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This chapter develops a general approach for analyzing consumer markets and, more specifically, consumer contracts. A behavioural-economics model was used to explain how consumer psychology interacts with market forces to influence the design of consumer contracts. The resulting behavioural market failure entails potentially significant welfare costs, which market solutions can reduce but not eliminate. Optimally designed disclosure mandates, while not a panacea, can enhance efficiency and help consumers.

In this chapter, Misha Petrovic and Gary Hamilton outline the market-making perspective and contrasts this perspective with two alternatives perspectives (namely, theories of comparative and competitive advantage) that are frequently used to conceptualize international trade and the global economy. The alternatives are generally ahistorical and non-organizational, and both rely on unrealistic assumptions about how actual markets work. The two authors then describe the historical background for the retail revolution, and show that market making by retailers involves multiple institutional innovations that have contributed to the evolution of both horizontal and vertical competition between retailers and their suppliers in the course of making national and global markets. The market-making perspective is shown to be historical, developmental, and organizational.

In this chapter, Misha Petrovic addresses the globalization of US retailers, as both buyers of goods from suppliers and sellers of goods to consumers around the world. First tracing the history of modern retailing and then concentrating on the post-Second World War period, Petrovic analyzes how major US retailers pioneered the development of transformative retailing formats, including department stores, supermarkets, chain stores, general merchandising, franchising, shopping malls, and big-box stores. As consumer market makers, modern retailers expanded internationally by replicating successful domestic models. The diffusion of American retail formats occurred in four waves. The first wave, between 1900 and 1945, showed very limited diffusion beyond national borders. During the second wave, 1945–70, big-box retailing spread to Europe and Japan. The third wave, between 1970 and 1990, spread best practices in retailing throughout the industrialized world, and internationalization of the major retail chains began in earnest. The fourth wave from 1990 until the present time has pushed the globalization of retail formats, allowing the largest chains to become global market makers, leading to the integration of global consumer markets.

Citigroup is believed to be the top player in international retail banking because of its ability to make the most of technological advances in electronic banking. Domestically however, Sanwa Bank—which is now a member of the UFJ Group and Financial One alliance, also possesses a high rank in terms of retail banking strategies in Japan. It could be observed though that Citi accounts for Japan's highest growth consumer-market segment. This chapter examines the role of IT in consumer banking, specifically in the case of the said two banks through discussing retail banking in Japan, the development of Sanwa Bank, Citigroup's consumer operations specifically on financial services and banking industries, and the Level 3 IT support structure strategy that Citigroup practices across the globe.

In this chapter, Gary Hamilton and Misha Petrovic introduce the main topic of the book: how retailers are changing the global economy. The main themes are also introduced, including the retail revolution and the five trends coming out of this revolution that shape global retailing today. These five trends are (1) the sudden rise of huge retail chains that have grown up at the same time as shopping malls have been built throughout the USA, Europe, and, gradually, the rest of the world; (2) the blurred boundaries between manufacturing, merchandising, and retailing; (3) the development of lean retailing; (4) the development of global suppliers for consumer goods sold by merchandisers and retailers, and (5) the transformation of consumption and consumers. The core concepts of market making, consumer and supplier markets, and the impact of retailers on the global economy are outlined. This chapter also presents an overview of the book.

This chapter examines the role of the Singer sewing machine in fashioning a consumer market in colonial Lanka, now known as Sri Lanka. More specifically, it narrates the fashioning of a market imaginary, which indexed modernity as desire installed through the Singer machine. The chapter first provides an overview of the Singer Sewing Machine Company and the market for sewing machines before discussing the company's global expansion. It then considers the Asian market for the Singer sewing machine and the Singer Company's venture in Ceylon/Lanka. It also analyzes the diffusion of the Singer sewing machine in Lanka and the marketing strategies used by Singer in the country. Finally, it explores how the Singer sewing machine intersected with the issue of race and the civilizing mission and how the market imaginary was exposed in circuits of communication such as advertisements, discourses of Sinhalese modern nationalism, and the economy of the machines itself.

This chapter discusses the distinct paths taken by consumer policy in West Germany and the United States. The Marshall Plan, while certainly instrumental for the speedy recovery of West Germany's economy, was not as effective in transplanting the American model of mass consumption as is often assumed. Rather than an “Americanization” of postwar West Germany, a series of contrasts emerges when we take a comparative look at three major areas: the overall importance of private consumption and purchasing power to social and economic policy; the regulation of consumer markets; and the degree of public consumption through direct and indirect social spending, as well as the provisioning of public goods as an alternative to the consumer marketplace. In tracing these contrasts, the author draws on a diverse array of primary and secondary sources, including trade journals and specialized publications by contemporary economists, sociologists, urban planners, and professionals in retailing and public administration.

This chapter investigates the process by which Japanese producers came to dominate home and world markets, and the Singer Sewing Machine Company's frustrated attempt to regain its dominant position. The sewing machine emerged as both mechanical chameleon and phoenix. As chameleon, the mishin quickly changed colors from home-front weapon to implement of peace in the autumn of 1945. As phoenix, it rose with astonishing speed to play an important role in the recovery of Japan's machine industry in export and domestic markets. Singer had been one of the few foreign firms with significant prewar reach into Japan's household consumer market. The story of the sewing machine as mechanical phoenix reveals a link between prewar and wartime developments and the postwar consumer revolution. Machine sewing was both a survival skill and a ticket to the dream of a bright life.

