Journal articles on the topic 'Origin-based pricing'

A new framework for asset price dynamics is introduced in which the concept of noisy information about future cash flows is used to derive the corresponding price processes. In this framework an asset is defined by its cash-flow structure. Each cash flow is modelled by a random variable that can be expressed as a function of a collection of independent random variables called market factors. With each such "X-factor" we associate a market information process, the values of which we assume are accessible to market participants. Each information process consists of a sum of two terms; one contains true information about the value of the associated market factor, and the other represents "noise". The noise term is modelled by an independent Brownian bridge that spans the interval from the present to the time at which the value of the factor is revealed. The market filtration is assumed to be that generated by the aggregate of the independent information processes. The price of an asset is given by the expectation of the discounted cash flows in the risk-neutral measure, conditional on the information provided by the market filtration. In the case where the cash flows are the dividend payments associated with equities, an explicit model is obtained for the share-price process. Dividend growth is taken into account by introducing appropriate structure on the market factors. The prices of options on dividend-paying assets are derived. Remarkably, the resulting formula for the price of a European-style call option is of the Black–Scholes–Merton type. We consider the case where the rate at which information is revealed to the market is constant, and the case where the information rate varies in time. Option pricing formulae are obtained for both cases. The information-based framework generates a natural explanation for the origin of stochastic volatility in financial markets, without the need for specifying on an ad hoc basis the dynamics of the volatility.

Abstract: Global container shipping is the phenomenon of packing goods into containers and transporting them across country borders. A global container shipping trip often involves multiple carriers, third party logistics firms, and fourth party logistics firms. Based on previously agreed-upon contract pricing with the shippers, these businesses bill base service costs, unexpected service fees, and value-added service fees through freight invoices. This study introduces an AWS-based system for creating electronic invoices for carriers of goods when one or more carriers are involved in the shipment of products from a shipper's origin location to a destination location outside of the country of origin. Real-time shipment tracking data and previously agreed-upon service contract pricing between the shipper and the carrier are largely used in the preparation of an invoice for a carrier. Our solution improves the effectiveness of the e-invoicing process and reduces expenses for the shippers and carriers involved in international trade. The' main reasons for adopting AWS-based e-invoicing solutions are to decrease the frequency of invoice disputes, speed up dispute settlement, and offer real-time audits

Prior matrix and surveyed link volumes were, in most cases, employed to estimate origin-destination matrix. With the development of BOT and of congestion pricing, charged links become an important component of road network, due to the fact that the tolling data: volumes and travel time on pricing entry-exit are traffic information, both cost-free and accurate. In this paper, we put forward a bi-level programming model, taking account of data on charging entry-exit to estimate OD matrix based upon the traditional model. Meanwhile, a heuristic method -the simulated annealing approach - is utilized to solve the OD estimation problem. Results of examples indicate that the accuracy of estimation will be improved while adding the tolling data, and that it is feasible to calculate OD matrix by combining the volumes and travel time on entry-exit with partial common link flows. In this light, this way can be applied to enhance accuracy, and also to reduce the cost spent on surveying the link flows in common OD matrix estimation.

Purpose The primary aim of revenue management (RM) is to sell the right product to the right customer at the right time for the right price. Ever since the deregulation of US airline industry, and the emergence of the internet as a distribution channel, RM has come of age. The purpose of this paper is to map out ten turning points in the evolution of Revenue Management taking an historical perspective. Design/methodology/approach The paper is a chronological account based upon published research and literature fundamentally drawn from the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management. Findings The significance and success to RM is attributed to the following turning points: Littlewood’s rule, Expected Marginal Seat Revenue, deregulation of the US air industry, single leg to origin and destination RM, the use of family fares, technological advancement, low-cost carriers, dynamic pricing, consumer and price transparency and pricing capabilities in organizations. Originality/value The originality of the paper lies in identifying the core trends or turning points that have shaped the development of RM thus assisting futurists or forecasters to shape the future.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine and analyse that factors that could potentially influence price premiums of Australian wine in the UK market. The authors integrated the economic-based hedonic pricing theory and marketing export pricing literature. The authors demonstrate a potential solution to limitations in knowledge of market-level data and industry wide competition, currently lacking in export pricing studies. Design/methodology/approach Using data extracted from wine-searcher.com and using multiple regression as the main analytical technique, the authors examined the relationships between actual retail prices UK consumers pay for Australian wine and product attributes. The authors compared the moderating influence of distribution channel (retail choice) on these relationships. Findings The results provide insights in export pricing literature, and the authors support better theoretical explanations for hedonic pricing studies in export marketing. The authors found two types of wine attributes – “brand” and “region of origin” – that attract price premiums. While relationships between variety and retail price, as well as age and retail price are less clear, the authors provide some support. Research limitations/implications One limitation of this hedonic pricing study is the inability to explain why certain relationships between product attributes and price premiums exist. Studies such as these could be improved by utilising both consumer- and firm-level data. Practical implications Whilst final prices paid by consumers are beyond the control of producers, understanding the relationships between retail prices, retail choices and product attributes are of strategic importance. Understanding the role consumer preferences play in determining prices they ultimately pay is of great value when determining export/retail pricing strategies. Social implications Consumers and firm managers are jointly able to provide comprehensive explanations on why certain attributes attract price premiums. The integration of economic and consumer-based theories provides a holistic understanding of the influence of retail choices and product attributes on retail prices. Originality/value The authors drew on the hedonic pricing theory linking product attributes with retail prices, which is vital for understanding market share and brand image. The authors identified which product attributes and which distribution channels (retail choices) are valuable to consumers. Deeper understanding of these issues is important for producers.

The U.S. lamb industry has changed in the last decade, impacting the structure of imports, which have become necessary to meet domestic demand. Product differentiation plays an important role in determining lamb imports. This research examines the importance of source (country or origin) and product attributes such as boneless versus bone-in cuts and chilled versus frozen products in determining U.S. demand for imported lamb. Overall, boneless and bone-in products show evidence of separability, which is an indication that preferences are independent based on these characteristics. For other product attributes, preferences were not independent, implying their aggregation in trade analyses may be justified. For agribusiness importers and wholesalers, our results and a better understanding of the importance of product origin, quality and form are useful to inform pricing and product substitution strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to present bi-level optimization models and develop a genetic algorithm (GA) based method to solve the optimal congestion pricing toll design problem and to determine the second-best link-based optimal toll locations and toll levels simultaneously. The upper-level subprogram is to maximize the toll revenue collected while explicitly accounting for the toll booth setting up and operating cost, given certain toll level constraints. The lower-level subprogram is a traditional user equilibrium problem with elastic demand. The proposed GA model is applied to the Sioux Falls network, which has 76 links and 24 origin–destination pairs, assuming homogeneous users. Comprehensive numerical results including solutions achieved under continuous tolling and discrete tolling schemes, tolling on optimized links and tolling on heuristically selected most congested links are carefully presented and compared. The impact of value of time and the elastic demand sensitivity are also comprehensively investigated.

Introduction: Many countries have introduced policies and strategies to limit pharmaceutical expenditures. These include pharmaceutical pricing policies and related strategies to control medicine prices and to ensure appropriate and stable prices. The aim of this study was to provide an overview of the current pharmaceutical pricing policy for medicines in Saudi Arabia and to provide an evaluation of the impact of this policy on medicine prices. Methods: A description of the current pharmaceutical policy is presented by reviewing the current official documents and regulations related to pharmaceutical pricing in Saudi Arabia. A price comparison between the original brand medicines and their generic versions was conducted for the top six selling medicines in Saudi Arabia during the period of 2010–2015. Results: The findings showed that Saudi pharmaceutical pricing policy takes into consideration several factors including an international price benchmark, internal price referencing, and the price of the medicine in the country of origin when determining medicine prices. Based on this policy, there were large differences in the prices of generic medicines compared to original brand medicines. The generic medicine to original brand medicine price ratio was 0.87–0.30. However, the price of the first generic medicine was close to the price of original brand medicine, with the first generic medicine-to-original brand medicine price ratio was 0.87–0.81. In this study, there were large differences in the prices of generic medicines for the same molecule. In fact, price ratio among the generic medicines for the same molecule was between 0.96 and 0.18. However, some generic medicines imported from high income countries were cheaper than the medicines manufactured locally or manufactured in other countries in the Middle East. Conclusion: Medicine prices are strictly controlled through the pharmaceutical pricing policy in Saudi Arabia. Overall, the current policy has resulted in significant price differences among medicines, including medicines of the same molecule. Due to this large difference, the cost savings will depend on the product prescribed or procured by the health organization.

It is well known that linear complementarity problem (LCP) involving partial integro differential equation (PIDE) arises from pricing American options under Lévy Models. In the case of infinite activity process, the integral part of the PIDE has a singularity, which is generally approximated by a small Brownian component plus a compound Poisson process, in the neighborhood of origin. The PIDE can be reformulated as a fractional partial differential equation (FPDE) under fractional diffusion models, including FMLS (finite moment log stable), CGMY (Carr-Madan-Geman-Yor), and KoBol (Koponen-Boyarchenko-Levendorskii). In this paper, we first present a stable iterative algorithm, which is based on the fractional difference approach and penalty method, to avoid the singularity problem and obtain numerical approximations of first-order accuracy. Then, on the basis of the first-order accurate algorithm, spatial extrapolation is employed to obtain second-order accurate numerical estimates. Numerical tests are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm and the extrapolation method. We believe that this can be used as necessary tools by the engineers in research.

Существующий сегодня метод проведения управленческого анализа ассортиментной и ценовой политики построен исключительно на теоретических положениях, требующих практической реализации с целью оптимизации деятельности организации. В статье рассмотрена проблема проведения управленческого анализа ассортиментной и ценовой политики на примере компании «Градиент». При проведении управленческого анализа эффективно использовался комплекс существующих фундаментальных методов исследования, в т.ч. анализ расчета потенциала организации, числовые (формальные) методы. Также обосновано применение нескольких подходов при реализации данной методики, в число которых входит составление функции и использование современных программных обеспечений как западного, так и отечественного происхождения. В результате определено, что наиболее эффективным инструментом проведения анализа ассортиментной и ценовой политики является автоматизация управленческого учета и анализа посредством специальных программ. The current method of conducting management analysis of assortment and pricing policy is based solely on theoretical provisions that require practical implementation in order to optimize the organization's activities. The article deals with the problem of conducting a management analysis of assortment and price policy on the example of the company «Gradien». When conducting management analysis, a set of existing fundamental research methods was effectively used, including analysis of calculating the organization's potential, numerical (formal) methods. It is also justified to apply several approaches to the implementation of this methodology, including the compilation of functions and the use of modern software of both Western and domestic origin. As a result, it was determined that the most effective tool for analyzing the assortment and price policy is the automation of management accounting and analysis through special programs.

Although China’s high-speed railway (HSR) is maturing after more than ten years of construction and development, the load factor and revenue of HSR could still be improved by optimizing the ticket fare structure. Different from the present unitary and changeless fare structure, this paper explores the application of multigrade fares to China’s HSR. On the premise that only one fare grade can be offered for each origin-destination (O-D) at the same time, this paper addresses the questions of how to adjust ticket price over time to maximize the revenue. First, on the basis of piecewise pricing strategy, a ticket fare optimization model is built, which could be transformed to convex program to be solved. Then, based on the analysis of passenger arrival regularity using historical ticket data of Beijing-Shanghai HSR line, several experiments are performed using the method proposed in the paper to explore the properties of the optimal multigrade fare scheme.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of country-of-origin (COO) cues and pricing perspective based on the third-party seller's name, intermediary, on consumers' purchasing decisions on e-commerce sites. A model was proposed to investigate consumers' perception toward sellers' online reputation, the mediating role of trust between the reputation of third-party sellers and attitude toward e-commerce as an intermediary, and attitude toward third-party sellers. In addition, this study also looks at the pricing threshold of consumers who are willing to buy from a third-party seller that has a negative COO cue, which is an area that has received limited attention in e-commerce studies.Design/methodology/approachThe paper opted for an experimental study using survey data gathered from general American consumers. Two studies were conducted. One hundred seventy surveys were gathered for study 1, and 171 surveys were gathered for study 2. The two studies had two product snippets which showed an Amazon product page with a list of third-party sellers. For study 2, all variables were kept the same – reviews and ratings for both products and sellers, delivery time, descriptions, e-commerce as an intermediary and brand of a bag – except for the price.FindingsThe findings showed that consumers' perceived reputation of a third-party seller has a positive impact on their attitude toward the seller and toward the e-commerce intermediary. In addition, the role of a positive COO influences attitudes and intentions. However, this influence is moderated by price when price is noticeably higher when compared to an alternative option provided by a seller from a country with a lower COO evaluation. This study suggests that the benefits of a positive COO diminish when a seller with a lower COO evaluation is able to provide a lower price for the product. In study 1, the results show that positive COO trumps negative COO. In study 2, the result shows that consumers lean toward a lower-price product and disregard their evaluation toward the COO. Furthermore, in study 2, results show that in order for the pricing to offset the negative COO attributes of a third-party seller, the price needs to be within 22–30% lower than the American seller's product pricing.Research limitations/implicationsWith the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability for the other markets (e.g. Asian consumer market). Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.Originality/valueThis study highlights the implications of COO cues such as sellers' names and how they impact consumers' willingness to purchase a product. The second study investigates consumers' willingness to purchase when the pricing for a product sold by a negative COO seller versus a positive COO seller is different in an e-commerce environment. In addition, the second study determines that the role of trust has more impact on consumers' attitude toward a third-party seller than it has on their attitude toward the e-commerce intermediary.

