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This paper aims to formulate a hedonic pricing model for Japanese rice wine, sake, via hierarchical Bayesian modeling estimated using an efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method. Using the estimated model, the authors examine how producing regions, rice breeds and taste characteristics affect sake prices.

The datasets in the estimation consist of cross-sectional observations of 403 sake brands, which include sake prices, taste indicators, premium categories, rice breeds and regional dummy variables. Data were retrieved from Rakuten, Japan’s largest online shopping site. The authors used the Bayesian estimation of the hedonic pricing model and used an ancillarity–sufficiency interweaving strategy to improve the sampling efficiency of MCMC.

The estimation results indicate that Japanese consumers value sweeter sake more, and the price of sake reflects the cost of rice preprocessing only for the most-expensive category of sake. No distinctive differences were identified among rice breeds or producing regions in the hedonic pricing model.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to estimate a hedonic pricing model of sake, despite the rich literature on alcoholic beverages. The findings may contribute new insights into consumer preference and proper pricing for sake breweries and distributors venturing into the e-commerce market.

With the ongoing industrial transformation of the Japanese sake industry and the continuous growth of exports in recent years, terroir, one of the core concepts in the wine culture, has been strategically used in the sake industry. Therefore, as an essential investigation, the purpose of this study is to elucidate when, how and why terroir has been used in the sake industry. This study starts with the research question: When, how and why has terroir come to be used strategically in the sake industry?

This study investigates the use of terroir in the Japanese sake industry, examining all 196 newspapers that referenced terroir from 1998 to 2022, sourced from the renowned newspaper database Nikkei Telecom 21. This study’s outcomes have been visualized through categorization work and text mining.

In this study, the use of terroir in the Japanese sake industry has gained significant momentum since 2015, with a remarkable surge observed in the 2020s. With the continuous growth in sake exports, industry players such as sake brewers are strategically structuring terroir to reinforce the authenticity of the brewing process, emphasizing the uniqueness of natural elements, such as water, sake rice and the natural environment. These findings highlight the critical role of terroir in the Japanese sake industry’s added value expansion.

This study provides objective insights regarding the recent industrial transformation for the practical sake industry, such as sake exporters and distributors. Additionally, this study enables the wine industry’s audience to understand the sake industry’s evolution in terms of wine culture.

This study investigates Hong Kong “consumers” sake tasting preferences, willingness to pay and how information commonly found on the bottle or menu affects these attributes.

This study took place inside a four-star hotel lobby restaurant. Convenience sampling was used to collect 184 valid responses from Hong Kong residents. Respondents were given four sakes two blind and two with common information found on the bottles and asked to rate each one independently.

The results suggest that alcohol content is the most crucial attribute in assessing the overall liking for consumers. In addition, information currently provided by producers and brewers has a negative effect on all assessment attributes and overall liking, but a positive effect on willingness to pay.

Sake producers, brewers, marketers, and hotel food and beverage managers should reconsider marketing strategies and the type of information provided to send better signals, increase “consumers” assessment and their overall liking. The results of this study suggest that sake brewers may want to advertise the alcohol content better to achieve higher satisfaction.

Consumers taste preferences for sake are not well understood. By applying the signalling theory the study results filled an information gap by examining how sake information commonly found on labels affects hotel guests tasting preferences and willingness to pay.

This study adopts the multi-step model developed by Avraham and Ketter (2008), for altering place images, based on past academic literature on destination marketing. The purpose of this study is to determine the state of Fukushima’s sake breweries before and after 2011, and its strategies for overcoming negative images and strengthening regional branding. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven sake breweries in Fukushima.

Fukushima Prefecture, located in northern Japan, is renowned for its hot springs, lakes, historical architecture, gastronomy, and particularly its sake (or Japanese rice wine). However, pre-existing problems such as the prefecture’s changing demographics and economic development, the effects of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) and fears of radioactive contamination have made consumers reluctant to consume products from the region or to visit the prefecture. This study illustrates how various sake brewery stakeholders have sought to reverse and alter negative images associated with the prefecture. To examine these initiatives, this study uses the multi-step destination marketing and counter-branding model to identify the strategies and techniques used by the stakeholders, with the aim of altering the way the prefecture is perceived and reversing the negative image people may have of the prefecture. To acquire data for this model, this study uses semi-structured interviews conducted in 2018 and 2020 with local sake breweries, tourism associations and the local government on how they sought to retore a positive image of the prefecture and rebrand it into a new type of tourism destination that focuses on the strengths of its breweries.

The results indicate that through a combination of collaboration between the breweries, local government and the local communities, the sake breweries were able to reverse many of the negative effects of the 2011 GEJE. The success of the sake industry has prompted the local government to focus more strongly on tourism marketing that places sake products and breweries at the center of its campaign to promote the region.

