Knowledge spillovers: cooperation between universities and KIBS

Knowledge is increasingly perceived as a fulcral factor to company competitiveness. As the transfer of knowledge is one of the key functions of knowledge intensive business services (KIBS), this research seeks to analyse how the transfer of knowledge takes place between the higher education sector and KIBS type firms. The empirical results show that cooperation between KIBS and universities occurs irrespective of the typology (whether professional or technological in focus). We also empirically establish how geographic proximity is the factor bearing greatest influence over cooperation while such cooperation proves to have a positive impact on the company capacity to innovate. We furthermore find that this innovation capacity also drives a positive company financial performance.     

Knowledge organisation in R&D alliances: its impact on product innovation

Based on the knowledge-based view of the firm, this paper analyses how alternative configurations of technological relatedness in interfirm research and development (R&D) alliances influence specific types of product innovation. A longitudinal study of pharmaceutical firms provides support for the argument that complementary alliances contribute to the development of both radical and incremental innovation. Collaborating with partners that have similar technologies only enhances incremental innovation, although its impact is curvilinear. These evidences highlight the importance of designing a suitable portfolio of R&D alliances in order to develop different innovative competences.     

Agrifood Safety Standards,Market Power,and Consumer Misperceptions

This article analyzes how the public regulation of food safety influences a firm's strategic behaviour in a food chain. In this context, we provide an original theoretical framework to show how, regardless of the level of standard, food safety regulation may have unexpected harmful effects. Namely, the level of compliance costs alone cannot explain the producer exclusion due to a high level of standard. We highlight how upstream producers' involvement in the market also depends on the strategic interest of the downstream firm to remunerate their compliance process. Finally, we show how the actual level of risk does not necessarily decrease when the standard is reinforced.     

Mergers and Acquisitions and Market Volatility of Brazilian Banking Stocks: An Application of GARCH Models

The main objective of this research was to investigate the impacts caused by announcements of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on the volatility of the returns of Brazilian bank stocks from 1994 to 2015. In order to achieve the proposed objective, this study applied Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) class models to the series to model their volatility. Our results confirmed the impact of the announcement of M&As on volatility. They suggest that M&A announcements are expected to cause a negative reaction if related to an expansion or a deal involving a less-well known bank, and a positive reaction if it involves well-known bank with good reputation—a higher level of confidence and a lower level of information asymmetry for investors.     

Private label brands: major perspective of two customer-based brand equity models

In recent years the retail industry has been characterized by the fast growth of private labels, with an increase of the offer of private labels and the enhancement of their value in the marketplace. This research focuses in private label brand equity to deepen the understanding of its origins, by analyzing two alternative customer-based conceptual models. The present study was developed in the large retailing industry, comprising different retailing formats that offer private labels to consumers. Our findings suggest a conceptual private label brand equity model, which is slightly different from the Aaker's brand equity model, considering store image as an antecedent and stressing its importance in building and enhancing private labels' brand equity. Additionally, retailers searching for successful ways to compete in the retail market need to examine in more detail the customer-based brand equity related to their private labels.     

Relational,Functional Benefits and Customer Value in Large Retailing: A Cross-Format Comparative Analysis

ABSTRACT

Based on the existing marketing concept on relational and functional benefits and on the retailing management of customer value, the present research empirically tests the influence of these customer benefits by providing a comparative analysis for different retailing formats, such as supermarkets and hypermarkets. Using questionnaire data for a sample of customers (N = 362), the authors developed structural equation modeling. This study identifies the factors influencing customer value, as well as the key to understand the relationships of customer benefits, customer value, loyalty, and purchase intention in the retailing service context. The contribution of the present research includes empirically testing a conceptual model, by developing a comparative analysis, along with providing some meaningful insights to retailing managers on how to strategically manage customer value variables to increase and enhance customer retention and purchase intent.     

Herding in the strategic allocations of Spanish pension plan managers

This paper empirically examines herding behavior in the strategic style allocations of Spanish pension plan managers. The study uses both the standard metric used in financial literature to capture institutional herding and a new approach to address some shortcomings of this traditional measure. Concretely, some authors have highlighted that the traditional measure does not take into account that the probability that a manager buys rather than sells a certain stock depends on both the initial holding in the stock and the asset flows. As a consequence, this study proposes a new approach, which can be applied to other financial markets and provides more accurate values of the probability to increase (or decrease) the style exposures bearing in mind the previous exposure of each portfolio. The study confirms the existence of herding behavior by using both methods. Although the strength of this behavior decreases using the new approach, the herding levels detected in this study of style herding of Spanish pension plans are higher than those of previous research analyzing portfolio holdings in other countries. Additionally, herding levels are higher in periods of low volatility while market returns does not seem to influence herding levels.     

The covariation for Banach space valued processes and applications

This article focuses on a recent concept of covariation for processes taking values in a separable Banach space $B$ and a corresponding quadratic variation. The latter is more general than the classical one of Métivier and Pellaumail. Those notions are associated with some subspace $\chi $ of the dual of the projective tensor product of $B$ with itself. We also introduce the notion of a convolution type process, which is a natural generalization of the Itô process and the concept of $\bar{\nu }_0$ -semimartingale, which is a natural extension of the classical notion of semimartingale. The framework is the stochastic calculus via regularization in Banach spaces. Two main applications are mentioned: one related to Clark–Ocone formula for finite quadratic variation processes; the second one concerns the probabilistic representation of a Hilbert valued partial differential equation of Kolmogorov type.     

Do Traditional Chinese Cultural Values Nourish a Market for Pirated CDs?

On one hand, Chinese consumers are well known for conspicuous consumption and the adoption of luxury products and named brands. On the other hand, they also have a bad reputation for buying counterfeit products. Their simultaneous preferences for two contrasting types of product present a paradox that has not been addressed in the literature. This study attempts to present an explanation of this paradox by examining the effects of traditional Chinese cultural values and consumer values on consumers’ deontological judgment of pirated CDs and the amount of social benefits they perceive they gain from them. We interviewed 300 Hong Kong Chinese consumers, and found that face consciousness increased materialism and risk aversion, thereby producing a favorable deontological judgment of pirated CDs. Face consciousness also has a direct effect on the amount of social benefits perceived in pirated CDs. Both favorable deontological judgment and perceived social benefits contributed to a strong intention to buy pirated CDs. The results are discussed in a cultural perspective.