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We develop a theoretical framework and propose a relevant empirical analysis of the soybean-complex prices’ cointegration relationships in a high-frequency setting. We allow for heterogeneous expectations among traders on the multi-asset price dynamics and characterize the resulting market behaviour. We demonstrate that the asset prices’ autoregressive matrix rank and the speed of reversion towards the long-term equilibrium are related to the market realized and potential liquidity, unlike the cointegrating vector. Our empirical application to the soybean complex, where we control for volatility, supports our theoretical results when the price idleness of the different assets is properly accounted for. Our analysis further suggests that the presence of cointegration among assets is related to the time of day and the contract maturities traded at a given time.

We introduce a methodology to visualize the limit order book (LOB) using a particle physics lens. Open-source data-analysis tool ROOT, developed by CERN, is used to reconstruct and visualize futures markets. Message-based data is used, rather than snapshots, as it offers numerous visualization advantages. The visualization method can include multiple variables and markets simultaneously and is not necessarily time dependent. Stakeholders can use it to visualize high-velocity data to gain a better understanding of markets or effectively monitor markets. In addition, the method is easily adjustable to user specifications to examine various LOB research topics, thereby complementing existing methods., Comment: 51 pages, 9 figures

Graphing procedures for evaluating power or interaction terms in binary logit and probit models are illustrated in an application to hog producers' decisions based on transaction cost economics' hypothesised positive effect of the interaction of uncertainty and asset specificity on contract use. Results support the hypothesis, particularly for producers that are otherwise on the cusp (near the 50/50 probability) of choosing either contract or spot transactions based on their responses for other variables. Such insights may not be drawn without use of the demonstrated graphing procedures.

Research offers mixed evidence about the risk management decision-making process of producers. Whether producers' characteristics drive behavior directly or through risk attitude remains a puzzle. We assess whether managerial/firm characteristics directly affect choices or if their influence occurs indirectly through impacts on risk attitude. The findings, which support indirect effects, indicate that failure to represent relationships between risk attitude, other characteristics, and behavior appropriately can mask the effect of risk attitude. A more complete understanding of the structure of decision-making may assist economists, policymakers, and industry stakeholders in designing and targeting mechanisms to manage or transfer risk.

In corporate finance, the determinants of firm target capital structure have been widely studied. However, less attention has been paid to understanding the financing behavior of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), particularly farm businesses as a distinctive setting. We use a dynamic partial adjustment model with a panel sample of 1500 Dutch farms over the years 2001 to 2015. We provide evidence that leverage is dynamic over time-varying farm characteristics, and the pecking-order and signalling theories explain this leverage dynamism in the farm business. This result is very robust across different farm types, size categories and data sample periods. Farm asset tangibility and growth opportunity significantly determine the target capital structure. In addition, we find that farm leverage is highly persistent (slow adjustment speed) and that lagged leverage is the best predictor ofsubsequent leverage ratios. Farms exhibit slower adjustment during recessions, and the effect is most pronounced for larger farms. Decomposing the analysis into farm types, we find that horticulture farms rebalance to the target much faster after leverage shocks. This variation is mainly attributed to the difference in adjustment costs. The results give better insight for policy makers and financial institutions on the impacts of financial policies on farm viability,and the farm capital decision-making process for risk and profit evaluation. It should also spark discussion about the applicability of corporate finance theories in farm business.

Shareholder complaints put pressure on publicly listed firms, yet firms rarely directly address the actual issues raised in these complaints. The authors examine whether firms respond in an alternative way by altering advertising investments in an effort to ward off the financial damage associated with shareholder complaints. By analyzing a unique data set of shareholder complaints submitted to S&P 1500 firms between 2001 and 2016, supplemented with qualitative interviews of executives of publicly listed firms, the authors document that firms increase advertising investments following shareholder complaints and that such an advertising investment response mitigates a postcomplaint decline in firm value. Furthermore, results suggest that firms are more likely to increase advertising investments when shareholder complaints are submitted by institutional investors, pertain to nonfinancial concerns, and relate to topics that receive high media attention. The findings provide new insights on how firms address stock market adversities with advertising investments and inform managers about the effectiveness of such a response.

