Criteria used by venture capitalists to evaluate new venture proposals

A questionnaire was administered to one hundred venture capitalists to determine the most important criteria that they use to decide on funding new ventures. Perhaps the most important finding from the study is direct confirmation of the frequently iterated position taken by the venture capital community that above all it is the quality of the entrepreneur that ultimately determines the funding decision. Five of the top ten most important criteria had to do with the entrepreneur's experience or personality. There is no question that irrespective of the horse (product), horse race (market), or odds (financial criteria), it is the jockey (entrepreneur) who fundamentally determines whether the venture capitalist will place a bet at all.The question is if this is the case, then why is so much emphasis placed on the business plan? In a business plan there is generally little to indicate the characteristics of the entrepreneur—it is generally devoted to a detailed discussion of the product/service, the market, and the competition. To us, the implications are obvious—such content is necessary, but not sufficient. The business plan should also show as clearly as possible that the “jockey is fit to ride” —namely, indicate by whatever feasible and credible means possible that the entrepreneur has staying power, has a track record, can react to risk well, and has familiarity with the target market. Failing this, he or she needs to be able to pull together a team that has such characteristics and show that he or she is capable of leading that team.Factor analysis of the results indicate that venture capitalists appear to assess ventures systematically in terms of six categories of risk to be managed. These are: risk of losing the entire investment: risk of being unable to bail out if necessary; risk of failure to implement the venture idea; competitive risk; risk of management failure; and risk of leadership failure.Finally, three clusters of venture capitalists were identified: those who carefully assess the competitive and implementation risks: those who seek easy bail out; and those who deliberately keep as many options open as possible.     

In the eye of the storm: Isaac Seligman and the panic of 1873

This paper focuses on the activities of the Seligman investment banking firm during an intense six-week period following the outbreak of the panic of 1873 in New York City. Because of their conservative business strategies, the partners did not experience any genuinely serious financial stress. The firm's ability to facilitate monetary transatlantic transfers helped to ease credit conditions in the New York and London financial sectors. The text also cites evidence arguing that the US economy experienced a two-year recession rather than a major depression in the 1870s.     

What Do Malaysian Firms Seek in Vietnam?

The article investigates the motives undergirding the investment of Malaysian firms in Vietnam. It argues that a sizeable portion of Malaysian firms are market seekers exploiting Vietnam’s large, young, and growing domestic market, and natural resource seekers. The article also argues that some of the firms are strategic asset seekers as they collaborate with politically well-connected Vietnamese firms to further their long-term commercial interests. Only a small percentage of Malaysian firms identify themselves as efficiency seekers, which highlights the low organizational and technical abilities of Malaysia’s manufacturing sector.     

If all their products seem the same,all the parts within a product seem the same too: How brand homogeneity polarizes product experiences

Many different factors affect brand homogeneity, including the different products associated with a brand, how they are made, and how they are branded. How does the perceived homogeneity of a brand’s offered products, in turn, affect consumers’ experiences with those products? Nine experiments reveal that consumers have more polarized judgments of product experiences when the sampled products are perceived to belong to more homogeneous brands. When a consumption experience is positive, the consumer has an even more positive experience when they think the sampled product came from a homogeneous brand; however, when a consumption experience is negative, the consumer has an even more negative experience when they think the sampled product came from a homogeneous brand. This polarization occurs because the individual product inherits the brand-level quality of perceived internal consistency—when a brand seems homogeneous (i.e., consisting of homogeneous products), consumers also perceive any individual product from the brand as similarly consisting of homogeneous ingredients or parts. We suggest that brand homogeneity leads to selective processing of individual product experiences, which makes products seem more coherent, products rated faster, and ratings of different product ingredients or features more highly correlated. The perception that all of the parts within the individual sampled product are homogeneous in quality polarizes judgments of the product experience.     

The rise and fall of single-letter ticker symbols

A single-letter stock ticker symbol is a limited resource – only 26 possibilities are available in a stock universe of over 475,000 possible one-, two-, three- or four-letter ticker symbols. These symbols were first allocated based on trading volume therefore some of the most important companies at the time were initially placed into this group. This paper examines the history of this group of stocks and documents a decline in the importance of these firms due to a natural turnover in commercial leadership and no established mechanism to remove the single-letter designation from firms that lost their prominence.     

Having your cake and eating it too? A two-stage model of the impact of employment and parallel job search on hybrid nascent entrepreneurship

Hybrid entrepreneurship, simultaneous employment and entrepreneurship, is increasingly prevalent. We theorize entrepreneurial entry as one possible outcome of a two-stage new employment search process 1) decision to search for a job, attempt a start-up, or both and 2) outcome of start-up attempts. Stage 2 is critically different for hybrid (employed) nascent entrepreneurs who have greater access to resources and experience lower risk but also more salient alternative employment options. Using a novel longitudinal panel of new employment opportunity seekers, we find that employment status matters and that “parallel search” for a new job is detrimental to successful entrepreneurial entry.     

