The Effectiveness of Brand- and Customer-Centric Content Strategies at Generating Shares, ‘Likes’, and Comments

Brands are constantly competing for user attention on Facebook and are trying to encourage fans to share, click ‘like’, and comment their posts. Yet, it remains unclear what content strategies are successful at encouraging those behaviors. Noting that the effectiveness of brand content strategies still remains an uncharted research area, this study adopts a discovery-oriented approach and employs workshops, quantitative content analysis, and episodic interviews, to link desired user responses (namely clicks share, ‘like’, and comment) to brand content strategies. This study reveals that customer-centric content strategies are the most effective at encouraging user responses. Managers can use provided recommendations to engage their customers by adopting content strategies that result in desired behavioral reactions.     

The optimal portfolio for the two-pillar mandatory pension system: the case of Poland

In the recent decade, there has been observed across the Central and Eastern European states the regulatory trend towards the increase of the non-financial (first) pension pillar size at the expense of the financial (second) pillar. It tends to question the consequences of this shift for the future retirement benefits. Applying the portfolio approach we address this issue by running a series of simulations to find out how to allocate pension contributions between both pillars in an optimal way. Our study contributes to the existing literature as follows. First, we do not perform the assessment of the predetermined regulatory solutions, but we look for an optimal one. Moreover, we allow our optimal rule to be time-varying, if necessary, which would be a true novelty in this research area. Second, we do not base our estimates on historical trends; rather, we apply the long-term economy’s projection to account for the society’s ageing impact, which is a crucially important factor for the solvency of the pension system. Adapting some of the simulation assumptions to fit the Polish case, our results confirm that current regulations underestimate the role of the capital pillar and the optimal allocation between both pillars should be time-varying.     

Determinants of consumer demand for circular economy products. A case for reuse and remanufacturing for sustainable development

We investigate determinants of consumer demand for circular (reused and remanufactured) products. Based on exploratory choice-based conjoint experiments with a sample of 800 adults in the United Kingdom, we examine two types of premium segment electronic appliances: a mobile phone and a robot vacuum cleaner. We find that consumers prefer partly circulated products over fully or not at all circulated products and that circular products can likely successfully enter the existing market at the retail price of a new product. Interestingly, circular products compete for market share primarily with new products, leaving the market share of second-hand options less affected. The results show a promising path for firms considering a transition to circular business models.     

Sequential estimation of a location parameter and powers of a scale parameter from delayed observations

The problem of sequentially estimating a location parameter and powers of a scale parameter is considered in the case when the observations become available at random times. Certain classes of sequential estimation procedures are derived under an invariant balanced loss function and with the observation cost determined by a convex function of the stopping time and the number of observations up to that time.     

Work in the Platform Economy: Beyond Lower Transaction Costs

Work on platforms is part of a wider trend towards the increasing fragmentation of work. It takes different forms, ranging from short spells of employment with the same employer to moving between different work arrangements to juggling multiple jobs at the same time. In all its forms, it signals an increasing job instability and is often fuelled by insufficient income from one job to cover the cost of living.     

Innovativeness of railway transport in the context of the development of tourism in Poland

Quality & Quantity - The article discusses the issue of innovation activities of companies in railway transport in Poland in the context of the development of tourism. Transport infrastructure...     

The impact of selected factors on new business formation in the private healthcare sector

Numerous factors influence the development of the private healthcare sector. Therefore, the selection of these factors, which represent a potential opportunity for forming new entities, is a crucial from the point of view of entrepreneurship. In our research we selected strategic variables which have got direct influence on entrepreneurship in the private healthcare sector in Poland. Theoretical approach was based on literature review which have revealed the main factors and their relationships with entrepreneurship according to the previous research studies. This research study was conducted for the entire population of municipalities in Poland. Methodology was based on Intelligent Data Analysis (IDA) which can be applied for a large amounts of data in order to extract useful knowledge from it. Moreover, in research study were applied explanation techniques – decision rules –in order to indicate, to what extent the environment have influence on strategic choices conditioning the success of businesses. The results have revealed that it is possible to determine a set of the most important factors influencing entrepreneurship in the private healthcare sector in Poland. On the other hand, were indicated these variables which do not participate in process of influencing on entrepreneurship in private healthcare sector in Poland.