PECULIARITIES OF USING TARIFFS FOR INTERRUPTION IN THE CONDITIONS OF THE ELECTRICITY MARKET OF UKRAINE

The use of schedules to disconnect consumers from electricity to reduce the load on the UES of Ukraine is an outdated model and may not meet the standards and requirements of the new model of the electricity market in Ukraine. The study of consumer desires and needs is a very promising area in improving the efficiency of the balancing mechanism in the electricity market and is an important factor in calculating interruption tariffs. In this paper, to minimize costs due to power outages, the consumer considers the creation of a hybrid econometric approach that combines the advantages and minimizes the disadvantages of two models: the popular consumer survey model and the econometric model. An econometric model that uses the added value created by a group of consumers for the year is a practical way to estimate the cost of planned outages. The method of consumer surveys is the most popular tool for assessing reliability in the electricity market. The paper proposes to use publicly available consumer data collected through a simple survey of consumers about their actions in case of undesirable power outages, taking into account the specifics of their work. It is worth noting that this study focuses on the interruption scenario that will lead to the highest shutdown costs, it covers only winter outages in the afternoon and eliminates the effect of the difference between time of day and season.

Accessibility and Equity Analysis of Transit Facility Sites for Common Carrier Parcel Lockers

Transit goals have typically focused on commuter trips but facilitating urban last mile freight logistics is a potential strategy to increase transit ridership and mitigate the demands of parcel distribution on the transportation network. Presently, most parcel lockers operate out of private businesses, but consumer surveys have found that transit users may be interested in locker facilities at transit facilities. The implementation of an unmanned, secure, common carrier parcel locker system could have benefits for non-transit users as well. This research presents a multiple-criteria approach for analyzing the potential of public transportation facilities as hosts for a common carrier locker system. Several accessibility and equity metrics, including ridership, mode of transportation, spatial distribution, and sociodemographic profiles of coverage areas are utilized. A case study utilizing real-word data from the Portland, OR region and its transit facilities is used to illustrate accessibility and equity tradeoffs. The results demonstrate that multiple facility types have the potential to host a locker system but there are complex accessibility and equity tradeoffs to be considered by stakeholders and policy makers when prioritizing locations.

Measuring Consumer Engagement in Omnichannel Retailing: The Mobile In-Store Experience (MIX) Index

We draw insights from Activity Theory within the field of human-computer interaction to quantitatively measure a mobile in-store experience (MIX), which includes the suite of shopping activities and retail services that a consumer can engage in when using their mobile device in brick-and-mortar stores. We developed and validated a nine-item, formative MIX index using survey data collected from fashion consumers in the United States (n = 1,267), United Kingdom (n = 370), Germany (n = 362), and France (n = 219). As survey measures of consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing using a mobile device, the index items with stronger factor loadings described in-store shopping activities whereas those with weaker factor loadings described activities related to behavioral targeting and social networking. These results suggest that retailers should give consumers the autonomy to independently find, evaluate and purchase merchandise in brick-and-mortar stores, thereby enabling them to co-create personalized shopping experiences as active participants within an omnichannel retail servicescape. Our findings also suggest that retailers should provide consumers with more authentic ways to build community and brand affiliations than mobile marketing and social media promotions. In-store activities should not simply be a migration of pre-existing e-commerce capabilities onto mobile devices. An engaging mobile in-store experience should be an amalgam of physical and digital activities that produce a seamless shopping journey and leverage the unique properties of mobile devices – ultra-portability, location sensitivity, untetheredness, and personalization. Retail executives can use the validated MIX index to prepare strategic investments in mobile technology applications and capabilities for retail stores within their omnichannel operations. The nine-item MIX index is also well-suited for consumer surveys, which also makes it an attractive measure of consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing for future academic research.

Cross-industry Benchmarking of Educational Projects

The article is devoted to the study of the integration of educational marketing into business and social projects. The value of this work is the development of a method that will help to abstract from the industry binding in the selection and application of educational tools in solving marketing problems. Attention is paid not only to the goals of using educational marketing, but to the willingness of companies to use it. The study analyzes global and local trends in society, business, and education; studies modern educational marketing technologies and benchmarked more than 40 projects that use educational marketing. The research methodology includes a series of in-depth interviews and consumer surveys. Attention is drawn to the goals of the application of educational marketing, the willingness of companies to use it, the potential for introducing innovative formats and educational marketing tools into the activities of companies. In the analysis of consumers attention is focused on the goals of educational content consumption. The author's classification of projects is formed from the point of view of the use of educational marketing tools. The result of the study is the method of applying educational marketing. When formulating the method, it was decided to rely on two criteria: the situation of consumption of educational content-stressful or life-long learning; the type of company using innovative formats and educational marketing tools: conservatives, load balancers and innovators. This method will help companies to use various formats and tools of educational marketing to build relationships with consumers and brand loyalty.

Rural consumer response to a food distribution innovation that connects farmers, retailers, and buyers

The Farm Fresh Food Box (F3B) strategy is a hybrid of direct-to-consumer (DTC) and short value chain models that aims to stimulate rural economies, creates an additional sales avenue for small farmers, provides rural grocery stores with increased foot traffic and overcomes barriers for rural consumers who are unable to access local food. The F3B project is a tri-state collaboration of extension and research partners from three states; two on the West Coast and one in the Northeast United States, involving small farmers and retailers from rural communities. This article analyzes F3B consumer surveys from 2 years of project implementation and contributes to the limited body of research on food box models by identifying benefits and barriers of the F3B strategy for consumers, comparing these findings to existing research on food box programs and other DTC market channels, and discussing implications for future model adjustment. Overall, consumers were pleased with all aspects of the F3B. However, the strategy had limited success with reaching a new demographic of local food consumers.

Forecasting with Business and Consumer Survey Data

In a context of growing uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the opinion of businesses and consumers about the expected development of the main variables that affect their activity becomes essential for economic forecasting. In this paper, we review the research carried out in this field, placing special emphasis on the recent lines of work focused on the exploitation of the predictive content of economic tendency surveys. The study concludes with an evaluation of the forecasting performance of quarterly unemployment expectations for the euro area, which are obtained by means of machine learning methods. The analysis reveals the potential of new analytical techniques for the analysis of business and consumer surveys for economic forecasting.

Farm shop diversification: Producer motivations and consumer attitudes

The farm shop is an increasingly proliferate form of farm diversification, both as a single entity or part of a wider strategy encompassing concentric and conglomerate elements. In this context, our paper investigates whether farm shops are viable diversification options in the United Kingdom, by investigating farmer drivers to diversify via shops and consumer motives to purchase there. The research combines data collected from semi-structured interviews (9) with farm shop owners and quantitative consumer surveys (181). The findings show that the primary driver to diversify was identified as an additional income stream. Other factors recognised throughout the interviews were the employment of family members, channels to sell produce and farm location. The reoccurring diversification option linked to farm shops was the addition of a tearoom or cafe. The findings highlight quality of produce and associated presence of attractions as being key to successful diversification. Seasonality of produce, consumer awareness and shop identity are seen as barriers to the enterprise. The research adopts a novel approach by gathering insights into consumer attitudes as well as producer motivations and experiences, and the relationship between them. The research further extends previous analysis by explicitly examining consumer survey evidence on attitudes to direct purchasing of farm products and increases our understanding into farm shop diversifications potential for nurturing entrepreneurship and supporting farm business resilience. The paper raises important implications for farm businesses and policy approaches that might seek to promote an entrepreneurial stance while also extending the analysis.