Beyond good and bad: Challenging the suggested role of emotions in customer experience (CX) research

Our paper challenges several notions regarding emotion's role and their influence on the customer experience (hereafter CX). Based on our analysis, we develop the following five propositions to advance our understanding of emotions' role in customer experience research. First, we argue that positive and negative emotions can coexist during the consumption experience. Second, positive emotions do not automatically lead to positive consumption outcomes, and negative emotions may not necessarily generate negative results. Third, positive or negative emotions toward a company employee might not automatically transfer to the company as a whole. Fourth, customers are not apathetic victims of their emotions with no capability to control their emotional experiences. Our last proposition is that consumption emotions are not a purely intrapersonal phenomenon, but that the social context matters and influences the consumption experience. We propose a related future research agenda highlighting opportunities for scholars and managers alike.     

An examination of the relationship between women's personal goals and structural factors influencing their decision to start a business: The case of Pakistan

Most of the work on women entrepreneurs in developing countries relates largely to those who are uneducated and very poor, working in the rural areas or the urban informal sectors. Few studies have attempted to study women entrepreneurs in the urban formal sectors in developing countries, the category of women corresponding to the women entrepreneurs studied in the Western world.Furthermore, most of these studies, conducted largely by international development agencies, have tended to focus on issues from a macroperspective. They assume that women entrepreneurs in developing countries are a homogeneous group, with similar experiences in starting a business.This study departs from earlier research in two major ways. First, it focuses on actual and potential women entrepreneurs in the urban formal sector. Second, adopting a symbolic interactionist approach, it tries to take a closer look at women's experiences in starting a business. Hence, it focuses on women's perceptions and the way they define their goals and the advantages and constraints they face in starting a business at a micro level.Data for the study were gathered through in-depth interviews of 33 participants of an entrepreneurship development program (EDP) run in Karachi, Pakistan. Sixteen of these were women who started a business after attending the EDP. The other 17 women did not start a business, although they had originally intended to do so.The study revealed that women wanted to start a business in order to achieve three types of personal goals: personal freedom, security, and satisfaction.Freedom seekers were mostly women who had experienced some kind of frustration or dissatisfaction in their paid work, and who now wanted to start their own business in order to have the freedom to choose the type of work, hours of work, work environment, and the people they worked with.Security seekers were mostly women who, triggered by some personal mishap (such as death or retirement of husband), wanted to start a business in order to maintain or improve their and their family's social and economic status. An important reason why most of these women opted for their own business rather than paid work was the flexibility that self-employment offered in terms of location (close to home, working from home) and hours of work, to which paid jobs could not cater.The satisfaction seekers were mostly housewives, with no previous work experience, who wanted to start a business in order to prove to themselves and to others that they are useful and productive members of society.The impact of structural factors on women's ability to start a business varied according to the dominant personal goal women had chosen. Structural factors influencing start-up were divided into three categories: internal resources, that is, women's qualifications and/or work experience; external resources, that is, finance and location; and relational resources, that is, family, employees, suppliers, and customers.The relationship between women's personal goals and structural factors influencing start-up led to the development of a conceptual framework that could help explain why some women, despite apparently unfavorable circumstances, succeeded in starting a business, whereas others even under apparently favorable circumstances did not do so.Understanding the different goals women pursue and how the relationship between these goals and the structural factors influenced start-up can be of great help to researchers, planners, as well as practitioners working to promote women entrepreneurs. This understanding can lead to the development of more finely tuned policies and programs of support that not only recognize that women have different goals for wanting to start a business, but that their needs and experiences in starting up vary according to their particular goals for business ownership.     

Female consumers׳ intention to be involved in fair-trade product consumption in the U.S.: The role of previous experience,product features,and perceived benefits

Fair-trade practices include paying fair wages, supporting participatory workplaces and environmentally sustainable production, and developing long-term and supportive buyer-producer relationships (Kunz, G. I. and Garner, M. B. (2011), Going Global (2nd ed.), New York, NY: Fairchild Books). Fair-trade is both a political movement organized around the theme of trade justice, and the practice of particular types of trading and production relationships (Mare, A. L. (2008), The impact of fair-trade on social and economic development: a review of the literature, Geography Compass, 2, (6), 1922–1942). The aim of this study was to examine female consumers׳ previous experience, product features and perceived benefits of fair-trade product consumption. Specifically, the study examined how previous experience or lack of experience in fair-trade product consumption influences female consumers׳ purchase decisions by considering the impact of product features and perceived benefits. Results indicated that consumers who did not have fair-trade products experience made their purchase decision based on traditional product features (i.e., style and new trends). On the other hand, consumers who had experience with fair-trade products more consider ethical responsibility (i.e., perceived consumer effectiveness) in fair-trade shopping. Implications and limitations were discussed.     