In this chapter, Suresh Kotha and Sandip Basu describe the effects of recent technological changes on retailing, in particular the development of the Internet and of overnight delivery services. The Internet and online retailing have given rise to new retailing formats for selling traditional products, such as in the case of Amazon.com and books. In addition, these new technologies have generated new forms of market making. One of the best and most successful examples is eBay.com, which brings together millions of buyers and sellers in a cyber marketplace. Online shopping has also impacted on incumbent retailers, whether they see the Internet as just another marketing channel or a new approach to retailing. Some existing retailers, such as Wal-Mart, are trying largely to use an online presence to leverage their physical assets, but that could change in the future. Online retailers are still in the process of discovering what works and what does not, although it appears that the current global recession has substantially increased people’s willingness to buy and sell online. Broadband connectivity has given a major boost to online retailing. The next stage, just beginning to emerge, may be global online retailing. Finally, the easy availability of information on the Internet, especially with the development of sophisticated search engines, such as Google, has helped create more knowledgeable consumers. Even if they do not buy online, by using the Internet, many consumers now are much better informed than in the past. When potential customers who have searched on the Internet come into automobile dealerships, for instance, they may literally know as much about the car models and pricing as the salesperson.

We love children for all the things we are no longer and often wish we were. We delight in the fact that children are not cynical or repressed. And we identify with this lost paradise of wonder because we have been so long banished from it. Theirs is the Garden of Wondrous Innocence, the World of the Cute. However, even when we affirm childhood innocence, we find ourselves confused about when it ends and who has it. Parents felt the need to exercise a firm if gentle control over the culture and experience of their children. However, the idea of wondrous innocence and the cute pulled children into the heart of a new consumer market with few ties to the worlds of parents. This unleashed a hedonistic spirit that often contradicted the developmental goals of the educator. This chapter looks at the image of the innocent child and the contradictions in how adults, including parents and schools, see and nurture them.

This chapter discusses why youth are commercially interesting and why marketing seems to be targeting children at ever-younger ages. In particular, it shows how children represent three markets—a primary market, a market of influencers, and a future market—and discusses the implications of being a threefold market for children's socialization as consumers. How do brand awareness and brand loyalty develop in early childhood? How does children's development influence their consumer behavior? Following this, the chapter evaluates whether advertising is effective among these young consumers. To what extent does the commercial environment that surrounds youth influence them? It contextualizes these questions by highlighting what the youth market looks like today, noting sophisticated digital developments and discussing efforts to counter the potential negative consequences of advertising.

This chapter surveys the semiconductor market’s evolution toward consumer purchases of PCs, cell phones, game consoles, and mobile devices, and chronicles how that purchasing power moved from corporate- to consumer-based, spurred by the use of the internet. It was the internet, due to its broad appeal, that moved what were once separate markets into a whole, which is most evident in the way technologies overlap today, whereby cell phones and videogame consoles are seen as consumers of diverse forms of multimedia. The chapter then reveals the challenges which the consumer market poses to chip producers, namely that they are more price oriented, trendsetting, and fragmented than ever before. In conclusion, it is argued that the rise in consumerization of chip markets has placed a declining price pressure against the rising cost pressures, hence firms will have to find certain means through which to maintain their costs.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is statutorily responsible for ensuring that prescription drugs and medical devices meet evidential standards for safety and efficacy before they are approved for marketing. Nevertheless, serious evidential gaps remain for every product at the time of approval, more so for devices than drugs, and post-approval uptake is driven more by market forces than scientific evidence of superiority. Moreover, to obtain approval for marketing, medical product makers not statutorily required to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of their products, and infrequently have a business case to do so. Federally-mandated comparative effectiveness research will complement what is known about the safety and efficacy of approved pharmaceutical products and devices, a prospect that many in the medical products industry find threatening.

This chapter reviews research on China’s consumer revolution. It begins with a survey of the literature addressing the general consumption issues. It then discusses more specific topics, including consumer behaviour, the new rich, e-consumers, gender and consumer cohorts, and advertising and marketing. Finally, it identifies some emerging issues in China’s consumer market, such as green consumption, eco-tourism, credit card risks, and consumer privacy protection.

The study examines the evolution of heterogeneous illegal markets, including markets for homemade alcohol, counterfeit alcohol, and illegally manufactured alcohol in Russia. A variety of statistical sources and survey data is used to demonstrate that the compositions of these markets have come through four different stages since late socialism, depending on the constellation of political, legislative, and economic factors. At each stage, some of these markets prevail, whereas others remain undeveloped. Overall, illegal alcohol markets tend to grow in periods of exogenous political or economic shocks and shrink in periods of economic growth. Changes in the structure of illegal markets are backed by a continuous requalification of products, organizations, and transactions contesting the boundaries between legality and illegality. Some illegal activities retain their legitimacy due to the ignorance or tolerance of enforcement agencies and final consumers.