In this book, Maxine Berg explores the invention, making, and buying of new, semi-luxury, and fashionable consumer goods during the eighteenth century. It follows these goods, from china tea ware to ...all sorts of metal ornaments such as candlesticks, cutlery, buckles, and buttons, as they were made and shopped for, then displayed in the private domestic settings of Britain's urban middling classes. It tells the stories and analyses the developments that led from a global trade in Eastern luxuries beginning in the sixteenth century to the new global trade in British-made consumer goods by the end of the eighteenth century. These new products, regarded as luxuries by the rapidly growing urban and middling-class people of the eighteenth century, played an important part in helping to proclaim personal identities,and guide social interaction. Customers enjoyed shopping for them; they took pleasure in their beauty, ingenuity or convenience. All manner of new products appeared in shop windows; sophisticated mixed-media advertising seduced customers and created new wants. This unparalleled 'product revolution' provoked philosophers and pundits to proclaim a 'new luxury', one that reached out to the middling and trading classes, unlike the elite and corrupt luxury of old. Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth Century Britain is cultural history at its best, built on a fresh empirical base drawn directly from customs accounts, advertising material, company papers, and contemporary correspondence. Maxine Berg traces how this new consumer society of the eighteenth century and the products first traded, then invented to satisfy it, stimulated industrialization itself. Global markets for the consumer goods of private and domestic life inspired the industrial revolution and British products 'won the world'. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/history/9780199215287/toc.html
Once there was a golden age of American thrift, when citizens lived sensibly within their means and worked hard to stay out of debt. The growing availability of credit in this century, however, has ...brought those days to an end--undermining traditional moral virtues such as prudence, diligence, and the delay of gratification while encouraging reckless consumerism. Or so we commonly believe. In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Lendol Calder shows that this conception of the past is in fact a myth.
How toxic are the products we consume on a daily basis? Whether it’s triclosan in toothpaste, formaldehyde in baby shampoo, endocrine disruptors in water bottles, or pesticides on strawberries, ...chemicals in food and personal care products are of increasing concern to consumers. This book chronicles how ordinary people try to avoid exposure to toxics in grocery store aisles using the practice of “precautionary consumption.” Through an innovative analysis of environmental regulation, the advocacy work of environmental health groups, the expansion of the health-food chain Whole Foods Market, and interviews with consumers, Norah MacKendrick ponders why the problem of toxics in the U.S. retail landscape has been left to individual shoppers—and to mothers in particular. She reveals how precautionary consumption, or “green shopping,” is a costly and time-intensive practice, one that is connected to cultural ideas of femininity and good motherhood but is also most available to upper- and middle-class households. Better Safe Than Sorry powerfully argues that precautionary consumption places a heavy and unfair burden of labor on women and does little to advance environmental justice or mitigate risk.
Before the twentieth century, personal debt resided on the fringes of the American economy, the province of small-time criminals and struggling merchants. By the end of the century, however, the most ...profitable corporations and banks in the country lent money to millions of American debtors. How did this happen? The first book to follow the history of personal debt in modern America,Debtor Nationtraces the evolution of debt over the course of the twentieth century, following its transformation from fringe to mainstream--thanks to federal policy, financial innovation, and retail competition.
How did banks begin making personal loans to consumers during the Great Depression? Why did the government invent mortgage-backed securities? Why was all consumer credit, not just mortgages, tax deductible until 1986? Who invented the credit card? Examining the intersection of government and business in everyday life, Louis Hyman takes the reader behind the scenes of the institutions that made modern lending possible: the halls of Congress, the boardrooms of multinationals, and the back rooms of loan sharks. America's newfound indebtedness resulted not from a culture in decline, but from changes in the larger structure of American capitalism that were created, in part, by the choices of the powerful--choices that made lending money to facilitate consumption more profitable than lending to invest in expanded production.
From the origins of car financing to the creation of subprime lending,Debtor Nationpresents a nuanced history of consumer credit practices in the United States and shows how little loans became big business.
In the long eighteenth century, new consumer aspirations combined with a new industrious behavior to fundamentally alter the material cultures of northwest Europe and North America. This 'industrious ...revolution' is the context in which the economic acceleration associated with the Industrial Revolution took shape. This study explores the intellectual understanding of the new importance of consumer goods as well as the actual consumer behavior of households of all income levels. De Vries examines how the activation and evolution of consumer demand shaped the course of economic development, situating consumer behavior in the context of the household economy. He considers the changing consumption goals of households from the seventeenth century to the present and analyzes how household decisions have mediated between macro-level economic growth and actual human betterment. Ultimately, de Vries' research reveals the strengths and weaknesses of existing consumer theory, suggesting revisions that add historical realism to economic abstractions.
