Intra and inter-country comparative effects of symbolic motivations on luxury purchase intentions in emerging markets

Emerging markets, and especially lower-tier cities within these markets, are seen as the future growth engines for luxury brands. However, extant literature on the drivers of luxury consumption has predominantly focused on Tier-1 cities. Grounded in the theory of network effects, this study offers first such intra and inter-country comparison of the symbolic motivations (i.e. snob, bandwagon and Veblen motivations) underpinning luxury purchases between and within Tier-1 and lower-tier cities in two prominent emerging markets, China and India. The findings offer first account of similarities and differences in consumer motivations that drive luxury consumption within and between these markets. While most luxury brands have ubiquitous strategies for emerging markets, the results will assist managers in developing distinctive brand strategies catering to the intra and inter-country differences.     

Organizational coordination, development proficiency, and on-time completion of development and international rollout: A contingency analysis of external environments

This study examines the moderating effects of external environmental variables on the relationships between organizational coordination, quality of implementation of new product development (NPD) activities, and on-time completion of (or timeliness in) product development and international new product rollout (INPR) among manufacturing firms in Korea. The results indicate that quality of marketing execution is of greater importance for achieving on-time NPD and multi-country rollout in markets where competitive intensity is high than when it is low. The positive effect of HQ-subsidiary relationships on INPR timeliness is strengthened in rapid rather than slower technology-change environments. By contrast, the positive effect of HQ-subsidiary relationships on INPR timeliness is weakened in high rather than lower competitive-intensity environments. In addition, the beneficial effect of cross-functional integration on NPD timeliness is weakened in markets characterized by a high rate of technological change. The article also discusses the theoretical and managerial implications of the findings.     

Beyond endorsements: The effect of celebrity Creative Directors on consumers’ attitudes toward the advertisement

Marketers are beginning to expand the roles that celebrities play in support of brands. Connections now go beyond the typical endorsement relationship to employing celebrities as Creative Directors. Study 1 demonstrates celebrity Creative Directors, as opposed to merely endorsers, result in increased attitudes toward the advertisement; an effect mediated by consumer perceptions of celebrity expertize and attenuated by skepticism toward advertising. Study 2 further investigates this phenomenon by considering whether it is the title of Creative Director that results in increased attitudes toward the advertisement or if consumers need to be made aware of the responsibilities associated with such a role. Results from Study 2 suggest that merely bestowing a celebrity with the title of Creative Director is not sufficient to enhance attitudes, the duties performed by the celebrity Creative Director must be made explicit.     

IS A SOCIAL EMPOWERMENT OF PPP FOR INFRASTRUCTURE DELIVERY POSSIBLE? LESSONS FROM SOCIAL IMPACT BONDS

Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) have emerged in recent years as outcome‐based public‐private partnerships (PPP) for the delivery of welfare services, where the payment to the private operator is linked to the achievement of superior social impact. Since the traditional infrastructure‐based PPP approach seems to have failed to achieve higher level of efficiency and, above all, effectiveness, this paper discusses the extent to which the SIB model can represent a reference point to innovate the PPP model by introducing more focus on outcome achievement and social value generation.     

A Self‐Tuning Model for Smart Manufacturing SMEs: Effects on Digital Innovation

With the changing way people live, communicate, and work, enterprises are striving to shift their existing business model into a “self‐tuning” one. Enterprises are becoming more agile, adaptive, and ambidextrous in order to boost innovation in the current digital transformation era. Nowadays, “digital innovation” is closely associated with Industry 4.0 enablers and smart enterprises. Prior research has shown that while multinational enterprises—across many sectors—have already embraced the aforementioned advancements, their adoption by small and‐medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) has so far taken place mainly in the manufacturing sector. Thus, based on a sample of 280 self‐tuned smart manufacturing SMEs and having utilized the structural equation modeling (SEM), this study was aimed to investigate how digital innovation is influenced by the three pillars of self‐tuning models—agility, adaptation, and ambidexterity. Our paper has focussed on the digital systems in which SMEs, spurred by networking and open innovation solutions, operate and innovate in response to external triggers, displaying a balance between exploration and exploitation, and a strong agile capacity.     

