Food and Tourism: Towards an Understanding of Sustainable Culture

Studies of the social significance of food and eating have mostly been left to social anthropologists and social historians. Often it has not appeared as part of the cultural environment that is offered as a tourist package. If a culture is to prove sustainable in the face of tourism, then traditional and ethnic foods must be preserved along with other art forms. This pilot study shows that in a tourist area of Bali (a) visitors are not necessarily being offered what they want, and (b) traditional food is not being preserved.     

Web-Based Menu Design: A Conjoint Value Analysis

ABSTRACT

This study explores the primary factors associated with online restaurant menu design, including trust, familiarity and recognizable patterns, branding consistency, psychological triggers, and utility (or ease of use). In order to assess the causal link between online menu design and consumer behavior, conjoint value analysis was employed. Sample menus were modeled such that the attributes of the five factors represent the independent variables with the responses indicating consumers’ preferences serving as the dependent variable. The study’s findings suggest that trust is paramount, followed by familiarity and recognizable patterns. Surprisingly, our analysis indicates that utility was the least important factor.     

Magazine Readership Patterns

A nationwide life style survey served as the basis for exploring women's magazine exposure behavior. Seven magazine exposure patterns were identified using factor analysis and interpreted on the basis of the common content of the magazines representing each pattern. Comparison of the findings of this study with prior studies suggested that media patterns are relatively stable over time.     

Understanding perceptions of professional attributes using conjoint analysis

It is imperative that academia prepare students to meet industry expectations. To that end, this study explores perceptions of professionalism including attributes that are considered to be indicators of future job performance and how they differ among hospitality students, faculty, and industry representatives. Using conjoint analysis on a large data set gathered during a major industry trade show, the results indicate practitioners place tremendous emphasis on interpersonal skills, interview preparation, ability to work with others, and alignment with the organizational culture when deciding whom to hire. Differences among groups are discussed, and resulting inferences on managing related perceptions are addressed.     

Friendly Fire? The Impact of US Antidumping Enforcement on US Exporters

While there has been considerable interest in recent years in the role of macroeconomic determinants of antidumping actions by the United States and other traditional users, on the one hand, and the determinants of the growing global usage of this trade policy instrument, on the other, there has to date been no systematic exploration of the motivations for the significant number of foreign antidumping cases filed against US exporters. Several observers have remarked that the growing number of foreign users of antidumping might threaten US exporters, but the determinants of these actions have not been examined. That is the purpose of this study. We find that these actions are in part explained by macroeconomic forces and as a response to US export superiority in particular sectors, however a significant role (and larger than found for global antidumping more generally) is played by retaliation for US trade policy actions. JEL no.  F13     

Are baseball players paid their marginal products?

Previous researchers found that baseball players under the reserve clause had been paid considerably less than their contributions to club revenues. We ask, has the new contractual system of free agency and final-offer arbitration brought baseball salaries into line with marginal revenue products? Using public data for the 1986 and 1987 seasons, our basic answer is yes, major league salaries generally coincide with estimated marginal revenue products, though significant deviations exist. Experienced players are paid in accord with their productivity; young players, however, are paid less than their marginal revenue product, on average. This result is closely related to the market structure within baseball.