Evidence from past research and insights from an exploratory investigation are combined in a conceptual model that defines and relates price, perceived quality, and perceived value. Propositions ab...

/pdf/consumer-perceptions-of-price-quality-and-value-a-means-end-1qnld18h7w.pdf

Consumer Perceptions of Price, Quality, and Value: A Means-End Model and Synthesis of Evidence:

This study explores the relationships between selected marketing mix elements and the creation of brand equity. The authors propose a conceptual framework in which marketing elements are related to the dimensions of brand equity, that is, perceived quality, brand loyalty, and brand associations combined with brand awareness. These dimensions are then related to brand equity. The empirical tests using a structural equation model support the research hypotheses. The results show that frequent price promotions, such as price deals, are related to low brand equity, whereas high advertising spending, high price, good store image, and high distribution intensity are related to high brand equity.

An examination of selected marketing mix elements and brand equity

Energy efficiency and consumption — the rebound effect — a survey

Health-relevant communications can be framed in terms of the benefits (gains) or costs (losses) associated with a particular behavior, and the framing of such persuasive messages influences health decision making. Although to ask people to consider a health issue in terms of associated costs is considered an effective way to motivate behavior, empirical findings are inconsistent. In evaluating the effectiveness of framed health messages, investigators must appreciate the context in which health-related decisions are made. The influence of framed information on decision making is contingent on people, first, internalizing the advocated frame and, then, on the degree to which performing a health behavior is perceived as risky. The relative effectiveness of gain-framed or loss-framed appeals depends, in part, on whether a behavior serves an illness-detecting or a health-affirming function. Finally, the authors discuss the cognitive and affective processes that may mediate the influence of framed information on judgment and behavior.

Shaping Perceptions to Motivate Healthy Behavior: The Role of Message Framing

Recent research in information economics has focused on signals as mechanisms to solve problems that arise under asymmetric information. A firm or individual credibly communicates the level of some unobservable element in a transaction by providing an observable signal. When applied to conveying product quality information, this issue is of particular interest to the discipline of marketing. In this article, the authors focus on the ways a firm may signal the unobservable quality of its products through several marketing-mix variables. The authors develop a typology that classifies signals and discuss the available empirical evidence on the signaling properties of several marketing variables. They consider managerial implications of signaling and outline an agenda for future empirical research.

No Pain, No Gain: A Critical Review of the Literature on Signaling Unobservable Product Quality:

Public effort in support of higher education – measured as state funding per thousand dollars of personal income – has declined by thirty percent since the late 1970s. During this time period many states implemented Tax and Expenditure Limits and/or supermajority requirements for tax increases. We use a forty-eight state panel from 1961 to 2001 to evaluate the effect of these tax revolt institutions for state effort on behalf of higher education. These provisions have a statistically significant and economically large impact on the timing and magnitude of this decline in state effort. An understanding of the fiscal environment caused by these provisions is critical for the future of state-supported higher education.

State Higher Education Spending and the Tax Revolt

Economic literature contains several sometimes contradictory hypotheses concerning the relationships among quality, price, and advertising. We investigate the impact of published quality ratings on these relationships and find that quality and advertising are much more likely to be positively related in the presence of quality ratings.

