Understanding contemporary marketing: Development of a classification scheme

The term Relationship Marketing has been used in a multitude of ways to describe and define marketing in the contemporary environment. This has led to the term being loosely defined and applied in the literature, resulting in frustration for both researchers and practitioners. Therefore, a classification scheme is developed from analysis of the extant literature, and used to systematically examine the meaning of marketing across twelve dimensions which reflect issues related to marketing practice. From this scheme, the authors identify two ‘perspectives’ of marketing, which encompass four distinguishable ‘types’ of marketing. Implications for future research in the area are discussed.     

The effects of role strain on the consumer decision process for groceries in single-parent households

Single-parent families are becoming a larger part of American society. But what is known about their decision-making processes? Role strain is of particular interest when studying single parents because of their need to serve multiple family roles otherwise carried out by dual-parent families. In this study, the consumer decision process for single parents is empirically examined in the context of grocery shopping. Role strain was found to have a significant effect on problem recognition style and reactive shopping behaviors. Advertising positively influenced proactive shopping behaviors and had a negative relationship with reactive shopping behaviors. Implications for food retailers are provided.     

Whose constituency? Representativeness of the Finnish Paper Workers' Union,innovation strategies,and outsourcing in the Finnish paper industry between 1980 and 2008

Outsourcing has been a conflictual issue in the Finnish paper industry, which reached a temporary solution in 2005. This article analyses the Paper Workers' Union's stance on outsourcing, arguing that it has been defending acquired rights and perhaps deliberately narrowed its representation of diverse constituencies over time.     

Argumentation-Based Qualitative Preference Modelling with Incomplete and Uncertain Information

This paper presents an argumentation-based framework for the modelling of, and automated reasoning about multi-attribute preferences of a qualitative nature. The framework presents preferences according to the lexicographic ordering that is well-understood by humans. Preferences are derived in part from knowledge. Knowledge, however, may be incomplete or uncertain. The main contribution of the paper is that it shows how to reason about preferences when only incomplete or uncertain information is available. We propose a strategy that allows reasoning with incomplete information and discuss a number of strategies to handle uncertain information. It is shown how to extend the basic framework for modelling preferences to incorporate these strategies.     

Does Hindsight Bias Change Perceptions of Business Ethics?

Ethical decision theory may not be sufficiently well developed to furnish reliable guidelines to people involved in complex decision making that involves conflict between ethical considerations and business imperatives such as making a profit. In conditions of ethical uncertainty hindsight bias may occur, and this study reports on an exploration of hindsight bias effects among participants in continuing education in business programmes. Perceptions of business ethics were found to differ among groups within the sample depending on what they thought had been the outcome of the ethical decision concerned.     

Institutional industry herding

We examine whether institutional investors follow each other into and out of the same industries. Our empirical results reveal strong evidence of institutional industry herding. The cross-sectional correlation between the fraction of institutional traders buying an industry this quarter and the fraction buying last quarter, for example, averages 40%. Additional tests suggest that correlated signals primarily drive institutional industry herding. Our results also provide empirical support for “style investing” models.     

Young in class: Implications for inattentive/hyperactive behaviour of Canadian boys and girls

Using data from the Statistics Canada National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), this paper investigates the impact of school entry age on inattentive/hyperactive behaviours. We employ both an across‐provinces and time difference‐in‐differences approach and a within‐province regression discontinuity design. We find that being young in class causes greater inattentive/hyperactive behaviour, exacerbating any inattentive/hyperactive behaviour exhibited prior to school entry. These results also hold in sibling fixed effect models. We do not find gender differences in the effects, although since boys are more likely to be inattentive/hyperactive at school entry, they are more affected. These effects persist into early adolescence.