The impact of price changes on volume sales of alcoholic beverages in Sweden, 2006-2013

We evaluate whether price elasticities on registered alcohol have changed in the last ten years in Sweden, in particular with regard to the investigation by Asplund et al (2007). We also investigate the fiscal effects of such changes. According to our estimates, price elasticities have increased, and these increases may have substantial effects on estimated changes in tax revenues when commodity tax rates are changed. In particular, commodity tax rates on spirits may have reached “Laffer territory” where tax increases may actually lower tax revenues.

Defining the links between retail price strategies and price tactics

Retailers tend to become trapped in a price-promotion war where price issues are dealt with on a short-term basis, indicating almost solely tactical choices. Since price is the only part of the marketing mix providing direct revenues to the organisation, it should also be of strategic importance for the retailer. Not only in practice are price tactics often separated from pricing strategies, it is also the case in research where these are often studied in isolation from each other probably due to their individual complexity. This paper contributes to both the research area and practice by discussing these two complex areas together, and the essence of both strategy and tactics are defined. By considering the planning horizon for the retailer this paper further contributes by defining the links between price strategy and price tactic. The conclusion shows the importance of clearly establishing which analytical level is being analysed.

Assumptions of retail price strategy and price tactic decisions

This licentiate thesis sets out to analyse how a retail price decision frame can be understood. It is argued that it is possible to view price determination within retailing by determining the level of rationality and using behavioural theories. In this way, it is possible to use assumptions derived from economics and marketing to establish a decision frame. By taking a management perspective, it is possible to take into consideration how it is assumed that the retailer should strategically manage price decisions, which decisions might be assumed to be price decisions, and which decisions can be assumed to be under the control of the retailer. Theoretically, this licentiate thesis has its foundations in different assumptions about decision frames regarding the level of information collected, the goal of the decisions, and the outcomes of the decisions. Since the concepts that are to be analysed within this thesis are price decisions, the latter part of the theory discusses price decision in specific: sequential price decisions, at the point of the decision, and trade-offs when making a decision. Here, it is evident that a conceptual decision frame that is intended to illustrate price decisions includes several aspects: several decision alternatives and what assumptions of rationality that can be made in relation to the decision frame. A semi-structured literature review was conducted. As a result, it became apparent that two important things in the decision frame were unclear: time assumptions regarding the decisions and the amount of information that is assumed in relation to the different decision alternatives. By using the same articles that were used to adjust the decision frame, a topical study was made in order to determine the time specific assumptions, as well as the analytical level based on the assumed information necessary for individual decision alternatives. This, together with an experimental study, was necessary to be able to discuss the consequences of the rationality assumption. When the retail literature is analysed for the level of rationality and consequences of assuming certain assumptions of rationality, three main things becomes apparent. First, the level of rationality or the assumptions of rationality are seldom made or accounted for in the literature. In fact, there are indications that perfect and bounded rationality assumptions are used simultaneously within studies. Second, although bounded rationality is a recognised theoretical perspective, very few articles seem to use these assumptions. Third, since the outcome of a price decision seems to provide no incremental sale, it is questionable which assumptions of rationality that should be used. It might even be the case that no assumptions of rationality at all should be used. In a broader perspective, the findings from this licentiate thesis show that the assumptions of rationality within retail research is unclear. There is an imbalance between the perspectives used, where the main assumptions seem to be concentrated to perfect rationality. However, it is suggested that by clarifying which assumptions of rationality that is used and using bounded rationality assumptions within research would result in a clearer picture of the multifaceted price decisions that could be assumed within retailing. The theoretical contribution of this thesis mainly surround the identification of how the level of rationality provides limiting assumptions within retail research. Furthermore, since indications show that learning might not occur within this specific context it is questioned whether the basic learning assumption within bounded rationality should be used in this context.

Semantic and Personalised Service Discovery

One of the most pervasive classes of services needed to support e-Science applications are those responsible for the discovery of resources. We have developed a solution to the problem of service discovery in a Semantic Web/Grid setting. We do this in the context of bioinformatics, which is the use of computational and mathematical techniques to store, manage, and analyse the data from molecular biology in order to answer questions about biological phenomena. Our specific application is myGrid (www.mygrid.org.uk) that is developing open source, service-based middleware upon which bioinformatics applications can be built. myGrid is specifically targeted at developing open source high-level service Grid middleware for bioinformatics.

Semantic and Personalised Service Discovery

One of the most pervasive classes of services needed to support e-Science applications are those responsible for the discovery of resources. We have developed a solution to the problem of service discovery in a Semantic Web/Grid setting. We do this in the context of bioinformatics, which is the use of computational and mathematical techniques to store, manage, and analyse the data from molecular biology in order to answer questions about biological phenomena. Our specific application is myGrid (http: //www.mygrid.org.uk) that is developing open source, service-based middleware upon which bioin- formatics applications can be built. myGrid is specif- ically targeted at developing open source high-level service Grid middleware for bioinformatics.

