18th annual TTRA conference

Cindy Guernsey, C.R. Goeldner and Deborah Eckstein briefly summarize the 18th Annual Conference of the Travel and Tourism Research Association held in Seattle, Washington on 7–11 June 1987 The conference dealt with tourism market research and ways to improve the performance of the tourism industry.     

The influence of leader regulatory focus on employee creativity

Brockner and Higgins (Brockner, J., Higgins, E. T. 2001. Regulatory focus theory: Implications for the study of emotions at work. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 86(1), 35–66.) suggest that a leader's behavior may be perceived as an organizational endorsement of promotion-focused or prevention-focused concerns and that this perception will influence employee behavior by eliciting a congruent state of regulatory focus. We tested this hypothesis using matched pairs of leaders and employees from a Chinese firm and found that employee creativity is positively associated with the promotion focus of the supervisor's behavior. Consequently, through their actions, promotion-focused leaders may increase the likelihood of entrepreneurial action in their firms by eliciting a promotion-focused state of eagerness from their employees.     

Geography of crop yield skewness

Analysis of crop yield distributions provides insights into better understanding how natural resources shape agricultural productivity. This study seeks to provide a rigorous theoretical and empirical understanding of the effects of exogenous geographic and climatic factors on the first three moments of crop yields with focus on the third moment. We hypothesize that exogenous factors having beneficial effects on crop production should make crop yield distributions less positively or more negatively skewed. We employ a large crop insurance data set for corn, soybean, and wheat to find general support for our natural‐resources‐determines‐skewness hypothesis. The proposed statistical method optimally uses correlations between the first three moments. It significantly improves estimation performance over existing methods, including the linear moment model which has been commonly applied in the literature.     

Applied customer knowledge in a manufacturing environment: Flexibility for industrial firms

Dynamic business markets are forcing B2B marketers to create flexibility in their firms. The present study investigates: (1) made-to-stock (MTS) versus made-to-order (MTO, which is considered more flexible); (2) production technology routineness (with nonroutine considered more flexible); and (3) a marketing-based enabler of flexibility, i.e., applied customer knowledge. SEM analysis shows that applied customer knowledge completely mediates the relationships of both MTO and routineness with financial performance. This delineates two routes to financial performance, beginning with manufacturing-based flexibility constructs and operating through marketing-based applied knowledge. In addition, exploratory analysis of a subsample confirmed empirically that the financial success of mass customization depends on extensive customer knowledge application and low finished goods inventory levels. Managerial implications are discussed, along with ideas for future research.     

Rural‐urban migration and gender division of labor in transitional China

Over the last two decades, social and economic changes in transitional economies have produced many new outcomes. In this article, I examine some of the ways in which China's transition has produced gendered outcomes and highlight evidence of these outcomes. I argue that during transition the state has shifted its goals to economic ones, but unlike capitalist economies it still has at its disposal instruments of social control. Peasants are made more vulnerable and must rely on migrant work for survival, but their low institutional status relegates them to outsider status in urban areas. These circumstances, together with socio‐cultural traditions that constrain women's mobility and endorse stratifications, have enabled the development of a labor regime that fosters segmentation and division of labor. Peasant migrants' reliance on social network further reinforces segregation in the urban labor market. Using multiple sources of macro‐level and field surveys, I examine both quantitative and qualitative evidence of gender segregation and division of labor. The findings show that a high degree of gender segregation among rural‐urban migrants exists in the urban labor market, that peasant women's urban work opportunities are short‐lived, and that upon marriage women migrants are relegated back to the village and to the ‘inside’, in part to sustain gender division of labor as a household strategy. Au cours des deux dernières décennies, les gouvernements de transition ont connu des évolutions économiques et sociales aux conséquences nouvelles et variées. Cet article examine comment la transition chinoise a produit des effets différenciés selon le sexe, et en détaille la réalité. Durant la phase transitoire, l'É tat a transposé ses objectifs sur le terrain économique mais, contrairement aux pays capitalistes, il dispose encore d'instruments de régulation sociale. Rendue plus vulnérable, la population rurale doit compter sur les travailleurs migrants pour sa survie; cependant, une fois en ville, leur faible statut institutionnel en fait des travailleurs ‘en marge’. Alliée aux traditions socio‐culturelles qui limitent la mobilité des femmes et nourrissent les stratifications, cette situation a permis la création d'un système d'emploi tendant à la segmentation et la division du travail. La dépendance des migrants ruraux par rapport au réseau social vient renforcer la ségrégation sur le marché du travail urbain. A partir d'études de terrain et de niveau global, l'article explore les éléments quantitatifs et qualitatifs de ségrégation sexuelle et division du travail. D'après les résultats, il existe un degré important de ségrégation selon le sexe parmi les migrants sur le marché de l'emploi urbain, les possibilités de travail en ville sont de courte durée pour les paysannes et, quant au mariage, les migrantes sont ramenées à leur village et à‘l'intérieur’, en partie pour soutenir une stratégie domestique de division sexuée du travail.     