Dairy products from grazing ruminant have numerous positive effects on human health thanks to their higher content essential fatty acids, vitamins, and polyphenols. Compared to livestock fed a conventional maize silage- and/or grain-based diet, grass-fed livestock produce milk with higher levels of n-3 fatty acids, vitamins A, E, carotenoids, and phenols. The effect is even more pronounced if animals are grazing on legume/forbs-rich grasslands. This review argues, based on the available literature, about the effect of grazing ruminant on milk and cheese quality, including the hedonistic aspects, pointing out the link between territory and dairy products quality (Protected Designation Origin; Protected Geografic Origin; namely PDO and PGI labels). Moreover, it points out the main plant biomarkers which can be used to discriminate grazing sourced from stall-fed sourced milk and dairy products. Overall milk and cheese sourced from grazing animals (cows, sheep and goat) showed higher levels (compared to stall system) of FA, vitamins, phenols, putatively beneficial for consumers’ health. FA and plant secondary metabolites can also affect flavor and some nutritional and technological features of dairy products such as their antioxidant protection degree. This would favour a fair pricing of dairy products sourced from grazing systems and the persistence of viable and sustainable extensive production systems.

This article provides an alternative theoretical framework to explain investors’ irrational behaviours in finance theories (mainly asset pricing) based on psychoanalysis approach. This is an approach used by psychoanalysts and psychiatrists to investigate human minds. The investigation is facilitated by interdisciplinary theories, namely (a) bounded rationality theory which differentiates intuition and reasoning, (b) prospect theory which explains framing and valuation and (c) theory of mind which divides behavioural risks into cognitive heuristics and affective biases. These theories collectively explain the origin of irrational behaviours. Additionally, (d) the ABC (Activating–Beliefs–Consequences) model is also used to interpret the causes and effects of irrational behaviours on investors and market behaviour. Last theory, (e) the dual system model of preference is used to conceptualize the bounded human mind that contains both rational and irrational elements. The proposed theoretical framework provides the theoretical foundation of investors’ irrational origin, forces, causes as well as their systematic effects on investors, asset prices and stock market behaviours dynamism. The validity of the theoretical framework is supported by empirical test using a representative of emerging stock market data and behavioural risk proxies.

Integrating activity-based models (ABMs) with simulation-based dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) have gained attention from transportation planning agencies seeking tools to address the arising planning challenges as well as transportation policies such as road pricing. Optimal paths with least generalized cost are needed to route travelers at the DTA level, while at the ABM level, only the least generalized cost information is needed (without fully specified paths). Thus, rerunning (executing) the least generalized cost path-finding algorithm at each iteration of ABM and DTA does not seem to be efficient, especially for large-scale networks. Furthermore, storing the dynamic travel cost skims for multiclass users as an alternative approach is not efficient either in regard to memory requirements. In this study, the aim was to estimate the least generalized cost so as to be used in destination and mode choice models at the ABM level. A heuristic approach was developed to use the simulated vehicle trajectories that were assigned to the optimal paths in the DTA level to estimate different cost measures, including distance, time, and monetary cost associated with the least generalized cost path for any given combination of the origin, destination, and departure time (ODT) and value of time. The proposed approximation method presented in this study used vehicle trajectories, aligned with the origin–destination direction and located in a specific boundary shaping an ellipse around the origin and destination zones at a certain time window, to estimate travel costs for the given ODT and user class. Numerical results for two real-world networks suggest the applicability of the method in large-scale networks in addition to its lower computational burden, including solution time and memory requirements, relative to other alternative approaches.

While perceived consumer effectiveness has consistently been linked to socially conscious attitudes, such as sustainable consumption decisions, the concept appears to have been confounded with other related constructs in the empirical studies measuring its effects on consumer buying intentions and consumer behaviour. A sustainable food consumer evaluation is based on product values and credibility to health, origin, environment, and ethical concerns. The research aimed to examine if sustainability-related perceived consumer effectiveness has an impact on purchase intention and willingness to pay for sustainable food products, in order to provide information on the pricing of sustainable foods. The study was carried out using a quantitative approach on a sample of 1204 young consumers using a self-administered online questionnaire. The results indicated a significant positive relationship between perceived consumer effectiveness and consumers’ willingness to pay a premium price for sustainable food attributes. Based on this willingness to pay a premium price for food products, a WTP Index was developed. The findings revealed that perceived effectiveness has a strong connection with the buying intention of food products with sustainable attributes.

This paper will review the match between single driver and single rider in online taxi services through a resource sharing (sharing platform) for the operators with the objectives to maximize the profit for drivers (operators) and minimize waiting time for passengers so that the matching rate is higher. A low matching rate between rider and driver can cause the consumer to drop the services. The matching between single driver and single rider in online taxi services through a sharing platform scheme is formulated in maximum weighted bipartite matching problem. To solve the proposed model, we use Kuhn Munkres Algorithm, while to solve the shortest path for the driver to pick up the passenger and the shortest path of passenger's origin destination, modified Dijkstra with adaptive algorithm based on Wei Peng et.al (2012) is used. Based on illustrative example with several cases, we found a resource sharing scenario can optimize the matching between driver and rider and moreover can solve the surge pricing problem which is deemed as less transparant to customer

Consider a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) where the nodes belong todifferent authorities. The nodes must be given incentives to spend theirresources (battery energy, transmission bandwidth, buffer space) inforwarding packets that originate at nodes belonging to anotherauthority. This can be done by assigning a credit balance to each node:when a node acts as an originating node it uses its credits to pay forthe costs of sending its own traffic; when a node acts as a transit nodeit earns credits by forwarding traffic from other nodes. This paperpresents a credit-based incentive scheme which assists nodes thatpersistently lack the credits necessary to transmit their data, andprotects nodes from using too large a proportion of their resources toforward traffic that originated from other nodes. We first present twobasic incentive schemes: the first scheme free-for-all does not regulatethe willingness of the nodes to forward packets on behalf of othernodes; the second scheme tit-for-tat contains such a regulatorymechanism. Next we present the origin pays and the destination paysprotocol which contain a decentralised credit redistribution mechanismto destroy (create) credit at over (under) provisioned nodes. Bothconstant and congestion-dependent resource prices are investigated.Congestion pricing is also used to reward (penalise) the destinationnode for receiving packets on under (over) utilised routes. Initialexperiments indicate that the origin pays protocol with congestionpricing offers a substantial improvement over the free-for-all protocolthat is currently used in MANETs.

Africa is facing a number of challenges that are negatively affecting socio-economic development at all levels of governments and local governments are expected to play a leading role for Africa’s development. One of these challenges are illicit financial flows that are perceived by many as a crime against Africa’s transformation. The continent is losing billions of dollars every year because of tax evasion, corruption and inappropriate transfer pricing and maladministration. With tax being one of Africa’s main sources of revenue, current and past researches revealed that, illicit financial flows (IFFs) cripple African Governments tax base as a results of capital outflows and lack of good governance. This situation obviously is a challenge for Africa’s development as governments struggle to finance structuring projects and this in turn compels these governments to seek funds from international organisations at very high interest rates. It is also important to reveal that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) rapidly grew after the Second World War with the intention to maximize profit on investment in less developed countries and specifically in the African continent. In competing in Africa, most multinationals main objective is to pay less tax, make extensive profits and transfer the proceeds to their country of origin. This subsequently gave rise to illicit financial flows in Africa where the continent is losing billions of dollars. Past studies equally revealed that, Africa’s revenue could increase between 55 and 65%, if appropriate mechanisms of monitoring the flows were in place. This study therefore is based on the premise that, tax evasion, illicit financial flows, corruption and abusive transfers pricing are all factors that affect Africa’s development. Using appropriate method of inquiry, this study wants to demonstrate the presence of FDI’s in Africa as a modus operandi behind tax evasion. It also using the “Appropriability Theory” to explain the rationale for FDI in Africa.

Several important reasons have contributed to the current interest in manipulating the composition of cows milk, particularly the ratio of milk protein to fat. Current market forces are still influenced with the introduction of production quotas on milk volume which occurred in the mid 80's. This led to a payment scheme based on the sale of milk solids, whilst the more recent introduction of a quota on milk fat sales has provided a major disincentive to overproduce milk fat and specifically milk with a high fat content. Most recently, the pricing structure of milk was changed, with the reward for lactose being removed and replaced by an increased price differential between protein and fat. Thus to the dairy farmer, other than those producing Channel Island milk, increasing the protein content of milk appears the only option with which to increase the ex-farm gate value of the product. At the same time, consumer choice continues to have a major impact on the demand for milk and milk products and the increasing sales of semi-skimmed milk is one consequence of the Nation's concern regarding over-consumption of fats, especially those of animal origin.

Reference budgets (RB) are illustrative priced baskets containing the minimum goods and services necessary for well-described types of families to have adequate social participation. Cross-country comparable food RB with the minimum cost were previously developed in 26 EU countries. However, sustainability was not considered. The aim of this paper is to present the development of healthy and sustainable food baskets for Spanish adults. This work follows the steps proposed in previous European projects to build RB: (1) revision of guidelines on healthy and sustainable eating and expert consultations, (2) translation into a concrete list of foods, (3) pricing. The results indicate that a sustainable diet can be cheaper than current recommendations when only the dietary content is considered, representing monthly savings of about EUR 7.27. This is mainly explained by the shift towards more plant-based proteins. Adding constraints on origin, packaging and seasonality increases the overall cost of the food basket by EUR 12.22/month compared with current recommendations. The Spanish Sustainable Food Reference Budget illustrates the cost of applying different criteria to improve dietary sustainability in the Spanish context, and can be useful to support the ecological transition, since providing different levels of adherence to a sustainable dietary pattern can ease its access across socioeconomic groups.

E-scooter sharing services been grown exponentially within the last five years. They are based on the flexibility of accessing dense urban areas without specialized infrastructure. In modern cities, there are diverse road environments that impact the comfort, and therefore the attractiveness, of micro-mobility services. This study aims to investigate the willingness to use e-scooter sharing services, while considering the road environment. To formulate area-specific pricing policies, a stated preferences experiment with 243 respondents, who can be considered as potential users, is conducted in Athens, Greece and a binary logistic regression model with random beta parameters is developed. The analysis of the model marginal effects indicates that the integration of bonus points into micro-mobility services, combined with the option of transferring these points to parking services, can compensate a non-friendly road environment, thus increasing the service demand. The existence of roads with good pavement conditions and wide sidewalks significantly increased the willingness of respondents to use e-scooter sharing services. Unexpectedly, pedestrianized zones in a buffer area of 2 km radius from the trip origin reinforce the attractiveness of shared e-scooters, while the contribution of bike lanes and traffic calming streets (or shared space) were proven to be insignificant.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of extrinsic cues on wine consumer’s willingness to pay (WTP) based on a blind tasting experiment conducted in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach Using data from a three-stage blind wine tasting experiment, the authors examine how an average consumer’s WTP for a bottle of wine changes as a result of knowing prior to tasting extrinsic information such as the country of origin or grape variety of an otherwise identical product. Findings The findings of this study align with previous research that finds subjective utility experienced by tasters can be significantly influenced by the belief or information given prior to the tasting. Sub-group analysis using a stratified sample based on the frequency of wine consumption and the wine taster’s prior experience with wine (grouped into expert and novice categories) suggests that it is the novice consumers that have a stronger response to the pre-tasting knowledge when evaluating wine. Experienced wine consumers, on the other hand, do not seem to respond strongly to the pre-tasting knowledge of the extrinsic attributes in their evaluation of wine. Originality/value The studies of taste preference and role of extrinsic characteristics in wine evaluation and consumption in the rapidly growing Asian market is increasingly important for the wine industry. The evidence from this study suggests the importance for producers and marketers to consider consumer heterogeneity and product differentiation when pricing and distributing their wine.

