Menstrual Cups: The Sustainable Future for Women Hygiene in India

In India, the usage of Menstrual Cups is comparatively limited. The study focuses on the acceptability, affordability, accessibility and awareness of Menstrual Cups amongst Indian women in the menstruating age. An assessment of the Knowledge, Aptitude, Practice and Behaviour (KAPB) of Menstrual Cups was done. The sampled data received from various parts of the country, after exclusions, included 397 responses. The average age of the respondents was 24 years where most of them were students and were from urban dwelling. From the results, it was inferred that menstrual cups users were in favour with their experiences with 79% reporting menstrual cups to be comfortable and 82% of the users found menstrual cups to be cheaper compared to other menstrual products, 61% of the users reported menstrual cups to be easy to adapt. For monthly expenditure of sanitary products, menstrual cups were more cost efficient as users spent an average of Rs 0-100 in comparison to other Sanitary Products where users spent an average of Rs 100-300. Disposable Sanitary pads was the most used sanitary product by non-menstrual cup users. 29.6% of the respondents are willing to switch to menstrual cups and 45.4% of the respondents are not sure if they want to switch to menstrual cups. The reasons for non-usage of menstrual cups was mostly comfort (32%), limited knowledge (25%) and accessibility (15%). Homemakers scored high on Practice and Behaviour questions while Business women scored high on Knowledge and Aptitude questions. Both users and non-users recommended conducting awareness drives in the form of seminars focusing on clarifying myths and taboos related to menstrual cups. A change in favor of menstrual cups could be made possible by targeted pricing and advertising

Anticipatory Consumptions

Mental simulations such as anticipatory and/or retrospective emotions can yield higher weight for a delayed consequence than for current well-being (i.e., negative devaluing). In this research, we investigate the behavioral and welfare implications of negative devaluing for intertemporal consumptions in an intrapersonal game. Our general framework accounts for two distinctions: desired versus undesired consumptions, and naive versus sophisticated beliefs about future selves’ preferences. Naive people procrastinate desired consumptions and preproperate undesired ones. The behavior of sophisticated people generally exhibits a cyclical pattern. Sophistication may either mitigate or exacerbate the time-inconsistency problem, and hence may improve or undermine long-run welfare, depending on the valence and the units of consumptions and on whether consumptions are tied consecutively. In addition, our comparative statics analysis generates surprising results with respect to the impacts of decision parameters (e.g., deadline, consumption units). We also discuss implications for targeted pricing, product design, promotion strategies, and savings. This paper was accepted by Matthew Shum, marketing.

Tell Me Where You Are and I’ll Tell You What You Want: Using Location Data to Improve Marketing Decisions

Location data has become more and more accessible. Smartphone applications such as location-based services collect location data on a large scale. Up to now, most approaches have relied on past data, but new developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence will soon enable more dynamic real-time use of location data. Companies that embrace these technologies will be able to create competitive advantages. Location data offers great potential to improve a variety of marketing decisions such as targeted pricing and advertising, store locations and in-store layout. Location based advertising is currently the most common application. It allows targeting all customers within a certain distance of a store. Besides advertising, location data can be used for dynamic pricing decisions. Customers close to competitor’s locations can be charged a lower price for particular products via discounts in order to reduce switching costs. Indoor tracking can help to optimize store design or the positioning of categories and brands. Granular location data about consumers’ movements hence further allows for minimizing potential offline transaction costs based on the distances to stores.