We examine the impact of innovation disclosure through patenting on firms' cost of debt, focusing on the American Inventors Protection Act (AIPA) as an exogenous shock in innovation disclosure regulation. Post-AIPA, firms have an incentive to apply for patents only if commercial success is likely. Accordingly, we expect post-AIPA patents to be a better proxy for successful innovation activity, and thus to have a stronger effect on reducing the cost of debt than pre-AIPA patents. Indeed, we find that pre-AIPA patents reduce the cost of debt only for the most innovative firms, while post-AIPA, this effect holds for all firms.

The cooperative organizational form is by nature a sustainable one, which has proved to be resilient in the face of crises and a solid lever in addressing present-day societal challenges. Still, little is known about its socio-economic impact. Also, despite the plethora of studies on cooperative performance, research remains inconclusive about how to best measure it. In fact, scholarly work has largely favored the use of appraisal tools reflecting those of investor-owned firms (IOFs), having undermined the dual idiosyncratic nature of the cooperative organizational form, which is manifest in the business and social-membership objectives. The goal of this article is to fill these gaps by delivering a comprehensive dashboard for cooperative performance assessment that harmonizes business&ndash, social aspects and catalogs the basic components for future attempts. To reach this goal, we used an extensive review of empirical research in cooperative performance (phase 1) and a Delphi study with 14 experts (phase 2). In addition, we reviewed comparable research efforts for a business form (social enterprises) that combines business with social goals and faces similar challenges (phase 3). This inquiry was particularly insightful for the social perspective and the overlooked role of cooperatives as a socially-embedded organizational form that hardly documents its societal impact and outreach.

We develop a classification of traditional versus restructured cooperative organizational attributes based on an inductive approach. Using this classification and integrating concepts from the business literature (i.e., market and brand orientation), we hypothesize three types of relationships: (a) the influence of organizational attributes, i.e., ownership, control and cost/benefit allocation, on organizational performance; (b) the influence of strategic, i.e., market and brand orientation, attributes on organizational performance, and (c) the influence of organizational attributes on market orientation. We examine these relationships empirically in two studies. In study 1, using data from 114 agribusiness cooperatives, we demonstrate that strategic attributes have a greater influence on organizational performance than organizational attributes. In study 2, we replicate the design from study 1, i.e., tracking attribute scores over time, with a subsample of 25 cooperatives 4 years later. This second study generally confirms the findings of study 1. Taken together, the results suggest that greater emphasis should be placed on strategic attributes both in the literature and in practice.

Despite extensive study, researchers continue to search for consistent and reliable measures of risk preferences to explain market behavior. We find that a measure, combining experiments rooted in expected utility theory and measures derived from surveys, explains spot and contractual sales, but does not exhibit substantially greater explanatory power than its underlying components. Survey-based measures are generally more significant indicators of marketing choices, but experimental measures reveal how risk attitudes vary over a range of probable outcomes, which is important in light of increased commodity price volatility. Given recently identified limitations on the applicability of expected utility theory, we suggest that researchers include survey methods to obtain low-cost supplemental measures.

Health organizations stimulate the development of low-fat variants to fight the obesity epidemic. We examine the effectiveness of this policy by studying the short- and long-term consequences of the first low-fat purchase on subsequent purchased volume and calories. Using a structural break analysis, we show that purchases increase in the short run after the first low-fat purchase, thereby confirming the single-occasion overconsumption effect of low-fat as shown in the experimental literature. Importantly, our results also show a significant positive long-term effect, which suggests that overpurchasing persists in the long run. In addition, our findings show that the long-term overpurchasing after the first low-fat purchase is solely due to the overpurchasing of low-fat items and not of regular items. These results provide support for the overgeneralization of claim effects and habit formation resulting in the enduring effect of healthier variants of unhealthy food. publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Regular or low-fat? An investigation of the long-run impact of the first low-fat purchase on subsequent purchase volumes and calories journaltitle: International Journal of Research in Marketing articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2016.04.001 content_type: article copyright: © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ispartof: International Journal of Research in Marketing vol:33 issue:4 pages:896-906 ispartof: location:MA, NW Univ, Kellogg Sch Management, Boston status: published

