The role of financial journalists in the expectations channel of the monetary transmission mechanism

Monetary policy relies on managing the inflation expectations of the public in order to influence prices (inflation). Relying on the South African experience, we argue that most of the general public are exposed to the communication of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) only via the media. This state of affairs is fairly typical around the globe. We explored the role and biases of the journalists in transmitting the SARB’s communications to the rationally inattentive general public. Our aim was to obtain insights about the factors that influence media articles that deal with monetary policy issues. Using interviews and qualitative content analysis, we explored the extent of the journalists’ knowledge about inflation and monetary policy, their views concerning the credibility of the SARB, the sources of information they use, and the constraints and incentives they face in writing their articles.     

An empirical examination of the effects of design elements of email newsletters on consumers’ email responses and their purchase

In this research, we empirically explore the effects of various design elements of email newsletters on consumers' email responses and their purchases. We capture the consumers' email responses using three metrics, namely email open, email click, and email reopen. We operationalize consumers' purchases as their spending on product items that are featured in email newsletters. Using a novel email marketing database, first, we model the influence of design elements of email newsletter on consumers' email responses at the individual consumer level. The email design elements constitute several email attributes, situational factors, and integrated marketing communication. Second, we quantify the effects of these three email responses, open, click, and reopen, on consumers' purchases. Our empirical results suggest a significant influence of email attributes, situational factors, and marketing communications on consumers' email responses. Furthermore, among open, click, and reopen, we find clicks tend to have the highest impact on consumers’ purchase, followed by email reopening and opening. However, email newsletters with higher opening probability are more effective in influencing purchases than those email newsletters with higher reopening probability. Furthermore, consumers who indulge in all three email responses, namely opening, clicking, and reopening, tend to purchase the most. Results from our study offer several critical insights for email marketing strategy helping managers improving the effectiveness of email campaigns by careful consideration for the design elements of email newsletters.     

Digital marketing communication in global marketplaces: A review of extant research,future directions,and potential approaches

Digital marketing communication, that is, communication through digital or electronic media among businesses and consumers, is growing rapidly, especially during the COVID-19 era. We propose a framework for analyzing digital marketing communication along four major dyads, business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and consumer-to-business (C2B). We review and summarize, for researchers and practitioners, the literature during 2000–2021 in these dyads along four major components: goals; channels, media, and platforms; content; and responses. We find that extant research in digital marketing communication pertains mostly to a specific, national level rather than a global level, despite the porousness of national boundaries for digital marketing. We derive important insights, identify key research gaps and questions in each of the dyads along these dimensions. We suggest approaches to address these research questions under three major components: substantive issues, data, and methods. These approaches can offer the insights that managers need to better formulate digital marketing strategies in local and global contexts.     

Metaverse as a disruptive technology revolutionising tourism management and marketing

Metaverse is the next disruptive technology that will impact society in the coming decades, by enabling immersive experiences in both virtual and physical environments. Although still conceptual, Metaverse converges the physical and digital universe, allowing users to seamlessly traverse between them. Digital immersion offers opportunities for people to travel in time, supporting users to experience virtually ancient encounters, space explorations or dangerous natural phenomena, such as volcano eruptions. Users can explore immersive environments for working, learning, transacting, exploring interests and socialising with others. This is already evident in gaming ecosystems, where gamers effectively interact in the metaverse. Although still experimental, Metaverse is expected to revolutionize travel and tourism management and marketing. It empowers destination awareness, positioning and branding, as well as coordination and management, through digital twins. Metaverse provides opportunities to support trip planning, interaction and engagement, effectively transforming consumer behaviour. Visiting and engaging with destinations virtually is expected to motivate real travel, rather than replace it. This paper provides a vision of how Metaverse can revolutionize tourism experiences and transform tourism management and marketing. Drawing on a systematic review of scholarly works, articles from media and industry reports, this study defines and conceptualizes the Metaverse ecosystem for tourism and travel. It explores the foundations of the disruptions that Metaverse brings to tourism destinations and organisations and identifies the building blocks of Metaverse tourism. The study outlines research directions so that the tourism industry can take full advantage of the Metaverse capabilities and opportunities emerging as well as identify challenges for the future.     

How will the Belt and Road initiative advance China’s exports?

We examined 2007, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016 data from 49 countries to determine changes wrought by China’s Belt and Road initiative; we also used panel data regarding the Maritime Silk and Inland Silk Roads to test initiative effects on Chinese exports. Post-initiative infrastructure expansion and logistics performance improvements led to positive effects on China’s exports. Additionally, legal-system similarities and inland borders with trade partners had a more positive effect on Chinese exports in the Inland Silk Road, while population and free trade agreements were found to have a more positive effect on the Maritime Silk Road.     

