The cyclical relations between traded property stock prices and aggregate time-series

This paper examines the cyclical regularities of macroeconomic, financial and property market aggregates in relation to the property stock price cycle in the UK. The Hodrick Prescott filter is employed to fit a long-term trend to the raw data, and to derive the short-term cycles of each series. It is found that the cycles of consumer expenditure, total consumption per capita, the dividend yield and the long-term bond yield are moderately correlated, and mainly coincident, with the property price cycle. There is also evidence that the nominal and real Treasury Bill rates and the interest rate spread lead this cycle by one or two quarters, and therefore that these series can be considered leading indicators of property stock prices. This study recommends that macroeconomic and financial variables can provide useful information to explain and potentially to forecast movements of property-backed stock returns in the UK.

Monopolistic product line competition with ex post consumer heterogeneity

We model monopolistic competition in product lines, assuming that consumer heterogeneity is the result rather than the cause of product variety. Our results contradict some well-known policy implications yielded by the standard monopolistic competition framework.

The consumer acceptance of novel vegetable-enriched bread products as a potential vehicle to increase vegetable consumption

Currently UK fruit and vegetable intakes are below recommendations. Bread is a staple food consumed by ~95% of adults in western countries. In addition, bread provides an ideal matrix by which functionality can be delivered to the consumer in an accepted food. Therefore, enriching bread with vegetables may be an effective strategy to increase vegetable consumption. This study evaluated consumer acceptance, purchase intent and intention of product replacement of bread enriched with red beetroot, carrot with coriander, red pepper with tomato or white beetroot (80g vegetable per serving of 200g) compared to white control bread (0g vegetable). Consumers (n=120) rated their liking of the breads overall, as well as their liking of appearance, flavour and texture using nine-point hedonic scales. Product replacement and purchase intent of the breads was rated using five-point scales. The effect of providing consumers with health information about the breads was also evaluated. There were significant differences in overall liking (P<0.0001), as well as liking of appearance (P<0.0001), flavour (P=0.0002) and texture (P=0.04), between the breads. However, the significant differences resulted from the red beetroot bread which was significantly (P<0.05) less liked compared to control bread. There were no significant differences in overall liking between any of the other vegetable-enriched breads compared with the control bread (no vegetable inclusion), apart from the red beetroot bread which was significantly less liked. The provision of health information about the breads did not increase consumer liking of the vegetable-enriched breads. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that vegetable-enriched bread appeared to be an acceptable strategy to increase vegetable intake, however, liking depended on vegetable type.

Enhanced three-factor security protocol for consumer USB mass storage devices

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an extremely popular interface standard for computer peripheral connections and is widely used in consumer Mass Storage Devices (MSDs). While current consumer USB MSDs provide relatively high transmission speed and are convenient to carry, the use of USB MSDs has been prohibited in many commercial and everyday environments primarily due to security concerns. Security protocols have been previously proposed and a recent approach for the USB MSDs is to utilize multi-factor authentication. This paper proposes significant enhancements to the three-factor control protocol that now makes it secure under many types of attacks including the password guessing attack, the denial-of-service attack, and the replay attack. The proposed solution is presented with a rigorous security analysis and practical computational cost analysis to demonstrate the usefulness of this new security protocol for consumer USB MSDs.

An enhanced fall detection system for elderly person monitoring using consumer home networks

Various fall-detection solutions have been previously proposed to create a reliable surveillance system for elderly people with high requirements on accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. In this paper, an enhanced fall detection system is proposed for elderly person monitoring that is based on smart sensors worn on the body and operating through consumer home networks. With treble thresholds, accidental falls can be detected in the home healthcare environment. By utilizing information gathered from an accelerometer, cardiotachometer and smart sensors, the impacts of falls can be logged and distinguished from normal daily activities. The proposed system has been deployed in a prototype system as detailed in this paper. From a test group of 30 healthy participants, it was found that the proposed fall detection system can achieve a high detection accuracy of 97.5%, while the sensitivity and specificity are 96.8% and 98.1% respectively. Therefore, this system can reliably be developed and deployed into a consumer product for use as an elderly person monitoring device with high accuracy and a low false positive rate.

Enhancing consumer liking of low salt tomato soup over repeated exposure by herb and spice seasonings

There is strong evidence for the link between high dietary sodium and increased risk of cardiovascular disease which drives the need to reduce salt content in foods. In this study, herb and spice blends were used to enhance consumer acceptability of a low salt tomato soup (0.26% w/w). Subjects (n=148) scored their liking of tomato soup samples over five consecutive days. The first and last days were pre-and post-exposure visits where all participants rated three tomato soup samples; standard, low salt and low salt with added herbs and spices. The middle 3 days were the repeated exposure phase where participants were divided into three balanced groups; consuming the standard soup, the low salt soup, or the low salt soup with added herbs and spices. Reducing salt in the tomato soup led to a significant decline in consumer acceptability, and incorporating herbs and spices did not lead to an immediate enhancement in liking. However, inclusion of herbs and spices enhanced the perception of the salty taste of the low salt soup to the same level as the standard. Repeated exposure to the herbs and spice-modified soup led to a significant increase in the overall liking and liking of flavour, texture and aftertaste of the soup, whereas no changes in liking were observed for the standard and low salt tomato soups over repeated exposure. Moreover, a positive trend in increasing the post-exposure liking of the herbs and spices soup was observed. The findings suggest that the use of herbs and spices is a useful approach to reduce salt content in foods; however, herbs and spices should be chosen carefully to complement the food as large contrasts in flavour can polarise consumer liking.

