scholarly journals Consumers’ Journey between Liquid and Solid Consumption

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 13730
Author(s):  
Edoardo Beretta ◽  
Giulia Miniero ◽  
Francesco Ricotta

Sharing economy brought changes both at the macroeconomic and the individual level. New models of consumption, such as the liquid one, are becoming very frequent, shaping countries’ productive systems and consumers’ habits. This paper—combining both theoretical approaches—aims at measuring the individual characteristics that induce consumers to prefer liquid versus solid consumption. First, the article contextualizes the topic from a broader, macroeconomic perspective, and later on, it narrows its angle of view making it rather microeconomic and behavioral. In this specific regard, by means of a cluster analysis, four profiles of consumers are identified: (1) Rational and liquid; (2) Hybrid and question mark; (3) Solid in transition; (4) Hyper solid. Characteristics as well as theoretical and managerial implications are outlined for each cluster. This research focusing on emerging consumer behavior contributes to the current debate on solid and liquid consumption (i) exploring the continuum between these two extremes, (ii) defining a first behavioral profile of customer that are traveling between solid and liquid state and (iii) designing a possible way to target such a blurred and fast evolving customer that mostly qualifies a global and rapidly evolving economic environment.

Author(s):  
Geoff Moore

The purpose of the concluding chapter is to review and draw some conclusions from all that has been covered in previous chapters. To do so, it first summarizes the MacIntyrean virtue ethics approach, particularly at the individual level. It then reconsiders the organizational and managerial implications, drawing out some of the themes which have emerged from the various studies which have been explored particularly in Chapters 8 and 9. In doing so, the chapter considers a question which has been implicit in the discussions to this point: how feasible is all of this, particularly for organizations? In the light of that, it revisits the earlier critique of current approaches to organizational ethics (Corporate Social Responsibility and the stakeholder approach), before concluding.


Author(s):  
Rajat Gera ◽  
Priyanka Chadha ◽  
Shirin Alavi

This paper aims to synthesize and integrate the existing literature on MSA adoption and provide directions for future research through narrative review by classifying and organizing the accumulated knowledge into a thematic framework. The paper's theoretical, conceptual approaches, and results were organized into three themes: online distribution channel (theoretical approaches and antecedent factors of MSA adoption, consumer characteristics), advanced technology for in-store shopping (marketing aspects of MSA), and technology perspectives (technology aspects of MSA). The 25 theories of mobile shopping app (MSA) adoption and usage (at the individual level) from 22 reviewed papers were summarized, defined, and mapped with authors. Research questions have been proposed for theories used in reviewed papers and new theories. MSA adoption is at an emergent stage of evolution with fragmentation of theoretical and methodological approaches. While theories of technology adoption and behavioral intentions have been used predominantly, most studies have adopted a multi-theoretic approach or have extended/modified the model with hedonic, situational, and behavioral constructs. The findings related to consumer characteristics of MSA adoption, anchor constructs, moderator and mediator variables, and marketing and technology features of MSA are synthesized and organized according to the themes. Theoretical and practical implications are drawn, research limitations are identified, and future research directions are suggested.


2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Denis S. Andreyuk

Genome editing technologies make it important to look for genetic determinants that can influence the structure of society and basic social relations. This paper proposes to look for such determinants in the evolutionarily ancient mechanisms of group interaction, namely in the genes that determine the balance of cooperation and competition. The opposition of these two forces is thought to be the basis of the evolutionary development of intelligence in higher primates and humans. The article provides examples showing that individual characteristics such as extraversion/introversion as measured by the "Big Five" methodology, aggressiveness, which strongly associates with the risk taking, and the level of intelligence, all of these traits a) greatly influence the organization of social processes and b) are largely genetically determined. As a development of this approach of searching for socially significant genetic determinants, it is proposed to model genetic changes in sociality, aggressiveness and intelligence at the individual level, followed by an analysis of the resulting social changes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 240 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 161-200
Author(s):  
Matthias Dütsch ◽  
Ralf Himmelreicher

