The fashion industry is adapting to the new situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by changing the structure of its supply chain, much like other industries that experience exogenous shocks. The pandemic affected conditions of apparel retailers: downstream among consumers and upstream among suppliers. It induced retailers to accelerate the adoption of technologies to make their supply chains more flexible and resilient. Before COVID-19, the apparel industry had gradually adopted virtual dressing room (VDR) technologies and crowd wisdom software, both of which reduce the risk associated with online purchases. Apparel retailers also altered the structure of their supply chains by outsourcing product turns via third-party logistics providers. This article analyzes how changes in market demand and supply conditions following the outbreak of COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of VDR technologies. The analysis is based on a conceptual microeconomic model of adopting technologies and changes in the supply chain. We support our theoretical findings with business cases. Understanding the nonlinear relationships among changes in demand, supply chains, and retail technology adoption triggered by exogenous shocks is essential for managers and affects the quality of service.The fashion industry is adapting to the new situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by changing the structure of its supply chain, much like other industries that experience exogenous shocks. The pandemic affected conditions of apparel retailers: downstream among consumers and upstream among suppliers. It induced retailers to accelerate the adoption of technologies to make their supply chains more flexible and resilient. Before COVID-19, the apparel industry had gradually adopted virtual dressing room (VDR) technologies and crowd wisdom software, both of which reduce the risk associated with online purchases. Apparel retailers also altered the structure of their supply chains by outsourcing product turns via third-party logistics providers. This article analyzes how changes in market demand and supply conditions following the outbreak of COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of VDR technologies. The analysis is based on a conceptual microeconomic model of adopting technologies and changes in the supply chain. We support our theoretical findings with business cases. Understanding the nonlinear relationships among changes in demand, supply chains, and retail technology adoption triggered by exogenous shocks is essential for managers and affects the quality of service.

We investigate how the status and functional benefits of cars’ brands lose value over time. Theoretically, we show that brands with a higher status, or that appeal to status-conscious consumers, exhibit steeper price decline over time. Empirically, we take advantage of the phenomenon of twin cars – pairs of car models that are nearly identical from a structural and mechanical standpoint, but that are sold under differing brand names – to disentangle the effects of physical wear and tear, which should impact both the premium brand and the corresponding standard brand similarly; and time-related price decline, which should affect each brand differently. The main result is that a premium car’s price declines much faster than that of the corresponding standard car (controlling for physical condition, mileage, and initial price). This result suggests that status declines faster than do functional attributes, and status seekers tend to replace their cars earlier.

This study aims to determine how feelings of nationalism or patriotism for one's own country and feelings of animosity for countries that are in political conflict affect consumers’ willingness to refrain from buying products from various origins. Four hundred forty-two shoppers participated in a survey that included questions about ethnocentric and patriotic feelings and a choice task between local and foreign produce. We find that a significant proportion of Israeli consumers are not willing to buy imported produce from countries that are in conflict with Israel. The proportion of consumers who would not purchase imported produce increases substantially with the intensity of the conflict. Consumers who avoid buying produce from friendly countries are those whose ethnocentric and economic-centric relationship are strong.

Abstract Coronavirus disease 2019 and related lockdown policies in 2020 shocked food industry firms? supply chains in developing regions. Firms ?pivoted? to e-commerce to reach consumers and e-procurement to reach processors and farmers. ?Delivery intermediaries? copivoted with food firms to help them deliver and procure. This was crucial to the ability of the food firms to pivot. The pandemic was a ?crucible? that induced this set of fast-tracking innovations, accelerating the diffusion of e-commerce and delivery intermediaries, and enabling food industry firms to redesign, at least temporarily, and perhaps for the long term, their supply chains to be more resilient, and to weather the pandemic, supply consumers, and contribute to food security. We present a theoretical model to explain these firm strategies, and then apply the framework to classify firms? practical strategies. We focus on cases in Asia and Latin America. Enabling policy and infrastructural conditions allowed firms to pivot and copivot fluidly.

Abstract Applied economists have investigated individual adoption choices as well as diffusion (aggregate adoption). The emphasis, however, has been on adopters' behavior and risk associated with production and markets. Marketing also considers broader aspects and marketers develop tools to address risk related to the fit of a product, its performance, and its reliability. This paper expands the economic literature on adoption by analyzing and assessing the implications of the choice of marketing tools, like money-back guarantees, demonstrations, and others, by marketers. The analysis is based on the threshold model of diffusion, which recognizes heterogeneity and dynamics. We provide evidence and examples from agriculture.

This paper demonstrates that religion and religiosity affect norms, which affect food consumption patterns and production. Heterogeneity and asymmetric information lead to multiple certification channels as well as multiple supply chains. Major supply chains may address multiple constituencies that are secular or less religious. Technological change affects norms and thus the food system. We obtain these results by analyzing the food systems for meat products in Israel where there are three religions – Jews, Muslims, and Christians – and people assign themselves three levels of religiosity – secular, conservative, and orthodox. Israel has multiple Kosher and Halal certifiers and several specialized supermarket chains for orthodox groups. Its main supermarket chains serve secular and some conservative segments. The immigration of secular Jews from Russia led to the proliferation of non-Kosher supply chains and products, and increased consumption of pork. New technologies and higher incomes led to emergence of fast food chains serving orthodox Jews that had previously tended to eat at home.