Can British multinational enterprises finance economic development in South East Asia?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on the debate about the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) and public policy in fostering economic development. Specifically, can the capital inflow of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and the ability of the subsidiaries to raise funds locally help promote development? This paper addresses this issue by examining the capital structure and financing sources of foreign subsidiaries of MNEs. Design/methodology/approach – This paper integrates the capital structure theories in finance with internalization theory in international business. It uses an original primary dataset collected by a survey of 101 foreign subsidiaries of British MNEs in six emerging economies in the ASEAN region. Findings – There are three significant findings. First, these subsidiaries rely heavily on internal funds generated within the MNEs and less on external debts raised in the host countries. Second, the foreign subsidiary's capital structure is influenced by the home country of origin of the parent firm and the parent firm's financing sources. Third, these subsidiaries have used the financial resources to develop business networks with local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which contribute to economic development of the host countries. Originality/value – This paper examines the internal capital market within the MNE. It provides theoretical and empirical support for the capital structure theory of the hierarchy financing approach and also for internalization theory by addressing FDI inflows by MNEs and the raising of funds locally. These findings have important implications for public policy, namely the facilitation of MNE entry to encourage economic development.

Negative online consumer reviews: effects of different responses

Purpose When consumers buy online, they are often confronted with consumer reviews. A negative consumer review on an online shopping website may keep consumers from buying the product. Therefore, negative online consumer reviews are a serious problem for brands. This paper aims to investigate the effects of different response options to a negative consumer review. Design/methodology/approach In an online experiment of 446 participants different response options towards a negative consumer review on an online shopping website are examined. The experimental data is analysed with simple linear regression models using product purchase intentions as the outcome variable. Findings The results indicate that a positive customer review counteracts a negative consumer review more effectively than a positive brand response, whereas brand strength moderates this relationship. Including a reference to an independent, trusted source in a brand or a customer response is only a limited strategy for increasing the effectiveness of a response. Research limitations/implications Additional research in other product categories and with other subjects than students is suggested to validate the findings. In future research, multiple degrees of the phrasing’s strength of the reference could be used. Practical implications Assuming high quality products, brands should encourage their customers to write reviews. Strong brands can also reassure consumers by responding whereas weak brands cannot. Originality/value This research contributes to the online consumer reviews literature with new insights about the role of brand strength and referencing to an independent, trusted source.

Facts, scope, style: a guide to writing papers for IEEE transactions on consumer electronics

In a previous article, I wrote a brief piece on how to enhance papers that have been published at one of the IEEE Consumer Electronics (CE) Society conferences to create papers that can be considered for publishing in IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics (T-CE) [1]. Basically, it included some hints and tips to enhance a conference paper into what is required for a full archival journal paper and not fall foul of self-plagiarism. This article focuses on writing original papers specifically for T-CE. After three years as the journal’s editor-in-chief (EiC), a previous eight years on the editorial board, and having reviewed some 4,000 T-CE papers, I decided to write this article to archive and detail for prospective authors what I have learned over this time. Of course, there are numerous articles on writing good papers—some are really useful [2], but they do not address the specific issues of writing for a journal whose topic (scope) is not widely understood or, indeed, is often misunderstood.

Obstacle avoidance routing scheme through optimal sink movement for home monitoring and mobile robotic consumer devices

In recent years, ZigBee has been proven to be an excellent solution to create scalable and flexible home automation networks. In a home automation network, consumer devices typically collect data from a home monitoring environment and then transmit the data to an end user through multi-hop communication without the need for any human intervention. However, due to the presence of typical obstacles in a home environment, error-free reception may not be possible, particularly for power constrained devices. A mobile sink based data transmission scheme can be one solution but obstacles create significant complexities for the sink movement path determination process. Therefore, an obstacle avoidance data routing scheme is of vital importance to the design of an efficient home automation system. This paper presents a mobile sink based obstacle avoidance routing scheme for a home monitoring system. The mobile sink collects data by traversing through the obstacle avoidance path. Through ZigBee based hardware implementation and verification, the proposed scheme successfully transmits data through the obstacle avoidance path to improve network performance in terms of life span, energy consumption and reliability. The application of this work can be applied to a wide range of intelligent pervasive consumer products and services including robotic vacuum cleaners and personal security robots1.

Avoiding the dark side of positive online consumer reviews: enhancing reviews' usefulness for high risk-averse travelers

The influence of positive online consumer reviews on a traveler's decision making remains unclear. To better understand the perceived usefulness of online reviews, this study conducts two experiments using positive and negative online consumer reviews. Study results suggest that high risk-averse travelers find negative online reviews more useful than positive reviews. For positive online reviews, high-risk averse travelers feel expert reviewers' postings, travel product pictures, and well-known brand names enhance usefulness of the positive online reviews. These findings offer interesting implications for both marketing theory and practice.