...Collaborative Consumption: Is it a disruptive business model? Introduction Airbnb (www.airbnb.com) started in August 2008 as a booking service letting private, spare space around the world, a marketplace that connects people who need temporary living spaces, to people who have extra spaces. The extra spaces could be a spare bed, a room, an apartment or even a villa. In five years’ time they now have over 10 million nights booked, have over 300,000 listings worldwide, operate over 33,000 cities in 192 countries and have over 600 million Social connections. This idea is called by various terms as “collaborative consumption”, the “asset-light lifestyle”, the “collaborative economy”, “peer economy”, “access economy” or “sharing economy”. Like Airbnb, one can rent automobiles, kennels, rides, solar power, toys, books, art, fashion, movies, sugar and spices, food, storage, lending, bartering, education and even maids, friends and nannies ! Google, General Motors, Avis, BMW, Toyota, Barclays, Ford, Radiohead and many other big brands and organizations have all jumped into the ‘collaborative consumption’ bandwagon to supplement their business strategies Objective of study Understand and explore the reasons behind this consumer behavior. What made it possible now and not earlier? What are the regulatory and other challenges? Why are large organizations in mainstream business investing in this model? Is perceived as a threat or an opportunity? Is it an attractive industry...
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...What's the Buzz on Smart Grids? Case study 1. How smart grids differ from the current electricity infrastructure in the United States The current electricity infrastructure within the U.S. provides power to shoppers with the smart grid providing info of how shoppers use energy. This makes it exhausting to be able to develop varied methods and approaches to finding ways of optimally distributing power. This infrastructure conjointly doesn't effectively handle power that's generated from energy sources. On the opposite hand smart girds digitally deliver electricity from suppliers to shoppers in a vary means that enables back and forth communication between suppliers and shoppers thereby enhancing selections created on energy production and consumption. This helps in saving energy, reducing prices and pollution and increasing transparency and re-liableness since the smart grid system is able to apportion involuntary changes to the energy stations. This permitting induces the energy they have, enhancing higher energy distribution whereas preserving it at identical time (What's the Buzz on Smart Grids, 2010). 2. Management, organization and technology issues to be considered when developing a smart grid Such managerial controls need...
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...information on how the consumers are using the energy when the smart grids are. It uses digital technology to save energy, reduce costs, and increase reliability and transparency. Without the smart grids, the electricity infrastructure is outdated and inefficient. 2. What management, organization, and technology issues should be considered when developing a smart grid? When it comes to smart grids, being aware of the amount of energy you use in a household is important to remember. It would definitely help manage the amount of power used every month and allow consumers to make more intelligent decisions regarding it. The organization that should be considered is allowing the consumers to access information about their usage of energy consumption and production every month. This is where the technology comes into play. You shouldn’t want an outdated and inefficient infrastructure. Going digital, just like the smart grids are, would be good to do. Having fast technology that is reliable and quick enough for the consumers to use will build satisfaction in the business and help out a lot. 3. What challenge to the development of smart grids do you think is most likely to hamper their development? Installing smart grids are very expensive. We have economic problems we have in our country now, which will make consumers more skeptical about installing smart grids for their household. Not only that, but the smart grids are very high in technology and can be challenging for consumers...
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...Sciences Prague Faculty of Economics and Management Department of Economics Project of Econometric Modelling © 2013 CULS in Prague I. One equation model: The following econometric model would like to analyze the impacts of consumption, interest rate and unemployment rate on Gross Domestic Product of China based on the data extracted from National Bureau of Statistics of China.(1992-2011 National Data in 1992-2011 ). 1. Economic model and econometric model 2.1. Assumption * Gross Domestic Product (GDP) depends on the following variables: * Private Consumption * Government spending * Total wage of employees * General model: GDP = f (Private Consumption, Government spending, Total wage of employees) * Dependency between variables based on economic theory: * Increase of private consumption will cause increase in GDP. * Increase of Government spending will cause increase in GDP. * Increase of Total wage will cause increase in GDP. 2.2. Economic and econometrics model * Declaration of variables Variable | Symbol | Unit | Gross Domestic Product | y1 | 100 million yuan | Unit vector | x1 | | Private Consumption | x2 | 100 million yuan | Government spending | x3 | 100 million yuan | Total wage of employees | x4 | 100 million yuan | Stochastic variable | u1t | | * Economic model: y1 = γ1+ γ2 x2 + γ3 x3 + γ4 x4 . Insert stochastic variable-...