Personalised Grid Service Discovery

The authors take a broad view that ultimately Grid- or Web-services must be located via personalised, semantic-rich discovery processes. They argue that such processes must rely on the storage of arbitrary metadata about services that originates from both service providers and service users. Examples of such metadata are reliability metrics, quality of service data, or semantic service description markup. This paper presents UDDI-MT, an extension to the standard UDDI service directory approach that supports the storage of such metadata via a tunnelling technique that ties the metadata store to the original UDDI directory. They also discuss the use of a rich, graph-based RDF query language for syntactic queries on this data. Finally, they analyse the performance of each of these contributions in our implementation.

Personalised Grid Service Discovery

We take a broad view that ultimately Grid- or Web-services must be located via personalised, semantic-rich discovery processes. We argue that such processes must rely on the storage of arbitrary metadata about services that originates from both service providers and service users. Examples of such metadata are reliability metrics, quality of service data, or semantic service description markup. This paper presents UDDI-MT, an extension to the standard UDDI service directory approach that supports the storage of such metadata via a tunnelling technique that ties the metadata store to the original UDDI directory. We also discuss the use of a rich, graph-based RDF query language for syntactic queries on this data. Finally, we analyse the performance of each of these contributions in our implementation.

Towards a Protocol for the Attachment of Metadata to Service Descriptions and its Use in Semantic Discovery

Service discovery in large scale, open distributed systems is difficult because of the need to filter out services suitable to the task at hand from a potentially huge pool of possibilities. Semantic descriptions have been advocated as the key to expressive service discovery, but the most commonly used service descriptions and registry protocols do not support such descriptions in a general manner. In this paper, we present a protocol, its implementation and an API for registering semantic service descriptions and other task/user-specific metadata, and for discovering services according to these. Our approach is based on a mechanism for attaching structured and unstructured metadata, which we show to be applicable to multiple registry technologies. The result is an extremely flexible service registry that can be the basis of a sophisticated semantically-enhanced service discovery engine, an essential component of a Semantic Grid.

Agents and the Grid: Service Discovery

The Grid is a large-scale computer system that is capable of coordinating resources that are not subject to centralised control, whilst using standard, open, general-purpose protocols and interfaces, and delivering non-trivial qualities of service. In this chapter, we argue that Grid applications very strongly suggest the use of agent-based computing, and we review key uses of agent technologies in Grids: user agents, able to customize and personalise data; agent communication languages offering a generic and portable communication medium; and negotiation allowing multiple distributed entities to reach service level agreements. In the second part of the chapter, we focus on Grid service discovery, which we have identified as a prime candidate for use of agent technologies: we show that Grid-services need to be located via personalised, semantic-rich discovery processes, which must rely on the storage of arbitrary metadata about services that originates from both service providers and service users. We present UDDI-MT, an extension to the standard UDDI service directory approach that supports the storage of such metadata via a tunnelling technique that ties the metadata store to the original UDDI directory. The outcome is a flexible service registry which is compatible with existing standards and also provides metadata-enhanced service discovery.

Principles of Personalisation of Service Discovery

We define personalisation as the set of capabilities that enables a user or an organisation to customise their working environment to suit their specific needs, preferences and circumstances. In the context of service discovery on the Grid, the demand for personalisation comes from individual users, who want their preferences to be taken into account during the search and selection of suitable services. These preferences can express, for example, the reliability of a service, quality of results, functionality, and so on. In this paper, we identify the problems related to personalising service discovery and present our solution: a personalised service registry or View. We describe scenarios in which personsalised service discovery would be useful and describe how our technology achieves them.

Recycling workflows and services through discovery and reuse

Scientific workflows are becoming a valuable tool for scientists to capture and automate e-Science procedures. Their success brings the opportunity to publish, share, reuse and repurpose this explicitly captured knowledge. Within the myGrid project, we have identified key resources that can be shared including complete workflows, fragments of workflows and constituent services. We have examined the alternative ways these can be described by their authors (and subsequent users), and developed a unified descriptive model to support their later discovery. By basing this model on existing standards, we have been able to extend existing Web Service and Semantic Web Service infrastructure whilst still supporting the specific needs of the e-Scientist. myGrid components enable a workflow life-cycle that extends beyond execution, to include discovery of previous relevant designs, reuse of those designs, and subsequent publication. Experience with example groups of scientists indicates that this cycle is valuable. The growing number of workflows and services mean more work is needed to support the user in effective ranking of search results, and to support the repurposing process.