Rapid increases in consumer food price beginning in 2007 generated interest in identifying the main factors influencing these increases. In subsequent years, food prices have fluctuated, but generally have continued their ascent. The effects of crude oil, gasoline, corn, and ethanol prices, as well as, the relative foreign exchange rate of the U.S. dollar and producer price indexes for food manufacturing and fuel products on domestic food prices are examined. Because the data series are non-stationary and cointegrated, a vector error correction model is estimated. Weak exogeneity and exclusion tests in the cointegration space are performed. Directed acyclical graphs are used to specify contemporaneous causal relationships. Dynamic interactions among the series are given by impulse response functions and forecast error variance decompositions. Weak exogeneity tests indicate all eight series work to bring the system back into equilibrium following a shock to the system. Further, exclusion tests suggest crude oil, gasoline, food CPI, ethanol, and food PPI variables are not in the long-run relationships. Dynamic analyses suggest the following relationships. Ethanol price is not a major factor in domestic food prices, suggesting that food prices are largely unaffected by the recent increased use of corn-based ethanol for fuel. Crude oil prices, corn prices, and the relative foreign exchange rate of the U.S. dollar, however, do influence domestic food prices with corn price contributing the most to food price variability. Innovation accounting inferences are robust to potential different contemporaneous causal specifications.

This thesis studies a single item periodic review inventory problem with stochastic demand, random price and quotation cost. It differs from the traditional inventory model in that at the beginning of each period, a decision is made whether to pay the quotation cost to get the price information. If it is decided to request a price quote then the next decision is on how many units to order; otherwise, there will be no order. An (r, S1, S2) policy with r < S2, S1 <= S2 is proposed for the problem with two prices. It prescribes that when the inventory is less than or equal to r, the price quotation is requested; if the higher price is quoted, then order up to S1, otherwise to S2. There are two cases, r < S1 or S1 <= r. In the first case, every time the price is quoted, an order is placed. It is a single reorder point two order-up-to levels policy that can be considered as an extension of the (s, S) policy. In the second case, S1 <= r, it is possible to “request a quote but not buy” if the quoted price is not favorable when the inventory is between S1 and r. Two total cost functions are derived for the cases r < S1 <= S2 and S1 <= r < S2 respectively. Then optimization algorithms are devised based on the properties of the cost functions and tested in numerical study. The algorithms successfully find the optimal policies in all of the 135 test cases. Compared to the exhaustive search, the running time of the optimization algorithm is reduced significantly. The numerical study shows that the optimal (r, S1, S2) policy can save up to 50% by ordering up to different levels for different prices, compared to the optimal (s, S) policy. It also reveals that in some cases it is optimal to search price speculatively, that is with S1 < r, to request a quote but only place an order when the lower price is realized, when the inventory level is between S1 and r.

Nowadays, bottled water is a common product, which can be easily found everywhere in developed and underdeveloped countries, and that usually has the main goal of reducing health risk. In Taiwan, tap water if often recognized as non-potable water, so, most of the people buy bottled water or filter their tap water. In France bottled water is popular for its convenience that consumers derive from it. However, bottled water became an important topic of discussion due to its importance and its negative aspects such as plastic waste, and its high price while having a similar composition with tap water. The aim of this study is to decompose the price of bottled water in France and Taiwan while using the hedonic price function in order to estimate the implicit price and the utility maximization that consumers estimate about it. A semi-log model has been used in order to obtain results. The findings show that the two markets have different preferences about bottled water attributes, but also have similarities which led to the conclusion that the that cultural and environmental differences play a large role in the preferences of bottled water attributes.

Pricing strategies (e.g. yield management) in the tourism industry, known as non-transparent pricing, have raised fairness issues, and more recently, new pricing schemes in the airline industry have been controversial issues in terms of price fairness. Nonetheless, few tourism researchers have studied price fairness from a consumer perspective. Thus, an understanding of the cognitive processes associated with perceived price fairness could have far-reaching implications for tourist behavior research. The purpose of this study was to examine the antecedents and consequences of tourists‟ perceived price fairness of the ancillary revenue (i.e. extra fees of airlines). In particular, a conceptual model was based on Weiner's (1980) attribution theory, which was expected to complement shortcomings of the traditional dual entitlement principle (Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler, 1986). Following the study purpose, four objectives of the study were established: (1) to examine the dimensionality of price fairness in a price change context; (2) to examine the antecedents of price fairness; (3) to examine the consequences of price fairness; and (4) to compare differences in the price fairness model between high and low price sensitivity groups. To achieve the study objectives, this study developed a conceptual model of price fairness with three antecedents (price comparison, cognitive attribution, and emotional response) and four consequences (behavioral loyalty, willingness to pay, complaining, and revenge), and determined the model that best predicted the hypothesized model using Structural Equation Modeling. Data were collected from an online survey and the respondents (n=524) were leisure travel passengers in the United States who had taken domestic flights in the past 12 months. The initial model fit the data well from a global perspective, yet, some hypotheses were not supported. Results suggested that price comparison evaluation and cognitive attribution are antecedents to price fairness, but emotional response was found to be influenced by price fairness as opposed to what was hypothesized. It was also revealed that while price fairness directly influenced favorable behavioral intentions (e.g. behavioral loyalty and willingness to pay more), it also influenced unfavorable behavioral intentions (e.g. revenge and complaining behavior), mediated by negative emotional response. The revised model was alternatively proposed. In addition, significant differences in price fairness, emotional response, willingness to pay more, and revenge intention between high and low price sensitivity groups were found. Results of this study provide potentially important direction for the development of a theoretical framework for the conceptualization of antecedents and consequences of price fairness in a tourism context. It is further expected that findings of this study from an attributional perspective provide managerial guidance for the utilization of marketing strategy when a company encounters inevitable price increases or extra fees.