Service-driven social community and its relation to well-being

This study aims to develop a conceptual framework pertaining to a service-driven social community and its relation to customer well-being. This paper draws on motivations and self-determination theory to expand an existing empowerment framework for a better understanding of how a service provider, which aims at transforming its service offerings to achieve business sustainability, supports for his/her customers’ needs in value co-creation in the beginning and over the course of time, which subsequently drive their active engagement in co-creation. The framework reinforces the transformative role of a service to establish a social community to satisfy customers’ psychological needs for competence, autonomy and a sense of relatedness. The satisfaction will drive the community to form a collective commitment to shared goals and intercustomer support, which subsequently perpetuates community members’ positive experiences of living well. This is accomplished through a case study drawn from the cTaipei platform, where service providers interact with their networks and customers to co-create values in developing a creative Taipei city. This paper contributes to this practice by providing a roadmap for services and customers to be benefited from the proposed service-driven social community framework.     

Exploring the Dynamics of Business Values: A Self-affirmation Perspective

In this paper our aim is to augment the value-congruency literature by demonstrating the dynamics of business value structures. The relationship between cognitive discomforts and value restructuring is examined by applying self-affirmation theory. Subjects (N = 115) were randomly assigned either to the treatment group (n = 69) or control group (n = 46). Those subjects in the treatment group were tasked with deciding between two different organizational re-structuring options that involved downsizing. The values of job-entitlement, and obligations to the disadvantaged shifted in emphasis in a direction that legitimated and justified the lay-off decision. The value of economic nationalism remained unchanged. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

The consumer as advocate: Self-relevance, culture, and word-of-mouth

This research examined the relation between self-relevance and word-of-mouth (WOM). The results of two studies suggest consumers are more likely to provide WOM for products that are relevant to self-concept than for more utilitarian products. There was also some indication that WOM was biased, in the sense that consumers exaggerated the benefits of self-relevant products compared to utilitarian products. Finally, self-relevance had a greater impact on WOM in individualist cultures than collectivist cultures, consistent with differences in the way self-concept is typically construed by these groups. Implications for marketing strategies concerning WOM are discussed. This paper is based on the first author’s doctoral dissertation     

第三方网上支付呈现发展契机

<正>根据艾瑞咨询中国网络购物及网上支付市场的研究发现,不同类别的电子商务行业网上支付的发展程度差异显著。C2C领域,在淘宝和支付宝市场培育基础上,第三方网上支付的应用已经成为最普遍的支付方式,淘宝网70-80%的交易均是通过支付宝完成,支付环节的相对成熟也成为C2C爆发式增长的关键因素。相比较而言,B2C电子商务领域,网上支付的应用还远未达到饱和和成熟,受制于传统的用户消费习惯及B2C企业区别于C2C企业的经营策略等因素,支付环节成为影响B2C企业快速发展的重要因素之一。