and over time. The data was provided by Cushman & Wakefield and consists of 825 property transactions. The results show that a portfolio premium for small, medium and large portfolios with a transactional value over 500 million SEK, and a discount on small portfolios with a transactional value below 500 million SEK is present. The premium was found to be 17.5% for small portfolios, 16.8% for medium sized and 26.3% for large portfolios. While premiums were found for portfolios with a transactional value over 500 million SEK an 13.7% discount was found for small portfolios with a transaction value below 500 million SEK. Which indicates that investors are willing to pay a premium, but only for larger portfolios. Furthermore, the only segment test with significant results were residential and industrial of which residential indicated a discount on small and medium portfolios with a transactional value over 500 million SEK and industrial indicated a discount on small portfolios with a transactional value over 500 million SEK. The test of variation of a portfolio premium over time gave mixed results and showed that investors payed a premium for medium and large portfolios with a transactional value over 500 million SEK during 2010 - 2015. / Detta masterarbete syftar till att undersöka fenomenet portföljpremier och bidra till utökad kunskap om premier och möjliga förklaringar till varför de uppkommer. Författarna har undersökt om det går att kvantifiera den påstådda portföljpremien och om denna skiljer sig över fastighetsegmenten och tid. Syftet med arbete är att bidrag med värdefulla insikter och kunskap om portföljpremier inom fastighetsbranschen. För att kunna besvara frågeställningen utvecklade författarna en regressionsmodell. Modellen innehöll sex portföljvariabler som bland annat kontrollerade för storlek i förhållande till transaktionsvärde samt antal fastigheter inkluderade i portföljen. För att undersöka om premien varierade över fastighetssegment och med tid utfördes fem olika segmentstest och två års tester. Data som användes i regressionerna tillhandahölls av Cushman & Wakefield. Resultatet av studien visar att det finns en portföljpremie på små, medelstora och stora fastighetsportföljer med ett transaktionsvärde över 500 millioner kronor. Premien noterades till 17,5% för små portföljer, 16,8% för medelstora portföljer och 26,3% för stora portföljer. Medans en premie noterades för portföljer med ett transaktionsvärde över 500 millioner kronor kunde en rabatt om 13,7% hittas för små portföljer med etttransaktionsvärde under 500 millioner kronor. Segmenttesten som genomfördes gav blandade resultat. De test som gav signifikanta resultat var segmentstest för industri och bostäder. Resultatet av regressionen visade att det finns en rabatt för små och medelstora bostadsportföljer med ett transaktionsvärde överstigande 500 millioner kronor samt en rabatt för små industriportföljer med ett transaktionsvärde över 500 millioner kronor. Utöver segmentstesten gjordes även två tester där författarna testade om premien varierade över tid. Likaså här gav testerna blandade resultat. Det kan konstateras att en premie återfinns för portföljer handlade under perioden 2010 - 2015.

abstract: In two independent and thematically connected chapters, I investigate consumers' willingness to pay a price premium in response to product development that entails prosocial attributes (PATs), those that allude to the reduction of negative externalities to benefit society, and to an innovative participatory pricing design called 'Pay-What-You-Want' (PWYW) pricing, a mechanism that relinquishes the determination of payments in exchange for private goods to the consumers themselves partly relying on their prosocial preferences to drive positive payments. First, I propose a novel statistical approach built on the choice based contingent valuation technique to estimate incremental willingness to pay (IWTP) for PATs that accounts for consumer heterogeneity, dependence in the decision making processes, and incentive compatibility. I validate the approach by estimating IWTP for a variety of PATs and contrast the theoretical and managerial benefits of using the proposed approach over extant techniques used in the literature for this purpose. Second, I propose a general and flexible statistical modeling framework for estimating PWYW payments that exceed zero. It relies on the joint estimation of three types of consumer decision processes namely, the consumer propensity to default to an explicit price recommendation, the propensity to pay a least legitimate price, and the payment of a freely-chosen non-zero payment. Of particular interest is the model's ability to account for a wide variety of design constraints such as the setting of price bounds, explicit price recommendations, and the provision of a menu of discrete prices to choose from. I validate the approach by estimating PWYW payments for a variety of products such as music licenses, snacks, and sports tickets. I specifically examine and report the differential impact of three managerially controllable variables namely, 'payment anonymity', 'information on payment recipients' and 'information of product value/quality'. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2016