The problem of structural imbalance in terms of supply and demand due to changes in traffic patterns by time zone has been continuously raised in the mobility market. In Korea, unlike large overseas cities, the waiting time tolerance increases during the daytime when supply far exceeds demand, resulting in a large loss of operating profit. The purpose of this study is to increase taxi demand and further improve driver’s profits through real-time fare discounts during off-peak daytime hours in Seoul, Korea. To this end, we propose a real-time fare bidding system among taxi drivers based on a dynamic pricing scheme and simulate the appropriate fare discount level for each regional time zone. The driver-to-driver fare competition system consists of simulating fare competition based on the multi-agent Deep Q-Network method after developing a fare discount index that reflects the supply and demand level of each region in 25 districts in Seoul. According to the optimal fare discount level analysis in the off-peak hours, the lower the OI Index, which means the level of demand relative to supply, the higher the fare discount rate. In addition, an analysis of drivers’ profits and matching rates according to the distance between the origin and destination of each region showed up to 89% and 65% of drivers who actively offered discounts on fares. The results of this study in the future can serve as the foundation of a fare adjustment system for varying demand and supply situations in the Korean mobility market.

Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers (CFRPs) are commonly used materials in manufacturing components and products in the automotive, aerospace, and wind energy industries generating thousands of tons of waste, thus creating a threat to the environment if not recycled. Therefore, it is important for both academia and industry to investigate various ways of recycling this material. However, there is an urgent need for a reliable cost predication system to assist in making informed decisions, planning sustainable treatment, and developing pricing strategies for different waste treatment scenarios. This research paper presents the development of a fuzzy logic-based system to perform cost estimation of recycling processes of the CFRP. The developed system has taken into consideration uncertainties such as the characteristics of End of Life (EoL) material including its size and weight, its origin and diversity of existing recycling methods, and quantity of recycling waste. Cost drivers were divided into categories such as dismantling, transportation, operation, and capital cost. The system was developed by creating 243 fuzzy rules and three levels of fuzzy sets. Moreover, an interactive user-friendly interface was developed to enable the user to use the system easily and efficiently. Finally, case study results were examined to compare the whole life recycling cost of four different recycling technologies in various scenarios of waste treatment. The developed fuzzy logic-based system has the capability in evaluating the cost structure of CFRP recycling techniques and take into consideration uncertainty factors. Hence, a major contribution of the developed system is its provision of the heuristic rules that aid the decision-making process for selecting a cost-effective recycling method. The visualisation facility of the developed system is also a useful tool in enabling potential users to forecast the cost of the CFRP recycling techniques upfront.

This paper presents a matching and pricing mechanism for a peer-to-peer ridesharing system that ensures a ride-back for matched riders. This service is thus presented as an alternative to driving alone for daily commuting. The matching algorithm is formulated as a minimum-cost, maximum-flow problem that is exact and quickly solvable on polynomial time. The mechanism modeling is based on the Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) mechanism that is known to be efficient, incentive compatible, and individually rational. However, VCG runs on a budget deficit in a ridesharing setting. To address this issue, participants were classified into drivers and riders in accordance with a novel multiparameter reserve price that fixes the revenue shortage problem and makes the system financially self-sustainable but in detriment of no longer being efficient. Agents’ utility functions include cost-sharing savings and high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) travel time savings. The parametric study uses origin–destination demand data from the Southern California Association of Governments, and travel times are extracted from a professional web mapping service. Results show the method has a revenue surplus over most of the reserve-price parameter space and offers high matching rates attributable to the inclusion of HOV travel time savings and reserve-price structure. The reserve prices are drawn from empirical distributions of value of time and unit distance cost.

Frequent food safety incidents in recent years have greatly reduced consumers’ trust, and consumers’ demand for safe food has been on the rise. However, there is an inconsistency between the consumers’ willingness and actual purchasing behaviors. Some consumers who have a willingness to purchase safe food ultimately do not produce actual purchasing behaviors, resulting in an “irrational behavior” in the safe food consumer market. In order to better study this phenomenon and identify its inherent logic, we chose to use pork (a typical representative of safety-certified agricultural products) as the object, based on a survey on 844 consumers in the Jiangsu Province and Anhui Province analyzed in July 2017 by RPL (Random Parameters Logit) and binary Logit regression methods from two aspects, i.e. consumer preference for different attributes of safety-certified products and factors affecting safe consumption. The research results show that consumers have a significant preference for pork that has additional attributes such as green food certification, organic food certification, origin information and “No Additives and Veterinary Drug Residue Labeling”; labeling such information on the pork can effectively improve consumers’ trust. Consumers’ inconsistency of purchase intention with purchasing behaviors of safety-certified pork is affected by many factors, such as gender, age, annual household income, the degree of trust in agricultural product quality and a safety certification mark, understanding of safety-certified pork, and the degree of concern on pork quality and safety issues. These factors have all contributed, to varying degrees, to the rising of “irrational behavior” of consumers’ safe consumption, lead to an irrational state of consumption that consumers with a safely certified pork purchase will not necessarily buy a safety-certified pork. Based on the results of two empirical analyses, it can be concluded that pricing and age are the two main influencing factors that lead to the “irrational behavior” of consumers’ safe consumption.

Introduction/Main Objectives: This study investigates the relationships between equity markets during the Asian financial crisis and the subprime mortgage crisis in Asia-Pacific. Background Problems: The advantages of market integration are under scrutiny in the midst of global financial crises, which have many implications for international asset pricing and regulators to develop strategies to protect economies. During the crises, the equity markets responded with different patterns, and it is important to understand in more detail the market relations during each crisis, especially for the less and more integrated markets. Novelty: We provide in-depth analysis to compare the market relationships during two extremely different financial crises originating from less integrated markets (i.e., emerging ones) and more integrated markets (i.e., developed ones), based on the prices which give a direct measurement and clear interpretation. This research provides a significant contribution by showing new findings in the form of a comparison of market relations during two extremely different crises in the Asia-Pacific region. Research Methods: This study employs time-series data from economic territories based on the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Asia-Pacific classification and the United States. We conducted analysis using the vector autoregressive, Granger causality test, and impulse response, to point out the market relationships during the crises or turmoil periods. Finding/Results: The results show that the Asian financial crisis affected the emerging markets more and this indicates the unidirectional causality relationships among them. Meanwhile, the subprime mortgage crisis affected all the markets, but more indicated the bidirectional relationships, especially the developed markets. Conclusion: Although these two financial crises were global in nature, the effects on the region were different. The origin of the shock and the level of market integration affected the market relationships differently during the crises.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of economic nationalism and consumer ethnocentrism in the form of country of origin (COO) cues specifically “Made in […]” and “Owned by […]” on the product judgement of bi-national wine brands (brands with multiple country affiliations). Further, the role of consumer product knowledge is examined as a moderator of these xenophobia attitudes. Design/methodology/approach – A self-administered questionnaire was designed using established scales. A convenience sample was drawn from participants attending a major wine trade exhibition in Western Australia and university students. A variety of statistical techniques were used to analyse the data. Findings – High levels of economic nationalism and anti-foreign sentiment was so strong that respondents did not want products that had any association with a foreign country, regardless of whether the products are directly or indirectly related to a foreign origin. This suggests that Australian consumers are not any more receptive to bi-national brands; as such domestic affiliations have not diluted the economic nationalistic sentiment. Further, results confirm that Australian consumers use COO cues as part of wine evaluations. Consumers with low product knowledge are likely to rely on extrinsic country cues to reinforce their brand evaluation, whereas consumers who are more knowledgeable are found to base evaluations on intrinsic attributes rather than extrinsic cues. Research limitations/implications – Only respondents from Perth, Western Australia were chosen, thus limiting the representativeness of the sample. Other cultural contexts and product categories based on a larger sample size should be investigated in the future. Practical implications – This research provides useful consumer insights and new market entry implications in terms of advertising and branding strategies for international wine manufacturers and distributors who wish to expand globally. In addition, there are managerial implications for domestic market where local retailers, merchandisers, importers can avoid importing products originating from offending countries and take on opportunity to exploit and promote “buy domestic campaigns”. Originality/value – Conceptually, this study extends the existing COO literature by introducing bi-national brands into the model; expanding on country of ownership appeals in evaluating bi-national brands; and identifying the correlation between the economic nationalism and consumer ethnocentrism constructs. Further, this research can significantly help wine marketers to develop more effective positioning strategies. It will also help in the development of pricing and promotional decisions.

This study aims to trace the main stages of the construction of resort villages on the southern coast of Crimea between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and their specifics and evaluate the contribution of Russian entrepreneurs to the development of resort business in Crimea. Based on the body of sources kept in the funds of the Russian State Historical Archive and the State Archive of the Republic of Crimea, it is established that the leading role in the formation and prosperity of the most popular Crimean resorts, Simeiz and Gurzuf, belongs to famous Russian entrepreneurs, i.e. representatives of the Maltsov dynasty and P. I. Gubonin, respectively. Thanks to their efforts and investments, once deserted and abandoned areas became villages with a developed infrastructure comfortable for living. Also, the involvement of a wide range of professionals in the construction of villages, such as architects, engineers, builders, managers, gardeners, etc. can be considered key to the successful functioning of resorts. The author singles out features of new places of rest: Simeiz developed because of individual development in accordance with the owners’ tastes, and Gurzuf became a model of hotel business of the time. The author concludes that with the help of a flexible pricing policy, hotels, guesthouses, and cottages became available to wealthy visitors not only of noble origin. In its turn, the public vacationing in Crimea enthusiastically got acquainted with local attractions, which became the basis for the formation of the tourism industry in the region. Crimea ceased to be an elitist place of rest for the royalty and persons close to them at the turn of the twentieth century and turned into the “Russian Riviera”, a popular resort in Russia, whose progressive development was interrupted by the events of October 1917 and the subsequent Civil War.

In this article we developed scientific and applied foundations of commercialization of the nature-resource potential of anthropogenic objects, on theexample of exhausted mines. It is determined that the category of “anthropogenic object” can be considered in a narrow-applied sense, as specific anthropogenic objects to ensure the target needs, and in a broad theoretical sense, meaning everything that is created and changed by human influence, that is the objects of both artificial and natural origin. It was determined that problems of commercialization of the natural-resource potential of anthropogenic objects are most often considered by researchers for specific objects, without having complex methodological coverage from the point of view of combining environmental, technical, economic and managerial components. When studying the substantiation of the scientific base, the authors confirmed the feasibility of the commercialization of natural-resource potential of anthropogenic objects on the example of a number of theoretical scientific studies in reclamation, reconstruction, recreation, remediation, restoration of biological productivity and economic value of land disturbed by economic activity. The considered examples of exhausted mines in the 21st century in the USA, Canada, Germany, Romania, and Poland indicate a wide range of opportunities for their commercialization. The study of the potential for commercialization of exhausted mines in the post-Soviet countries testified to the underused reserves for the commercialization of their nature-resource potential and their high potential for further development. The authors proposed the identification of anthropogenic objects on the basic livelihood spheres of society. There were identified the main system (natural, biological, technical, economic, social,managerial) and structural (subjects, trends, threats, risks, problems, challenges) factors of diagnosing the state of an anthropogenic object. A set of measures has been developed for commercialization of an anthropogenic object in functional and production activities, product policy, financial and investment spheres, pricing and sales policies, promotion, management and determination of property rights. Recommendations were provided on optimizing the management decision-making process based on a set of positivistic development principles, methods, and management functions. The study allows international organizations, state and local authorities, territorial communities, owners and potential investors to see new opportunities and make mutually beneficial decisions on the rational use of the nature-resource potential of anthropogenic objects.

