Digital Commons Network^™

Can Health Claims For Foods Help Consumers Choose Better Diets?, P. G. Williams

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Consumers are becoming health-conscious and most agree that eating healthily is a better way to manage illness than using medication. This has led to the increased acceptance and consumption of functional foods with health-promoting capabilities, demonstrated by impressive growth in sales world wide. Functional foods certainly have the potential to assist in disease management or reduction of risk and their use is being increasingly recommended in both medical and dietetic practice. There is an observed ‘push’ from food companies seeking out new markets and profit opportunities, with a concurrent market ‘pull’ from an educated, health-conscious consumer with a higher disposable …

Dr. Anca Micu Interviewed As Part Of Groundbreaking Marketing Conference, Anca C. Micu

Anca C. Micu

Interview of Dr. Anca Micu which took place at the 2006 Consumer Engagement Conference, held at The Crowne Plaza in New York City from September 27 to 28 2006, and was broadcast on the official blog covering the event.

Slides: Got Government? A Look At What’S Behind Solving Climate Change In The Private Sector, Tom Arnold

Climate Change and the Future of the American West: Exploring the Legal and Policy Dimensions (Summer Conference, June 7-9)

Presenter: Tom Arnold, Terrapass, Inc., Menlo Park, CA.

15 slides.

Brand New Deal: The Branding Effect Of Corporate Deal Structures, Victor Fleischer

Michigan Law Review

Consider the unusual legal structures of the following four deals: When Google went public in 2004, it used an Internet auction to sell its stock to shareholders. When Ben & Jerry's went public in 1984, it sold its stock only to Vermont residents. Steve Jobs's contract with Apple entitles him to an annual cash salary of exactly one dollar. Stanley Works, a Connecticut toolmaker, considered reincorporating in Bermuda to reduce its tax liability. Under public pressure, it changed its mind and remains legally incorporated in Connecticut. What do these deals have in common? In each case, the legal infrastructure of …

Design And Implementation Of A Web-Based Lead Management System Using Oracle And Coldfusion Technologies, James Darschewski

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

In business a key to being successful is being able to identify who your customers are and evaluating their needs. Most businesses are not only comprised of a single customer; therefore, there is a need to retain customer information and to track the customer from initial contact to the point of sale. While there are numerous off the shelf products that can store customer data, often times they do not easily allow for modifications and many of these products would require some sort of wide area network (WAN), which could incur extensive costs, in order for highly distributed sales people …

Housing Price Determinants In The Lynchburg, Virginia Area, Benjamin L. Ferguson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The effect of certain variables on the price of a house is a subject that has been very widely studied. This paper attempts to generate a pricing model for houses in the Lynchburg VA, area using the physical characteristics of a home and other locational variables. The model will attempt to create a representation of the housing price equation for the market in the area. The results of the equation will allow the ability to predict future housing prices in the market, given certain physical and locational values that are similar for the area. 3

Nutrient Function, Health And Related Claims On Packaged Australian Food Products - Prevalence And Compliance With Regulations, P. G. Williams, H. Yeatman, Leisa Ridges, A. Houston, J. Rafferty, A. Roesler, M. Sobierajski, B. Spratt

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Australia and New Zealand are currently reviewing the regulations governing nutrition function, health and related claims on foods. Health claims currently are not permitted on food labels, with one exception. The aim of this study was to describe the use of such claims on packaged food for sale in Australia (excluding nutrient content claims) prior to any changes to the regulations, and measure compliance with existing regulations. A survey was conducted of the labelling of 7850 products (including multiple pack sizes of individual foods) in 47 different food categories on sale in New South Wales in 2003. A total of …

One-Sided Contracts In Competitive Consumer Markets, Lucian A. Bebchuk, Richard A. Posner

Michigan Law Review

The usual assumption in economic analysis of law is that in a competitive market without informational asymmetries, the terms of contracts between sellers and buyers will be optimal-that is, that any deviation from these terms would impose expected costs on one party that exceed benefits to the other. But could there be cases in which "one-sided" contracts containing terms that impose a greater expected cost on one side than benefit on the other-would be found in competitive markets even in the absence of fraud, prohibitive information costs, or other market imperfections? That is the possibility we explore in this Article.

