The need for services and technologies in physical fast fashion stores: Generation Y’s opinion

ABSTRACT

This study answers the question of in which services and technologies should fast fashion retailers with physical stores invest. Fifteen improvement options were identified through a literature review, corporate practice and expert interviews. Then, a sample of 255 members of Generation Y evaluated and classified these options as attractive, indifferent, must-be, one-dimensional, or reverse according to Kano’s approach using the segmented Kano perspective. Results show that Generation Y generally values service improvements (e.g. with respect to salesperson friendliness and competence) higher than technology improvements. However, this evaluation differs among customer segments: whereas quality-conscious fast fashion shoppers are mainly indifferent to technology improvements, other customer segments rate ‘3D Bodyscan’, ‘Barcode App’, ‘Click&Collect’, ‘iDressroom’, ‘iTerminal’, ‘Loc Aware App’, or ‘Self-Checkout’ as highly attractive.     

How does a firm's life cycle influence the relationship between carbon performance and financial debt?

In a progressively more stringent regulatory context concerning greenhouse gas emissions derived from a growing awareness of how economic activity affects our environment, this study analyzes how the firm's life cycle affects the relationship between carbon performance and financial debt. Using panel data on a sample of European listed firms during the 2005–2018 period, we find evidence suggesting that firms with better carbon performance have greater access to external financing during their growth stages and lesser access during maturity, although it has no effect during the shake-out stage. Furthermore, carbon performance has a strong positive effect during growth, maturity, and shake-out when firms need to finance additional tangible investments. We also find that the negative relationship between liquidity and debt is reversed during innovative stages for firms with better carbon performance. Our results are robust to the use of alternative measures of life cycle stages and to the consideration of industrial, legal, and cultural contexts.     

The work values and job involvement of Post-80s employees in the hospitality and tourism industry: empirical evidence from Macau

The purpose of this research was to examine the work values (WV) and the job involvement (JI) of the younger workforce in a Chinese society. Specifically, the study explores the case of Macau, which has transformed from a sleepy enclave to a gambling mecca. The findings from 384 full-time Chinese employees revealed four WV factors considered important to them. The Post-80s value the social environment and freedom. WV are significantly positively correlated with JI and vary significantly across demographic variables. Intrinsic WV have prediction power towards JI. The lack of research on the younger generation particularly in this popular tourism destination contribute to a better understanding and management of the workforce. It also highlights that traditional Chinese managerial practice might not be able to cope with the new expectations and work habits of the younger workers.     

Unusual patterns in China’s prefectural GDP growth rates

This article examines the last (rightmost) digit of China’s prefectural GDP growth rates, and find that they are unevenly distributedamong 0 to 9. There are too many 0s, 1s, 2s, 5s and too few 4s, 7s, 9s. Moreover, the distribution of the last digit is less skewed when the macro economy grows quickly and when the prefecture’s growth rate ranks high within the province. These patterns reveal that local officials artificially influence the data in order to exceed some thresholds. However, they do not necessarily imply that China's GDP data are falsified.     

The fallacy of Washington consensus and the role of the Government: interpreting some Chinese contributions to development policy from aspects of Chang’e 4

Students of economics may have heard of that economics, especially the kind of mainstream neoclassical economics taught in most universities on earth today, is an imitation of physical science in some fundamental fashion. However, few economists would imagine that economics can be as effective as physical science, not even in the remote future. China’s Chang’e 4 mission to the far side of the Moon provides a golden opportunity for economists to explore this fascinating possibility from the aspect of astrodynamics.

This article, inspired by thoughts of Justin Yifu Lin and Angang Hu among others regarding China’s economic reform, demonstrates that physics explaining the Three-Body Problem of classical mechanics may as well be understood as guiding principles when dealing with issues in development economics. Several aspects of ‘Washington consensus’ are examined in relation to the concerns raised by Chinese scholars. The study concludes that neoliberal interpretations of modern economics are basically inconsistent with the neoclassical framework outlined in standard economics textbooks.     