Background The medical tourism industry is currently popular in India, but there is no confirmation of the common perspectives among the country’s medical travelers. Objective This qualitative research study analyzed web-based narratives from health travelers visiting India and described the themes of their experiences. This study aimed to answer the following primary question: What can we learn about health travelers’ experiences in India from an analysis of their web-based narratives? The secondary questions were as follows: (1) What are the primary health care reasons for which patients in the examined narratives traveled to India? (2) What can be derived from the narratives regarding medical tourists’ satisfaction with the outcome and result of the treatment they received in India? (3) What are some positive and negative factors influencing medical tourists’ perceptions and overall experiences about their health travel to India? (4) What are the characteristics of medical tourists who write web-based narratives regarding their health experiences in India? Methods Publicly available narratives written by medical tourists who visited India were obtained from a Google search. The narratives included blog posts and discussion board posts by medical tourists. The analysis process consisted of initial open coding being conducted on the narratives to create initial codes and identify common themes with a focus on the primary research question and subquestions. Results Although Mumbai, Chennai, and New Delhi were not the only destination cities mentioned, these were the most popular cities patients visited for care. The medical tourists, who stated their origin country, came from one of the following continents: Africa, Europe, North America, and Oceania. Dental care, Ayurveda treatment, and eye care were the most popular types of care that medical tourists sought. The results showed that most of the medical tourists were happy with the overall experience of receiving care in India. The most popular themes with regard to the patients’ satisfaction were low costs, good customer service, and services being offered that were unavailable in their home country. When negative feedback was provided, it was mainly concentrated on the overall environment of India being unorganized and unsanitary. Conclusions Primarily, the study’s findings can benefit health care providers and patients. Providers hosting medical tourists in India can use negative feedback to improve their services; similarly, providers who are losing patients to medical tourism can identify opportunities for improvement (ie, why are we losing patients). Indian providers hosting medical tourists should keep their prices competitive and continue to provide exceptional service; however, they should do their best to lessen the crowdedness of their facilities while making sure they are esthetically pleasing. Providers losing patients to medical tourism need to identify ways to ensure their services match the benefits that their international counterparts are providing, such as competitive pricing and expansion on the services provided.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mean-variance capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and downside risk-based CAPM (DR-CAPM) developed by Bawa and Lindenberg (1977), Harlow and Rao (1989), and Estrada (2002) to assess which downside beta better explains expected stock returns. The paper also explores whether investors respond differently to stocks that co-vary with declining market than to those of co-vary with rising market. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses monthly data of closing prices of stocks listed at the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). The data cover the period from January 2000 to December 2012. The standard, downside, and upside betas are estimated for different sub-periods,and then,their validity to quantify the risk premium is tested for subsequent sub-periods in a cross sectional regression framework. Though our empirical methodology is similar to that of Fama and MacBeth (1973) for testing the CAPM and the DR-CAPM, our approach to estimate the downside beta is different from earlier studies. In particular, we follow Estrada ' s (2002) suggestions and obtain the correct and unbiased estimation of the downside beta by running the time series regression through origin. The authors carry out the two-pass regression analysis using the generalized method of moment (GMM) in the first pass and the generalized least squares (GLS) estimation method in the second pass. Findings – The results indicate that the mean-variance CAPM shows a negative risk premium for monthly returns of selected stocks. However, the results for the DR-CAPM of Bawa and Lindenberg (1977) and Harlow and Rao (1989) provide evidence of a positive risk premium for the downside beta. In contrast, the DR-CAPM of Estrada (2002) shows a negative risk premium in some sub-periods while the positive premium in the others. By comparing the risk premium for both downside and upside risks in a single-equation framework, the authors show that the stocks that co-vary with a declining market are compensated with a positive premium for bearing the downside risk. Yet, the risk premium for stocks that are negatively correlated with declining market returns is negative for all the three-downside betas in all the examined sub-periods. Practical implications – The empirical findings of the paper are of great significance for investors for designing effective investment strategies. Specifically, the results help investors to identify an appropriate measure of risk and to construct well-diversified portfolio. The results are also useful for firm managers in capital budgeting decision-making process as they enable them to cost equities appropriately. The results also suggest that the risk-return relationship implied by mean-variance CAPM is negative and therefore this model is not suitable for gauging the risk associated with stocks traded in KSE. Yet, the authors show that DR-CAPM out performs in quantifying the risk premium. Originality/value – Unlike prior empirical studies, the authors follow Estrada’s (2002) suggestions where downside beta is calculated using regression through origin to find correct and unbiased beta. Departing from the existing literature the authors estimate three different versions of DR-CAPM along with the standard CAPM for comparison purpose. Finally, the authors apply sophisticated econometrics methods that help in lessening the problem of non-synchronous trading and the issue of non-normality of returns distribution.

Traditionally, to implement the first-best marginal cost pricing scheme in a traffic network requires the information on the exact demand function or true origin-destination demand, which, however, is rarely available in practice. To overcome this dilemma, the trial-and-error method has been proposed to find the marginal cost toll through an iterative process using the observed traffic volumes. This method guarantees the convergence of tolls and flows to the system optimal state under the assumption of deterministic traffic conditions. However, in reality, the uncertainty of transportation network has been recognized well that induces the variability of link flow and travel time. Therefore, this paper proposes an evolutionary implementation method that iteratively finds the first-best marginal cost toll pattern according to the observed stochastic link flow information and the known travel time functions. The proof of the convergence of the iterative algorithm is presented. The paper also analyzes the effect of the sampling error of the link flow data on the convergence of the algorithm and shows that the biases from the flow observation will not affect the convergence. The numerical tests are provided for the illustration of the algorithm.

Tourism is one of the most important sectors of the Ukrainian economy. Analysis of the tourism potential of the country and its individual regions, in particular its attractiveness – the ability to attract potential tourists, is necessary for the effective functioning of the tourism sector. The purpose of the article is to justify the socio-geographical approach to assessing the tourist potential’s attractiveness of the region and analyse the conditions and factors for such estimation in the objective (quantitative) and subjective (qualitative) dimensions on the basis of factor criteria and performance indicators. The tourist potential’s attractiveness of the region is the degree of attractiveness of the natural, ethnocultural, socio-historical and other tourist resources of the region, its socio-economic and transport infrastructure, reception places and attendants. The tourist potential’s attractiveness of the Carpathian region is ensured by its diversity of relief forms, the picturesque of landscapes, the presence of unique wild nature areas, a significant amount of rivers, the purity of natural waters, a lot of forests, and the richness of flora and fauna. The wealth of anthropogenic tourism resources of the Carpathian region leads to a high attraction of the social segment of the tourist potential of the Carpathian region. All regional centres, a lot of small towns and villages, which have survived, the samples of Old Ukrainian church wooden architecture, castles, religious buildings, defensive structures, old residential and economic buildings of the region have a high attraction. The attractiveness is also ensured by the presence of numerous parks, cafes, restaurants, theatres, museums, cultural and lifestyle habits of local residents, including Hutsuls and Boyks. Along with this, a combination of natural and social tourism resources created in the Carpathian region favourable conditions for the development of all kinds of ethnic and event tourism, rural green tourism. Based on the analysis of approaches to the component of the tourism potential’s assessment and attractiveness, own socio-geographical approach to the construction of a system for assessing the tourist potential’s attractiveness of the region has been formed. These include natural tourist resources, tourist resources of anthropogenic origin, tourist infrastructure, marketing and pricing policies, labour resources, provision of catering facilities, sports and entertainment facilities, the level of transport infrastructure’s development, tourist safety, environmental quality, finance, investment in tourism sphere, general image of the region, economic attractiveness, management, state support and political stability, information. The peculiarity of the proposed approach is to assess the conditions and factors of the tourism potential of the region in an objective and subjective way. Each of these characteristics is described by relevant factor criteria and may be defined by specific quantitative and / or qualitative indicators. With the help of the constructed indicators’ system of tourism potential attraction estimation, we are able to quantitatively and qualitatively estimate the level of tourism industry development in the Ukrainian regions; to highlight the causal relationships in determining the level of tourist potential’s attractiveness; to identify the factors that influence the development of tourism activity, in that destabilizing; to carry out monitoring of tourism activity in the region with the possibility of predicting changes in tourist activity taking on its basis optimal managerial decisions at the state and regional levels. Key words: tourist potential, tourist potential’s attractiveness, Carpathian region, natural and anthropogenic tourist resources.

AbstractThe paper develops a theoretic equilibrium model for ridesplitting markets with specific considerations of origin-destination demand patterns, competition with other transport modes, characteristics of en route matching, and spatial allocation of ridesplitting vehicles, to adequately portray the intertwined relationships between the endogenous variables and decisions. The operation property of the market under distance-based unified pricing is analyzed through the response of system performance indicators to the decisions. Moreover, a gradient descent algorithm is derived to find optimal operating strategies in the monopoly scenario and social optimum scenario. Leveraging the tight connection between trip’s utility and level of service (LoS), the paper then proposes a utility-based compensation pricing method to alleviate the inequity issue in ridesplitting, which results from the variance in waiting time and detour time and the implementation of unified pricing. Specifically, the trip fare of those with an initial utility smaller than a threshold will be compensated following a predefined compensation function. We compare its effectiveness and influence in different scenarios through numerical experiments at Munich. The results show that the proposed pricing method can improve the LoS and equity without losing any profit and welfare, and can even achieve increments in maximum profit and social welfare under certain conditions.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the information asymmetry pricing (relation between information asymmetry and expected return) based on environmental uncertainty and accounting conservatism.Design/methodology/approachThe current study applies panel regression method estimator to investigate the relationship between accounting conservatism, environmental uncertainty and information asymmetry pricing of 1,309 firm-year observations in Iran for the period 2008–2018.FindingsThe result indicated the negative relation between accounting conservation and information asymmetry pricing and documented a positive association between environmental uncertainty and information asymmetry pricing.Practical implicationsIn the present study, the weaknesses caused by the ambiguity of capital market efficiency in market performance-based statistical models are compensated and partially covered by quantifying the relationships and implementing models in each quintile. Results obtained from this study will aid policymakers to evaluate disclosure rules and firms to manage their information. The study is based on the corporate accounting and financial literature and examines behavioral changes in information and its effect on information asymmetry pricing that can be applied to investors, managers, standardization committees and legislators.Originality/valueThe risk of accounting information in the context of the capital market environment can be divided into two parts: a part that is ambiguous about the accuracy of this information and another part that is a distribution of information. Unlike other research, information asymmetry pricing has also been addressed with regard to the origin and distribution of information. This study also considers the effect of information asymmetry and market constraints by considering the ability of financial reports to transmit firm information.

Over the last decades, shared mobility systems have become an integral part of inner-city mobility. Modern systems allow one-way rentals, that is, customers can drop off the vehicle at a different location to where they began their trip. A prominent example is car sharing. Indeed, this work was motivated by the insight we gained in collaborating closely with Europe’s largest car sharing provider, Share Now. In car sharing, as well as in shared mobility systems in general, pricing optimization has turned out to be a promising means of increasing profit while challenged by limited vehicle supply and asymmetric demand across time and space. Thus, in practice, providers increasingly use minute pricing that is differentiated according to where a rental originates, that is, considering its location and the time of day. In research, however, such approaches have not been considered yet. In this paper, we therefore introduce the corresponding origin-based differentiated, profit-maximizing pricing problem for shared mobility systems. The problem is to determine spatially and temporally differentiated minute prices, taking network effects on the supply side and several practice relevant aspects into account. Based on a deterministic network flow model, we formulate the problem as a mixed-integer linear program and prove that it is NP-hard. For its solution, we propose a temporal decomposition approach based on approximate dynamic programming. The approach integrates a value function approximation to incorporate future profits and account for network effects. Extensive computational experiments demonstrate the benefits of capturing such effects in pricing generally, as well as showing our value function approximation’s ability to anticipate them precisely. Furthermore, in a case study based on Share Now data from Florence in Italy, we observe profit increases of around 9% compared with constant uniform minute prices, which are still the de facto industry standard.

