Consumers Pick Brands Similar to Themselves
Factors which determine consumer preferences for certain brands are not limited just to income, age and social status; other important considerations are the brand's ‘personality’ and whether it fits with that of the consumer, according to Natalia Antonova, Associate Professor of the Department of Organizational Psychology and Head of the Psychology of Consumer Behavior Research and Study Group, and Veronika Morozova, member of the Group.
Single People Get Less Happy as They Age
While being single or married does not usually make much difference in terms of life satisfaction for younger people, single individuals tend to feel less happy as they age, particularly at certain moments of their lives, and most single people experience a peak of unhappiness once they retire, according to Anna Shirokanova, Senior Research Fellow of the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research in St. Petersburg.
Migrants Give More Births Than Locals
Women who have moved to another part of the country tend to have higher fertility than those who stay in the same community all their lives. Relocation often improves a woman's life circumstances and broadens her choice of marriage partner, thus supporting her reproductive intentions, according to Svetlana Biryukova, Senior Research Fellow of the HSE Center for Studies of Income and Living Standards, and Alla Tyndik, Leading Research Fellow at the RANEPA.
Financial Analysts Seek Forecasting Accuracy
Investment banks tend to give fairly accurate advice to stock market participants – particularly when it comes to stock in industries such as metallurgy, mechanical engineering, transport and construction, according to the paper 'Analysis of Conflicts and Determinants of Accuracy of Forecasts in Russian Financial Analysts’ Recommendations', authored by a group of researchers of the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences.
Top 15. HSE's Most Interesting Research in 2015
Public misperceptions of inequality; Sanctions hit the best companies; How high is mortality in Russia?; How the type of university affects graduates' salaries; What national pride means; Muslims sharing a Protestant ethic; Economic inactivity among Russians; Russian travellers reluctant to book hotels online; The right to be forgotten; and Analysts can be wrong – these were the HSE's most interesting research papers in 2015, according to Opec.ru.
Customer Focus Linked to Company Profits
Employees who are too focused on sales targets can ignore customer needs. Meanwhile, customer focus is emerging as a key trend in business management. Ksenia Klepneva, postgraduate student of the HSE School of Business Administration, examined factors contributing to customer focus in companies operating in developed and developing economies.
Private Tutors Do Not Help Pass the Russian State Exam
Shadow education for high school students, such as private tutors or preparatory courses, is often treated by families as a mega-project requiring substantial investments of money and effort. Such investments, however, rarely pay off for underachieving students who are often unaware of the quality of shadow education and thus may choose the wrong providers. A study by Andrey Zakharov, Deputy Head of the HSE Institute of Education’s International Laboratory for Education Policy Analysis, and Prashant Loyalka, leading research fellow of the same Institute, has debunked some of the more popular myths concerning the effect of shadow education.
HSE Researchers Help Treat Cancer in Children
HSE School of Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence is conducting research for Federal Research Center of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology, and Immunology on how the treatment response might vary depending on the patient's physiology, such as the state of the internal organs and blood, and what the role of genetics is.
Informal Revenues Increase Credit Worthiness of Mortgage Borrowers
Mortgage borrowers who have unconfirmed income turn out to be unable to repay the loan less often than public officials, whose income consists of their official salary only. The probability of loan default is also considerably influenced by the cost of the loan. These were the findings of a study conducted by Alexander Karminsky, HSE Professor, and Agata Lozinskaya, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE campus in Perm.
Traditional Family Is in Revival
The Russian family has been becoming more demographically heterogeneous over recent years. Some of the families follow the trend of having many children: women more often give birth to a third and fourth child, and the gap between births is decreasing, which makes the evolution of the family faster. At the same time, younger generations are inclined to postpone marriage and having their first child, which leads either to later motherhood or to childlessness. This means that two opposite trends are developing; along with the growing share of ‘Western-type’ families, with postponed parenthood and fewer children, there is a revival of the traditional family with more children, Sergey Zakharov, Deputy Director of the HSE Institute of Demography, reported.