Statistical classification models applied to common stock analysis

The application of statistical classification techniques to various aspects of equity financing and returns performance has been an attractive and fairly prolific area of research in the last 10–15 yrs. The various aspects of equity analysis relevant to classification techniques are more diverse than fixed income analysis and, until recently, presented more interesting empirical as well as theoretical challenges.The purpose of this paper is to review and comment upon numerous classification studies related to several aspects of common stock analysis, and, in so doing, to provide a clear picture of the variety of application areas amenable to statistical classification techniques. These areas include (1) common stock investment categories; (2) price-earnings and return-risk equity classification; (3) information content and return performance; and (4) capital structure questions.     

展望未来20年中国经济发展格局

全球经济陷入疲软"新常态",中国经济"风景这边独好"。即使外部环境不好,内部反周期刺激的空间很大,中国经济仍然可以维持较高的增长。扩大内需仍应以投资为主,解决消费比重过低的办法在于改善一次分配,而不能过度强调二次分配。中国将会成为全球最大的经济体和贸易体,人民币终有一天要变成国际储备货币。但目前加速人民币国际化会扰乱中国金融秩序,不利于中国经济增长。当前中国经济政策的主要目标仍然必须是创造有利环境,保持内部相对稳定,再维持20年或更长时间的快速增长。     

Coping with multiple identities related to meat consumption

Global meat consumption poses a threat to environmental sustainability and human health. Therefore, moral and health‐related norms connected to eating meat are changing and consumers experience conflicts when choosing between meat and nonmeat options in various situations. To achieve a better understanding of the nature of these conflicts and how consumers cope with them, we study identities related to meat consumption and how they are organized. Identity theories are used as the lens to address the self‐relevance of meat to consumers. Thirteen Danish consumers shared how and why they ate, reduced, or avoided meat in a food‐based photo‐diary and in‐depth interviews, supported by a visualization approach, developed from self‐brand connection methods. Three higher‐order identities (pragmatic idealist, ethical foodie, and healthy hedonist) emerged, governing the consumption, reduction, or avoidance of different meat categories. Identity conflicts between health, moral (e.g., animal welfare), and hedonic concerns were present, but also identity stigma. Coping mechanisms include change of salience and changing patterns of meat consumption. Campaigners promoting a reduction in meat consumption and developers of alternative protein foods can use these insights to target identities and facilitate conflict resolutions. However, more research is needed on how generalizable results are.     

Nostalgia is not what it used to be: heritage films,nostalgia websites and contemporary consumers

Nostalgia is not a singular phenomenon; it is multi-layered, diversely experienced and variously exploited, as I demonstrate by briefly outlining the history of nostalgia, especially the recent shift from modern to post-modern versions of the experience. The modern, temporal version of nostalgia is founded on the unattainable distance between the past and the present; the post-modern, atemporal version erases this sense of distance. Central to the modern concept of nostalgia is the experience of wistfulness, a hopeless longing for something lost and irrecoverable. But for post-modern nostalgics, the irrecoverable is now attainable, the difference between past and present flattened out. This is partly because post-modern nostalgia re-cycles images, objects and styles associated with the relatively recent past, a prime site of such re-cycling being the Internet. I therefore look at a range of websites that use nostalgia as a central concept in their marketing and which demonstrate some of these recent shifts in the experience of nostalgia. In the final part of this article, I explore these concerns in relation to the reception of four films about the English, past released in the 2000s: Ladies in Lavender (2004), Becoming Jane (2007), Brideshead Revisited (2008) and An Education (2009). How are films mobilised for nostalgic purposes at the levels of production, marketing and consumption? How is an experience of the past built into these films? Are some of the resulting images, sounds and pasts more resistant to nostalgic uses than others? Are these films discussed by audiences in terms of nostalgia? If so, is this is a positive or negative experience? Ranging in this way across a variety of material, my article is an attempt to bring together cultural history, conceptual, formal analysis and the analysis of reception or consumption.     

Making working in retailing interesting: A study of human resource management practices in Danish grocery retail chains

This paper discusses how five retail chains in the Danish grocery industry attempt to make low-wage, low-status store-level retail jobs as checkout operators and sales assistants interesting. It does so from the perspective of both retailers and employees. Following analysis of the social and institutional context of Danish grocery retailers, we identify three types of retail employees (transitional workers, core employees and career seekers), who have different motivations and aspirations for working in grocery retailing. The central challenge for retailers is to make store-level retail jobs interesting to the different employee types. Although retailers mainly focus their attention on career seekers, we find that working in retailing is interesting for all employee types because the retailers are currently able to meet their respective motivations and aspirations. Nevertheless, we identify several areas in which retailers can improve their practices.     