AbstractIn this article we examine the correlation between characteristics of individuals, companies, and industries involved in low-wage labour in Germany and the risks workers face of earning hourly wages that are below the minimum-wage or low-wage thresholds. To identify these characteristics, we use the Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) 2014. The SES is a mandatory survey of companies which provides information on wages and working hours from about 1 million jobs and nearly 70,000 companies from all industries. This data allows us to present the first systematic analysis of the interaction of individual-, company-, and industry-level factors on minimum- and low-wage working in Germany. Using a descriptive analysis, we first give an overview of typical low-paying jobs, companies, and industries. Second, we use random intercept-only models to estimate the explanatory power of the individual, company, and industry levels. One main finding is that the influence of individual characteristics on wage levels is often overstated: Less than 25 % of the differences in the employment situation regarding being employed in minimum-wage or low-wage jobs can be attributed to the individual level. Third, we performed logistic and linear regression estimations to assess the risks of having a minimum- or low-wage job and the distance between a worker’s actual earnings and the minimum- or low-wage thresholds. Our findings allow us to conclude that several determinants related to individuals appear to suggest a high low-wage incidence, but in fact lose their explanatory power once controls are added for factors relating to the companies or industries that employ these individuals.


2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Licia C. Papavero ◽  
Francesco Zucchini

Studies on female legislative behavior suggest that women parliamentarians may challenge party cohesion by allying across party lines. In this paper we analyze a specific parliamentary activity – bill co-sponsorship – in the Italian lower Chamber, between 1979 and 2016, as a source of information about MPs’ original preferences to study how gender affects party cohesion. Do women form a separated group in the Italian parliament? On average, are they more or less distant from the center of their parties than men? Does gender affect systematically party cohesion? A principal component analysis of co-sponsorship data allows us to identify the ideal points of all MPs in a multidimensional space for each legislature. Based on these data we estimate the impact of gender on party cohesion at the individual level while controlling for the impact of several other variables of different kind (individual, partisan, and institutional). We find that: (1) on average, women show lower cohesion as a group inside different parties and higher party cohesion than men; (2) the influence of gender on party cohesion is not conditional upon individual characteristics, upon the size and organization of parliamentary parties, and upon the share of women in their parliamentary groups; (3) the different behavior of women MPs may depend on the different patterns of recruitment in the parties.


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 973-1002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Letheren ◽  
Kerri-Ann L. Kuhn ◽  
Ian Lings ◽  
Nigel K. Ll. Pope

Purpose This paper aims to addresses an important gap in anthropomorphism research by examining the individual-level factors that correlate with anthropomorphic tendency. Design/methodology/approach The extant psychology, marketing and consumer psychology literature is reviewed, and eight hypotheses devised. Data from 509 online survey respondents are analysed to identify individual characteristics associated with anthropomorphic tendency. Findings The results reveal that anthropomorphic tendency varies by individual and is significantly related to personality, age, relationship status, personal connection to animals and experiential thinking. Research limitations/implications This paper extends on recent research into the individual nature of anthropomorphic tendency, once thought to be a universal trait. Given that this paper is the first of its kind, testing of further traits is merited. It is suggested that future research further examine personality, as well as other elements of individual difference, and test the role of anthropomorphic tendency in the development of processing abilities with age. Practical implications Findings show that anthropomorphic tendency may prove to be a key variable in the segmentation of markets and the design of marketing communications, and that younger, single, more creative, conscientious consumers are an appropriate target for anthropomorphic messages. The importance of personal connection to animals, as well as experiential thinking, is also highlighted. Originality/value Given the importance of anthropomorphic tendency for the processing of messages involving non-human endorsers, as well as the formation of relevant attitudes and behaviours, this paper fulfils an identified need to further understand the characteristics of those high on this tendency.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rich Colbaugh ◽  
Kristin Glass

AbstractThere is great interest in personalized medicine, in which treatment is tailored to the individual characteristics of patients. Achieving the objectives of precision healthcare will require clinically-grounded, evidence-based approaches, which in turn demands rigorous, scalable predictive analytics. Standard strategies for deriving prediction models for medicine involve acquiring ‘training’ data for large numbers of patients, labeling each patient according to the outcome of interest, and then using the labeled examples to learn to predict the outcome for new patients. Unfortunately, labeling individuals is time-consuming and expertise-intensive in medical applications and thus represents a major impediment to practical personalized medicine. We overcome this obstacle with a novel machine learning algorithm that enables individual-level prediction models to be induced from aggregate-level labeled data, which is readily-available in many health domains. The utility of the proposed learning methodology is demonstrated by: i.) leveraging US county-level mental health statistics to create a screening tool which detects individuals suffering from depression based upon their Twitter activity; ii.) designing a decision-support system that exploits aggregate clinical trials data on multiple sclerosis (MS) treatment to predict which therapy would work best for the presenting patient; iii.) employing group-level clinical trials data to induce a model able to find those MS patients likely to be helped by an experimental therapy.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiphaine Macé ◽  
Eliel González-García ◽  
György Kövér ◽  
Dominique Hazard ◽  
Masoomeh Taghipoor

