Purpose – The importance of packaging design and the role of packaging as a vehicle for consumer communication and branding are necessarily growing. To achieve communication goals effectively, knowledge about consumer psychology is important so that manufacturers understand consumer response to their packages. this paper aims to investigate this issue.Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines these issues using a conjoint study among consumers for packaged food products in Thailand, which is a very competitive packaged food products market.Findings – The conjoint results indicate that perceptions about packaging technology (portraying convenience) play the most important role overall in consumer likelihood to buy.Research limitations/implications – There is strong segmentation in which packaging elements consumers consider most important. Some consumers are mostly oriented toward the visual aesthetics, while a small segment focuses on product detail on the label.Originality/value – Segmentation var...

The importance of packaging attributes: a conjoint analysis approach

G-Cubed is a multi-country, multi-sector, intertemporal general equilibrium model that has been used to study a variety of policies in the areas of environmental regulation, tax reform, monetary and fiscal policy, and international trade. It is designed to bridge the gaps between three areas of research – econometric general equilibrium modeling, international trade theory, and modern macroeconomics – by incorporating the best features of each. This chapter describes the theoretical and empirical structure of the model, summarizes its applications and contributions to the literature, and discusses two example applications in detail.

A global approach to energy and the environment: The G-cubed model

Until the Uruguay Round, agricultural trade policies were subject to few multilateral disciplines. In this situation, the interplay of special-interest lobbying pressures resulted in this sector becoming heavily distorted. One of the great achievements of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations was to bring agricultural policies under much greater discipline. The Agreement on Agriculture has altered the climate of farm policy making in both advanced and developing countries. Even though Uruguay Round commitments themselves will not result in large cuts in farm protection, attitudes have been irreversibly changed and the foundation has been laid for further reforms, including during the next WTO Round. Having said that, it needs to be recognised that little reduction in actual agricultural protection rates will have occurred by the end of this decade, when barriers to trade in agricultural products will still be several times higher than barriers to trade in manufactures. Hence much remains to be done before agricultural trade is as liberal as world trade in manufactures. But agriculture is distorted by more than agricultural policies. In developing countries especially, farming is discouraged not only by farm protection policies in high-income countries but also by those countries' own manufacturing policies and distortions to services markets. Farm lobby groups in developing countries therefore have an interest not only in the agricultural negotiations of the next WTO round, but also the non-agricultural ones. The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which multilateral liberalization of not only farm but also non-farm policies would affect the markets for farm products. This paper considers the patterns of production, consumption, trade and protection, as well as other structural features of the global economy that are likely to influence the welfare impacts of liberalizing agricultural and non-agricultural trade. It projects the global economy to 2005, when the Uruguay Round (UR) implementation will be complete, and assesses the potential impact of further cuts from that post-UR base. This is done using a modified version of the GTAP model of global trade, assuming 40% cuts in protection in agriculture, mining and manufacturing, and services. We find that agricultural liberalization in the wake of the Uruguay Round could still yield substantial benefits for the global economy in 2005. The total gains amount to about $70 billion from 40% cuts in both market price support and domestic producer subsidies. These gains shrink to $60 billion if domestic subsidies are left unaltered. Overall, these welfare improvements are comparable to the gains that could be obtained from similar cuts in manufacturing tariffs. This is so despite agriculture's much smaller size in the global economy, and reflects the much higher rates of protection for agriculture. However, the distributions of the gains from sectoral protection cuts are quite different. In the case of manufacturing tariffs, the developing countries make the biggest cuts in protection (because their initial tariffs are higher), but they also enjoy the lion?s share of the welfare gains. In the case of agricultural liberalization, the rates of protection are highest in the industrialized economies and they are the ones to capture the majority of the absolute gains from liberalization of food markets. However, when measured relative to initial income, developing countries are among the biggest winners from cuts in agricultural protection. We also examine the interaction between non-agricultural reforms and agricultural trade balances, by region. Overall, reductions in agricultural protection have the strongest impact on the regional food trade balances. However, for some regions, most notably Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia, non-agricultural reforms dominate and reverse the sign of the change in the food trade balance following liberalization. In particular, China's manufacturing tariff cuts are equally as important as agricultural liberalization in determining the change 0in China's food trade balance. Both sets of multilateral reforms lead to a substantial decline in China's aggregate food trade balance and, when combined, the total decline is approximately $6 billion in 2005. All of the estimates in this study are subject to revision as improved estimates of protection become available. Agricultural protection in non-OECD countries is very poorly documented at present. With regard to the OECD countries, more work is needed on the appropriate representation of "decoupled" policies in this type of quantitative framework, and explicit modeling of tariff rate quotas will be an important item for future analysis, since the distribution of the associated rents will become increasing important. Also, while we have reported on some innovative work aimed at coming to grips with services protection, much more research along these lines will be needed in order to understand the implications of services liberalization.