This paper considers the adoption of institutional innovations by not for profit organizations, an issue that can be considered in the context of the extensive literature on the adoption of technological innovation by firms. The specific institutional innovation considered is the offices of technology transfer (OTT)—the organization that assemble and disclose university innovations and negotiate and enforce licenses with users of these innovations. We propose a theoretical framework that depart from previous studies by focusing on the timing decision of institutions rather than on the percentage of institutions that adopt at each point in time. Our theoretical framework also incorporates organization theory via imitation effects on the timing of adoption. We find that number of adopters has an S-shape function of time, which may indicate a strong element of imitation led universities to create OTTs. We also find that universities with higher research incomes and rankings were earlier adopters of the OTT model and that universities with medical schools were generally late adopters. Finally, we find that the number of universities who have already adopted the OTT model increases the speed by which other non-adopters make their OTT adoption decisions and that the number of invention disclosures, a primary indicator of output of OTTs, increases with the size of research budget, is smaller for those with medical schools, and larger for those that were earlier adopters of OTT. Section 1 of the paper discusses the recent trends in technology transfer while Section 2 reviews the advent of OTTs as facilitators of technology transfer activities. Section 3 reviews the relevant technology and institutional innovation literature. Section 4 develops a conceptual framework that links Sections 2 and 3 to analyze the advent and timing of the establishment of OTTs. Section 5 estimates the time of adoption of the OTT working model on the part of major research universities in the US, and analyzes the impact of time of adoption of the OTT model on the intensity of the technology transfer process. Section 6 presents empirical results while the conclusions and policy implications are discussed in Section 7.

Marketing tools, in addition to their role in persuasion and serving as a bridge between production and consumers, reduce prepurchase risks. This role has received less attention in the literature. This review highlights marketing's role in reducing consumers? purchasing risk. We present our approach, backed up with extensive literature review, beginning with a description of advertising, branding, and pricing that may serve as a signal of a product's quality. We then describe and analyze the role of product demonstrations, free product samples, and money-back guarantees (MBGs), which enable consumers to acquire direct experience before a final decision is made, in reducing risks. We briefly discuss product warranties and their relationship to MBGs. We demonstrate how marketing tools can help reduce the risk associated with the consumption of food products that contain genetically modified organisms, as well as help in marketing of agricultural products that vary in their levels of risk to buyers.Marketing tools, in addition to their role in persuasion and serving as a bridge between production and consumers, reduce prepurchase risks. This role has received less attention in the literature. This review highlights marketing's role in reducing consumers? purchasing risk. We present our approach, backed up with extensive literature review, beginning with a description of advertising, branding, and pricing that may serve as a signal of a product's quality. We then describe and analyze the role of product demonstrations, free product samples, and money-back guarantees (MBGs), which enable consumers to acquire direct experience before a final decision is made, in reducing risks. We briefly discuss product warranties and their relationship to MBGs. We demonstrate how marketing tools can help reduce the risk associated with the consumption of food products that contain genetically modified organisms, as well as help in marketing of agricultural products that vary in their levels of risk to buyers.

Emerging markets are often characterized by the presence of foreign brands and local brands in a product category. These brands tend to get positioned differently in the market by utilizing marketing mix elements with different focuses on the functional, image, or value nature of the brands. We utilize a choice model specification quite different from the commonly used types, to identify whether a particular brand benefits more from a certain type of marketing mix emphasis than from another type of emphasis. The model enables us to evaluate main and synergistic effects of mix elements on brand market shares. In an empirical analysis of brands in an emerging market, we found that international brands tended to benefit from highlighting the image attributes of the brands, while local brands benefited more from a focus on brand functionality. We also found significant variations in the saliency of different positioning foci across different market segments characterized by demographic variables. The methodology used in our research can also be utilized for identifying appropriate brand-specific marketing strategies for multiple brands in a variety of consumer markets.

We suggest two psychological mechanisms, temporal discounting and feeling of resource scarcity, for explaining the relation between food insecurity and body overweight. We demonstrate how Nettle et al.'s findings could be explained, post hoc, by each of these accounts, suggesting that their data are not rich enough to allow identification of mechanisms that underlie food insecurity and overweight relationship.

Marketing tools that enable pre-purchase experience (e.g., product trials, sampling) are considered efficient means of reducing uncertainty and increasing demand for unfamiliar products. It is widely agreed that having more information improves the quality of choice, so demonstrations, sampling, and other experience-generating marketing tools are expected to increase consumers' welfare. The current paper challenges this concept by suggesting that experiencing some product types for a limited time might provide unrepresentative information, and thus might result in suboptimal choices. In three experiments, we evaluated the effect of potentially unrepresentative experience on consumer product acceptance. The results show that while experiencing products affects consumers even when it provides little information, the effect might be positive or negative, depending on the product value distribution. Specifically, short experience with the product increases the appeal of negatively skewed products, which appear appealing after a short, yet unrepresentative experience. Yet short experience impairs the appeal of positively skewed products, which appear unappealing given short or low-intensity experience. This pattern emerges even though the most likely result of a given sample is not a good predictor of the expected utility of the product. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.