Although interest in smart shopping carts is increasing, both retailers and consumer groups have concerns about how real-time spending feedback will influence shopping behavior. Building on budgeting and spending theories, the authors conduct three lab and grocery store experiments that robustly show that real-time spending feedback has a diverging impact on spending depending on whether a person is budget constrained (“budget” shoppers) or not (“nonbudget” shoppers). Real-time spending feedback stimulates budget shoppers to spend more (by buying more national brands). In contrast, this feedback leads nonbudget shoppers to spend less (by replacing national brands with store brands). Furthermore, smart shopping carts increase repatronage intentions for budget shoppers while keeping them stable for nonbudget shoppers. These findings underscore fundamental unexplored differences between budget and nonbudget shoppers. Moreover, they have key implications for both brick-and-mortar and online retailers as well as app developers. Keywords: real-time spending feedback, grocery shopping behavior, smart shopping carts, budget shoppers, nonbudget shoppers

Combining monthly survey data with matching trading records, we examine how individual investor perceptions change and drive trading and risk-taking behavior during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. We find that investor perceptions fluctuate significantly during the crisis, with risk tolerance and risk perceptions being less volatile than return expectations. During the worst months of the crisis, investors' return expectations and risk tolerance decrease, while their risk perceptions increase. Towards the end of the crisis, investor perceptions recover. We document substantial swings in trading and risk-taking behavior that are driven by changes in investor perceptions. Overall, individual investors continue to trade actively and do not de-risk their investment portfolios during the crisis. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In this article the financial/ownership structures of agribusiness cooperatives are analyzed to examine whether new cooperative models perform better than the more traditional ones. The assessment procedure introduces a new financial decision-aid approach, which is based on data-analysis techniques in combination with a preference ranking organization method of enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE II). The application of this multicriteria decision-aid approach allows the rank ordering of cooperatives based on the most prominent financial ratios. The financial ratios were selected using principal component analysis. This analytical procedure reduces the dimensionality of large numbers of interrelated financial performance measures. We assess the financial success of Dutch agribusiness cooperatives for the period 1999–2010. Results show that there is no clear-cut evidence that cooperative models used to attract extra members’ investments and/or outside equity perform better than the more traditional models. This suggests that ownership structure of cooperatives is not always a decisive factor for their financial success.

Understanding the motives and risk attitudes of producers to engage in sustainable practices is important for policy-makers who wish to increase the likelihood of adoption and improve the design of incentives. This article examines the underlying motives of producers to adopt sustainable practices. We focus on expected economic, social and personal rewards and analyse the role of producers' financial risk perception and risk tolerance. Results from personal interviews with 164 hog producers show that the adoption of sustainable practices is affected by expected economic rewards but not by social and personal rewards. Further, while perceived risk is a barrier to the adoption of sustainable practices, risk tolerance is a positive moderator of the relationship between economic rewards and adoption. In addition, perceived tax benefits and turnover have a significant positive relationship with adoption, while education and age do not play a role.

In order to better understand decision maker's perceptions of the importance of attributes, Goldstein (1990) differentiates between global and local interpretations of attribute importance. While the appreciation for the distinction is growing, research on the relationship between measures of global and local importance is inconclusive. We believe that these inconclusive findings are caused by operationalizing global attribute importance with single-point measures that implicitly assume that the global interpretation of attribute importance linearly depends on the relevant range of context-specific attribute levels. To address this, we propose to operationalize the global interpretation of attribute importance by estimating decision makers' attribute-value functions. Two empirical studies demonstrate that the shape of attribute-value functions changes from concave to convex with global attribute importance. Furthermore, the steepness of these functions increases with global attribute importance while the diminishing sensitivity decreases. Finally, it is demonstrated that the inconclusive findings about the relationship between common, single-point measures of global and local attribute importance is driven by non-linearities in decision makers' attribute-value functions. The results suggest great promise for future research on using decision makers' attribute-value functions for measuring the importance of attributes. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Numerous crop marketing and risk management tools are available. Research relating producers’ risk attitudes to their use of these tools has produced mixed results, and most studies focus on individual tools, neglecting potential complementarities in information they provide. Little is known about the proportion in which individual tools are used, e.g., the percentage of the crop that is forward sold as opposed to hedged. This study identifies factors, including risk attitude, that impact the proportion of corn and soybean producers’ sales through spot markets, futures, and options, as well as forward and production contracts, and investigates contract complementarity and substitutability using survey and accounting data, and causal modeling.