The Politics of Precautionexamines the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation in the United States and Europe over the last five decades, explaining why America and Europe have often ...regulated a wide range of similar risks differently. It finds that between 1960 and 1990, American health, safety, and environmental regulations were more stringent, risk averse, comprehensive, and innovative than those adopted in Europe. But since around 1990, the book shows, global regulatory leadership has shifted to Europe. What explains this striking reversal?
David Vogel takes an in-depth, comparative look at European and American policies toward a range of consumer and environmental risks, including vehicle air pollution, ozone depletion, climate change, beef and milk hormones, genetically modified agriculture, antibiotics in animal feed, pesticides, cosmetic safety, and hazardous substances in electronic products. He traces how concerns over such risks--and pressure on political leaders to do something about them--have risen among the European public but declined among Americans. Vogel explores how policymakers in Europe have grown supportive of more stringent regulations while those in the United States have become sharply polarized along partisan lines. And as European policymakers have grown more willing to regulate risks on precautionary grounds, increasingly skeptical American policymakers have called for higher levels of scientific certainty before imposing additional regulatory controls on business.
Despite growing evidence about differences in the attitudes and behaviors of consumers in emerging and developed markets, there is little research on the differences in country of origin (COO) ...effects on their evaluation, behavioral intentions (BIs), and actual purchase of imported products. This paper introduces a new conceptual framework incorporating consumer ethnocentrism (CET), materialism (MAT), and value consciousness (VC) to hypothesize several differences in the influence of COO effects on consumers from developed and emerging markets. A web-based study with 1752 consumers in four countries representing two developed markets (the UK and the USA) and two emerging markets (China and India) shows significant differences in the moderating influence of CET, MAT, and VC on the effects of COO on the evaluations and BIs for a fictitious passenger car brand, and on the actual choice of car brands owned by them. The findings highlight the importance of looking beyond CET at other relevant psychographic variables to understand the differences in motivations underlying consumer perceptions and behavior towards imported products.
This book is the first comprehensive history of consumerism as an organised social and political movement. Matthew Hilton offers a groundbreaking account of consumer movements, ideologies and ...organisations in twentieth-century Britain. He argues that in organisations such as the Co-operative movement and the Consumers' Association individual concern with what and how we spend our wages led to forms of political engagement too often overlooked in existing accounts of twentieth-century history. He explores how the consumer and consumerism came to be regarded by many as a third force in society with the potential to free politics from the perceived stranglehold of the self-interested actions of employers and trade unions. Finally he recovers the visions of countless consumer activists who saw in consumption a genuine force for liberation for women, the working class and new social movements as well as a set of ideas often deliberately excluded from more established political organisations.
We characterize the effect of anticipated regret on consumer decisions and on firm profits and policies in an advance selling context where buyers have uncertain valuations. Advance purchases trigger
...action regret
if valuations turn out to be lower than the price paid, whereas delaying purchase may cause
inaction regret
from missing a discount or facing a stockout. Consumers whom we describe as
emotionally rational
act strategically in response to the firm's policies and in anticipation of regret. In this context, regret explains two types of behavioral patterns: inertia (delayed purchase) and frenzies (buying early at negative surplus). We show how firms should optimally respond to consumer regret and also characterize a normative regret threshold above which they should not advance sell. Action regret reduces profits as well as the value of advance selling and booking limit policies for price-setting firms; inaction regret has the opposite effects. These effects are diminished by capacity constraints and are reversed for firms facing price pressure in the advance period (owing, e.g., to competition or market heterogeneity). Regret heterogeneity explains premium advance selling for the capacity-constrained firm, which may benefit from larger shares of regretful buyers. Finally, we show how the negative effects of regret on profits can be mitigated by regret-priming marketing campaigns and by offering refunds or options or allowing resales. Our results highlight the importance of assessing the relative strength of regret within and across market segments and of accounting for these factors in pricing and marketing policies.
This paper was accepted by Christian Terwiesch, operations management.
Background
Older people taking multiple medications represent a large and growing proportion of the population. Managing multiple medications can be challenging, and this is especially the case for ...older people, who have higher rates of comorbidity and physical and cognitive impairment than younger adults. Good medication‐taking ability and medication adherence are necessary to ensure safe and effective use of medications.
Objectives
To evaluate the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve medication‐taking ability and/or medication adherence in older community‐dwelling adults prescribed multiple long‐term medications.
Search methods
We searched MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), PsycINFO, CINAHL Plus, and International Pharmaceutical s from inception until June 2019. We also searched grey literature, online trial registries, and reference lists of included studies.