AbstractIn situations of negative energy balance (NEB) due to feed scarcity or high physiological demands, body energy reserves (BR), mainly stored in adipose tissues, become the main sources of energy for ruminants. The capacity to mobilize and restore such BRs in response to different challenges is of major concern in the current context of breeding for resilience. Body condition score (BCS) is a common, practical indicator of BR variations throughout successive productive cycles, and quantitative tools for characterizing such dynamics at the individual level are still lacking. The main objective of this work was to characterize body condition dynamics in terms of BR mobilization and accretion capacities of meat sheep during their productive lifespan through a modelling approach.The animal model used in this work was the reproductive meat ewe (n = 1478) reared in extensive rangeland. Regular measurements of BCS for each productive cycle were used as the indicator of BR variations. A hybrid mathematical model and a web interface, called PhenoBR, was developed to characterize ewes’ BCS variations through four synthetic and biologically meaningful parameters for each productive cycle i: BR accretion rate , BR mobilization rate , plus the time of onset and the duration of the BR mobilization, and ΔTi, respectively.The model converged for all the ewes included in the analysis. Estimation of the parameters indicated the inter-individual variability for BR accretion and mobilization rates, and for the length of the mobilization period. Body reserve mobilization rates were closely correlated between productive cycles. Significant correlations between BR mobilization and accretion rates suggest that the two processes are biologically linked. Parameters kp and kb decreased as parity increased. BR mobilization rate and duration increased as litter size increased, while BR accretion rate decreased.Individual characterization of animals by these parameters makes it possible to rank them for their efficiency in the use of body reserves when facing NEB challenges. Such parameters could contribute to better management and decision-making by farmers and advisors, e.g. by adapting feeding systems to the individual characteristics of BR dynamics, or by geneticists as criteria to develop future animal breeding programs including BR dynamics for more robust and resilient animals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eoin McElroy ◽  
Mathew Ashton ◽  
Anne Marie Bagnall ◽  
Terence Comerford ◽  
Mick McKeown ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Previous research has examined individual-level and place characteristics as correlates of subjective wellbeing, with many studies concluding that individual factors (e.g. health, finances) are more strongly related to wellbeing. However, this ‘dualistic’ approach has been challenged, with some arguing that it is impossible to disentangle the effects of the two domains, and that wellbeing should be considered as part of a network of mutually reinforcing relationships between individual, community and place characteristics. We used network analysis to explore these complex associations. Methods Data were from a large sample of adults from a socioeconomically disadvantaged region of the United Kingdom (N = 4319). Wellbeing was assessed using the 7-item version of the Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS). Mixed graphical networks were estimated including wellbeing, place and individual-characteristic variables as nodes. Results We found a densely connected network in which wellbeing was associated, both directly and indirectly, with all of the individual, community and place characteristics assessed. Wellbeing was most strongly connected with individual characteristics, in particular financial difficulty and subjective physical health. However, controlling for all other variables in the network model, wellbeing was positively associated with local greenspace usage, civic agency, and neighbourhood cohesion, and negatively associated with housing disrepair. Greater specificity in these associations was observed when the wellbeing construct was broken down into its constituent parts. Conclusions These findings highlight the complex relationships that exist between individual, community and place characteristics in the context of subjective wellbeing, and that all domains need to be considered when developing population-level strategies to improve wellbeing. Further consideration needs to be given to how this might happen in practice, for example through a combination of consistent use of community engagement methodologies alongside Health in All Policy (HiAP) approaches.


Author(s):  
Benjamin Bader ◽  
Carol Reade

A number of research studies have been published in recent years dealing with the implications of terrorism for human resource management (HRM)–related issues, mostly at the individual level. Different theoretical perspectives have been utilized, such as stress theory, social identity theory, and social support theory, and the respective studies have contributed to our knowledge in this important research field. Nonetheless, a comprehensive theoretical approach at the organizational level relevant to HRM in the context of terrorism is lacking. To address this shortcoming, this chapter examines extant literature on the influence of terrorism on HRM-related issues, integrates several theoretical approaches that emerge from this literature, and introduces an HRM terrorism-response theory relevant for companies operating in countries afflicted with terrorism. Avenues for future research are discussed and practical implications are derived.


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