All market participants (e.g., investors, producers, consumers) accept a certain level of risk as necessary to achieve certain benefits. There are many types of risk including price, production, financial, institutional, and individual human risks. All these risks should be effectively managed in order to derive the utmost of benefits and avoid disruption and/or catastrophic economic consequences for the food industry. The identification, analysis, determination, and understanding of the benefit–risk trade-offs of market participants in the food markets may help policy makers, financial analysts and marketers to make wellinformed and effective corporate investment strategies in order to deal with highly uncertain and risky situations. In this paper, we discuss the role that benefits and risks play in the formation of the decision-making process of market-participants, who are engaged in the upstream and downstream stages of the food supply chain. In addition, we review the most common approaches (expected utility model and psychometrics) for measuring benefit–risk trade-offs in the economics and marketing-finance literature, and different factors that may affect the economic behaviour in the light of benefit–risk analyses. Building on the findings of our review, we introduce a conceptual framework to study the benefit–risk behaviour of market participants. Specifically, we suggest the decoupling of benefits and risks into the separate components of utilitarian benefits, hedonic benefits, and risk attitude and risk perception, respectively. Predicting and explaining how market participants in the food industry form their overall attitude in light of benefit–risk trade-offs may be critical for policy-makers and managers who need to understand the drivers of the economic behaviour of market participants with respect to production, marketing and consumption of food products Keywords: Benefit–risk trade-offs Decoupling Utility Economics Marketing-Finance

This paper develops an interdisciplinary conceptual framework demonstrating the role of marketing in managing investor relationships. The framework illustrates how companies can turn investor relationships into market-based assets by analyzing and managing them from a relationship marketing and stakeholder perspective. Marketing can contribute to investor relationship management and increase shareholder value by lowering the cost of equity capital, increasing analyst coverage and stock liquidity, and reducing shareholder activism. An investigation among investor relations professionals working at publicly traded companies in the Euronext 100 stock index demonstrates the framework's empirical validity and provides managerial implications.

How instructive cues present on the cell surface have their precise effects on the actin cytoskeleton is poorly understood. Semaphorins are one of the largest families of these instructive cues and are widely studied for their effects on cell movement, navigation, angiogenesis, immunology and cancer1. Semaphorins/collapsins were characterized in part on the basis of their ability to drastically alter actin cytoskeletal dynamics in neuronal processes2, but despite considerable progress in the identification of semaphorin receptors and their signalling pathways3, the molecules linking them to the precise control of cytoskeletal elements remain unknown. Recently, highly unusual proteins of the Mical family of enzymes have been found to associate with the cytoplasmic portion of plexins, which are large cell-surface semaphorin receptors, and to mediate axon guidance, synaptogenesis, dendritic pruning and other cell morphological changes4, 5, 6, 7. Mical enzymes perform reduction–oxidation (redox) enzymatic reactions4, 5, 8, 9, 10 and also contain domains found in proteins that regulate cell morphology4, 11. However, nothing is known of the role of Mical or its redox activity in mediating morphological changes. Here we report that Mical directly links semaphorins and their plexin receptors to the precise control of actin filament (F-actin) dynamics. We found that Mical is both necessary and sufficient for semaphorin–plexin-mediated F-actin reorganization in vivo. Likewise, we purified Mical protein and found that it directly binds F-actin and disassembles both individual and bundled actin filaments. We also found that Mical utilizes its redox activity to alter F-actin dynamics in vivo and in vitro, indicating a previously unknown role for specific redox signalling events in actin cytoskeletal regulation. Mical therefore is a novel F-actin-disassembly factor that provides a molecular conduit through which actin reorganization—a hallmark of cell morphological changes including axon navigation—can be precisely achieved spatiotemporally in response to semaphorins

Although almost one in three U.S. households shops on a budget, it remains unclear whether and how shoppers track their in-store spending to stay within those budgets. A field study and two laboratory studies offer four key generalizations about budget shoppers in grocery stores: (1) They predominantly use mental computation strategies to track their in-store spending, (2) they adapt their mental computation strategy to the dominant range of price endings of items in their shopping baskets, (3) those who try to calculate the exact total price of their basket are less accurate than those who estimate the approximate price, and (4) motivated shoppers are less accurate than less motivated shoppers (because they tend to calculate instead of estimate the total basket price). A second field study demonstrates that shoppers who underestimate the total price of their basket are more likely to overspend, leading to negative store satisfaction. Keywords: budget shoppers, in-store spending behavior, mental computation, basket estimation, retail price setting

We developed and applied a model of consumer risk perceptions of beef food safety to better understand the underlying drivers of consumer demand for food safety. We show how consumer demographics, country-of-residence, as well as reliance on, and trust in, alternative food safety information sources affect risk perceptions of consumers in Canada, Japan and the United States. Consumers in all three countries have risk perceptions shaped by their level of reliance on observable and credence attribute information. Risk perceptions of consumers in each country are significantly higher for those less trusting of doctors. Moreover, personal and indirect food safety experiences substantially affect risk perceptions. These results are useful to decision-makers in developing more efficient supply chain management strategies and public policies aimed at building or sustaining consumer confidence in food safety.