Consumers telling consumption stories: Word-of-mouth and retrospective evaluations

During conversations, people generally comply with norms such as keeping the story interesting for the listener. If word-of-mouth about a previous consumption experience is communicated in a conversational format, then adherence to conversational norms could result in changes to the retrospective evaluation of the event. The research presented here investigates whether an alteration occurs, the possible consequences of an alteration to the retrospective evaluation, and the mechanisms behind a change. A peak-trough moment approach to constructing retrospective evaluations is compared with an average moment (or overall attitude) change. The peak is the most intensely positive moment in a positive experience and the trough is the most intensely negative moment in a positive experience. The results show that post-conversational retrospective evaluations are amplified and that the change in the intensity of the trough that has an important role to play in explaining the changes in the retrospective evaluation of the consumption event.     

Automatic adjustment clauses and allocative efficiency in public utilities

This paper presents a formal analysis of the efficiency effects of automatic adjustment clauses (AACs) is regulated industries. Using a two-input model of ex ante/ex post input choice and a general putty-clay technology, we analyze the relative extent of allocative distortions due to each of three alternative regulatory policies—periodic rate review with and without an AAC, and an AAC without any rate review—for the case of a regulated firm that chooses an ex post technology to maximize the present value of future profits.Our results indicate that the economic rationale for using AACs in industries already subject to intermittent rate review is not unambiguous, even in the face of severe cost inflation, and is particularly sensitive to the magnitude of the price elasticity of demand for output and the rate and direction of input price changes. We are forced to conclude that the use of AACs in regulated industries such as electric power, while originally justified on the basis of financial viability, may well carry significant economic costs in the form of allocative inefficiency that may outweigh the benefits.     

It's Only Once,So Let's Indulge: Testing Ordinary vs. Extraordinary Experience within Marketing Messaging,Temporal Distance,and Consumer Indulgence

Prior research has inadequately examined how the nature of an experience (ordinary/extraordinary) influences consumption, with exceptions exploring outcomes of spending and happiness. This research extends prior work to examine if the nature of an experience within marketing messaging influences actual consumption, is moderated by temporal distance, and is mediated by goal orientation. Results show the nature of an experience within marketing messaging influences consumption through direct manipulation and use of an unrelated greeting card slogan prime (Pilot, Study 1), with extraordinary experiences increasing indulgence. Study 2 replicates prior results with actual consumption to show that extraordinary (ordinary) experiences within marketing messaging lead participants to eat more (fewer) candies. Study 3 builds on construal theory by examining temporal distance (moderator) and goal orientation (mediator) to show that extraordinary (ordinary) experiences 1 month in the future lead to a lower (higher) focus on goals that results in higher (lower) guilt‐related affect.     

Stability of mutual fund systematic risk statistics

Empirical data for 85 mutual funds are used to test the intertemporal stability of their systematic risk statistics. Reasons why the portfolios may be nonstationary are suggested. A random coefficient model developed by Theil [37] is employed to test for the stability of each fund's beta. The data suggest that some funds do exhibit a beta that is best described as being a random coefficient. However, the percentage of funds exhibiting this characteristic was not statistically different from the percentage of randomly created portfolios that exhibited a random beta coefficient. The findings of this study support the statistical models employed in two other recent studies [18,21] to test for the stability of beta. Yet, for mutual funds that do exhibit a random beta coefficient, the partitioning of the total risk of the portfolio return into systematic and unsystematic risk is no longer valid for explaining the total risk.     

Humor and ad liking: Evidence that sensation seeking moderates the effects of incongruity‐resolution humor

It is widely reported that humorous ads are better liked and therefore more effective than are non‐humorous ones. This study examines whether the liking advantage associated with ads containing incongruity‐resolution humor depends on sensation seeking. Higher sensation seekers are assumed to enjoy arousal induction because they are lower in base arousal level. From this it can be predicted that ads containing incongruity‐resolution humor will not be liked better by such people than will equivalently arousing non‐humorous ads. However, the higher base arousal assumed to characterize lower sensation seekers is claimed to be associated with a preference for reduction of induced arousal. Incongruity‐resolution humor provides a mechanism for reduction of the arousal occasioned by the incongruity. As a result, it is expected that lower sensation seekers will like ads containing such humor more than non‐humorous ads matched in arousal to the humorous ones. The results support those suggestions. The relevance of the findings for advertising is discussed, and requirements for further research are indicated. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.