Online Boilerplate: Would Mandatory Website Disclosure Of E-Standard Terms Backfire?, Robert A. Hillman

Michigan Law Review

A law backfires when it produces results opposite from those its drafters intended. Lots of laws may have backfired. For example, people opposed to hate crimes legislation think that the laws "inflame prejudice rather than eradicate it." The Endangered Species Act, according to some analysts, has helped destroy rather than preserve the creatures listed by the Act. Even consumer protection laws, some believe, increase prices and confuse consumers instead of protecting them. This Article analyzes whether mandatory website disclosure of standard terms, advocated by some as a potential solution to market failures when consumers contract over the Internet, is another …

The Boilerplate Puzzle, Douglas G. Baird

Michigan Law Review

The warranty that comes with your laptop computer is one of its many product attributes. The laptop has a screen of a particular size. Its microprocessors work at a particular speed, and the battery lasts a given amount of time between recharging. The hard drive has a certain capacity and mean time to failure. There is an instruction manual, online technical support (or lack thereof), and software. Then there are the warranties that the seller makes (or does not make) that are also part of the bundle. Just as I know the size of the screen, but nothing about the …

Contra Proferentem: The Allure Of Ambiguous Boilerplate, Michelle E. Boardman

Michigan Law Review

Bad boilerplate can shake one' s faith in evolution; not only does it not die away, it multiplies. The puzzle is why. Much of boilerplate is ambiguous or incomprehensible. This alienates consumers and is i ncreasingly punished by courts construing the language against the drafter. There must, therefore, be some hidden allure to ambiguous boilerplate. The popular theory is trickery: drafters lure consumers in with promising language that comes to nothing in court. But this trick would require consumers to do three things they do not do-read the language, understand it, and take comfort in it. There is a hidden …

The Hidden Roles Of Boilerplate And Standard-Form Contracts: Strategic Imposition Of Transaction Costs, Segmentation Of Consumers, And Anticompetitive Effects, David Gilo, Ariel Porat

Michigan Law Review

Standard-form contracts offered to consumers contain numerous terms and clauses, most of which are ancillary to the main terms of the transaction. We call these ancillary terms "boilerplate provisions." Since most consumers do not read boilerplate provisions or, if they do, find them hard to understand, courts are suspicious of boilerplate provisions and sometimes find them unenforceable under the doctrine of unconscionability. At times, courts conclude that harsh terms have not been accepted by consumers in the first place and therefore are not included in the contract, and on other occasions courts interpret boilerplate provisions in favor of consumers, applying …

Assessing The Efficacy Of Guest Loyalty Programs In The Hotel Industry: A Case Study Of Kimpton Hotels, Keith Brophy

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Since 2004, several small hotel chains have introduced guest loyalty programs in order to give their guests "big chain perks" while keeping a boutique identity. Recent studies have raised concerns that loyalty programs do not create brand loyalty. By looking at Kimpton Hotel's recently introduced program, Kimpton InTouch, this study examines the potential for operationalizing guest loyalty programs in a small boutique hotel chain setting. The study utilizes guest information gathered through customer surveys and reviews guest visits and spending patterns to see if there is any indication that loyal behavior exists amongst members of the Kimpton InTouch. This study …

War And Peace: The 34th Annual Donald C. Brace Lecture, Jessica D. Litman

Other Publications

I'd like to thank the Copyright Society and the Brace committee for inviting me to speak to you this evening. I am honored that you invited me to give this lecture. I want to talk a little bit about war - copyright war - and then I want to talk a little bit about peace. It's become conventional that we're in the middle of a copyright war.' I tried to track down who started calling it that, and what I can tell you is that about ten years ago, about the time that copyright lawyers everywhere were arguing about the …

