Measuring customer equity and managing the customer asset: an explanatory study in the Australian hotels

Although there are a range of conceptual and theoretical studies about customer equity (CE) measurement and management in the literature, there are few empirical studies where these two concepts are examined together. This paper focuses on the need for a more synthesised approach and addresses calls for more research into this specific area of marketing management. A conceptual framework was developed that synthesises both customer lifetime value and customer relationship management from a customer equity management (CEM) perspective. The framework was used to empirically examine how four CE strategies, together with a firm’s use of the two types of customer data (aggregated and disaggregated), impact on CEM outcomes. Data were collected from 114 hotel managers in Australia and analysed through a decision tree methodology. The results show that hotels are utilising their CE strategies for acquisition purposes more than retention purposes (customer asset management), which overall appears to satisfice more than maximise their hotel’s capacity in achieving effective CE outcomes. The study’s contribution to theory is through empirically testing a framework that combines two discrete theoretical concepts in one study to provide insights to guide future research.     

Eating their cake and everyone else's cake, too: Resources as the main ingredient to workplace bullying

This article examines workplace bullying from a personal resources perspective. As workplace bullying emerges in unsupportive and stressful work environments, the threat of personal resource loss triggers the low cost, high reward resource-seeking behaviors that are typically reported as indicative of bullies in the workplace bullying research. Herein, we propose that these resource-seeking bullying behaviors allow bullies to create reinforcing resource gain cycles for them, but also create reinforcing resource loss cycles for targets and bystanders of bullying. As a potential remedy, we discuss recommendations for organizations to reduce the occurrence of workplace bullying.     

The United Nations Global Compact: Engaging Implicit and Explicit CSR for Global Governance

In the past few decades, a growth in ethical consumerism has led brands to increasingly develop conscientiousness and depict ethical image at a corporate level. However, most of the research studying business ethics in the field of corporate brand management is either conceptual or has been empirically conducted in relation to goods/products contexts. This is surprising because corporate brands are more relevant in services contexts, because of the distinct nature of services (i.e., intangible, heterogeneous, and inseparable) and the key role that employees have in the services sector (i.e., they can build or break the brand when interacting with customers). Accordingly, this article aims at empirically examining the effects of customer perceived ethicality in the context of corporate services brands. Based on data collected for eight service categories using a panel of 2179 customers, the hypothesized structural model is tested using path analysis. The results show that, in addition to a direct effect, customer perceived ethicality has a positive and indirect effect on customer loyalty, through the mediators of customer affective commitment and customer perceived quality. Further, employee empathy positively influences the impact of customer perceived ethicality on customer affective commitment, and customer loyalty positively impacts customer positive word-of-mouth. The first implication of these results is that corporate brand strategy needs to be aligned with human resources policies and practices if brands want to turn ethical strategies into employee behavior. Second, corporate brands should build more authentic communications grounded in their ethical beliefs and supported by evidence from actual employees.     

Cost-effectiveness of obinutuzumab plus bendamustine followed by obinutuzumab monotherapy for the treatment of follicular lymphoma patients who relapse after or are refractory to a rituximab-containing regimen in the US

Aims: Obinutuzumab (GA101, G) was approved in February 2016 by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat follicular lymphoma (FL) patients who relapsed after, or are refractory to (R/R), a rituximab-containing regimen (R/R-rituximab). In the GADOLIN trial, R/R-rituximab patients who received G plus bendamustine (B) followed by G-monotherapy (G?+?B) for up to 2 years had significantly improved progression-free survival and overall survival compared to patients receiving B-monotherapy. This study estimated the cost-effectiveness of G?+?B vs B-monotherapy for R/R-rituximab FL patients from a US payer perspective.

Materials and methods: Patient outcomes were simulated using a 3-state area under the curve model including progression-free survival, progressive disease, and death. This study used R/R-rituximab data from the National LymphoCare Study to extrapolate the GADOLIN trial’s refractory FL progression-free and overall survival data to a R/R-rituximab FL population. Drug utilization and adverse events were based on trial data, and costs were based on Medicare reimbursements and drug wholesale acquisition costs in 2016. Utility estimates were derived from published literature. Post-progression treatment costs were based on observed post-progression therapies in GADOLIN. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess model uncertainty.

Results: G?+?B resulted in an increase in quality-adjusted life years relative to B-monotherapy of 1.24 (95% CR?=?0.61–1.87); the incremental total cost was $58,100 (95% CR?=?$54,500–$61,500). The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was $47,000 per QALY gained, and, based on probabilistic simulations, there was a 98% probability that G?+?B was cost-effective at the $100,000 per QALY threshold.