PurposeThis paper offers empirical evidence on factors influencing credit spreads on commercial mortgage loans. It extends existing work on the pricing of commercial mortgage loans. The authors examine the relative significance of a range of factors on loan pricing that are lender, asset and loan specific. The research explores and quantifies the sources of spread differentials among commercial mortgage loans. The paper contributes to a limited literature on the subject and serves the purpose of price discovery in commercial property lending. It offers a framework to compare actual pricing with fundamental-based estimates of loan spreads.Design/methodology/approachPanel analysis is deployed to examine the cross-section and time-series determinants of commercial mortgage loan margins and credit spreads. Using an exclusive database of loan portfolios in the United Kingdom (UK), the panel analysis enables the authors to analyse and quantify the impact of a number of theory-consistent and plausible factors determining the cost of lending to commercial real estate (CRE), including type and origin of lender, loan size, loan to value (LTV) and characteristics of asset financed – type, location and grade.FindingsSpreads on commercial mortgages and, therefore, loan pricing differ by the type of lender – bank, insurance company and debt fund. The property sector is another significant risk factor lenders price in. The LTV ratio has increased in importance since 2012. Prior to global financial crisis (GFC), lenders made little distinction in pricing different LTVs. Loans secured in secondary assets command a higher premium of 50–60bps. The analysis establishes an average premium of 35bps for loans advanced in regions compared to London. London is particularly seen a less risky region for loan advancements in the post-GFC era.Research limitations/implicationsThe study considers the role of lender characteristics and the changing regulation in the pricing of commercial mortgage loans and provides a framework to study spreads or pricing in this market that can include additional fundamental influences, such as terms of individual loans. The ultimate aim of such research is to assess whether mortgage loans are correctly priced and spotting risks emanating from actual loan spreads being lower than fundamental-based spreads pointing to tight pricing and over-lending.Practical implicationsThe analysis provides evidence on lender criteria that determine the cost of loans. The study confirms that differences in regulation affect loan pricing. The regulatory impact is most visible in the increased significance of LTV. In that sense, regulation has been effective in restricting lending at high LTV levels.Originality/valueThe paper exploits a database of a commercial mortgage loan portfolio to make loan pricing more transparent to the different types of lender and borrowers. Lenders can use the estimates to assess whether commercial loans are fairly priced. Borrowers better understand the relative significance of risk factors affecting margins and the price they are charged. The results of this paper are of value to regulators as they can assist to understand the determinants of loan margins and gauge conditions in the lending market.

This study determines the attributes that affect the market rental value of dormitories using the Hedonic Pricing Model. The proportional stratified random sampling technique was used to obtain data from 1,292 PKN STAN students in levels 1 to 3, which was analyzed using the SPSS statistical application. Based on the calculation, the dormitory value varies between IDR11,719,521 (RM3,424.82) to IDR15,482,242 (RM4524,41). The determinants that have a significant positive effect on dormitory value are bathroom location, average remittances per month, earnings per month, room size, gender, and origin, while the type of residence attribute has a negative correlation effect. The results of this study will be beneficial inputs for the PKN STAN in determining the market rental value, the quality of buildings and facilities are in accordance with the market preference.

Purpose Wine consumption among women in India is gradually increasing on the back of several factors such as increased urbanization, higher disposable income, rising affluence of the people, exposure to new cultures and a gradually changing perception about wine being a healthy beverage. Eventually, this offers tremendous opportunities for wine marketers to design appropriate strategies to target Indian women consumers. However, along with this growth, there is growing need to identify the attributes that the women desire in the wines of their choice. Toward this, the current study aims to identify the wine attributes that influence the purchasing behavior of Indian women consumers. Design/methodology/approach In-depth interviews of 27 women wine consumers, aged between 25 to 46 years, were conducted to identify the topmost essential wine attributes. Later, a conjoint analysis using 1000minds, an Internet-based software implementing Potentially All Pairwise RanKings of all Possible Alternatives (PAPRIKA), was used to collect data from the participants. The total number of responses received was 271. Findings The type of wine, taste, price, familiarity and country of origin emerged as the five most crucial wine attributes in wine choice after the in-depth interview. Conjoint analysis results revealed that sweet red wine priced between Rs 600 to Rs 1,200 is the most preferred wine by Indian women consumers. Research limitations/implications The study provides valuable and actionable insights for both domestic and international wine marketers and manufacturers in the identification of wine attributes that predominantly influence women consumers’ choice of wine in India. Originality/value The study contributes to wine consumers' literature by identifying wine attributes favored by women consumers in India. Our findings will be of great use to wine marketers who can leverage the insights to design appropriate marketing and advertising strategies, develop new products and make more informed branding and pricing decisions.

Theoretical basis Transnational entrepreneurs (TEs) are individuals that migrate from one country to another, concurrently maintaining business-related linkages with their former country of origin and currently adopted countries and communities. TEs are active social actors who enact networks, ideas, information and practices for the purpose of seeking business opportunities or maintaining businesses within dual-social fields, which, in turn, force them to engage in varied strategies of action to promote their entrepreneurial activities (Drori, Honig & Wright, 2009). This case research focused on the ethic, legal and cultural challenges TE has been facing when operating their business across boards. Research methodology The data used in this case were collected from mainly third-parties, including the office de la protection du consommateur; Office of consumer protection (OPC), securities and exchange commission (SEC) reports, news as well as marketing materials posted on public media by Sinorama Corp. and Vacances Sinorama. The authors conducted interviews with former employees of Vacances Sinorama to gain the understanding of the owners and the business challenges faced during the years of operation. The authors also communicated with the OPC through to obtain specific case-related information through the Canadian freedom of information channels. Triangulation of such information from multiple resources had been conducted to validate and support the details described in the case content. Case overview/synopsis A Chinese immigrant couple migrated to Canada and started Vacances Sinorama Inc. (“Vacances Sinorama”) in 2005. The focus of this case is on the expansion of their travel businesses after 2015. In 2016, they established a financing shell company, Sinorama Corporation (“Sinorama Corp.”), in Florida, USA, which became the holding company to the operation subsidiaries. Born during the 1970s and raised in Mainland China, the owners were culturally traditional and operated the company with the values and norms from their heritage culture. Vacances Sinorama successfully penetrated the local tourism market using Web-based technology and aggressive low-pricing strategies after the scaling-up strategies. However, Vacances Sinorama was operating in the red for several consecutive years (2015–2018). Sinorama Corp. received additional capital of US$4.4m by listing a portion of its shares on the NASDAQ over-the-counter market during 2016 and 2017. Canadian regulators began to investigate its operational and financing activities in 2017. They found a comingling of client and operation funds, which directly violated Canadian consumer protection laws. As a result of these violations, the license for Vacances Sinorama was nonrenewed in August 2018. The majority of owners fought to overturn the regulators’ decision and failed at all levels of appeal, administrative and judicial. This entrepreneurial endeavor ended with Vacances Sinorama declaring bankruptcy in October of 2018. Complexity academic level This multipurpose teaching case aims to assist students from an integrated approach whom are learning about entrepreneurship, international business, business law and business ethics. It is best suited for advanced undergraduate courses in entrepreneurship, business ethics, international business and business law as well as specific teaching modules in MBA courses.