The last 4 decades have seen the transformation of food supply chains from being supply driven to becoming much more closely integrated with consumer demand. With this development, the transaction mechanism in food marketing channels has changed from an open-market mechanism to coordination through the use of contract-supply arrangements between farmers and food processors and retailers. In this article, we assess the interaction of marketing channel members through the use of contracts and its impact on incentives, coordination costs, risk aversion, risk allocation, and risk management strategies. For this purpose we specify a 3-stage principal-agent supply chain model involving producers, wholesalers, retailers, and a futures market. We compare the situation with and without a futures market. The empirical results regarding the dutch ware potato marketing channel during 1971 to 2003 reveal that as a result of increases in incentives to producers and wholesalers, the coordination costs of the marketing channel decreased significantly, both with and without futures trade. The coordination costs of the marketing channel in the case with a futures market appear to be lower than without futures, demonstrating the informational (i.e., price discovery) role of futures markets.

Recently, pennings and smidts (2003) showed a relationship between organizational behavior and the global shape of the utility function. Their results suggest that the shape of the utility function may be related to ‘higher-order’ decisions. This research examines the relationship between financial strategic decisions and the global shape of the utility function of real decision makers. We assess the shape of utility functions of portfolio managers and show that the global shape is related to their strategic asset allocation. The findings demonstrate the informational content of the shape of utility functions in the context of financial strategic behavior.

We analyze how the introduction of probability weighting and loss aversion in a futures hedging model affects decision making. Analytical findings indicate that probability weighting alone always affects optimal hedge ratios, while loss and risk aversion only have an impact when probability weighting exists. In the presence of probability weighting, simulation results for a relevant range of parameter values suggest that probability weighting is dominant; changes in probability weighting affect hedge ratios relatively more than changes in loss and risk aversion. When decisions are made independently, loss aversion has a relatively small impact on hedge ratios for all parameter values, and risk aversion becomes important for only a narrow range of risk coefficients which produce implausible speculative behavior. When prior losses and gains affect behavior, hedging is influenced most by prior outcomes that influence risk attitudes, but this effect is still somewhat less than the consequences of changes in probability weighting.

Producers have a wide variety of risk management instruments available, making their choice(s) complex. The way producers deal with this complexity can vary and may influence the impact that the determinants, such as risk aversion, have on their choices. A recently developed choice bracketing framework recognizes that producers are unable to evaluate all alternatives simultaneously and that to manage a complex task, they often group or bracket individual alternatives and their consequences together in choice sets. Data on 1,105 U.S. producers show that producers do not use all available combinations of risk management tools and that the influence of the determinants of producer’s risk management decisions are not necessarily the same across risk management strategies within and across bracketing levels. The findings may help resolve puzzling results on the role that well-known determinants of risk management behavior have on producers’ choices, extending knowledge on producers’ risk management behavior. Further, the findings have managerial implications for policy makers and agribusiness companies that provide risk management services. [EconLit citations: M000, G1000, Q130] � c 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Recent work in behavioral finance showed how investors’ perceptions (i.e., return expectations, risk tolerance, and risk perception) affect hypothetical trading and risk-taking behavior. However, are such perceptions also capable of explaining actual trading and risktaking behavior? To answer this question, we combine monthly survey data with matching brokerage records to construct a panel dataset allowing us to simultaneously examine investor perceptions and behavior. We find that investor perceptions and changes therein are important drivers of actual trading and risk-taking behavior: Investors with higher levels of and upward revisions of return expectations are more likely to trade, have higher turnover, trade larger amounts per transaction, and use derivatives. Investors with higher levels of and upward revisions in risk tolerance are more likely to trade, have higher buy-sell ratios, use limit orders more frequently, and hold riskier portfolios. Investors with higher levels of risk perception are more likely to trade, have higher turnover, have lower buy-sell ratios, and hold riskier portfolios. Keywords: Individual investors, Investment decisions, Investor perceptions, Trading behavior, Risk-taking behavior