Institutionalized Communication in Markets and Firms

How markets and firms function is critically related to what knowledge and information is exchanged between whom, how quickly. Exchange of (symbolic) information needs to be properly institutionalized in order to be understood by others, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, cannot avoid being ambiguous to some degree as well (Dolfsma et al. 2011 Dolfsma, Wilfred, John Finch, and Robert McMaster. 2011. “Identifying Institutional Vulnerability: The Importance of Language, and System Boundaries.” Journal of Economic Issues 45 (4): 805–818.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Ambiguity allows for the dissent that allows for innovation in the broadest sense of the term. Institutionalization of communication is community-specific. The tension between institutionalization of and ambiguity in communication explains why innovations cannot depart too much from what is known and accepted in a community to be (ultimately) accepted as a legitimate novelty. The view of markets and firms as settings for institutionalized communication and knowledge exchange offers a perspective that institutional economists are well positioned for to offer insights on.     

民航地空通信自适应抗干扰系统设计与性能分析

在复杂电磁环境下，由于民航地空通信大频偏的要求，滤波器无法滤除波道内的干扰。针对此问题，提出了一种自适应抗干扰系统设计方法。对于落在波道内且与地空通信信号有效频带不重叠的干扰，首先对通信信号进行载波频率估计，然后使用自适应滤波方法进行干扰抑制；对于落在波道内且与地空通信信号有效频带重叠的恒包络干扰，首先重构载波信号，消除对恒包络信号估计的影响，然后根据恒包络信号的特性重构干扰信号并进行干扰分离。实验结果表明，该系统设计方法在不改变民航地空通信架构的前提下，抗有效频带外干扰的能力最大可以提升23.8 dB，抗恒包络干扰的能力最大可以提升39.4 dB，从而可以大幅提高航空飞行安全水平。     

Research engagement,impact and sustainable tourism

In this editorial, we reflect on how the Journal of Sustainable Tourism can contribute towards sustainable tourism researchers achieving more impact with their research. We propose some changes that can be tested in, and introduced gradually and collaboratively with, the community of the editorial board and authors. To support impactful mind sets, we will promote research that reflects diverse academic communities. To promote impactful research topics, we will encourage authors to frame their submitted articles against the Sustainable Development Goals, while research that is time sensitive will be fast tracked so it can contribute to current debates. To promote impactful methodologies, we shall favour articles that use mixed methods and action research, and those that conduct longitudinal, experimental, and evaluative research. To promote impactful partnerships, we will favour multidisciplinary approaches and research that has been co-created with stakeholders. To promote impactful communication and dissemination, we will continue to build an online community on social media for sustainable tourism researchers, we will promote articles in social media to raise their visibility, and we will provide free access to those articles that are deemed to have the greatest potential to impact positively on society.     

The dynamic role of small- and medium-sized multinationals in global production networks: Norwegian maritime firms in the Greater Shanghai Region in China

This article examines the role of small- and medium-sized multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the dynamic development of global production networks (GPNs) in the maritime industry. It studies the dynamism between subsidiaries of Norwegian maritime firms and regional actors and institutions in the Greater Shanghai Region of China from the perspectives of the subsidiaries. It argues that strategic coupling, recoupling and decoupling are partly the results of regional selection mechanisms. However, in the cases where the subsidiaries are embedded within the host region, the strategies and behaviour of MNEs are of decisive importance for the dynamic development of GPNs.     

Sharing versus collaborative economy: how to align ICT developments and the SDGs in tourism?

Great hopes have been placed in the sharing economy to provide a new business model based on peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges of underutilized assets. As a model, the sharing economy has been expected to make significant contributions to sustainability, providing new opportunities for entrepreneurship, more sustainable use of resources, and consumer co-operation in tight economic networks. However, in recent years, digital platforms have turned into the most important actors in the global sharing economy, turning global corporations, such as AirBnB, Booking, or TripAdvisor into intermediaries controlling and profiting from most transactions. Focused on accommodation, this paper conceptualizes the sharing economy in comparison to the wider collaborative economy, and discusses its social, economic, environmental, and political impacts in comparison to the sustainable development goals. It concludes that the sharing economy has great potential to make very significant contributions to sustainability, though the model is increasingly being replaced by the collaborative economy, which performs as an extension and acceleration of neoliberal economic practices.