While this paper focuses on the recovery of breweries, it does not include the recovery of wineries in Fukushima, which have made similar progress in their recovery. In addition, the interviews focused primarily on the perspectives of the suppliers and not the consumers.

The results of this research can help guide other destinations undergoing prolonged association with negative images on the path toward image recovery. In particular, this paper highlights the importance of a coordinated strategy by all stakeholders, the local government, businesses and communities, to create a united image and response for addressing the causes of these image problems and to create new opportunities for all stakeholders.

This research contributes to the field of image restoration, which combines theories regarding destination marketing and crisis management. Also, the research highlights the importance of collective stakeholder mobilization when attempting to help communities that are facing economic and tourism crises.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse consumer buying behaviour in the Japanese rice wine, also known as sake market.

The study applies a novel qualitative and quantitative analytical methodology to an off-license channel in Japan. The methodology involves the use of anchoring-and-adjustment theory and simulation to a large set of point of sale data. The selection of the brands used for the study are more than 230 brands and more than 150 sake breweries.

Age and gender are important factors determining recurrent patterns of purchasing behaviour. Small size packaging, e.g. one cup, has the highest volume in sales, for example, convenience shopping, but it depends on exogenous factors, e.g. summer season or festive events.

Limitations are related with the lack of specific personal data from consumers that impedes to test behavioural attitudes driving loyalty to brands. Anchoring-and-adjustment theory can be a valid approach to evaluate large longitudinal data sets of purchasing behaviour.

Results indicate that fragmented markets tend to over-expand the assortment affecting volume stability. However, this dynamics is difficult to avoid when all participants are engaged in this behaviour and the market is strongly segmented by age and gender.

The paper contributes to the body of knowledge of buyer behaviour in relation to purchasing and consumption for other types of wine. It is the first application in alcoholic beverages of anchor-and-adjustment theory.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

The question I want to ask, acting as Devil's Advocate, a role I enjoy playing, is this — what's wrong with technology for its own sake? I was set to pondering after reading an article by McKee who considers that ‘education falls into the twin traps of getting carried away by techno‐fantasy and of getting excited about technology for its own sake, rather than thinking of the basics of educational purpose.’ McKee posits that technology should always be seen from the perspective of human values and organisational purpose and goes on to quote the President‐elect of the American Library Association, Bill Summers, who believes that values are more important than technology, that technology must conform to these values and not vice‐versa, and that no amount of technology can help if you don't have a clear idea of what you are trying to accomplish and its importance.

The data from the Swiss Labour Force Survey (SAKE) have been widely used to estimate wage functions, which in turn have been applied for the determination of wage discrimination between genders. One serious problem with the SAKE data is that about 17 per cent of employed individuals did not report wages. Those studies which use the SAKE data to estimate wage functions simply ignore these non‐respondents. Such an approach could lead to a serious selectivity bias if the response decision is not purely random. In this study this issue is analysed in a double‐selectivity framework, in which both this response decision and the usual market‐participation decision are modelled. Although the response decision can be partially explained by certain socio‐economic variables, a large degree of randomness/unexplained variation exists. The authors therefore conclude that, in the absence of a better model, the standard approach at estimating wage functions (i.e. only correcting for the selectivity bias arising from women’s participation decision) is the most appropriate one.

Pragmatism in the sense of harmonizing rules and reality for the sake of appropriate problem solving and overall performance is a ubiquitous phenomenon in organizational life. As such it has been generalized as an everyday requirement of making organizations work and a virtue of human decision making under the condition of complexity, strategic dilemmas or “wicked problems.” This chapter addresses both the theoretical and the normative dimensions of pragmatism in organizations, public administration in particular. The main statement is that the necessary theoretical clarification concerns the distinction between pragmatism and what is referred to as a logic of appropriateness while the normative limits of pragmatism refer to the necessity of ranking logics of appropriateness and related values plus the ability to act on the basis of accurate judgment which is primarily, even if not exclusively, a matter of leadership.

Japan is characterized by its businesses older than 100 years, commonly known as shinise (老舗) – long-standing companies – which tend to be family businesses. Longevity in Japanese family businesses has been attributed, among other factors, to the system of the ie, or patrilineal household line. This chapter follows a sociocultural perspective and uses documental and media textual analysis to identify the cultural and structural attributes and the strategies that shinise have implemented when facing new and intimidating economic, political, and social circumstances under extreme contexts such as wars, structural changes, and national catastrophes and crises while protecting the family structure behind the firm. It is found that, for these firms, the ie comes first than individuals, and so does talent over lineage. The relevance of someone who shares the values that resonate with those of the business is imperative, but also that the leader has a resilient character and an innovative and proactive mind, and understands that his/her major purpose should be protecting the firm and securing its continuity.