Explaining municipal audit costs in Sweden: Reconsidering the political environment,the municipal organisation and the audit market

With the purpose of explaining professional audit costs in Swedish municipalities, we hypothesised that audit costs are partly driven by various signalling and monitoring incentives in order to manage stakeholder relationships. Our model of the determinants of audit costs was tested on data from Swedish municipalities, thus extending the study of audit costs to political organisations in a Scandinavian institutional context. The test supported to some extent the traditional propositions of organisational complexity, risk and market determinants, as well as the proposition of the political environment. Our results indicate that audit costs are used to signal accountability, thereby suggesting that audit as a signal could be managed without managing professional auditors.     

Rolling Out New Products Across Country Markets: An Empirical Study of Causes of Delays

Faced with the challenge of launching a new product into numerous countries, managers may view a sequential rollout as the prudent course of action. Rather than launching the product simultaneously in diverse countries, they may believe they can reduce risk by launching first in one or two countries, and then in others. However, this strategy overlooks the interplay between timeliness in international new product rollouts (INPR) and product success. George M. Chryssochoidis and Veronica Wong explore these issues in a study of 30 high-tech products launched into multiple European markets. Their study has three objectives: examining the incidence of timeliness and delays in simultaneous and sequential INPR; exploring the causes of delays in INPR; and assessing the effects that INPR timeliness and delays have on new product outcomes. They define timeliness in INPR as the availability of the new product to the firm's multiple target markets within the time frame planned by the company's managers. In other words, timeliness in this study reflects a company's capability for adhering to the schedule that management has established. Contrary to expectations, the results of this study do not reveal direct effects on timeliness in INPR from such sources as diversity of target markets or the firm's external environment. These results suggest that firms can achieve on-time, multicountry rollout of new products notwithstanding the legal, technological, and competitive environment. For the firms in this study, timeliness in INPR depends on such factors as sufficiency of marketing and technological resources (for example, to train sales staff, provide after-sales service, and adapt the product for multiple markets), proficiency in executing new product development activities, and effective communication between a company's headquarters and its business units and customers in different countries. Among the 22 product launches categorized as sequential rollouts in this study, 15 experienced delays. All eight of the simultaneous launches were timely. The results of this study indicate a positive relationship between timeliness in INPR and new-product success. Conversely, for the firms in this study, delays in INPR resulted in lower-than-expected product sales and profitability. In other words, the seemingly less risky sequential launch strategy may actually increase the risk of new product failure by delaying product rollout in multiple markets.     

Courts,scheduled damages,and medical malpractice insurance

We study how the functioning of the judicial system affects the availability and affordability of medical liability insurance, as proxied by the number of insurers and the premiums paid. We use two unique datasets collected in Italy from 2000 to 2010. Using the first dataset—insurance contracts for hospitals—we estimate the average treatment effect of schedules on insurers and premiums paid, conditional on judicial efficiency and proxied by different measures. Our identification rests on the partial overlap between healthcare districts and judicial districts, meaning that the caseload of a court and malpractice events at the healthcare provider level are not perfectly correlated. On average, the adoption of schedules does not produce any significant effect on insurers or on premiums paid. However, adopting schedules has a robust and significant effect on the number of insurers, but only in inefficient courts. We further investigate these findings using a second dataset comprising 17,578 malpractice insurance claims. We find evidence of a composition effect among claims that is triggered by higher levels of judicial inefficiency: As a court’s inefficiency increases, the likelihood for a case to not be decided on the merits decreases and the levels of reserve and recovery per claim decrease.     

A content analysis of male roles in television advertising: Do traditional roles still hold?

Analysis of male roles in television advertising is limited. In order to remedy this, our research serves as a catalyst by providing a review of the current literature, conducting a preliminary examination of male roles in television advertising, and discussing ways for this area of research to move forward in the future. Specifically, the study conducted in this paper examines television advertising to provide insight on the depiction of males, the portrayed relations between males and other individuals, and how these depictions may have changed from 2003 to 2008. Male depictions in lead roles are contrasted using 907 primetime commercials from 2003 and 961 commercials from 2008 from the four major US broadcasting networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX). Results suggest that some aspects of male depictions in advertising are counter to, while other aspects are reflective of, the changing gender roles occurring in society.