IntroductionSupermarkets are functionally challenging environments for people with vision impairments. A supermarket is likely to house an average of 45,000 products in a median floor-space of 4,529 square meters and many visually impaired people are unable to shop without assistance, which greatly impedes personal independence (Nicholson et al.). The task of selecting goods in a supermarket is an “activity that is expressive of agency, identity and creativity” (Sutherland) from which many vision-impaired persons are excluded. In response to this, a number of proof of concept (demonstrating feasibility) and prototype assistive technologies are being developed which aim to use smart phones as potential sensorial aides for vision impaired persons. In this paper, I discuss two such prototypic technologies, Shop Talk and BlindShopping. I engage with this issue’s list theme by suggesting that, on the one hand, list making is a uniquely human activity that demonstrates our need for order, reliance on memory, reveals our idiosyncrasies, and provides insights into our private lives (Keaggy 12). On the other hand, lists feature in the creation of spatial inventories that represent physical environments (Perec 3-4, 9-10). The use of lists in the architecture of assistive technologies for shopping illuminates the interaction between these two modalities of list use where items contained in a list are not only textual but also cartographic elements that link the material and immaterial in space and time (Haber 63). I argue that despite the emancipatory potential of assistive shopping technologies, their efficacy in practical situations is highly dependent on the extent to which they can integrate a number of lists to produce representations of space that are meaningful for vision impaired users. I suggest that the extent to which these prototypes may translate to becoming commercially viable, widely adopted technologies is heavily reliant upon commercial and institutional infrastructures, data sources, and regulation. Thus, their design, manufacture and adoption-potential are shaped by the extent to which certain data inventories are accessible and made interoperable. To overcome such constraints, it is important to better understand the “spatial syntax” associated with the shopping task for a vision impaired person; that is, the connected ordering of real and virtual spatial elements that result in a supermarket as a knowable space within which an assisted “spatial practice” of shopping can occur (Kellerman 148, Lefebvre 16).In what follows, I use the concept of lists to discuss the production of supermarket-space in relation to the enabling and disabling potentials of assistive technologies. First, I discuss mobile digital technologies relative to disability and impairment and describe how the shopping task produces a disabling spatial practice. Second, I present a case study showing how assistive technologies function in aiding vision impaired users in completing the task of supermarket shopping. Third, I discuss various factors that may inhibit the liberating potential of technology assisted shopping by vision-impaired people. Addressing Shopping as a Disabling Spatial Practice Consider how a shopping list might inform one’s experience of supermarket space. The way shopping lists are written demonstrate the variability in the logic that governs list writing. As Bill Keaggy demonstrates in his found shopping list Web project and subsequent book, Milk, Eggs, Vodka, a shopping list may be written on a variety of materials, be arranged in a number of orientations, and the writer may use differing textual attributes, such as size or underlining to show emphasis. The writer may use longhand, abbreviate, write neatly, scribble, and use an array of alternate spelling and naming conventions. For example, items may be listed based on knowledge of the location of products, they may be arranged on a list as a result of an inventory of a pantry or fridge, or they may be copied in the order they appear in a recipe. Whilst shopping, some may follow strictly the order of their list, crossing back and forth between aisles. Some may work through their list item-by-item, perhaps forward scanning to achieve greater economies of time and space. As a person shops, their memory may be stimulated by visual cues reminding them of products they need that may not be included on their list. For the vision impaired, this task is near impossible to complete without the assistance of a relative, friend, agency volunteer, or store employee. Such forms of assistance are often unsatisfactory, as delays may be caused due to the unavailability of an assistant, or the assistant having limited literacy, knowledge, or patience to adequately meet the shopper’s needs. Home delivery services, though readily available, impede personal independence (Nicholson et al.). Katie Ellis and Mike Kent argue that “an impairment becomes a disability due to the impact of prevailing ableist social structures” (3). It can be said, then, that supermarkets function as a disability producing space for the vision impaired shopper. For the vision impaired, a supermarket is a “hegemonic modern visual infrastructure” where, for example, merchandisers may reposition items regularly to induce customers to explore areas of the shop that they wouldn’t usually, a move which adds to the difficulty faced by those customers with impaired vision who work on the assumption that items remain as they usually are (Schillmeier 161).In addressing this issue, much emphasis has been placed on the potential of mobile communications technologies in affording vision impaired users greater mobility and flexibility (Jolley 27). However, as Gerard Goggin argues, the adoption of mobile communication technologies has not necessarily “gone hand in hand with new personal and collective possibilities” given the limited access to standard features, even if the device is text-to-speech enabled (98). Issues with Digital Rights Management (DRM) limit the way a device accesses and reproduces information, and confusion over whether audio rights are needed to convert text-to-speech, impede the accessibility of mobile communications technologies for vision impaired users (Ellis and Kent 136). Accessibility and functionality issues like these arise out of the needs, desires, and expectations of the visually impaired as a user group being considered as an afterthought as opposed to a significant factor in the early phases of design and prototyping (Goggin 89). Thus, the development of assistive technologies for the vision impaired has been left to third parties who must adopt their solutions to fit within certain technical parameters. It is valuable to consider what is involved in the task of shopping in order to appreciate the considerations that must be made in the design of shopping intended assistive technologies. Shopping generally consists of five sub-tasks: travelling to the store; finding items in-store; paying for and bagging items at the register; exiting the store and getting home; and, the often overlooked task of putting items away once at home. In this process supermarkets exhibit a “trichotomous spatial ontology” consisting of locomotor space that a shopper moves around the store, haptic space in the immediate vicinity of the shopper, and search space where individual products are located (Nicholson et al.). In completing these tasks, a shopper will constantly be moving through and switching between all three of these spaces. In the next section I examine how assistive technologies function in producing supermarkets as both enabling and disabling spaces for the vision impaired. Assistive Technologies for Vision Impaired ShoppersJason Farman (43) and Adriana de Douza e Silva both argue that in many ways spaces have always acted as information interfaces where data of all types can reside. Global Positioning System (GPS), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and Quick Response (QR) codes all allow for practically every spatial encounter to be an encounter with information. Site-specific and location-aware technologies address the desire for meaningful representations of space for use in everyday situations by the vision impaired. Further, the possibility of an “always-on” connection to spatial information via a mobile phone with WiFi or 3G connections transforms spatial experience by “enfolding remote [and latent] contexts inside the present context” (de Souza e Silva). A range of GPS navigation systems adapted for vision-impaired users are currently on the market. Typically, these systems convert GPS information into text-to-speech instructions and are either standalone devices, such as the Trekker Breeze, or they use the compass, accelerometer, and 3G or WiFi functions found on most smart phones, such as Loadstone. Whilst both these products are adequate in guiding a vision-impaired user from their home to a supermarket, there are significant differences in their interfaces and data architectures. Trekker Breeze is a standalone hardware device that produces talking menus, maps, and GPS information. While its navigation functionality relies on a worldwide radio-navigation system that uses a constellation of 24 satellites to triangulate one’s position (May and LaPierre 263-64), its map and text-to-speech functionality relies on data on a DVD provided with the unit. Loadstone is an open source software system for Nokia devices that has been developed within the vision-impaired community. Loadstone is built on GNU General Public License (GPL) software and is developed from private and user based funding; this overcomes the issue of Trekker Breeze’s reliance on trading policies and pricing models of the few global vendors of satellite navigation data. Both products have significant shortcomings if viewed in the broader context of the five sub-tasks involved in shopping described above. Trekker Breeze and Loadstone require that additional devices be connected to it. In the case of Trekker Breeze it is a tactile keypad, and with Loadstone it is an aftermarket screen reader. To function optimally, Trekker Breeze requires that routes be pre-recorded and, according to a review conducted by the American Foundation for the Blind, it requires a 30-minute warm up time to properly orient itself. Both Trekker Breeze and Loadstone allow users to create and share Points of Interest (POI) databases showing the location of various places along a given route. Non-standard or duplicated user generated content in POI databases may, however, have a negative effect on usability (Ellis and Kent 2). Furthermore, GPS-based navigation systems are accurate to approximately ten metres, which means that users must rely on their own mobility skills when they are required to change direction or stop for traffic. This issue with GPS accuracy is more pronounced when a vision-impaired user is approaching a supermarket where they are likely to encounter environmental hazards with greater frequency and both pedestrian and vehicular traffic in greater density. Here the relations between space defined and spaces poorly defined or undefined by the GPS device interact to produce the supermarket surrounds as a disabling space (Galloway). Prototype Systems for Supermarket Navigation and Product SelectionIn the discussion to follow, I look at two prototype systems using QR codes and RFID that are designed to be used in-store by vision-impaired shoppers. Shop Talk is a proof of concept system developed by researchers at Utah State University that uses synthetic verbal route directions to assist vision impaired shoppers with supermarket navigation, product search, and selection (Nicholson et al.). Its hardware consists of a portable computational unit, a numeric keypad, a wireless barcode scanner and base station, headphones for the user to receive the synthetic speech instructions, a USB hub to connect all the components, and a backpack to carry them (with the exception of the barcode scanner) which has been slightly modified with a plastic stabiliser to assist in correct positioning. Shop Talk represents the supermarket environment using two data structures. The first is comprised of two elements: a topological map of locomotor space that allows for directional labels of “left,” “right,” and “forward,” to be added to the supermarket floor plan; and, for navigation of haptic space, the supermarket inventory management system, which is used to create verbal descriptions of product information. The second data structure is a Barcode Connectivity Matrix (BCM), which associates each shelf barcode with several pieces of information such as aisle, aisle side, section, shelf, position, Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode, product description, and price. Nicholson et al. suggest that one of their “most immediate objectives for future work is to migrate the system to a more conventional mobile platform” such as a smart phone (see Mobile Shopping). The Personalisable Interactions with Resources on AMI-Enabled Mobile Dynamic Environments (PRIAmIDE) research group at the University of Deusto is also approaching Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) by exploring the smart phone’s sensing, communication, computing, and storage potential. As part of their work, the prototype system, BlindShopping, was developed to address the issue of assisted shopping using entirely off-the-shelf technology with minimal environmental adjustments to navigate the store and search, browse and select products (López-de-Ipiña et al. 34). Blind Shopping’s architecture is based on three components. Firstly, a navigation system provides the user with synthetic verbal instructions to users via headphones connected to the smart phone device being used in order to guide them around the store. This requires a RFID reader to be attached to the tip of the user’s white cane and road-marking-like RFID tag lines to be distributed throughout the aisles. A smartphone application processes the RFID data that is received by the smart phone via Bluetooth generating the verbal navigation commands as a result. Products are recognised by pointing a QR code reader enabled smart phone at an embossed code located on a shelf. The system is managed by a Rich Internet Application (RIA) interface, which operates by Web browser, and is used to register the RFID tags situated in the aisles and the QR codes located on shelves (López-de-Ipiña and 37-38). A typical use-scenario for Blind Shopping involves a user activating the system by tracing an “L” on the screen or issuing the “Location” voice command, which activates the supermarket navigation system which then asks the user to either touch an RFID floor marking with their cane or scan a QR code on a nearby shelf to orient the system. The application then asks the user to dictate the product or category of product that they wish to locate. The smart phone maintains a continuous Bluetooth connection with the RFID reader to keep track of user location at all times. By drawing a “P” or issuing the “Product” voice command, a user can switch the device into product recognition mode where the smart phone camera is pointed at an embossed QR code on a shelf to retrieve information about a product such as manufacturer, name, weight, and price, via synthetic speech (López-de-Ipiña et al. 38-39). Despite both systems aiming to operate with as little environmental adjustment as possible, as well as minimise the extent to which a supermarket would need to allocate infrastructural, administrative, and human resources to implementing assistive technologies for vision impaired shoppers, there will undoubtedly be significant establishment and maintenance costs associated with the adoption of production versions of systems resembling either prototype described in this paper. As both systems rely on data obtained from a server by invoking Web services, supermarkets would need to provide in-store WiFi. Further, both systems’ dependence on store inventory data would mean that commercial versions of either of these systems are likely to be supermarket specific or exclusive given that there will be policies in place that forbid access to inventory systems, which contain pricing information to third parties. Secondly, an assumption in the design of both prototypes is that the shopping task ends with the user arriving at home; this overlooks the important task of being able to recognise products in order to put them away or to use at a later time.The BCM and QR product recognition components of both respective prototypic systems associates information to products in order to assist users in the product search and selection sub-tasks. However, information such as use-by dates, discount offers, country of manufacture, country of manufacturer’s origin, nutritional information, and the labelling of products as Halal, Kosher, containing alcohol, nuts, gluten, lactose, phenylalanine, and so on, create further challenges in how different data sources are managed within the devices’ software architecture. The reliance of both systems on existing smartphone technology is also problematic. Changes in the production and uptake of mobile communication devices, and the software that they operate on, occurs rapidly. Once the fit-out of a retail space with the necessary instrumentation in order to accommodate a particular system has occurred, this system is unlikely to be able to cater to the requirement for frequent upgrades, as built environments are less flexible in the upgrading of their technological infrastructure (Kellerman 148). This sets up a scenario where the supermarket may persist as a disabling space due to a gap between the functional capacities of applications designed for mobile communication devices and the environments in which they are to be used. Lists and Disabling Spatial PracticeThe development and provision of access to assistive technologies and the data they rely upon is a commercial issue (Ellis and Kent 7). The use of assistive technologies in supermarket-spaces that rely on the inter-functional coordination of multiple inventories may have the unintended effect of excluding people with disabilities from access to legitimate content (Ellis and Kent 7). With de Certeau, we can ask of supermarket-space “What spatial practices correspond, in the area where discipline is manipulated, to these apparatuses that produce a disciplinary space?" (96).In designing assistive technologies, such as those discussed in this paper, developers must strive to achieve integration across multiple data inventories. Software architectures must be optimised to overcome issues relating to intellectual property, cross platform access, standardisation, fidelity, potential duplication, and mass-storage. This need for “cross sectioning,” however, “merely adds to the muddle” (Lefebvre 8). This is a predicament that only intensifies as space and objects in space become increasingly “representable” (Galloway), and as the impetus for the project of spatial politics for the vision impaired moves beyond representation to centre on access and meaning-making.ConclusionSupermarkets act as sites of hegemony, resistance, difference, and transformation, where the vision impaired and their allies resist the “repressive socialization of impaired bodies” through their own social movements relating to environmental accessibility and the technology assisted spatial practice of shopping (Gleeson 129). It is undeniable that the prototype technologies described in this paper, and those like it, indeed do have a great deal of emancipatory potential. However, it should be understood that these devices produce representations of supermarket-space as a simulation within a framework that attempts to mimic the real, and these representations are pre-determined by the industrial, technological, and regulatory forces that govern their production (Lefebvre 8). Thus, the potential of assistive technologies is dependent upon a range of constraints relating to data accessibility, and the interaction of various kinds of lists across the geographic area that surrounds the supermarket, locomotor, haptic, and search spaces of the supermarket, the home-space, and the internal spaces of a shopper’s imaginary. These interactions are important in contributing to the reproduction of disability in supermarkets through the use of assistive shopping technologies. The ways by which people make and read shopping lists complicate the relations between supermarket-space as location data and product inventories versus that which is intuited and experienced by a shopper (Sutherland). Not only should we be creating inventories of supermarket locomotor, haptic, and search spaces, the attention of developers working in this area of assistive technologies should look beyond the challenges of spatial representation and move towards a focus on issues of interoperability and expanded access of spatial inventory databases and data within and beyond supermarket-space.ReferencesDe Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Print.De Souza e Silva, A. “From Cyber to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies As Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces.” Space and Culture 9.3 (2006): 261-78.Ellis, Katie, and Mike Kent. Disability and New Media. New York: Routledge, 2011.Farman, Jason. Mobile Interface Theory: Embodied Space and Locative Media. New York: Routledge, 2012.Galloway, Alexander. “Are Some Things Unrepresentable?” Theory, Culture and Society 28 (2011): 85-102.Gleeson, Brendan. Geographies of Disability. London: Routledge, 1999.Goggin, Gerard. Cell Phone Culture: Mobile Technology in Everyday Life. London: Routledge, 2006.Haber, Alex. “Mapping the Void in Perec’s Species of Spaces.” Tattered Fragments of the Map. Ed. Adam Katz and Brian Rosa. S.l.: Thelimitsoffun.org, 2009.Jolley, William M. When the Tide Comes in: Towards Accessible Telecommunications for People with Disabilities in Australia. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2003.Keaggy, Bill. Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found. Cincinnati, Ohio: HOW Books, 2007.Kellerman, Aharon. Personal Mobilities. London: Routledge, 2006.Kleege, Georgia. “Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eyewitness Account.” The Disability Studies Reader. 2nd edition. Ed. Lennard J. Davis. New York: Routledge, 2006. 391-98.Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991.López-de-Ipiña, Diego, Tania Lorido, and Unai López. “Indoor Navigation and Product Recognition for Blind People Assisted Shopping.” Ambient Assisted Living. Ed. J. Bravo, R. Hervás, and V. Villarreal. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2011. 25-32. May, Michael, and Charles LaPierre. “Accessible Global Position System (GPS) and Related Orientation Technologies.” Assistive Technology for Visually Impaired and Blind People. Ed. Marion A. Hersh, and Michael A. Johnson. London: Springer-Verlag, 2008. 261-88. Nicholson, John, Vladimir Kulyukin, and Daniel Coster. “Shoptalk: Independent Blind Shopping Through Verbal Route Directions and Barcode Scans.” The Open Rehabilitation Journal 2.1 (2009): 11-23.Perec, Georges. Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Trans. and Ed. John Sturrock. London: Penguin Books, 1997.Schillmeier, Michael W. J. Rethinking Disability: Bodies, Senses, and Things. New York: Routledge, 2010.Sutherland, I. “Mobile Media and the Socio-Technical Protocols of the Supermarket.” Australian Journal of Communication. 36.1 (2009): 73-84.