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...Valued Possessions vs. Insignificant Desires Anna Quindlen, a novelist, social critic, and journalist wrote an intriguing essay “Stuff is Not Salvation” about the addiction of Americans, who splurge on materialistic items that have no real meaning. The ability to obtain credit is one of the main reasons to blame for society’s consumption epidemic. However, Quindlen feels the economic decline due to credit card debt is insignificant compared to the underlying issues of American’s binging problems. Quindlen’s essay gives excellent points regarding the differences in America’s typical shopping habits. Additionally, she mentions how people acquire all this “stuff” but seem to never realize, “why did I get this?”(501). Quindlen makes her audience visualize a world where we acquire our needs versus our meaningless desires. Yet, she fails to mention people who could live a life of happiness through the possessions they acquire. In summary, Quindlen supports her point of view with examples of American spending habits in the past decades of depression compared to now. She mentions Black Friday and how people become enthralled by cheap bargains (Quindlen 500-501). In Quindlen’s essay, she refers to an accident in which a worker at Walmart was trampled to death by a mob of shoppers and despite the horrific incident people kept shopping (500). With the U.S. depression, Black Friday brings hopes of more money spent, therefore a rise in the markets. The dream of an uplifted economy became...
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...such as malls and shopping districts (Tyndall, 2009). This version of consumer-driven rules – culled from qualitative research and personal interviews – depicts a new notion of public-ness that is less egalitarian than ever before. It is a version of public space that is not entirely open to the public. Baker adds to this perspective by historicizing the commercialization of public space, dating the use widespread use of public space for advertising purposes to before the dawn of the 20th century (Baker, 2007). This argument inextricably links the notion of “culture” with “consumerism”, and sets the stage for the potential for access to public spaces to be consumed, or purchased. Finally, Klingle underscores this spatial history of consumption, placing the transaction of consumer power contexts as diverse as Thoreau’s Walden to the challenges environmentalists face in today’s high-powered, consumer-driven society (Klingle, 2003). Problem Statement However, a systematic and historical chronology of public spaces that conveys power relations borne out of consumerism has yet to be fully developed....
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...Is Consumerism Killing Our Creativity? by Jocelyn K. Glei Have you ever fallen into a black hole of comparison shopping? You’re looking for a new digital camera, for instance. You head over to Cnet.com and read some reviews of various cameras, watch the video demos, identify the model you want. Then perhaps you employ Google’s shopping search to price out the options and find the best deal. All of the sudden, it’s four hours later. You’ve found the perfect camera, but your purchasing triumph is tainted by a creeping feeling of, well, disgust. Couldn’t that time have been used better?I was thinking recently about what my biggest distractions were – the things keeping me from pushing my creative projects forward. As I scanned through my daily activities, I found that the most insidious distraction was, in fact, things. More specifically, the wanting, hunting, and getting of things – whether they be tangible (a new computer) or intangible (information). As Annie Leonard says in The Story of Stuff, “Our primary identity has become that of being consumers – not mothers, teachers, or farmers, but of consumers. We shop and shop and shop.” We love our stuff. Yet more than the stuff itself, we love the act of finding it – the search, the anticipation. But why is consumerism – and particularly, an online hunt for the ideal purchase – so addictive? It turns out that our consumerist impulse stimulates the same part of the brain that fires when we’re on the trail of a great...
