Donation promotions that tie product purchase to charitable contributions are common in the marketplace. Yet little is known about the sensitivity of different consumer segments to such promotions, particularly relative to traditional discount-based promotions. To address this void, the authors consider the extent to which consumers in traditional demographic segments based on gender and residence vary in their propensity to choose donation versus discount promotions. An experiment along with a field study using in-market data show that female and rural consumers exhibit higher choice probabilities for donation promotions than male and urban consumer segments. The experimental results also demonstrate that interdependence, at least in part, underlies the effect of these demographic and geographic segmentation variables on promotion choice. In addition to providing new theoretical insights involving interdependence and promotion choice, these results offer pragmatic guidance for managers targeting donation versus discount promotions to various consumer segments.

ABSTRACT This study investigated the sales and advertising “build” curves for 15 consumer packaged-goods (CPG) categories, for both new products and established brands. Build curves reflect cumulative sales at any given time period divided by the 52-week sales. The author identified commonalities across category in the sales and advertising build curves. The goal: to develop benchmarks that brand managers can employ to assess how their brands are performing. Further, the author believes, these benchmarks are the basis for developing a simple and direct means of forecasting year-end sales based on actual sales over an interim time period.

The enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidative capacities of bitter gourd (Momordica charantia) and zucchini (Cucurbita pepo) were investigated in water extracts and chemical buffer extracts. Bitter gourd and zucchini fruits were purchased from a farmer's market and homogenized separately in water and in a native enzyme extraction buffer. Total phenolic compounds, free radical DPPH scavenging activity, SOD activity and beta-glucosidase activity were assayed in the extracts. The average total phenolic compounds recorded in bitter gourd were 13.28 GAE/g fresh weights while in zucchini, the average was 8.67GAE/g fresh weight. This study also found that bitter gourd was 82.05% as effective as ascorbic acid in inhibiting the free radical DPPH while zucchini was 12.19% as effective. The results indicated that bitter gourd was significantly higher in antioxidant content and in beta-glucosidase activities than zucchini (P<0.05). On the other hand, significantly higher SOD activities were recorded in zucchini than in bitter gourd extracts.

This is an exciting collective milestone. As recently as two or three decades ago, it was something of an event to discover an essay on Japanese philosophy, in Philosophy East and West or any other major philosophical journal. Now, with the publication of five new volumes (stemming from symposia and workshops in Nagoya, Hong Kong, Berlin, and Montreal) by the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, seventy-three essays have appeared, more or less all at once. These essays are mostly in English, although several are written in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. In the first volume by itself, Japanese Philosophy Abroad, several writers provide an account of Japanese philosophy from French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese, and English speaking regions of the world. As with all conference gatherings, the quality of the essays varies somewhat, although, in general, they are of remarkably high caliber. Even a cursory glance at the scope of these volumes reveals chapters dealing with central Kyoto School figures, including Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime, Kuki Shuzo, Watsuji Tetsuro, Nishitani Keiji, and Ueda Shizuteru. Other chapters provide background to the Kyoto School philosophers: Dogen, Motoori Norinaga, Nishi Amane, Takizawa Katsumi, and the late Yasuo. In order to give some impres sion of the nature of the essays included, it might prove helpful to list a few of them by title: The Idea of the Mirror in and (Michael Dalissier), Getting back to Premodern Japan: Tanabe's Reading of Dogen (Ralf Muller), Yuasa Yasuo's Theory of the Body (Britta Boutry-Stadelmann), Nishida Kitaro as Philosopher of Science (Noe Keiichi), The Human and the Absolute in the Writings of Kuki Shuzo (Saito Takako), Transcendence of the State in Watsuji's Ethics (Bernard Bernier),