The use of RFID (radio frequency identification), also called “smart tags”, is on the rise in the retail industry. In short, RFID are tiny microchips using short range radio signals to emit information and can be used to tag goods, buildings, cars, pets, people etc. Unlike bar-code scanners, which must be held directly in front of the item being scanned, one of the benefits of RFID tags is that they can be scanned from a distance. It is expected that RFID will eventually replace the bar code and its use is likely to save companies like Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble and Gillette millions of dollars as they can track every bottle of shampoo or packet of razor blades from the factory floor to the store shelf (Baard, “Lawmakers”). Most agree that using RFID to track goods from the point of manufacture to the location of sale in order to prevent goods being lost, stolen or handled inappropriately, is acceptable and not cause for privacy concerns. But as marketers often take every opportunity to learn more about consumers and their purchasing behaviours, some fear that tags embedded in clothing, membership cards, mobile phones etc. may be scanned inappropriately and used to target individuals with cleverly tailored marketing messages. In the effort to provide a more customised experience, business is at risk of becoming increasingly intrusive – something that will not be universally acceptable. But is it all bad? Privacy concerns aside, smart tags can add new functions as well as enable a whole range of innovative products and services when joined with other technologies. RFID beyond Traditional Value Chain Management Prada is often mentioned as an example of how RFID can be taken beyond the traditional value chain management. Prada has implemented some ground-breaking technology in their Manhattan (New York) store, all based around RFID. RF-receivers automatically detect and scan garments brought into the dressing room. Via a touch screen the customers view tips on how to mix and match, access information about available sizes, colours, fabrics and styles, and watch video clips of models wearing the very outfit they are trying on (Grassley, ”Prada’s”). Eventually customers will be able to create virtual closets and store information about what they have tried on or bought on their Prada Web account (”Prada’s”). Customers’ details, including notes made by sales assistants, e.g. preferences, can be stored automatically in customer cards, readable by sales assistants’ handhelds or at the cash register (”Prada’s”) – information that could be used by the assistant to spur further sales by suggesting for example: “Last time you were here, you bought a black skirt. We have a sweater that matches that skirt” (Batista). Another example is Precision Dynamics Corp (PDC), which developed an automatic identification wristband incorporating RFID technology. One application is the AgeBand which is used to verify the bearer’s age when purchasing alcohol. ID is checked when entering the venue and the customer receives a plastic wristband printed with personal details that cannot be removed without being damaged or destroyed (Swedberg). The embedded chip can be linked to a customer’s credit card number or a cash deposit to pay for purchases while on the premises. “It is also an easy way to collect statistics for marketing”, says PDC’s senior marketing communications specialist, Paula Maggio (qtd. in Swedberg). Although the RFID clearly provides benefits and new opportunities to business operations, there is an argument over whether consumers will ultimately gain or suffer when smart tags become more commonplace. Certainly it may be convenient to have smart hangers that project virtual clothes onto a customer’s reflection in the mirror so they can try on a range of outfits without having to remove their clothes, but the collection of personal information necessary to provide this convenience also raises complex privacy issues. Fear of Intrusive Marketing Hesseldahl believes that our homes, workplaces, shops, malls, cars, trains, planes and bicycles will all be environments that constantly notice who we are and what we are doing, and which – according to a detailed profile of our habits – will try to service us in ways we can hardly even imagine today (25). This may be helpful to us in many ways, but there are concerns that organisations will use RF-technology to connect product information to individuals in order to create personal profiles which can then be used for pin-pointed marketing purposes, or even for tracking individuals, without their knowledge or consent. A possible scenario is one where consumers are bombarded with intrusive advertising based on what they are wearing, what they are purchasing, their history of past purchases, demographics and more. “Kill Machines” Fearing that the technology will be abused, many privacy advocates suggest that RFID must only be used to keep track of goods in the supply chain and thus be deactivated as soon as they leave the store. For example, consumer organisations such as CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), the American Civil Liberties Union, and Electronic Frontiers Australia, lobby for the obligatory deactivation of the tags at the point of purchase. But companies such as Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart would prefer to keep the tags active after checkout, rather than disabling them with so called “kill machines”, so they can match the unique codes emitted by RF-tags to shopper’s personal information (Baard “Watchdog”). They will want to use RF technology to support the sales process and to provide the consumer with new and better services than what is otherwise possible. And without doubt, if the tags are deactivated some genuinely helpful applications would be lost to the consumer, e.g. being able to call your refrigerator from the supermarket to check if you need milk or your washing machine alerting you if you have accidentally put a delicate garment in your white wash. Looking at the Bright Side Privacy concerns aside, RFID technology, in fact, has the potential to empower consumers as it will put more information about products at consumers’ fingertips. Consumers will for example be able to go into competing supermarkets and scan items with an RF-receiver embedded in their mobile phone, record prices, store and process the information to evaluate which store offers better value. The information can then be shared with other shoppers via the Internet, and suddenly we have a powerful “shopping bot” which transcends the online world. Consequently, RFID has the potential to make competition between retailers tougher than ever before and to benefit consumers through lower and more transparent pricing. In addition, RFID tags may also make possible faster and more accurate services, particularly in supermarkets. Shopping carts are mounted with computers which automatically register all items put into the cart and enable the customer to keep track of items, their prices and their total amount (Blau). RFID can also be used to find the location of items in the store and show more detailed information on a product (origin, use by date, content etc.) and as the customer passes through the checkout, all purchases are registered automatically in a matter of seconds. Privacy Protection In Australia, the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act 2000, with its ten National Privacy Principles (NPP), has been highly criticised over the last few years as being much to open for interpretation and thus difficult to reinforce. In short, the NPP allows for marketers to use non-sensitive personal information for direct marketing purposes without seeking the individual’s consent if it is impracticable to do so (“Guidelines”). That is, as long as they make available a privacy policy explaining why the data is collected and who will have access, they ensure that the data is correct and up to date, protected from unauthorised access, and that individuals are given access to their data upon request (“Guidelines”). In 2003 the Spam Act was introduced in order to take a tougher stand on the escalating problem with massive amounts of unsolicited emails filling up inboxes, threatening the whole concept of the Internet and its many benefits. In essence, the Spam Act will not allow commercial electronic messages to be sent without the recipient’s prior consent or without a possibility to unsubscribe (“Spam”). In the same manner that the Spam Act was passed to regulate the collection of Internet users’ contact information, it may become necessary to regulate the collection and use of data obtained via RFID if the NPP are deemed inadequate. The difficulty will be to do so and at the same time safeguard many of the positive side-effects the technology may have for businesses and consumers. As argued by Roger Clarke, privacy has to be balanced against many other, often competing interests: “The privacy interest of one person may conflict with that of another person, or of a groups of people, or of an organisation, or of society as a whole. Hence: Privacy Protection is a process of finding appropriate balances between privacy and multiple competing interests.” It is therefore recommended that legislators and policy makers keep up with the development and undertake significant research into both sides before any legislation is passed so that the best interests of consumers and business are catered for. Can There Be a Win-Win Situation? Although business can expect some significant gains from the use of RFID, particularly through a more effective value chain management but also from more substantial and better quality business intelligence, consumers may in fact be the real winners as new and better business concepts, products and services are made available. Further, with the increased transparency in business, consumers can use the vast amounts of information available to find the best products and services, at the best price, and from the best provider. With the aid of smart software, such as search agents, it will be a rather effortless task and will provide consumers with a real advantage. But this assumes consumers are aware of the benefits and how they can be exploited, and have the means to do so – something that will require some skill, interest, money and time. Consumers will also have to give up some privacy in order to take full advantage of the new technology. For the industry, the main challenge will be communicating what these advantages are, as acceptance, adoption and thus also return on investment will depend upon it. For legislators and policy makers, the major dilemma will be to provide a regulatory framework that is flexible but distinct, and that will prevent abuse and at the same time enable positive outcomes for both business and consumers. A fine line that should be treaded wisely in order to create a future where everyone can gain from the benefits of using this technology. References Baard, Mark. “Lawmakers Alarmed by RFID Spying.” Wired News 26 Feb. 2004. 9 Mar. 2004 http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,62433,00.html>. Baard, Mark. ”Watchdog Push for RFID Laws.” Wired News 5 Apr. 2004. 6 Apr. 2004 http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,62922,00.html>. Batista, Elisa. ”What Your Clothes Say about You.” Wired News 12 Mar. 2003. 8 Mar. 2004 http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,58006,00.html>. Blau, John. ”Så fungerar det digitala snabbköpet.” PC för Alla 1 (2004). 8 Mar. 2004 http://www.idg.se/ArticlePages/200402/27/20040227165630_IDG. se760/20040227165630_IDG.se760.dbp.asp>. Clarke, Roger. Beyond the OECD Guidelines: Privacy Protection for the 21st Century. 4 Jan. 2000. 15 Mar. 2004 http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/PP21C.html>. Grassley, Tanya. ”Retailers Outfit Stores with Tech.” Wired News 18 Dec. 2002. 8 Mar. 2004 http://www.wired.com/news/holidays/0,1882,56885,00.html>. “Guidelines to the National Privacy Principles.” The Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner 2001. 4 Apr. 2004 http://www.privacy.gov.au/publications/nppgl_01.html#sum>. Hessledahl, Peter. Den globale organisme. Copenhagen: Aschehoug, 2002. 24 Apr. 2004 http://www.global-organisme.dk/e-bog/den_globale_organisme.pdf>. ”Prada’s Smart Tags Too Clever?” Wired News 27 Oct. 2002. 9 Mar. 2004 http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,56042,00.html>. “Spam” DCITA 2004. 4 Apr. 2004 http://www2.dcita.gov.au/ie/trust/improving/spam>. Swedberg, Claire. ”Putting Drinks on the Cuff.” RFID Journal 15 Jun. 2004. 15 Jun. 2004 http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/987/1/1/>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Melchior, Angelika. "Tag & Trace Marketing." M/C Journal 8.4 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/03-melchior.php>. APA Style Melchior, A. (Aug. 2005) "Tag & Trace Marketing," M/C Journal, 8(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/03-melchior.php>.