This study reports that Market Advisory Services (MAS) are used by about 82% of commercial U.S. crop producers, based on the results of a recent survey. Only 43% of MAS users rely on a single service, while the other 57% subscribe to multiple services. MAS users' profiles in terms of their (1) demographic characteristics, (2) risk attitude, and (3) marketing behavior are presented. The results indicate that MAS users can be differentiated based on their location and use of computers, though not on age and farm size. MAS users are shown to be significantly more risk seeking than non-users. Furthermore, MAS users apply significantly more forward-pricing techniques, but are no different from non-users in terms of marketing frequency.

What drives poverty? We propose a research approach to study poverty by focusing on individual decision-making behavior in which the interaction between individual's innovativeness and time preference rate is crucial to begin understanding poverty. This approach enables policy makers to formulate efficient and effective policy and provides economists with an alternative research tool to study poverty.

Analysis of a unique data set of 1,400 U+S+ crop producers using a mixture-modeling framework shows that the likelihood of Marketing Advisory Services ~MAS! use is, among others, driven by the perceived performance of MAS in terms of return and risk reduction, the match between the MAS and the crop producer’s marketing philosophy, and the interaction between them+ The influence of these factors on crop producers’ MAS usage is not homogeneous across crop producers+ The heterogeneity is played out in different MAS choices and appears to be driven by crop producers’ risk attitudes+ @EconLit citations: D210, D400, L100, L200, M310, Q120, Q130+# © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc+

This paper takes a behavioral approach toward the market for hedging services. A behavioral decision-making model is developed that provides insight into how and why owner-managers decide the way they do regarding hedging services. Insight into those choice processes reveals information needed by financial institutions to improve the design of their financial products. The key elements of the model are related to the characteristics of the owner-managers, thereby exploring the decision units' evaluations of the hedging services provided by futures exchanges. Using structural equation models and data from 467 owner-managers, obtained by means of computer- assisted personal interviews, we find that the elements "exercising entrepreneurial freedom," "perceived performance," and the "owner-manager's reference price" determine their attitude toward using futures. These elements are related to innovativeness, risk attitude, and level of understanding of futures markets.

The behavior of managers in initiating a derivatives market position brings to the surface an interesting phenomenon: sometimes managers initiate a position in derivatives markets (i.e., futures and options markets) and sometimes they do not, even though the price volatility of the underlying asset has not changed. The current (hedging) models might explain the phenomenon of derivatives position-initiating behavior by assuming changes in the manager's risk attitude and in the volatility of the underlying asset. However, this explanation is not in line with the literature that suggests that risk attitude in a particular domain does not show strong changes within a short time frame. In this paper we try to solve this puzzle by providing a conceptual model that is able to explain the manager's futures contract initiation behavior. The psychological reference price and the futures market price level at the manager's decision moment play a key role in this model. The model is able to explain futures initiation behavior without assuming changing risk attitudes or changing price volatility. Using data from experiments obtained from personal computer-guided interviews conducted with 450 managers, the proposed model is tested with logistic regression on choice probabilities. The manager's risk attitude, the ratio of the futures price level to the manager's psychological reference price and the interaction between them, appear to explain the manager's behavior in initiating a futures position.

What drives the behavior of consumers when faced with a product-related crisis, such as that involving food contamination or life-threatening design flaws? For both consumers and companies, these crises have become of increasing importance because of the globalization of markets and an increased coverage by the media. Marketers need to understand why and how consumers react to a crisis. We show that by decoupling risk response behavior of consumers into the separate components of risk perception and risk attitude, a more robust conceptualization and prediction of consumers’ reactions is possible. Such a framework helps provide answers on how marketers can deal with such types of crises. The merits of this conceptualization are illustrated in two field studies that examine the reactions of German, Dutch, and American consumers to the BSE (mad cow disease) crisis. D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

We propose a behavioural decision-making model to investigate what factors, observable as well as unobservable, owner-managers consider regarding futures contract usage. The conceptual model consists of two phases, reflecting the two-stage decision structure of manager's use of futures. In the first phase owner-managers consider whether futures are within the market choice set for the enterprise. In the second phase the owner-manager decides whether or not to initiate a futures position when confronted with a concrete choice situation. In both phases owner-manager's beliefs and perceptions play an important role. The proposed model is tested on a data set of Dutch farmers, based on computer-assisted personal interviews. Because we incorporate latent variables (e.g., perceptions and beliefs) in both phases, we propose an estimation procedure that takes the measurement error of these latent variables explicitly into account. The implications of the behavioural decision-making model for futures contract design are derived.

