Traditionally, policymakers and financial markets have regarded the “core” consumer price index (CPI) as a key inflation indicator. The core CPI, a special index published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), excludes the volatile prices of food and energy. In excluding these components, BLS recognizes that prices that swing dramatically in response to unusual shifts in weather and other un...

Modified BG Prasad socioeconomic scale is widely used to determine the socioeconomic status of study subjects in health studies in India. It is an income-based scale and, therefore, has to be constantly updated to take inflation and depreciation of rupee into account. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for industrial workers (IW) is used to calculate updated income categories for January 2014. Deta...

This paper suggests that the interaction between consumers has an impact on market structure, in addition to each consumer’s own behavior. In this paper, we replicate the artificial market model proposed by Onozaki and Yanagita, and extend it by adding the network of consumers in order to show that the interaction between consumers in the market affects emerging and changing the market structur...

It is well-known that switching costs may facilitate monopoly pricing in a market with price competition between two suppliers of a homogenous good, provided the switching cost is above some critical level. We show that introducing consumer heterogeneity tends to increase the critical switching cost and thereby reduce the stability of the collusive outcome. A testable implication is that widesp...

The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated consumer health informatics utilization framework that can be used to gauge the online health information needs and usage patterns among Malaysian women. The proposed framework was developed based on four different theories/models: Use and Gratification Theory, Technology Acceptance 3 Model, Health Belief Model, and Multi-level Model of Info...

innovation has attracted considerable interest in recent years in improving competitive advantage for both profit and nonprofit organizations. service innovation offers the potential for substantially improving the performance, but performance gains are often obstructed by users’ unwillingness to accept and use available systems. this research aims to use the concept of reasoned action theory t...

Many foods and beverages are developed specifically for children, and must be tested with children. Sensory or consumer tests for children must take into account the range of sensory and cognitive abilities of children from infancy to teen age. This review examines what type of sensory or consumer test may be conducted with children, at what age and for what purpose. The many factors that must ...

Abstract Using two basic assumptions of time series analysis, a test is proposed to assess the quality of seasonal adjustment of a series. The test is applied to several seasonally adjusted series of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) using three methods of seasonal adjustment: State Space Model Based Method (SSMB), TRAMO SEATS Method and X12ARIMA method. The empirical results are presented along w...

The purpose of a trade mark is to enable the consumer to distinguish the goods and services offered to him by their original enterprise. In this respect a trade mark is a sign that can be perceived through any sense the consumer uses to communicate with the outside world. In principle, any message capable of being perceived by the senses can constitute an indication for the consumer to identify...