Race, Media Consolidation, And Online Content: The Lack Of Substitutes Available To Media Consumers Of Color, Leonard M. Baynes

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In its 2003 media ownership proceedings, the FCC relied on the existence of the Internet to provide justification for radically relaxing the FCC ownership rules. These rules limited the national audience reach of the broadcast licensees and the cross-ownership of different media properties by broadcasters and newspapers. In relaxing these rules, the FCC failed to recognize that a media submarket for African Americans and Latinos/as existed. This separate market is evidenced by the different television viewing habits of African Americans and Latinos/as as compared to Whites and Billboard magazine's delineation of R&B/urban music radio stations as a separate radio station …

Bankruptcy Ethics Issues For Solos And Small Firms, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This chapter, in Corinne Cooper & Catherine E. Vance's book Attorney Liability in Bankruptcy, walks the reader through some of the traditional ethics issues triggered by representing consumers and small businesses. It also addresses some of the ethics issues that the recent Bankruptcy Amendments (BAPCPA) have created.

The Limitations Of Consumer Response To Csr: An Empirical Test Of Smith's Proposed Antecedents, Alan Pomering, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Despite an increase in consumer expectations for business to do more for society than deliver on economic conditions and many firms' increasingly adopting socially-responsible stances, marketplace behaviour highlights a gap between what consumers report they expect from firms and what they are prepared to reward. In an effort to rationalise this gap, Smith (2000) has proposed three limits on consumers' ability to respond to firms' socially-responsible practices, or corporate social responsibility (CSR). Based on a study in Australia's retail banking sector, a high-contact service context, this paper empirically tests Smith's three proposed limits to consumers' CSR response. Key findings include …

Diffusion Of Internet Banking Amongst Educated Consumers In A High Income Non-Oecd Country, Cedwyn Fernandes, Raed Awamleh

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This study analyses the internet banking channels and service preferences of educated banking consumers in the UAE and examines the factors influencing the intention to adopt or to continue the use of internet banking among both users and non users of internet banking.

It is shown that although the banking sector in the UAE is a regional leader, internet banking in the UAE is yet to be properly utilized as a real added value tool to improve customer relationship and to attain cost advantages. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used to identify factors influencing the intention to adopt and …

Process Flow Mapping Of Consumers In A High Involvement Service Purchase Process: An Exploratory Study, Robert G. Grant, Elias Kyriazis

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper reports on an exploratory study undertaken to deal with the intricacy of consumer behaviour in a buying process for a complex high involvement service bundle spanning both offline and online channels. A key finding is that consumers switch repeatedly between online and offline channels and between different types of information source to satisfy their search needs. This offers a challenge for communications management if organisations wish to add customer value by minimising their customer time and effort search costs. Prior online channel research has not acknowledged off-line information complementarity for complex high involvement search. Travel agents and principal …

Abuse Prevention 2005, James J. White

Articles

Today I do not debate the empirical question (what is the cause of the increase in bankruptcy filings?) nor do I address the buried moral question (who deserves the protection of bankruptcy law?). Rather, I speculate about the consequences of 2005 amendments to the Bankruptcy Code and about the reasons it will achieve or fail to achieve the goals of its sponsors. Along the way I hope to learn something about how law changes, or fails to change behavior.

Guidance Documents And Regulatory Beneficiaries, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

Federal agencies rely heavily on guidance documents, and their volume is massive. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently catalogued over 2000 and 1600 such documents, respectively, issued between 1996 and 1999. These documents can range from routine matters, such as how employees should maintain correspondence files, to broad policies on program standards, implementation, and enforcement. Documents in the latter category include Education Department policies on Title IX implementation, Environmental Protection Agency policies on hazardous waste cleanup, the Food and Drug Administration's policies on food safety and broadcast advertising of pharmaceuticals, and many more.Although these …