Consumer Expectations on Supermarkets in Organized Retailing

The study emphasise on the consumer expectations on supermarkets in organised retailing and factors which acts as driving force for consumers to opt for the same, with reference to Chennai city. The sample size is 120 respondents who were retail customers of Supermarkets under Non- Probability Judgment Sampling method. The growth of Supermarkets of India in recent years has been witnessed due to increased consumer expectations. As most of the retail segments try to find their way to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it must be noticed that the consumers are already evolving at great speed in their expectations in all fields. At the pandemic situations, people try to venture out most importantly for essential items with the available outlets, taking care of all safety measures. The immediate next option available for consumers is online shopping. The blowout of virus has not only changed the way how consumers shop, but also their buyer behaviour pattern and what they actually expect from retailers. By 2025, India is expected to become the world’s third largest economy as it is experiencing the world’s fastest growing economies. According to various reports, it is known that these new spending and shopping patterns is expected to continue even after the crisis comes down. With more developments as well as challenges in the field of organized retailing, consumer preferences are changing from region to region.

A Methodology for Flexible Implementation of Collaborative Robots in Smart Manufacturing Systems

Small-scale production is relying more and more on personalization and flexibility as an innovation key for success in response to market needs such as diversification of consumer preferences and/or greater regulatory pressure. This can be possible thanks to assembly lines dynamically adaptable to new production requirements, easily reconfigurable and reprogrammable to any change in the production line. In such new automated production lines, where traditional automation is not applicable, human and robot collaboration can be established, giving birth to a kind of industrial craftsmanship. The idea at the base of this work is to take advantage of collaborative robotics by using the robots as other generic industrial tools. To overcome the need of complex programming, identified in the literature as one of the main issues preventing cobot diffusion into industrial environments, the paper proposes an approach for simplifying the programming process while still maintaining high flexibility through a pyramidal parametrized approach exploiting cobot collaborative features. An Interactive Refinement Programming procedure is described and validated through a real test case performed as a pilot in the Building Automation department of ABB in Vittuone (Milan, Italy). The key novel ingredients in this approach are a first translation phase, carried out by engineers of production processes who convert the sequence of assembly operations into a preliminary code built as a sequence of robot operations, followed by an on-line correction carried out by non-expert users who can interact with the machine to define the input parameters to make the robotic code runnable. The users in this second step do not need any competence in programming robotic code. Moreover, from an economic point of view, a standardized way of assessing the convenience of the robotic investment is proposed. Both economic and technical results highlight improvements in comparison to the traditional automation approach, demonstrating the possibility to open new further opportunities for collaborative robots when small/medium batch sizes are involved.

Ecolabeling to Improve Product Quality and Reduce Environmental Impact: A Choice Experiment With Vegetable Farmers in Thailand

The overuse of agricultural pesticides creates high costs to ecosystems and human health. One important reason for overuse is that markets in lower-income countries do not sufficiently differentiate agricultural produce based on quality aspects, making it difficult for consumers to select safe produce. Ecolabeling is a voluntary method of certification to gain consumer trust by differentiating produce based on environmental impact. Most studies have looked at consumer preferences for ecolabels, but the preferences of producers to adopt such labels have received much less attention. This paper aims to explore farmers' choice preference for ecolabels, safe pest management methods, human health, and the environment using a choice experiment. We sampled 303 vegetable farmers from three peri-urban provinces of Bangkok, Thailand, namely Ratchaburi, Nakhon Pathom and Pathum Thani provinces. Attributes of pest management methods and outcomes included farm ecosystems, human health, ecolabels, market opportunities, training in integrated pest management, and additional farm cost. A mixed logit model was employed to quantify the effect of each attribute on farmers' preference and marginal willingness to pay for each attribute. The data show high levels of pesticide use in vegetable production as farmers try to protect their investment from a wide range of pests and diseases. Alternative control methods are not widely available and are used in an ad-hoc manner to complement pesticides rather than substitute them. Farmers' willingness to pay for an ecolabel was 222 US$/ha/crop. However, ecolabeling had a lower priority than most other attributes. We conclude that there is a need to promote alternative pest management practices alongside ecolabels to reduce the environmental impact of vegetable farming in peri-urban areas in Thailand.

Formation of Sustainable Investment Attractiveness of Regions Under the Conditions of COVID-19

The decline in the forecast indicators of the economy and production activity, the structural transformation of international production and consumer preferences, the reduction in income from bonds and world tourism, the massive layoffs of workers that led to an increase in unemployment and a decrease in household income, deferred investments and the reorientation of investment flows, both in economic sectors and in the regional context, are all the result of the impact of another challenge called COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed and continues to change many characteristics of the economy and society. Together with the onset of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the transition to the digital era, as well as taking into account completely new realities of the development of future generations, which are regulated by the concept of sustainable development, the formation of investment attractiveness is also taking place in a fundamentally different way. In this regard, the article substantiates the need to introduce the category sustainable investment attractiveness into everyday use. The author’s vision of the interpretation of this concept is presented. A procedure for forming a stable investment attractiveness of regions in the conditions of COVID-19 has been developed.

PENGARUH GAYA HIDUP SEHAT DAN CITRA MEREK TERHADAP PREFERENSI KONSUMEN MINUMAN RTD (READY TO DRINK) DI KALANGAN MAHASISWA KAMPUS U NESA KETINTANG (CASE: COCA=COLA ZERO SUGAR & TEH BOTOL SOSRO TAWAR)

This study aims to examine and analyze the influence of a healthy lifestyle and brand image on consumer preferences for ready-to-drink among students at State University of Surabaya on the Ketintang campus. The categories of ready-to-drink that became the object of the research were Coca-Cola Zero Sugar and The Botol Sosro Tawar. This study is using a quantitative approach with a sampling technique using a non-probability sampling method. The population for this research is ready-to-drink (RTD) consumers, which are students from the State University of Surabaya on the Ketintang campus. Number of samples that used by researchers in this study were 116 samples according to the formula of Machin and Champbell (1987). The statistic used is multiple linear regression with the help of IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0. The results show that a healthy lifestyle and.brand image.have a positive and significant effect on consumer preferences.