Complexity Analysis for Price Competition of Agricultural Products with Regional Brands

The disordered price competition among various agricultural business agents leads to chaos of agricultural products’ prices, which makes it difficult for customers to form stable price expectation and correct brand cognition, restricting the sales of agricultural products with regional brands. Based on the Salop circular market model with bounded rationality and delayed feedback, this paper discusses the complexity in price competition of agricultural products with regional brands. It is found that when the price adjustment speed of agricultural business agents exceeds the stability region, the pricing system of agricultural products with regional brands would appear the phenomenon of periodic bifurcation or chaos. The delayed feedback controlling mechanism of price adjustment could make the pricing system in the chaos state turn to the equilibrium state. Therefore, the price fluctuation of agricultural products with regional brands needs reasonable control from the industrial associations and government departments.

Economic Evaluation of Wind Power Projects in a Mix of Free and Regulated Market Environments in Brazil

The electricity market in Brazil is basically organized under two parts: the regulated market, where energy is traded through auctions, and the free market, where market participants freely negotiate the price and quantity of electricity. Although revenues obtained in the regulated market tend to be lower than in the free market, the auctions’ results show that investors still value the lesser degree of uncertainty associated with the regulated market. However, a growing interest in the free market by investors is recognized since the price of electricity tends to be higher. Therefore, this study investigates four free market price scenarios to assess the expected return for investors, using the traditional discounted cash flow approach complemented with Monte Carlo simulation to address market uncertainty. The study breaks new ground by capturing the weekly price fluctuations and including the price elasticity of demand of the free market. The results seem to indicate that the disclosure of the ceiling and floor price limits for the spot price can signal important information about the agents’ price expectation in the free market and can be used for investment project evaluation.

Understanding Chinese consumers' pre-purchase value expectations: the role of country of origin effect

PurposeThis study aims to examine the effect of country of origin (COO) on customers' value expectation and willingness to pay by employing signalling theory and cue utilisation.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected from 386 customers via an online survey in the context of Australian food retail franchise stores in China.FindingsThe findings indicate that COO origin is an important determinant of customer expectations including service quality, social value, emotional value, monetary price, behavioural price and reputation. Furthermore, the only social value was a significant predictor of willingness to pay. Although the direct effect of COO on willingness to purchase was not significant, the COO had a significant indirect effect on willingness to pay via social value. Finally, the COO has a stronger effect on monetary price expectation among customers who were aware of the country brands than those who were unaware.Originality/valueThe study extends the body of knowledge related to the effect of COO during the pre-purchase process and provides important implications for retailers who are looking to enter an overseas market such as China.

Three-dimensional morphology of anatase nanocrystals obtained from supercritical flow synthesis with industrial grade TiOSO4 precursor

Anatase TiO2 (a-TiO2) nanocrystals are vital in catalytic applications both as catalysts (e.g. photodegradation) and as a carrier material (e.g. NOx removal from exhaust). The synthesis of a-TiO2 nanocrystals and their properties have been heavily scrutinized, but there exists a clear gap between the scientific literature, and the scale and price expectation of industrial application. Here it is demonstrated that the industrially most attractive Ti precursor, titanyl sulfate (TiOSO4), can be combined with the green, scalable and fast supercritical flow method to produce phase pure and highly crystalline a-TiO2 nanoparticles with high specific surface area. Control of the nanocrystal morphology is important since it is known that certain facets substantially promote catalytic activity. It is, however, in itself challenging to determine nanocrystal morphology to provide a rational basis for the synthesis control. Here we advocate the use of advanced Rietveld refinement of powder X-ray diffraction data including anisotropic size broadening models in aiding to establish the sample three-dimensional morphology. This relatively quick and robust method assists in overcoming the often encountered ambiguity inherent in two-dimensional to three-dimensional reconstruction of selected particle morphologies with transmission electron microscopy and tomography techniques.

THE ANALYSIS OF PRE AND POST NEGOTIATION OF FRAMING AND PARTNER’S OBJECTIVE ON TRANSFER PRICES

Transfer price negotiations are important to managers as they influence both their own and other divisional profits. These transfer prices are affected by both economic factors (market prices) and behavioral factors including fairness on judgments about negotiated transfer prices. In the current study, we examine whether the impact of accounting information on managers’ transfer price expectations are affected by the way accounting information is framed (either as potential gains or potential losses) and the managers’ perception of the other negotiation partners’ objective (whether their partner’s objective involves high or lowconcern-for-others). These expectations are important as they directly affect the costs and outcomes of negotiations. A controlled laboratory experiment was conducted to test the proposed hypotheses, using a 2 x 2 x 2 between-subjects design. The participants of an experiment were 216 undergraduate accounting students from Faculty of Economics and Business, Soegijapranata Catholic University, Semarang. The results of this study that compared to the mainframe, a loss frame exacerbates managers’ self-serving bias and increases the transfer price expectation gap between buyers and sellers. Further, we found that the negotiation partner’s objective had a significant impact on sellers’ transfer price judgments. This finding also found that the degree of concern for the other party has a significant impact on the judgment, in particular, the transfer price for the seller division.