Discrete choice studies have been utilised extensively over the past three decades and applied to a broad range of experimental situations (McFadden 1974; Louviere & Woodworth 1983; Louviere et al. 2000; Sapede & Girod 2002). More specifically, Haaijer et al. (2001, p. 93) indicate that the popularity of discrete choice experiments is due to their ‘ability to mimic real market decisions’ on the part of consumers since the dependent variable for these types of research studies is consumer choice, as opposed to an overall rating or other evaluation measure. While discrete choice experiments have shown their value in terms of market share prediction, these approaches have not proved particularly helpful in terms of identifying or highlighting target audiences. That is, these methods have not typically been employed for identifying target segments for products and services, based on demographics. This is a real weakness given the nature of contemporary marketing (i.e. evolving from ‘broadcasting’ to ‘narrowcasting’) and the corresponding proliferation of cable channels and websites targeting relatively small audiences. Discrete choice experiments usually do not include demographics variables, or characteristics of individual respondents, because these components do not vary across the different alternatives in each choice scenario (Haaijer et al. 2001; Montgomery 2002; Train 2003). The primary objective of the current research is to address this methodological shortcoming and share a practical procedure that is designed to incorporate demographic variables in discrete choice experiments and related multinomial logit models. The prior research provides some guidance on this issue in theoretical terms (Hoffman & Duncan 1988), or is somewhat out of date (So & Kuhfeld 1995); however, the goal of the current study is to provide practical and up-to-date guidance on this important issue. In support of this objective, we use a classic transportation example (Daganzo 1979; SAS Version 9.1) that has been modified to include gender as a demographic variable.

The idea of nothingness has been viewed as neither a vital nor a positive element in Western philosophy or theology. With the exception of a handful of mystics, nothingness has been taken to refer to the negation of being, or to some theoretical void. By contrast, the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō gave nothingness a central role in philosophy. The strategy of this essay is to use the German mystic Meister Eckhart as a more familiar thinker who did take nothingness seriously, and then to look closely at Nishida’s philosophy, and at the work of his contemporary Ueda Shizuteru, in exploring the central importance of nothingness in Zen Buddhist thought. Eckhart writes of the nothingness of the godhead, whereas Nishida and Ueda speak of nothingness “pure and simple.” Eckhart remains within the being of the godhead and theology. Nishida moves directly to nothingness. Some have claimed that Nishida is not a mystic, and Nishida himself concurred, yet it is Ueda who explains why Nishida can rightly be read as a mystic and as not a mystic. He argues that Zen includes mysticism, but then goes beyond it to a “non-mysticism.” Mystic or non-mystic, the guidance that Nishida and Ueda offer leads to a compelling outlook on life.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that may influence a consumer to pay a premium for a product or service communicating ethical information.Design/methodology/approachA survey was administered to 77 subjects and a conceptual model of five specific inter‐related constructs was tested using LISREL.FindingsThere is a sequence of events that leads consumers to be willing to pay a premium for a product communicating ethical information. This sequence starts with the need for information which, in turn, leads to socially responsible behavior and social sacrifice and, finally, to the intention to pay a premium. Importantly, this sequence is positively moderated by monetary resources available to spend in the category.Research limitations/implicationsTo increase generalizability, this study should be replicated among other sample compositions and for additional products and/or services.Practical implicationsThe research details the multi‐step consumer decision‐making process that marketers need to understand in order to market a premium priced product that delivers a social benefit.Originality/valueSocially responsible behavior is not sufficient by itself for a consumer to pay a premium for a product communicating ethical information. Rather, socially responsible behavior leads to a willingness to make a sacrifice which then leads to intentions to pay a premium price.

Introducing new products is both risky and critical to a company's success. To help mitigate these risks, the use of line extension strategies has become widespread, with some researchers reporting that 95% of new product introductions are extensions of current brands. Support for the use of line extensions is based on the extended product's ability to leverage favorable parent brand associations and, hence, demonstrate a greater degree of success. To fully understand the success of a line extension, its impact, or spillover, on the parent brand must also be taken into account. This prompts the research question: Will a line extension help or hurt the parent brand? That is, will the introduction of the line extension result in incremental or reduced unit sales of the parent brand? The majority of research on line extensions focuses on forward effects from the parent brand (P) to the extension (X). In contrast, I study reciprocal advertising effects - those of X on P - using 45 P/X brand pairs in 15 categories. I test eight hypotheses derived from a model integrating associative network theory and information economics, suggesting positive interactions between P and X; and cross-elasticity theory, suggesting negative interactions when P and X are substitutes. I find the moderating variables similarity, concept consistency, and fit to be particularly important determinants of whether a line extension will have a net positive or net negative effect on unit sales of the parent brand.