Creating value through returns management: Exploring the marketing–operations interface

Managing the return flow of product is increasingly recognized as a strategically important activity that involves decisions and actions within and across firms. We focus specifically on returns management at the marketing-operations interface, by utilizing the conceptualization of customer value and its related drivers. In order to explore the phenomenon of returns management across a multi-disciplinary, managerial spectrum, a qualitative research methodology relying on individual managers’ perceptions was chosen to generate depth of understanding given the limited current understanding of the research topic under consideration. Our results suggest that functional integration at the marketing-operations interface can lead to better alignment of corporate resources and thus create higher levels of customer value. We also found the external business environment to impact how and why a firm creates customer value through the returns management process. Overall, our results suggest that when returns management is recognized as a matter of a firm's competitiveness, the joint role of operations and marketing is imperative to success.     

Voting over selective immigration policies with immigration aversion

Selective immigration policies set lower barriers to entry for skilled workers. However, simple economic intuition suggests that skilled majorities should welcome unskilled immigrants and protect skilled natives. This paper studies the voting over a selective policy in a two-country, three-factor model with skilled and unskilled labor, endogenous migration decisions, costly border enforcement and aversion to immigration. Results show that heterogeneity in capital distribution forces skilled voters to form a coalition with unskilled voters, who become pivotal. The voting outcome is therefore biased towards the preferences of the latter, and consists in a selective protectionism. Finally, immigration aversion helps to explain why skilled majorities do not bring down entry barriers against unskilled workers.     

Choice Based on Goals

This article introduces a goal-based view of consumer choice in which (1) choice is influenced by three classes of goals (consumption goals, criterion goals, and process goals), (2) goals are cognitively represented, and (3) the impact of a goal on choice depends on its activation. For each class of goals, we discuss how goal activation is influenced by direct (subconscious) goal priming, by spreading activation from choice options, from other goals, and from the context, and by goal (non-)achievement. Opportunities for modeling goal-based choice, the integration of emotions in a theory of goal-based choice, and relationships with dual-process theories of decision making are discussed. An expanded version of this paper is available from the first author.     

创新区域转移

目前全球关注的重点似乎集中在就业、生存、领导能力、技术水平，尤其是创新等方面。     

中国车市，成为老大之后

2009年，对于中国汽车行业来说，是具有重大历史意义的年份。由于全球金融危机的爆发，经历了2007年销售7000万辆的顶峰之后，全球汽车市场在过去两年中，销量萎缩了将近1000万辆，由北美、西欧和日本组成的三大市场，销量带头下跌。许多跨国公司为了在危机下存活，也经历了史无前例的重组。