A Study of Consumer Behaviour in the Gold Market of Kerala
Gold trade is flourishing business venture in Kerala. The yellow metal play an important role in our sociological institutions and rituals as a solid and reliable form of wealth and the quantity of the metal is decided by the affordability of the party. Irrespective of religion or community, every keralite father and mother want their daughter to tie the knot, bedecked in gold. The primary objective of this paper is to study gold and consumer behavior in Kerala. It also studies the consumer behavior of how people choose to buy gold, when they do and the various factors influencing the purchasing decision with respect to gold. Self-prepared questionnaire is administered among them to assess their buying pattern. From the study it is found out that the keralite consider gold as an all-time investment. Apart from the investment angle, people mainly keep gold with them as jewellery to fulfill their emotional needs. 
Key words: Gold Jwellery, Consumer behavior, Tradition, Investment
A study on the impact of marketing strategies in the gold ornament market of Kerala
List of Tables List of Figures Abbreviations Introduction to the study 1-43 1 Statement of the problem 3-4  2 Reviews of literature 4-25  3 Significance of the study 25-27  4 Scope of the study 28 5 Objectives of the study 28-29 6 Hypothesis of the study 29-31 7 Research Methodology 31-38 8 Variables selected for the study 38-40  9 Limitations of the study 41-42  10 Chapterization 42-43 1 Gold ornament market in Kerala: An overview 44-68
Strategy and Manipulation in Medieval Elections
There are many goals in developing electoral protocols, including a desire for a system which is transparent, in that it is clear what the rule or procedure to follow is; nonmanipulable, in that it is not in a person’s best interest to misrepresent their preferences; honest, in the sense that it elects the ‘right’ candidate; and not open to strategizing, i.e., bribery or collusion. However, these desiderata are in tension with each other: Often, transparent electoral procedures are the least strategy resistant, and many honest procedures encourage manipulation. Thus a balance between these different goals must be sought. In modern times, since the seminal result on vote manipulation, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [5, 6], much attention has been devoted to developing voting rules where manipulation is never in the best interest of the voters [4] or which are computationally too complex for the average bounded agent to be able to manipulate [1]. This focus on computational aspects of electoral methods is one of the hallmarks of modern studies on voting. But pursuit of these goals is not restricted to modern times: Those participating in elections in the Middle Ages also sought transparency, non-manipulability, honesty, and strategyproofness in so far as these properties can be consistently expressed in a single procedure. However, given the lack of computational sophistication in the Middle Ages, alternate approaches were needed in order to promote honesty, discourage strategizing, etc. These approaches can be classified as either external (constraints introduced outside of the electoral procedure, such as incentives for coming to consensus quickly) or internal (constraints introduced within the electoral procedure, such as voting rules which cannot be manipulated without adverse effects, or which are too difficult for the average bounded agent to manipulate). Surveying examples of both approaches in the context of medieval ecclesiastical and secular elections provides an interesting comparison to modern electoral procedures. Elections in the Middle Ages were used for the same reasons that they are today: To select suitable candidate(s) for a particular office, duty, or obligation. However, it is important to note that the term electio was used in the Middle Ages in a broader sense than our modern ‘election’. Its primary sense was ‘selection’ or ‘choice’, and only secondarily ‘election’ in the modern sense. Thus, many records which purportedly discuss elections are not discussing elections of the type which interests us. We can identify four categories of medieval electoral processes: (1) Election by an external authority having no direct interest in the election; (2) Indirect election, where electors name other electors who then select or elect the officials; (3) Election by lot; and (4) Election by ballot. Elections of the first and third types are generally computationally uninteresting; the first type corresponds to dictatorial voting rules, and the third type collapses to probability theory. In general, interesting voting methods are found only in the fourth type, election by ballot, though they can also occur in indirect election.