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Agriculture and Non-agricultural Liberalization in the Millennium Round

Empirical results using time-series and cross-sectional data indicate that rice in Asia is becoming an inferior good. Income elasticities declined and in some cases became negative between 1961 and 1985 in most of the fourteen Asian countries studied. Accordingly, domestic demand for rice in these countries is not likely to grow as rapidly as it has in the past. As a consequence, there is a potential for excess supplies of rice to develop in Asia, putting downward pressure on rice prices. While governments in Asian countries may need to adjust their rice policies in the future, world rice suppliers may need to develop new markets for rice.

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Rice in Asia: Is It Becoming an Inferior Good?

https://www.gtap.agecon.purdue.edu/resources/download/2873.pdf

Projecting world food demand using alternative demand systems

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 80(December):1052-1062.

This study assesses the interaction between climate change and agricultural trade policies.
We distinguish between two dimensions of agricultural trade policy: market insulation and
subsidy levels. Building on the previous work of Tsigas, Frisvold and Kuhn (1997) we find that,
in the presence of current levels of agricultural subsidies, increased price transmission --as called for under the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture-- reduces global welfare in the wake of climate change. This is due to the positive correlation between productivity changes and current levels of agricultural support. Increases in subsidized output under climate change tend to
exacerbate inefficiencies in the global agricultural economy in the absence of market insulation.
However, once agricultural subsidies have also been eliminated, price transmission via the global
trading system contributes positively to economic adaptation under climate change.

products. This may partially explain the relatively slow growth of world grain import demand in recent years. In addition, bilateral agreements with East Asia, NAFTA, and the evolution of the CAP, have all had important impacts on the structure of world food and agricultural trade.
The objective of this paper is to assess the relative role of each of the major forces--
consumer demand, factor accumulation, transport costs, and policy change--in driving changes in
the composition of world food trade in 1980-1995. To do so, we employ a modified version of the
Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model of world trade which permits us to isolate the
contribution of each of these related factors to the changing composition of world food trade in a
general equilibrium context.
We evaluate the relative role of each of these factors by simulating the model backwards in
time, from 1995 to 1980 under different assumptions. This general approach, termed “backcasting”
(i.e. backwards forecasting), takes as exogenous the basic drivers of change and attempts to explain the resulting change in food trade composition. The model-produced changes in the composition of agricultural and food trade are compared with historical trade data, to determine the relative importance of each factor on the changing composition of food trade. Given limited space, our focus will be on explaining the changes in the global composition of food and agriculture trade. A natural follow-on effort would target specific markets in more detail.
This type of backcasting approach was first employed by Gehlhar (1997) who sought to
explain the shift in exports of primary commodities to manufactures in East Asia in the 1980's. He calibrated the GTAP model to 1992 data, then implemented shocks to factor endowments and economywide total factor productivity (TFP) in order to force each economy back to its 1982 levels of population, land, labor, human capital, physical capital and technology. By comparing actual and
predicted changes in export shares in this period, he found human capital accumulation played a key role in explaining the change in the aggregate composition of East Asian exports. Gehlhar, Hertel and Martin (1994) built on this work in an effort to predict future changes in the pattern of agricultural trade from 1992-2002. They also emphasized the importance of supply-side determinants of agricultural trade.
In this paper, we go beyond this earlier work in a number of ways. First, we focus on the
composition of agricultural exports, rather than simply looking at the share of agriculture in total trade. Secondly, we incorporate the Cranfield et al. estimates of Rimmer and Powell’s recently developed, implicitly directly additive demand system (nicknamed AIDADS) into the GTAP model.
This permits us to better capture the impact of demand-side changes on the pattern of global tr

/pdf/understanding-the-determinants-of-structural-change-in-world-uuktoge1o5.pdf

Understanding the Determinants of Structural Change in World Food Markets

Demographic changes in the Asia-Pacific region - expanded urban concentration, variability in population growth within the region, and an aging population base - will drive significant food system change. Costs associated with urban congestion will test the capacity of the region's food system to deliver a continuous flow of safe, reasonably priced, fresh and processed foods. Pressure to better connect urban areas to rural hinterlands and for trade liberalization will intensify to meet food needs of these growing urban areas. Differential rates of population growth and population aging among economies will affect the quantity and composition of foods demanded, hence private sector strategies and public policies.

Where Will Demographics Take the Asia-Pacific Food System

This study investigates the impact of the recent Asian financial crisis on global economic adjustment and its implication for US agriculture using a multi-country, multi-sector dynamic intertemporal general equilibrium model with endogenously modelled financial markets The simulation results show that the crisis in Asia reduces not only US exports but also interest rates and the cost of intermediate inputs of production, stimulating US domestic economic activity in interest-sensitive sectors, and driving up demand for agriculture products However, this stimulus of domestic demand may or may not offset the negative impact of declining exports JEL Classification Numbers: D58, F17, F30

/pdf/the-asian-financial-crisis-and-global-adjustments-4bhe10m43e.pdf

William T. Coyle

Papers

Understanding the Determinants of Structural Change in World Food Markets

Where Will Demographics Take the Asia-Pacific Food System

The asian financial crisis and global adjustments: implications for us agriculture

The 1984 U.S.-Japan Beef and Citrus Understanding: An Evaluation

Japan's Rice Policy