Quality, Price, Advertising, and Published Quality Ratings

Government subsidization of public higher education primarily is a function of the states. Even today, with budgets emerging from crisis, the states provide over four dollars of support for higher education expenses for every dollar of federal subsidy. Yet public effort in support of higher education--measured as state funding per $1,000 of personal income--has been in decline for the last quarter century. The magnitude of this decline has been quite significant. Aggregate state effort has fallen by 30% since the late 1970s. In this article, we evaluate the connection between state higher education effort and the tax revolt that began in the 1970s. The tax revolt gave birth to a set of laws and constitutional provisions that have dramatically changed taxing and spending policies in many states. The tax revolt is based on the notion that government is too large, and that the appropriate strategy is to "starve the beast." The most prominent legal change resulting from the tax revolt is the Tax and Expenditure Limitation (TEL), which limits the growth of state revenue or expenditures to some outside indicator, most commonly the growth of state personal income. Starting in the late 1970s, 23 states adopted a TEL. In addition, though this happened more slowly and less often, states added supermajority requirements (SMRs), typically two-thirds, for the legislature to approve tax increases. Thirteen states have an SMR. We use a 41-year panel of state data from 1961 to 2001 to investigate the importance of these tax revolt institutions for state effort on higher education. Both TELs and SMRs prove to be very robust predictors of the time series and cross-sectional variation in state funding effort. Together with rising costs, this retreat of public effort is a major component of the financial difficulties faced by state-supported colleges and universities. One measure of the consequences of this financial crisis at public institutions is the ratio of spending per full-time student at public institutions relative to private institutions. In 1980, public institutions spent 70 cents for every $1 spent at private colleges and universities. By the late 1990s that figure had fallen to 55 cents (see Kane, Orszag, & Gunter, 2003). Understanding the causes of this retreat is crucial if there is any chance of reversing it. Changing the political climate is never easy, but our results suggest that the task ahead is even more difficult. All of the SMRs and a majority of the TELs are amendments to state constitutions. They are firmly in place. The questions that motivate our article arise at three distinct levels of generality. At the highest level, the issue is whether institutions actually affect policy outcomes. At the next, more specific level, the question is whether the particular institutions spawned by the tax revolt affect policy. There is an extensive literature, both theoretical and empirical, on these two questions. Our contribution comes from extending the discussion to the third and most specific question: Have the tax revolt institutions had a meaningful effect on higher education effort in particular? In this introduction, we briefly review the literature on the highest-level question. We discuss the more specific implications of the tax revolt institutions in separate sections of the paper. That political institutions should matter for policy outcomes is not self-evident. In much of the political economy literature as it has evolved since the work of Anthony Downs (1957), policy outcomes are driven by the preferences of the median voter. This is true if politicians know voter preferences and can align their proposals accordingly. In this case, there is little scope for the institutional structure of decision making to exert an independent effect on policy outcomes. Institutions become important again whenever any of the assumptions of the Downsian paradigm are removed. In particular, political parties may care about policy as well as winning elections. …

/pdf/state-higher-education-spending-and-the-tax-revolt-1qr6sonxkb.pdf

(2008). Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 79, No. 3, pp. 268-295.

/pdf/explaining-increases-in-higher-education-costs-vyuuvycm22.pdf

Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs

Part 1 - Introduction Chapter 1: The Landscape of the College Cost Debate Chapter 2: Is Higher Education All That Unusual? Part 2 - Costs Chapter 3: Higher Education is a Service Chapter 4: The Costs of Employing Highly Educated Workers Chapter 5: Cost and Quality in Higher Education Chapter 6: The Bottom Line: Why Does College Cost So Much? Chapter 7: Is Higher Education Increasingly Dysfunctional? Chapter 8: Productivity Growth in Higher Education Part 3 - Tuition and Fees Chapter 9: Subsidies and Tuition Setting Chapter 10: List-Price Tuition and Institutional Grants Chapter 11: Outside Financial Aid Chapter 12: The College Affordability Crisis Part 4 - Policy Chapter 13: Federal Policy and College Tuition Chapter 14: Financial Aid Policy Chapter 15: Rewriting the Relationship between States and Their Public Universities Chapter 16: A Few Final Observations Appendix 1: Data on Costs and Prices Appendix 2: Granger Causality Tests of the Bennett Hypothesis

/pdf/why-does-college-cost-so-much-12m99f47vx.pdf

Robert B. Archibald

Papers

State Higher Education Spending and the Tax Revolt

Quality, Price, Advertising, and Published Quality Ratings

State Higher Education Spending and the Tax Revolt

Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs

Why Does College Cost So Much