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...This report discusses macroeconomic factors that impact both the automotive and health-care industries. Interest rates, consumer price index (CPI), consumer confidence, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), wage rates, and inventory levels impact the macroeconomic environment to influence these industries in the short run. Consumption as a percentage of the GDP depicted in table 1 indicates a continuous declined in consumer spending from 2005 through 2010 and suggests that consumers are becoming more conservative with disposable income spent on elective health-care products and procedures as-well-as new vehicle purchases. As the nominal interest rates indicate in table 2, the FED attempted to encourage consumer spending by decreasing the interest rates to encourage expansionistic economic activity, which would also be a positive influencing factor for both the health-care and automotive industries. The automobile industry is volatile by nature and heavily influence by macroeconomic factors, while the health-care industry enjoys an inelastic environment. Macroeconomic factors influence the health-care industry, it is unlikely essential health-care demand will decrease in the short term; however, elective health-care products and services will likely suffer as will new vehicle purchases as consumers remain conservative. The future is not as bleak as one might anticipate. The automotive industry is traditionally volatile and dependent upon the macroeconomic environment and currently producing...
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...moving all the terms with national income (Y) to the LHS, we have Y[ 1 - c(1-t) + m ] = c0 + I + G + X Denoting the RHS (the sum of the autonomous components) with the symbol A, we have Y = 1 / [1 - c (1-t) + m]* A which gives us the equilibrium level of national income, but can also be expressed as changes: ΔY = 1 / [1 - c (1-t) + m]* ΔA The expression { 1 / [1 - c (1-t) + m] } is the multiplier (K). Dividing both sides of the above equation by ΔA ECON 1002 Feb 2013 We have ΔY / ΔA = 1 / [1 - c (1-t) + m] which gives us our first formula for K. What about the second formula? What is z? It is the marginal propensity to spend out of national income, which include the propensity to consume and the propensity to import. As we saw above, consumption spending comes out of disposable income, and therefore, the propensity to consume out of national income is c(1-t). We also assumed that imports represent a leakage from the circular flow, therefore, – m represents the propensity to import. We therefore have z = [c(1-t) – m] Notice that the minus sign in front of z in the multiplier formula will change the sign of its two terms and gives us the exact expression of K we derived above. What is obvious from the multiplier? From this expression we derived for K, we see that when c increases, the multiplier will increase, and when t and m...
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...find more-than-adequate demand. M&A could inject some headline risk, and VW is still a wildcard that could cause a bout of spread weakness. We would see such volatility as presenting an opportunity, however, given the solid underpinnings of the Auto Sector storage. The positive side of the sector's story is its still strong credit quality even if the group did see some modest deterioration on that from increased M&A and pockets of end-market weakness. They're not bulletproof, however, and there are still a number of sources of potentially negative headline risk that we expect to be at play out in the coming year. Additionally, even if the economy does perform to consensus. we expect the expansion will be reliant upon the US domestic consumption story and it will be heavier going in the global arena in which the manufacturing conglomerates compete, particularly as regards to economic performance in emerging market countries (most notably China). That, along with the comparatively tight level of prevailing spreads, limits the possibility for outperformance and constrains us from taking a more constructive...
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...and low mortgage and interest rates. It is also necessary to include that the housing boom was only made possible by their allied industries such as plumbing, cement and electricity as without these products being readily available the houses could not have been built. As the housing industry boomed it made other industries more successful in trade as the consumption of electricity doubled in the 1930’s and by 1938 there were 9 million wireless sets in private homes and the demand for luxuries such as radios and cars also grew. This benefited the other industries and the working class as more jobs were readily available for them to earn a living and provide for their families. It is clear to see that the housing boom could be seen as being responsible for Britain’s economic recovery in the 1930’s as it gave jobs to the working class which increased consumerism as more and more people had money to buy consumer goods which helped the cycle of prosperity to continue on and helped the economy recover. Another contributing factor to the economic recovery of Britain was consumer spending. A.J.P Taylor stated that “increased consumption by individuals pulled England out of the slump”, meaning that Britain came out of the Depression by spending money and stimulating their own economy – creating a ‘consumer-led’ recovery. The lowered prices – caused by the Depression itself – allowed those...