Limitations and conclusions: This US-based analysis suggests that treatment with G?+?B compared to B-monotherapy is likely cost-effective in R/R-rituximab FL patients. Modeling a R/R-rituximab population based on a synthesis of GADOLIN and the National LymphoCare Study data introduces uncertainty in the analysis. However, the findings were robust to sensitivity analyses.     

Social identity in MNCs based on language and nationality

The existence of multiple languages in a multinational corporation (MNC) causes tensions in the firm both by causing problems in communicating and by creating social groups. MNCs that adopt a common corporate language that is not their home language will find a problem of competing languages. Nationality is another cultural feature that leads to perceived biases that favor home‐country nationals. We explore both of these influences using social identity theory. Our research was conducted in a Spanish MNC that has subsidiaries in 42 countries and has adopted English as its corporate language. We used a mixed‐method approach with a mailed survey of 216 managers across 42 subsidiaries in the MNC and personal interviews of headquarters executives. We found that Spanish speakers enjoyed advantages in terms of access to resources for themselves and their subsidiaries, relative to non‐Spanish speakers. This access was greater when the Spanish speakers were Spanish nationals and was moderated by geographic proximity of the subsidiary to the headquarters and age of the subsidiary.     

Expectations and exchange rate dynamics: A state-dependent pricing approach

This paper presents a two-country DSGE model with state-dependent pricing as in Dotsey et al. [Dotsey, M., King, R.G., and Wolman, A.L., 1999. State-dependent pricing and the general equilibrium dynamics of money and output. Quarterly Journal of Economics 114, 655-690] and variable demand elasticity as in Kimball [Kimball, M.S., 1995. The quantitative analytics of the basis neomonetarist model. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 27, 1241-1277]. Following a domestic monetary expansion, the model predicts: (i) positive hump-shaped responses of domestic output and consumption, (ii) positive spillover effects on foreign output and consumption, (iii) a high international output correlation relative to consumption correlation, (iv) a delayed increase in domestic and foreign inflation, (v) a delayed nominal exchange rate overshooting, (vi) a deterioration in the terms of trade, and (vii) a J-curve in the trade balance. The model matches the impulse responses from an identified VAR more closely than an otherwise identical model with time-dependent pricing.     

Revisiting the welfare effects of eliminating business cycles

We investigate the welfare effects of eliminating business cycles in a model with substantial consumer heterogeneity. The heterogeneity arises from uninsurable and idiosyncratic uncertainty in preferences and employment status. We calibrate the model to match the distribution of wealth in U.S. data and features of transitions between employment and unemployment. In comparison with much of the literature, we find rather large effects. For our benchmark model, we find welfare effects that, on average across all consumers, are of a bit more than one order of magnitude larger than those computed by Lucas [Lucas Jr., R.E., 1987. Models of Business Cycles. Basil Blackwell, New York]. When we distinguish long- from short-term unemployment, long-term unemployment being distinguished by poor (and highly procyclical) employment prospects and low unemployment compensation, the average gain from eliminating cycles is as much as 1% in consumption equivalents. In addition, in both models, there are large differences across groups: very poor consumers gain a lot when cycles are removed (the long-term unemployed as much as around 30%), as do very rich consumers, whereas the majority of consumers—the “middle class”—sees much smaller gains from removing cycles. Inequality also rises substantially upon removing cycles.     

Is environmental regulation bad for competition? A survey

Theoretical and empirical research points to environmental regulation affecting the vigour of competition in product markets. We provide a critical, selective survey of that research. Environmental regulations can advantage large firms over small and raise concentration. They can discourage entry in their own right, and provide instruments with which incumbents can discourage entry strategically. They can provide the basis for predatory behavior by incumbents. Policy governance needs to be coordinated sufficiently to ensure that these secondary effects are accounted for in policy design. Cost-benefit evaluation of environmental policies that fail to account for likely detrimental impacts on product market competition will overstate the net benefits. This survey is a heavily-revised version of a discussion paper that the author wrote for presentation to a meeting of the OECD Competition Committee in June 2006 (OECD 2006). The support of OECD in the writing of that paper is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks also to Nick Johnstone, Jean-Phillipe Barde, Jeremy West, Sandeep Kapur, Michael Crew and an anonymous referee from this journal for helpful comments on earlier versions. All views expressed are those of the author alone.     

Predatory Lending Laws and the Cost of Credit

Various states and other local jurisdictions have enacted laws intending to reduce predatory and abusive lending in the subprime mortgage market. These laws have created substantial geographic variation in the regulation of mortgage credit. This article examines whether these laws are associated with a higher or lower cost of credit. Empirical results indicate that the laws are associated with at most a modest increase in cost. However, the impact depends on the product type. In particular, loans with fixed (adjustable) rates are associated with a modest increase (decrease) in cost.