The Impact of Logistics on Marketing Margin in the Philippine Agricultural Sector

The logistics industry is a fundamental aspect of fulfilling the supply chain in agriculture. Agricultural farmers in the Philippines often use the services of middlemen to transact on their behalf since these intermediaries possess better information, and engaging in logistics affects the marketing margin in the process. Frequently, logistics costs cause marketing margin to increase, leading to high farm-retail prices of agricultural goods. This paper examines if the existence of middlemen improves farmers' wages even with the additional logistics costs incurred. The variables' secondary data were all gathered from the Philippine Statistics Authority, and its annual frequency spanned the period of 1995 to 2019. Using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis procedure and diagnostic tests prove that logistics cost negatively affects marketing margin while farmers' wages have a positive relationship. The findings of this study address the presence of a longer supply chain, asymmetric information, technology, storage and facilities, and added logistics costs in agricultural transactions. Although middlemen have greater market power than the farmers, these mediators are still affected by the changes in the logistics costs since it is unavoidable for them to reduce the price due to the need to competitively sell the commodities.

Research of the factor dependence of egg and egg products consumption in the subjects of the Russian Federation

Importance of consummating eggs and egg products in the diet of the population is determined by their high nutritional value. An egg contains a complete animal protein, it has consumer accessibility (both economic and physical) and prevalence in food markets regardless of the territory. The widespread availability (both assortment and price) of eggs and egg products to some extent can compensate for the deficit in consumption of other types of livestock products, which are often not available for socially vulnerable groups of the population with a low level of income. This food group is one of the most valuable products in the structure of rational consumption that meets the modern requirements of a healthy diet, which is reflected in the relevant Recommendations of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation [1]. The conducted research is based on the analysis of the main parameters of eggs and egg products’ consumption. The emphasis is made on the study of statistical information on the number of the living population; the prevailing average per capita money income; consumer average retail prices for the specified food group; the level of consumption, its compliance with a rational level that meets modern requirements for healthy nutrition in equal subjects of the Russian Federation, both in the region, territory, republic, autonomous okrug, autonomous region, and in cities of federal significance: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sevastopol. The result of the study was confirmation of the direct dependence of the reduction in the consumption of eggs and egg products as a result of a decrease in the population's income. The territorial aspect also indicated the existence of such dependence. All this allows us to assert that the fundamental factor affecting the level of consumption of eggs and egg products is the economic affordability of the food group, which depends on the income of buyers [11; 13].

PRODUKSI PAKAIAN BERDASARKAN LEMBAR BIAYA & TARGET HARGA RITEL

Through a 3-year community service scheme (6 periods), 4 periods have been conducted. There are 3 stakeholders in this program: study program, community research partner, and brand partner. Along the process, community service partner has understood and be able to collaborate using digital method to produce clothing collections for brand partner. But although the stitching quality is well, cost prices are mostly found too high, not suitable for brand partner’s retail prices. Through this community service period, the aims are: 1) to train cost sheet making for each sku made; 2) to provide knowledge of target retail price and its calculations; 3) to provide knowledge on many components of clothing costs, including margin fees on multiple fashion platforms in Indonesia. This period is the last step of training and focus more on production and business mindsets before letting community service partner to go independent in the last period.

Research on retail channel decisions considering consumer’s fairness concern

Online retailing provides alternative shopping channels, where the retail platform can either let manufacturers directly sell to consumers or open a self-operated channel, or even both. Regardless of sales channels, consumers often pay attention to the income gap between themselves and enterprises (named consumer's fairness concern). In this work, we explore how consumers’ fairness concerns affect the optimal decisions of both manufacturer and retail platform under different retail channel modes (single-channel mode and mixed-channel mode). The results show that consumer’s fairness concern has a negative impact on the retail price under low production cost in single-channel mode, while the retail prices in mix-channel mode are jointly determined by consumer’s fairness concern and revenue sharing ratio. Besides, if the market channel mode has not yet formed, the retail platform can choose either a self-operated channel or manufacturer consignment channel, depending on the consumer’s fairness concern level and revenue sharing ratio. By contrast, if the market channel mode has already been formed, the retail platform should make effort to reduce consumer’s fairness concern if only the self-operated channel exists, while maintain consumer’s fairness concern and revenue sharing ratio at a moderate level if there exist mixed channels.

Collective Farm Village of Mordovia in the Post-War Period

Introduction. The article explores the state of the collective farm village of Mordovia in the post-war period, when the peasantry went through a difficult and contradictory path of development, having experienced all the consequences of state policy, which was characterized mainly by the use of repressive measures and increased taxes. At the same time, the moral encouragement of the leaders of collective farm production was used, the material and technical base of collective farms was gradually strengthened. Results and Discussion. Yield growth, livestock and productivity of public animal husbandry, the strengthening of the economy of farms largely depended on the efficiency of the work of collective farmers, state farm workers, advanced production workers, agricultural production specialists. The improvement of the material well-being and cultural level of the workers of the region, first of all, was expressed in the growth of the monetary income of collective farmers, workers and employees, in housing construction. The reduction of the agricultural tax in 1953, the increase in procurement and purchase prices for agricultural products, the decrease in retail prices for some food and industrial goods, the transition to monthly and quarterly advance payment of labor changed not only the economic situation, but also the psychological climate in the village: the social and labor activity of people increased, the migration of the rural population of Mordovia decreased. Conclusion. The progressive measures implemented after September 1953 soon exhausted themselves due to systemic reasons and contradictory subjective decisions.

Costs of Sales Forces, Substitution between Competing Products, and Vertical Integration Decisions

This paper analyzes duopolistic firms’ vertical integration decisions with considering costs of sales forces and sales delegation under vertical integration. The main contribution of our research is showing that full vertical integration (separation) is more common when competing products are highly (weakly) substitutable. Second, contrary to conventional wisdom, an asymmetric vertical structure may not only be an equilibrium outcome but may also be optimal for consumers’ surplus in spite of yielding higher retail prices than those arising under full vertical integration. We also examine the impacts of vertical structures on welfare which have vertical merger policy relevance. First, when products are weakly substitutable, keeping vertical merger costs low may induce full vertical integration to be an equilibrium outcome which optimizes consumers’ surplus and social welfare simultaneously. Second, imposing a vertical merger tax increasing with substitution between products on firms may induce firms’ vertical integration decisions to be optimal for social welfare.