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...Consumerism Term 3, Lecture 1 Now, consumerism is more widespread than before. Before- What you produce determines who you are and how people look at you Now- Consumption= what is consumed, when it is consumed and how much, determines who you are and how people look at you 2. The roots of consumerism Began towards the end of the 18th century Sugar, tea, coffee- consumerist products With these consumerist products, came the associated pieces (cups, coffee cups, saucers, coffee shops) Consumerism= caused by increased prosperity. As people earn more, they consume more. Social, political and economic revolutions changed people- from this comes consumerism Consumerism becomes feminized- focuses on what goes on in the homes. Which is a woman’s job After consumerism (18th century), women are seen as more beautiful. Before, men were seen more beautiful. Thus women buy more to make themselves more beautiful. Men started to go shopping, as a fun activity. This was not the case before consumerism came along. 3. The growth on consumerism Uneven geographically- consumerism more in urban areas than rural areas a) changes in retailing(shops) changes in retailing boosts consumerism = department stores advertisement boosts consumerism = first in America Peasant societies don’t produce consumerism Changes in media boosts consumerism= radio Kleptomania= compulsion to steal...
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...Team members must hold at least three meetings to discuss the joint project, and you are required to record collective activities and individual activities as detailed as possible in your logbook. For individual activities, they must be endorsed by the other member. No free-riding for the group project is allowed. I reserve the right to read your logbook to identify each member’s contribution to the group work. After reading this article “How does the stock market affect the economy?” it is obvious that the main topic of this article is about the stock market and how it affects companies and households. There are two main ideas of the article which I will summarize in this paragraph. Stock price declines, especially those induced by profit warnings, increase shareholder pressure on managers to cut costs by laying off workers and scaling back investment. Second, a large stock price decline reduces the value of unexercised stock options, which falls as the gap narrows between a company’s stock price and the price at which workers can buy stock under an option. Third, the factors dragging down stock prices, such as a weaker or more uncertain profit outlook, may spur investors to demand higher risk premiums, which boosts the cost of financing business investment. A fourth way lower stock prices affect firms is that they will have less incentives to invest in new capital if there is a fall in the ratio (q) of the cost of buying existing capital to that of buying new capital. Lower...
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...Americans spent an average of $407.02 from the Thursday through Sunday that bookends Black Friday, as stated by the National Retail Federation. This topsy-turvy day recognized by a vast majority of American culture has been seen by many as the yearly peak of the country’s ever-increasing trend towards consumerism. Consumerism, the belief that goods give meaning to individuals and their roles in society, has presented itself to Americans in both a positive and negative spirit. On the one hand, consumer spending drives the economy, gives consumers a vast myriad of retailers to choose from, and renders shopping as a social experience. On the other hand, consumerism can render all aspects of life as merely a commodity, encourages excess consumption, and distorts our personal values. In this paper, I will explore these details in greater depth. After that point, I will assess said details and form my own opinion on whether consumerism as a whole is healthy or unhealthy for the average American shopper. Finally, I will...
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...Note: 1. P3(a): Calculate and compare the profit under each flight. 2. P3(b) is asking: Should Airway Express continue providing the flight between Los Angeles and New York? Even if Airway Express decides not to fly, it still has to pay the fixed costs of $3,000 per day. The evening flight with the return flight the next afternoon is counted as 1 day, not 2 days. 3. P11: You do not need to draw the chart. Salvatore Chapter 9: a. Problems: 7, 11, and spreadsheet problem 1. Note: 1. P7: The tariff-inclusive price will be $3(1+.33) = $4. What are the impacts of tariff on domestic consumption, domestic production, imports, and government’s tariff revenue? Show the numbers; for example, at figure 9-4, if you draw a line starting at Px=$4 and parallel to the X axis, it will cross the demand curve, Dx, at 500X. Therefore, you know that the domestic consumption will decrease from 600X to 500X. 2. P11: The goal of publishers is to maximize profit. 3. Revised spreadsheet problem 1: Just answer 1(a) and 1(d). For 1(d), change “For (a) to (c)” to “For (a) only.” Froeb et al. Chapter 9: a. Individual problems: 9-2 and 9-4. Note: P9-2: Think about substitutes and complements. For example, marijuana and snack foods are strong complements (or so we are told). Froeb et al. Chapter 11: a. Individual problems: 11-4 and 11-5. Note: 1. P11-4: Use the carry trade to predict the impact of lower U.S. interest rates on Euro/$. 2. P11-5:...
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