In applied agricultural economic research various risk-attitude elicitation techniques are used. Here, we investigate whether risk-attitude measures rooted in the expected utility framework are related to measures rooted in the multi-item scale framework. Using a second-order factor analytical model, and data obtained from personal computer-guided interviews with 373 farmers, we investigate whether the common variance among the (latent) risk-attitude measures can be accounted for by a global risk-attitude construct. We find that the different risk-attitude measures are related, and that the global risk-attitude construct is significantly related to farmers’ intention to use futures contracts. Our research suggests that farmers’ risk attitude is a higher-order characteristic that cannot be effectively extracted by a single measure. In empiricalstudies deal ing with risk, risk attitudes and producers’ market behavior various risk-attitude measures are used. Two major approaches to quantify directly farmers’ risk attitudes can be distinguished: measures derived from the expected utility framework, and measures derived from responses to multi-item scales (e.g., Antle; Chavas and Holt; Goodwin and Schroeder; Saha, Shumway, and Talpaz; Smidts). The purpose of this research is to test whether risk-attitude measures rooted in the expected utility framework are related to the risk-attitude scales rooted in the multiitem scale approach and, if so, whether these risk-attitude measures share a common

The authors are grateful for the generous participation of the 440 farmers in the personal computer-assisted interviews. Financial support provided by the Amsterdam Exchanges (AEX), Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Foundation for Research in Agricultural Derivatives, the Office for Futures and Options Research, and the Niels Stensen Foundation made it possible to conduct the large-scale interview. The authors would like to thank J.A. Bijkerk for building a user-friendly interface for the computer-assisted personal interviews. The authors express special thanks to W. Brorsen, M. Candel, C. Ennew, P. Garcia, F. ter Hofstede, S. Irwin, M.T.G. Meulenberg, M. Rockinger, F. Verhees, A. Smidts, J-B.E.M. Steenkamp, B. Wierenga and the participants of the 1999 NCR-134 meeting held at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for helpful comments on the research project and preliminary versions of this manuscript.

Two major approaches to measuring risk attitude are compared. One, based on the expected utility model is derived from responses to lotteries and direct scaling. The other measure is a psychometric approach based on Likert statements that produces a unidimensional risk attitude scale. The data are from computer-assisted interviews of 346 Dutch owner-managers of hog farms, who made decisions about their own businesses. While the measures demonstrate some degree of convergent validity, those measures based on lotteries were better predictors of actual market behavior. In contrast the psychometric scale showed more agreement to selfreported measures of innovativeness, market orientation, and the intention to reduce risk. In light of the higher predictive validity of lottery-based measurements, werecommend elicitation methods based on the expected utility paradigm.

Several studies either implicitly or explicitly converted the well-known theory of reasoned action into a theory for choice. In this paper we elaborate upon such an attitude-based choice theory by proposing different model variants for binary choices. The models vary in two respects: (1) the level at which alternatives are compared (level of comparison), and (2) the way the comparison takes place at each of these levels in reaching a choice (comparison mechanism). Based on these dimensions 45 models were formulated that were examined empirically by logistic regression on choice probabilities. The data set consisted of measurements on 467 entrepreneurs for different financial services, one of which was an innovation. Of the different comparison mechanisms, subtraction, without explicitly incorporating the similarity of the choice alternatives, turned out to be the most adequate. For these models, equal weighting of the attitudinal components could not be rejected, which made it impossible to test at which level the alternatives were compared. Structural equation modeling of the same data shows that the equality of the weights for the attitudinal components can be explained by the affective component of attitude being a major predictor of choice.

The financial services industry is one of the fastest growing service industries. The financial services industry includes financial derivatives markets such as options and futures markets. In order to ensure survival, firms providing financial services show a rapid product innovation. However, for financial services the risk of failure is considerable. Argues that a synthesis between the financial approach and the marketing approach towards financial services provides a conceptual framework for analysing the possible success or failure of futures contracts. The synthesis is illustrated by an empirical study of a new futures contract that might possibly be introduced.