Introduction The proliferation of non-fungible tokens has transformed cryptocurrency artefacts into a legitimised art form now considered in mainstream art collecting as an emerging high-yield commodity based on scarcity. As photography was debated “of being art” in the late 19th century, video art in the 1960s, virtual reality in the 1990s, and augmented reality in the 2010s, NFT art is the next medium of artwork tied to emergent cultural forms. From the concept of “introducing scarcity from born-digital assets for the first time ever, NFTs or crypto or digital collectibles, as they are also referred to, have already shown glimpses of their potential'” (Valeonti et al. 1). Yet for NFT art, “numerous misconceptions still exist that are partly caused by the complexity of the technology and partly by the existence of many blockchain variants” (Treiblmaier 2). As the discussion of NFT art is still centred on questions of justifying the legitimacy of the medium and its financial trading, critical analysis outside of these key points is still limited to blogs and online articles as the mainstay of debate. To distance NFTs from a common assumption that they are in some form or another a populous digital fad, cryptocurrencies are intended primarily as currencies, even if they maintain some asset-like properties (Baur et al.). In a broader sense, NFTs have positioned digital art as a collectable staple as “the most common types are collectibles and artworks, objects in virtual worlds, and digitalised characters from sports and other games” (Dowling). As a point of origin "NFTs were originally developed using the Ethereum blockchain, [while] many other blockchain networks now facilitate trade and exchange of NFTs” (Wilson et al.). “Given NFTs link to underlying assets that are unique in some way and cannot be exchanged like for like” (Bowden and Jones), this article will consider how artists respond to this uniqueness, which separates the art as simply trading an artefact on a crypto platform, to instead consider a different approach that attests to legitimising the medium as a conceptual space. The concept of NFTs was first introduced in 2012 with Bitcoin’s “Colored Coins”, which referred to tokens that represent any type of physical asset “such as real estate properties, cars and bonds” (Rosenfeld). To that end, the origins of NFTs, as we know, attach themselves to rarities, much the same as any other luxury trading artefact. But where NFTs differ is, as a system, in the non-fungibility of their agency and, as an artefact, the singularity of their rarity and uniqueness. As an example in art, consider a Van Gogh painting where its rarity sustains its value, as there are only a certain number of Van Gogh paintings in circulation. Thus, the value of a Van Gogh painting in the domain of rarity is determined by its metadata with attention to the verification of the authenticity of the artefact and, among others, its subsequent details of the year it was painted. NFTs work along with the same premise: both the Van Gogh painting’s data and an NFT are non-fungible because they cannot be forged, but the painting is fungible because it can be forged. From here, there are two components to associate with NFT art. The first is the NFT, which is the data of a digital token registered on a blockchain. The second is the artefact associated with the NFT, which we know as NFT art. But the system by which NFTs exists as a blockchain is different from, say, buying shares listed in a stock market. Therefore, to find a conceptuality in NFT art, the idea of an NFT artwork as a singular tradable commodity needs to be rethought as not the artefact per se, but the effect of the condition brought about by a combination of the artefact, the currency, and nature of its transaction system. To think of these key points as an independent singularity dismantles any sense of a conceptual framework by which NFT art can exist beyond its form. As McLoughlin argues, “unlike the commercial gallery business model, NFTs are designed to cut out the need for art dealers, enabling artists to trade directly online, typically via specialist auction sites” (McLoughlin). With regards to the GLAM sector, the conceptuality of this disruption positions both the born-digital artefact and the system of trading of the artefact as inextricably linked together. Yet the way this link is considered, even by galleries and curators alike, invites further attention to see NFT art not as a fad, but as a beginning of an entirely new system of the digital genre. Background From an aesthetics perspective, recent hostility surrounding the acceptance of NFT art within the establishment has predictably taken issue with the low-brow nature of mainstream avatar-oriented NFT art; for example, Bored Ape Yacht Club and Cryptopunks not surprisingly have been at odds with “proper” art. More so, other artists who have used blockchain in their practice, including Kevin McCoy, Mitchel F. Chan, and Rhea Myers, contributed to early crypto art especially in the 2010s to be inclusive of the proliferation of NFT art as a fine arts medium. Yet despite these contributions, the polarising of NFT art within the art world, as Widdington asserts, has accounted for assumptions that NFT art is identified as being of populous kitsch, lowbrow images, where contemporary art is in opposition to the critique it subjectifies itself against. The art establishment’s disdain towards the aesthetics of NFTs is historically predictable. Early NFT art focussed on pop culture references that have significance within the crypto community (Pepe memes, collectible CryptoKitties), and similarly, in the 1980s, Jeff Koons forced the world of “high art” to confront and accept his works rejoicing in pop culture (Michael Jackson, Pink Panther; Widdington). A key point from Widdington’s claim can be attested for other art that came before Postmodernism, linked firmly to artists using identifiers as part of their studio practice. Moreover, the tying of artwork to a non-fungible identifier is not new. Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #793B Certificate (LeWitt) compounded his manifesto that “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art” (LeWitt). By adopting the practice that each of his artworks was accompanied by an authenticity certificate, where the identification code forced a fungible asset to be associated with a unique non-fungible asset, it is the ownership of a certificate of authenticity, or a smart contract on the blockchain in the case of an NFT, that makes the artist’s work unique and therein valuable (Widdington). The scarcity of born-digital assets drives demand for collecting NFT art and joins a financial aspect tied to the process of buying and selling crypto assets. This is obviously different from a crypto conceptuality which exists outside the process and thereby manifests in the idea of what intersects the process, and, in the case of NFT artworks, the subject of the image being traded. Just as LeWitt’s certificate of ownership was thought to raise questions about authenticity and uniqueness through abstract thinking, the concept of art derived from NFT art is fundamentally no different. Both use non-fungibility as a condition of their agency to first address what can be copied and what remains as unique. Second, the mechanism of a ledger that, for NFTs, is blockchain and, for a certificate of authenticity, is the assigned number of the unique identifier, regulates scarcity by using a system to define uniqueness. Adopting this manifesto invites a different way to consider NFT art when the main conversation about NFT art in popular journalism or blogging is a narrow discussion either about the legitimacy of NFTs as an authentic financial stock or about the amount of money they transact in collecting the artefacts. One such conceptuality is in the recent NFT artwork of Damien Hirst. NFT Art Damien Hirst’s The Currency “is composed of 10,000 NFTs linked to 10,000 individual spot paintings on paper” (Hawkins) which are inclusive of added security devices within the paper itself to make the physical asset unique. The purchaser can decide if they would like to own the NFT “or ... keep the physical work and relinquish rights to the blockchain-based artwork” (Goldstein). Perspectives of the project, despite the fact that “Hirst has become a renewed critical target in the left and left-liberal media” (White 197) for his NFT project, not to mention being lamented as “Thatcher’s Warhol” (Lemmey), range from indicating “greater fool theory” (Hawkins) to the questioning of a “responsibility to other NFT artists in the market” (Meyohas). However, discussion on the conceptuality created by The Currency, especially its ontology, is muted if not ignored altogether, which this article considers a fundamental oversight in any credible critical assessment of NFT art. Given that Hirst’s artwork has consistently been moulded around conceptual art, whereby the idea of art becomes the artwork not necessarily found in the hand-made aspect of the artefact itself, the idea of The Currency is to question the role and relationship of art and money through an allegory. One might argue that its conceptuality then affords the idea of the artwork being a currency in itself. It speaks to divisibility, just as the cryptocurrency used to purchase the artworks is divisible of its own tender. The disjuncture in this accord is that “NFTs are not currencies themselves, but rather more like records of ownership” (Cornelius 2). The dot paintings on paper are created as unique artefacts where their uniqueness makes them rare, and this uniqueness makes the rarity an increase in financial value. However, subverting this are Hirst’s physical creations, where the legal tender’s conceptuality is manufactured with watermarks, security embeds, and financial markings the same as traded bills. If this perspective is considered a concept, not a digital selling point, then The Currency prompts further debate on how NFT art can, on the one hand, disrupt the way we might think about the financial systems within cryptocurrencies, and on the other hand, fuel debate on how collecting art within traditional markets has been transformed through the emergence of cryptocurrencies. These once excluded forms of money, often thought of as scams, vapourware, and Ponzi schemes from collectable trade, now dwarf digital art auction sales at an exponential margin; see, for example, the recent Christie's sale of Beeple’s NFT art. When dissecting The Currency through a conceptuality, it is important to state that this is not the first time that artists have used currency to conceptualise social questions about money. At a system level, Marcel Duchamp created his work Monte Carlo Bond (Duchamp), which “advertised a series of bonds by which he claimed he would exploit a system he had developed to make money while at the roulette wheel in Monaco” (Russeth). At an artefact level, artist Mark Wagner “deconstructed dollar bills to make portraits of presidents, recreations of famous paintings and other collages” (Ryssdal and Hollenhorst). Most notoriously, “Jens Haaning was loaned 534,000 kroner ($116,106) in cash to recreate his old artworks using the banknotes [but] pocketed the money and sent back blank canvases with a new title: "Take the Money and Run" (ABC News). If anything, The Currency is merely one of many artists' responses in a long history of exploring art and money. Yet the conceptuality of Hirst’s tender lends itself to deploying a conceptual currency system that says more about the money transactions of the art world than it does about the art sold as a financial transaction. More so, a clever subversion by Hirst, whose ongoing thematic produces artworks about mortality, life, and death, places this thematic back on the purchasers of The Currency to decide if they will “kill” the tethered artwork; that is, if they accept the NFT and not the assigned NFT art, the artwork will be destroyed by an act of burning. Hirst’s conceptuality from The Currency forces the consumer to “play God” by deciding which component is destroyed or not, posing the moral question of how we value the immorality of destroying an artwork for the sake of profitability from a born-digital token. The twist at the end is that Hirst melds such a moral choice with “an experiment in the highly irrational economics of collectibles and blockchain technology” (Hawkins). While this article acknowledges that the extreme wealth of Hirst plays a determining factor in how The Currency has been received by the public, one might argue that such polarising opinions are of no value to the critical assessment of The Currency nor the conceptualities of NFT art when determining the mechanical aspects of the artworks. The same invalidation emerged in December 2021, when “a group of Wikipedia editors ... voted not to categorize NFTs as art—at least for now” (Artnews). This standpoint contradicts the New York Times, which referred to Beeple as the “third-highest-selling artist alive” after his Christie’s sale (Artnews). Bowden and Jones provide insight into this kind of hesitation in legitimising NFT art, saying that “the tension between innovation and incumbency also contributes to the scepticism that always surrounds such new technologies” (Bowden and Jones). Another example, Beautiful Thought Coins from Australian artist Shaun Wilson, is made up of 200 digital hand-drawn colour field NFT artworks that are an allegorical investigation into bureaucracy, emotion, and currency. “The project is complete with a virtual exhibition, digital art prints, art book, and a soundtrack of AI hosted podcasts exploring everything from NFTs to chihuahuas” (Lei). As with The Currency, Beautiful Thought Coins approaches a conceptuality about NFT art through its subject, but also in the embodiment of the currency embedded within the NFT digital ecosystem. Not surprisingly, the artwork depicts coins sharing a direct relationship to the roundel paintings of Jasper John and Peter Blake, but instead with the design proportions of the iconic Type C.1 roundels adopted by the Royal Air Force between 1942 and 1947. Merging these similarities between its pop-art heritage and historical references, the allegorical discussion in Beautiful Thought Coins centres around the pretext of bureaucracy that extends to the individual artwork’s metadata. As featured on its OpenSea sales window, each of the coins has substantial metadata that, when expanded to view, reveal a secondary narrative found in the qualities each NFT has linked to its identifier. Once compared with other tokens, these metadata expand into a separate story with the NFT artworks, using fictitious qualities that link directly to the titles of each artwork in the digital collection to describe how each of the coins is feeling. One might argue that in this instance, the linking of metadata narratives to the artworks functions as an ontological framework. Wilson’s coins draw similarly to philosophical questions raised by Cross, who asks “what, exactly, is the ontological status of an NFT in relation to the work linked to it?” (Cross). Likewise, in the exhibition catalogue of Beautiful Thoughts Coins, Church states that the ontology of this series appears to be linked to a conceptuality with more questions than answers about the ‘lifestyle’ bureaucracy attached to NFT art, where the branding of the artwork by a digital token will make you feel better with the promise to also make you potentially wealthy. (Church) When considering the nature of the artwork's divisibility, ontology plays a part in finding a link between its allegory and aesthetic. Given that each image of the roundels is identical, except for the colours that fill each of its four rings, the divisibility of the hue in the subject is likened to the divisibility of the cryptocurrency that purchases NFTs. Conclusion This article has discussed NFT art in the context of its emergent conceptuality. Through assessment of the crypto artwork of Hirst and Wilson, it has proposed a way of thinking about how this conceptuality can remove NFT art from a primary attachment to financial exchange, to instead give rise to considerations of the allegory surmounting both fungible and non-fungible artefacts linked to digital tokens. Both series of works draw allegorical commentary about the nature of currency. Hirst takes a literal approach to manufacture physical artworks as a mock currency linked to minted NFTs to discuss the transactions of money in art. Wilson manufactures digital artworks by creating images of coins linked to minted NFTs to discuss the transactions of AI-generated lifestyle bureaucracy controlling money. The assessment of both series has considered that each artist uses NFT art as modularity to represent their contexts, rather than a singularity lacking in conversation about the ontological implications of the medium. 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