Selection criteria
We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs), quasi‐RCTs, and cluster‐RCTs. Eligible studies tested interventions aimed at improving medication‐taking ability and/or medication adherence among people aged ≥ 65 years (or of mean/median age > 65 years), living in the community or being discharged from hospital back into the community, and taking four or more regular prescription medications (or with group mean/median of more than four medications). Interventions targeting carers of older people who met these criteria were also included.
Data collection and analysis
Two review authors independently reviewed s and full texts of eligible studies, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias of included studies. We conducted meta‐analyses when possible and used a random‐effects model to yield summary estimates of effect, risk ratios (RRs) for dichotomous outcomes, and mean differences (MDs) or standardised mean differences (SMDs) for continuous outcomes, along with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Narrative synthesis was performed when meta‐analysis was not possible. We assessed overall certainty of evidence for each outcome using Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE). Primary outcomes were medication‐taking ability and medication adherence. Secondary outcomes included health‐related quality of life (HRQoL), emergency department (ED)/hospital admissions, and mortality.
Main results
We identified 50 studies (14,269 participants) comprising 40 RCTs, six cluster‐RCTs, and four quasi‐RCTs. All included studies evaluated interventions versus usual care; six studies also reported a comparison between two interventions as part of a three‐arm RCT design.
Interventions were grouped on the basis of their educational and/or behavioural components: 14 involved educational components only, 7 used behavioural strategies only, and 29 provided mixed educational and behavioural interventions. Overall, our confidence in results regarding the effectiveness of interventions was low to very low due to a high degree of heterogeneity of included studies and high or unclear risk of bias across multiple domains in most studies.
Five studies evaluated interventions for improving medication‐taking ability, and 48 evaluated interventions for improving medication adherence (three studies evaluated both outcomes).
No studies involved educational or behavioural interventions alone for improving medication‐taking ability. Low‐quality evidence from five studies, each using a different measure of medication‐taking ability, meant that we were unable to determine the effects of mixed interventions on medication‐taking ability.
Low‐quality evidence suggests that behavioural only interventions (RR 1.22, 95% CI 1.07 to 1.38; 4 studies) and mixed interventions (RR 1.22, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.37; 12 studies) may increase the proportions of people who are adherent compared with usual care. We could not include in the meta‐analysis results from two studies involving mixed interventions: one had a positive effect on adherence, and the other had little or no effect. Very low‐quality evidence means that we are uncertain of the effects of educational only interventions (5 studies) on the proportions of people who are adherent.
Low‐quality evidence suggests that educational only interventions (SMD 0.16, 95% CI ‐0.12 to 0.43; 5 studies) and mixed interventions (SMD 0.47, 95% CI ‐0.08 to 1.02; 7 studies) may have little or no impact on medication adherence assessed through continuous measures of adherence. We excluded 10 studies (4 educational only and 6 mixed interventions) from the meta‐analysis including four studies with unclear or no available results. Very low‐quality evidence means that we are uncertain of the effects of behavioural only interventions (3 studies) on medication adherence when assessed through continuous outcomes.
Low‐quality evidence suggests that mixed interventions may reduce the number of ED/hospital admissions (RR 0.67, 95% CI 0.50 to 0.90; 11 studies) compared with usual care, although results from six further studies that we were unable to include in meta‐analyses indicate that the intervention may have a smaller, or even no, effect on these outcomes. Similarly, low‐quality evidence suggests that mixed interventions may lead to little or no change in HRQoL (7 studies), and very low‐quality evidence means that we are uncertain of the effects on mortality (RR 0.93, 95% CI 0.67 to 1.30; 7 studies).
Moderate‐quality evidence shows that educational interventions alone probably have little or no effect on HRQoL (6 studies) or on ED/hospital admissions (4 studies) when compared with usual care. Very low‐quality evidence means that we are uncertain of the effects of behavioural interventions on HRQoL (1 study) or on ED/hospital admissions (2 studies). We identified no studies evaluating effects of educational or behavioural interventions alone on mortality.
Six studies reported a comparison between two interventions; however due to the limited number of studies assessing the same types of interventions and comparisons, we are unable to draw firm conclusions for any outcomes.
Authors' conclusions
Behavioural only or mixed educational and behavioural interventions may improve the proportion of people who satisfactorily adhere to their prescribed medications, but we are uncertain of the effects of educational only interventions. No type of intervention was found to improve adherence when it was measured as a continuous variable, with educational only and mixed interventions having little or no impact and evidence of insufficient quality to determine the effects of behavioural only interventions. We were unable to determine the impact of interventions on medication‐taking ability. The quality of evidence for these findings is low due to heterogeneity and methodological limitations of studies included in the review. Further well‐designed RCTs are needed to investigate the effects of interventions for improving medication‐taking ability and medication adherence in older adults prescribed multiple medications.
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