In financial literature, much attention has been paid to theories that explain the success or failure of futures contracts. Previous literature explains the success or failure of futures contracts by the underlying characteristics of the futures contract Black 1986 , Tashjian 1995 . From a marketing point of view, these investigations implicitly focus on the product element of the marketing mix. In this article, I argue that the promotion and distribution element of the marketing mix can be another valuable element in explaining success or failure of futures contracts by looking at the information dissemination process regarding new futures contracts.

The lack of sufficient market depth particularly in many newly initiated futures markets results in relatively high hedging costs, and this inhibits the growth of futures contract volume. In this article the price path due to order imbalances is analyzed and a two-dimensional market depth measure is derived. Understanding the underlying structure of futures market depth provides the management of the futures exchange with a framework for improving their market depth and gives hedgers a better understanding of market depth risk. The managerial implications of our findings are demonstrated empirically using data from the Amsterdam Agricultural Futures Exchange.

Introducing a futures market for fishing rights would increase utility for risk averse fishermen. We use the EV model to analyze possible reductions in (expected) profits for futures trading that would make fishermen indifferent between the situation with and without futures markets. It is found that a futures market for fishing rights enables policy makers to pursue substantial cuts in the size of annual quotas without hurting fishermen. In light of current overfishing and pressure from the sector to avoid dramatic cutbacks in effort, this is an important policy result.

The literature on rights has paid much attention to the description of rights and the performance of systems of rights. Less has been published on identifying the underlying dimensions of rights, even though such identification seems important for understanding the different types of rights and for classifying them so as to facilitate the process of development that occurs when introducing rights (Miller, 1995). In this article a theoretical framework, which sheds light on the structure of rights, is developed. After examining the characteristics of rights, a correspondence analysis is carried out on existing rights and on a hypothetical ideal right in order to find similarities between them and to identify their underlying structure.

Previous research has shown that customer satisfaction is a market-based asset that can contribute to a firm’s value by increasing its stock-market returns, while simultaneously reducing the riskiness of these returns. This study contributes to the growing literature on the marketing–finance interface by examining the relationship between customer satisfaction and a type of risk that has not been previously studied in the marketing literature: the vulnerability of a firm’s stock price to the stock-market corrections that typically follow periods of high investor sentiment. The results show that customer satisfaction can function as a buffer against the risk of such sentimental stock-price movements and reduces their negative impact on a firm’s market value. In particular, we find that firms with higher (lower) levels of customer satisfaction exhibit smaller (greater) price corrections and higher returns after periods of high investor sentiment. Mark Lett (2013) 24:13–27 DOI 10.1007/s11002-012-9219-9 R. P. Merrin : A. O. I. Hoffmann : J. M. E. Pennings Keywords Customer satisfaction . Investor sentiment . Market-based assets . Marketing–finance interface

While the interest in smart shopping carts is growing, both retailers and consumer groups have concerns about how real-time spending feedback will influence shopping behavior. Building on budgeting and spending theories, the authors conduct three lab and grocery store experiments, which robustly show that real-time spending feedback has a diverging impact on spending depending on whether a person is budget constrained (“budget” shoppers) or not (“nonbudget” shoppers). Real-time spending feedback stimulates budget shoppers to spend more (by buying more national brands). In contrast, this feedback leads nonbudget shoppers to spend less (by replacing national brands with store brands). Furthermore, smart shopping carts increase repatronage intentions for budget shoppers while keeping them stable for nonbudget shoppers. These findings underscore fundamental unexplored differences between budget and nonbudget shoppers. Moreover, they have key implications for both brick-and-mortar and online retailers, as well as app developers.

Combining monthly survey data with matching trading records, we examine how individual investor perceptions change and drive trading and risk-taking behavior during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. We find that investor perceptions fluctuate significantly during the crisis, with risk tolerance and risk perceptions being less volatile than return expectations. During the worst months of the crisis, investors’ return expectations and risk tolerance decrease, while their risk perceptions increase. Towards the end of the crisis, investor perceptions recover. We document substantial swings in trading and risk-taking behavior that are driven by changes in investor perceptions. Overall, individual investors continued to trade actively and did not de-risk their investment portfolios during the crisis.