Chinese relationship management: a qualitative study of banking in New Zealand

This study investigates the relational factors and motivations of Chinese migrant consumers towards financial service providers in New Zealand. Using convergent interviews, a deeper understanding is developed of immigrants’ relational behaviour with service providers. These relationships with service providers are significantly influenced by traditional Chinese values and guanxi and relational embeddedness plays an important role in how they are developed. The research contributes a better understanding of the interplay between Eastern and Western cultures in service relationships among immigrant groups. A general theory of the Chinese perspective of customer relationship management is developed. The implications for how marketing practitioners manage their relationships with migrant customers are explored.     

The analysis of corporate governance policy and corporate financial performance

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the quality of corporate governance policy and the firm financial performance and. Data were collected from Corporate Library. A sample of 3,068 firms from the database of 2010 Corporate Library was analyzed. Logistic regression models were employed and SPSS statistical package was utilized to perform the analysis. Our results show that when firms have better corporate governance policies, they are more likely to perform better. Specifically, when firms have a better board rating, compensation policy, takeover defense strategy, accounting practice, and a formal governance policy, they are more likely to perform better than their counterparts without such quality corporate governance policies.     

Job accessibility and the modal mismatch in Detroit

Transportation scholars are challenging traditional formulations of the spatial mismatch hypothesis because previous studies have disregarded the considerable difference between travel modes. This case study of the Detroit metropolitan region uses 2000 census data and a gravity-based model of transportation accessibility to test differences in access to jobs among places and people, and provides support for recent calls for reconceptualizing spatial mismatch. It shows that even though Detroit experiences the greatest distance between African Americans and jobs of any region in the country, most central city neighborhoods offer an advantage in accessibility to jobs compared to most other places in the metropolitan region – as long as a resident has a car. Policies aimed at helping carless people gain access to automobiles may be an effective means of improving the employment outcomes of inner-city residents.     

Local cuisines and destination marketing: cases of three cities in Shandong,China

This study analyzes how the three cities of Jinan, Qingdao, and Qufu in Shandong Province of China use their cuisines in promoting their destinations. Based on a critical review of previous studies, a conceptual framework was developed, which included five closely related areas: foods, beverages, dining, farming, and food festivals. All related texts, images, videos, brochures, booklets, and websites designed to market these three cities were content-analyzed. The study findings suggest that all the three cities have not yet fully utilized their cuisines in their destination marketing efforts. Although some of their culinary resources appear in their marketing materials, the local cuisines of these three cities are not yet skillfully integrated into their marketing efforts. The present study offers specific theoretical and practical implications on marketing the culinary resources of destinations that are in the early stages of their development.     

Housing-Price Cycles and Prepayment Rates of U.S. Mortgage Pools

Empirical mortgage prepayment models generally have trouble explaining differences in mortgage-prepayment speeds among pools with similar interest rates on the underlying mortgages. In this article, we model some of the sources of termination heterogeneity across mortgage pools, particularly the role of regional variations in housing prices in generating atypical prepayment speeds. Using a sample of Freddie Mac mortgage pools from 1991 to 1998, we compare two classes of empirical models: a rational option-pricing model using a backward-solving pricing algorithm and an empirical hazard model. In both empirical estimation strategies, we find evidence that differences in house-price dynamics across regions are an important source of between-pool heterogeneity. This finding is then shown to be robust to alternative ways of parameterizing pool heterogeneity in mortgage termination models.     

The role of numeric and statistical content on risk perception in infographics about road safety

Abstract

Numbers saturate news coverage and health and risk messaging. But as our expertise in the creation of statistical information increases, the ability to use those statistics in decision making remains frustratingly inadequate. There has been a wealth of research related to how to train people to better use the numbers they interact with on a daily basis. Far less research, however, explores the appropriate way to use numbers in communication. Two experiments explored the role of numbers in risk communication infographics related to road safety while driving. Experiment 1 found that the presence of numbers influence risk perception, but whether those numbers reflect accurate statistics or random numbers does not change their influence. Experiment 2 found that removing all statistics entirely from infographics and replacing them with linguistic gist representations of the numbers (i.e. words like ‘some’, ‘many’, ‘none’) increased risk perception even though people found the infographics to be less informative than the ones containing numbers. The results suggest that the gist representations of the numbers in the context of the infographics are equivalent regardless of their value, such that the very presence of statistics influences judgment and risk perception but not their meaning. They also suggest that people do not always realize how they are using statistical information in their judgement and decision making process.     

Workplace chaplains: filling a need traditional EAPs can't meet

More organizations are finding secular counseling provided by employee assistance programs (EAPs) is inadequate for many employees. As a result, increasing numbers of employers are providing services of workplace chaplains. Chaplain services are not necessarily part of the recent fad toward "spirituality" in organizations, but rather address the needs of an increasingly non-churchgoing culture living in a more stressful world.