The feature of group buying is that the price will go down as the accumulated orders are increasing. However, consumers will not know the final price until the end. As a result, consumers can only make decision based on the final price forecast of group buying. The final price forecast might be different depending on different pricing strategies of group-buying models and if there are competitions from posted-price stores. The purpose of this research is to understand how consumers¡¦ internal reference price and final price prediction of group buying would be influenced when facing different price curves in different market competition environment. The difference between the internal reference price and final price prediction of group-buying indicates the consumers¡¦ transaction utility. In addition, if consumers¡¦ perceived transaction utilities affect their intentions and behavior of joining group buying is another research purpose. In this research, there are three different pricing strategies, decreasing, neutral, and increasing based on the initial price, discount size and final price. For the market competition environment, it manipulated by if there are other posted-price stores to be chosen or not. The research result indicates that increasing price curve, which has higher final price, make consumers¡¦ final price prediction of group buying higher than the others under the best condition. On the other hand, it indicates that decreasing price curve, which has higher initial price, make consumers¡¦ final price prediction of group buying higher than the others under the worst condition. Consumers¡¦ internal reference prices are mainly influenced by market price information. When there are other posted-price stores to be chosen, consumers¡¦ internal reference price are higher averagely. In addition, the higher consumers¡¦ perceived transaction utilities are, the higher consumers¡¦ intentions to join group buying are. Finally, it shows consumers¡¦ intentions to join group buying have significant effect on their actual behavior.

This paper explores the effect of internet market and merchant characterics. Product retail price is not only a major revenue-driven factor for the seller, but also a key decision factor for the buyer. This research investigates how online retailing prices are affected by maket types and merchant characteristics. A dataset of 3,811 retail price quotes collected from 245 product items at 14 categoris from 880 onlline shopping or auction merchants is collected and analyzed. Major findings are below: 1. The average prices in the B2C market are significant higher than that in the C2C markets. No significant price difference is found between C2C markets that charge fees and free C2C markets. These implies that the auction market reduces product prices but whether the market maker charge service fees has no effect on product pricing. 2. Competitive intensity of a market is found to have significant positive effect on the price dispersion rate. This is consistent with prior research findings but is in conflict with the signle price theory in economics. This is because some vendors may intentionally lower their prices to attract customers, which results in a higher dispersion rate. 3. The reputation of a merchant has significant positive effects on its price dispersion in the B2C market. In auction markets, reputation has positive effect on price dispersion in the higher range, but has negative effect in the lower range. In both markets, merchant size has a positive effect on price dispersion in both markets. 4. Finally, price dispersion and effect of market types and product characteristics vary for different product categories.

For the past two decades, events on the world stage and particularly in the United States have serious implications for the operations of financial markets. In this study, we will attempt to provide some insights into information dispersion before and after three particular events: the near collapse of Long Term Capital Management in August 1998, the Tech-Bubble Burst in March 2000, and the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. A study of these events will yield insights into the resolution of information uncertainties in the financial markets. We estimated state prices and state price densities using Claims-based asset pricing (a la Ross (2000)). We then used our results to gauge investor sentiments three months before and three months after each event. We also used two new measures of the level of pessimism in the market during these events: skewness of the state price distributions and the percentages of discount states (with state price densities greater than one). Our results clearly indicate that different markets reacted differently to the three events, and that there were different levels of information leakage in the markets for each event. As expected, the impacts from the 9/11 event were immediate but short-lived in both the SPX and NDX markets. Further, our results show that event impact contamination played an important role in the over- and under-reactions to the three events. More specifically, our results indicate that the LTCM event was closely related to and was probably precipitated by the Russian Currency Crisis. As well, the 9/11 event occurred immediately following predictions of a U.S. economic recession, and three months prior to the declaration of the War on Terror. Our results show lulls and peaks in market expectations which correspond to these separate and yet correlated events. / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2008-05-30 13:29:49.85

Cattle producers are faced with difficult decisions on how they market theircalves. This study examines the different characteristics that play a role in determiningthe price of a group of animals. Identifying characteristics that determine pricedifferentials relative to the price premium given to producers participating in CPH salesis important information when producers are making a marketing decision. The modeldeveloped in this study provides producers with evidence of what characteristics generatethe highest price, as well as relative differences between sales locations and types ofsales. The more information available to producers, the better equipped they are to makedecisions.

The purpose of this study is to see whether price endings affect people's perceptions of luxury and necessity goods. There is evidence that the rightmost digits, or endings, of retail prices can communicate meanings to consumers. Some researchers (Schindler and Kirby, 1997; Stiving and Winer, 1997; Thomas and Morwitz, 2005) argued that there are two price ending effects level effects (those effects in which consumers may underestimate the price); and image effects (those effects in which consumers may infer meaning from the right-hand digits). In the study, ninety-three participants were recruited from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. All participants were given questionnaires to rate the quality and necessity-luxury of the good first; then a distraction session which used for distracting participants' attention from memorizing the prices of the goods; then a recall-test was given. Participants gave significantly different ratings for luxuries and necessities according to the different price-endings. In addition, the idea that the prices ending in 9 tend to be underestimated was also found.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-260). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.