This book focuses on a new type of inclusive consumer decision-making process model (CDM) related to new leading-edge consumers. There have been two main types of CDMs for consumer behavior: one is the stimulus-response model and the other is the information-processing model. The stimulus-response model is applicable when consumers buy low-involvement products, and the information-processing model applies for high-involvement products. Thus consumers' decision making depends on the involvement level for the products. With the advent of the widespread use of the Internet, however, the situation has changed. Consumers whose information sensitivity is high (i.e., among leading-edge consumers) now use the Internet to search for information even for low-involvement products. The consumers' decision-making process depends therefore on their information sensitivity, not on the involvement level of the products. Also, these leading-edge consumers become in effect another type of media as they broaden their experience through the Internet. Under these circumstances, research about leading-edge consumers and the introduction of a new CDM is highly significant. This book gathers data about leading-edge consumers, analyzes these data, then proposes a new type of CDM called "circulation marketing". Following this model, not only the previous types of CDM, but also the new kind of CDM, including share behavior of leading-edge consumers, is explained.

This book focuses on a new type of inclusive consumer decision-making process model (CDM) related to new leading-edge consumers. There have been two main types of CDMs for consumer behavior: one is the stimulus-response model and the other is the information-processing model. The stimulus-response model is applicable when consumers buy low-involvement products, and the information-processing model applies for high-involvement products. Thus consumers' decision making depends on the involvement level for the products. With the advent of the widespread use of the Internet, however, the situation has changed. Consumers whose information sensitivity is high (i.e., among leading-edge consumers) now use the Internet to search for information even for low-involvement products. The consumers' decision-making process depends therefore on their information sensitivity, not on the involvement level of the products. Also, these leading-edge consumers become in effect another type of media as they broaden their experience through the Internet. Under these circumstances, research about leading-edge consumers and the introduction of a new CDM is highly significant. This book gathers data about leading-edge consumers, analyzes these data, then proposes a new type of CDM called "circulation marketing". Following this model, not only the previous types of CDM, but also the new kind of CDM, including share behavior of leading-edge consumers, is explained.

This study is an unique approach to social and cultural history of Japan through the scope of food and food ways. In this book-length study of food markets in the early modern Japanese capital of Edo, Akira Shimizu draws a fascinating picture of early modern Japanese society where specialty foods-seasonal, regional, and hard-to-find delicacies that satisfied the palate of nation's highest political authority, the shogun-served as a powerful nexus that connected different social groups. In the course of their daily lives, peasants, fisherfolks, and merchants, who made specialty food available at the market, were in constant negotiation with powerful wholesalers and government authorities in charge of procuring specialty foods of the highest qualities for the shogun's Edo Castle. Utilizing a number of previously unused archival material that reveals the lives of those at the bottom of the society, the book traces the production, supply, and handling of specialty foods and shows how ordinary people were empowered to assume control over the distribution of specialty food, eventually affecting their procurement for the shogunal kitchen. In doing so, they disrupted the existing market order on the shogunal requisition, and led to the reconfiguration of market relations.