Expected work experience and the gender wage gap: A new human capital measure

Work experience is a key variable in earnings function estimates and wage gap decompositions. Because data on actual work experience are rare, studies commonly use proxies, such as potential experience. But potential experience is identical for all individuals of the same age and level of education, so it ignores labor market intermittency because of childbirth and child rearing—a critical omission when analyzing gender differences in earnings. This paper constructs a better proxy: expected work experience, which is the sum of the annual probabilities that an individual worked in the past. This measure can be generated using commonly available data on labor force participation rates by age and gender to gauge the probability of past work. Applying the measure to labor force survey data from the Philippines shows that conventional proxies underestimate the contribution of gender differences in work experience in explaining the gender wage gap.     

Residents’ attitudes on the contribution of cultural tourism in Tanzania

This study aimed at evaluating residents’ attitudes towards the contribution of cultural tourism to the social welfare of the local rural residents participating in cultural tourism activities by factoring gender and level of education as possible differentiating factors in residents’ attitudes. Based on survey of local people in northern part of Tanzania, a questionnaire was administered that yielded data that were subjected to a series of t-tests. The results indicate residents to have both positive and negative attitudes towards the contribution of cultural tourism. Gender differences are noted to relate with cultural tourism participation and attitudes towards the contribution of cultural tourism. Females benefit more from cultural tourism than males in economic terms. Having education raises the chances of locals having a more positive attitude towards cultural tourism. From the results, implications to facilitators in cultural tourism to further aid tourism contribution to the locals are derived.     

The dynamics of privilege: How employees of a multinational corporation construct and contest the privileging effects of English proficiency

In this article we analyze how privilege is dynamically constructed as well as contested. A positioning analysis of interviews with employees of a multinational organization reveals the construction of a hierarchy of privilege. As this hierarchy is based on English proficiency along with other diversity dimensions, privilege is multifaceted. Furthermore, privilege is also contested. Contesting English-proficiency–related privilege is connected to the speaker's position in the hierarchy of privilege. The analysis shows that both category membership and specific competences and skills cumulate to produce privileging effects, but also the possibilities for contesting privilege. At the same time, although the privilege gained by English proficiency is not invisible and is regularly contested, it is nevertheless silenced by those in advantage.     

Existence of a calibrated regime switching local volatility model

By Gyöngy's theorem, a local and stochastic volatility model is calibrated to the market prices of all European call options with positive maturities and strikes if its local volatility (LV) function is equal to the ratio of the Dupire LV function over the root conditional mean square of the stochastic volatility factor given the spot value. This leads to a stochastic differential equation (SDE) nonlinear in the sense of McKean. Particle methods based on a kernel approximation of the conditional expectation, as presented in Guyon and Henry‐Labordère [Risk Magazine, 25, 92–97], provide an efficient calibration procedure even if some calibration errors may appear when the range of the stochastic volatility factor is very large. But so far, no global existence result is available for the SDE nonlinear in the sense of McKean. When the stochastic volatility factor is a jump process taking finitely many values and with jump intensities depending on the spot level, we prove existence of a solution to the associated Fokker–Planck equation under the condition that the range of the squared stochastic volatility factor is not too large. We then deduce existence to the calibrated model by extending the results in Figalli [Journal of Functional Analysis, 254(1), 109–153].     

Understanding Heterogeneous Consumer Preferences in Chinese Milk Markets: A Latent Class Approach

We examine heterogeneous consumer preferences in Chinese milk markets. Using a discrete choice experiment, we examine how the brand, quality certification, traceability label and price influence consumers' milk choices. We identify four consumer segments using a latent class model: price conscious (9.8%), balanced thinking (19.8%), health conscious (57.5%), and environment conscious (12.9%) consumers. These four segments have distinct preferences: price conscious consumers prefer green certification; balanced thinking consumers have the highest willingness to pay for traceability labels; health conscious consumers have strong brand awareness; and environment conscious consumers prefer organic certification and traceability labels and use price as a quality signal. Such diversity of consumer preference can be explained by four psychological factors: price consciousness, food safety concerns, health consciousness and environmental concerns.