Building strong brands in Asia: selecting the visual components of image to maximize brand strength

Asian brands have often struggled to develop quality images. The visual aspects of branding have received little attention on how they might be used to strengthen brand perceptions in Asia. Guidelines for designing visual brand stimuli are developed using evaluations of logos in China and Singapore. There is a significant relationship between design and the responses companies seek, including positive affect, perceptions of quality, recognition, consensus in meaning, and feng shui. How designs are perceived, and their effect on consumer responses, were similar between China and Singapore. Companies are encouraged to leverage design to strengthen their brands. In particular, they should select logo designs that are elaborate, natural, and harmonious as these created positive affect and quality perceptions, clear meaning, true recognition, and feng shui. Many of these relationships hold in the United Sates as well, implying that the visual aspects of brand strategies may accomplish companies' goals across international borders.     

Unlocking the potential of advanced manufacturing technologies

This research examines whether investments in advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) such as flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), computer aided design (CAD), computer aided manufacturing (CAM), robotics, etc., are more likely to lead to improved performance if they are supported by improvements in the manufacturing infrastructure of the company. This question is evaluated using data gathered from 202 manufacturing plants chosen from industries generally considered to have relatively high investments in technology.Multiple item scales are developed and adapted from sources in the literature to measure investments in technology, infrastructure, and the performance of the plant. Evidence supporting the reliability and validity of these scales is provided. Hierarchical regression is used to analyze the relationship between technology, infrastructure, and performance. The results suggest that there is an important interaction between the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies and investments in infrastructure. Firms that invest in both AMTs and infrastructure perform better than firms which only invest in one or the other. Separate analyses on sub-samples of firms with the highest and lowest investments in AMTs show that infrastructural investments have a stronger relationship with performance in the high investment group. Thus, the data indicate that infrastructural investments provide a key to unlocking the potential of advanced manufacturing technologies.     

Perspectives on tourism management as covered by Woodside and Martin

Tourism Management is a research journal and the short title of a book. This article examines the book as a resource for tourism students, tourism researchers and those who use tourism research in decision making. Part I of the book provides a framework for organizing 26 chapters into Parts II to VI. The chapters are research papers, some with exercises that help researchers and users of research understand good decision support by research. Analysis supports the book's value for target markets, particularly in providing good ideas and reference material about using research for decision making. However, Parts II-VI do not have introductions or conclusions. Analysis, drawing on extensive experience of the authors of this article, identifies the usefulness of a revised edition having information in each part about how the chapters fit into the book's framework and their practical significance. Discussion includes having expanded exercises for most chapters. Though suggesting changes to make a new edition better, the study here strongly endorses Tourism Management, the book, for teaching applications and as a resource for researchers and users of research.     

Marketing timeshare in Singapore: An analysis of potential customers and present owners

Timeshare has gained recognition and acceptance in many Asian countries in recent years, but is relatively slow in gaining momentum in Singapore. Timesharing is a type of real estate ownership, which may include hotels, resorts, holiday villas, apartments and more, whereby ownership is split among individuals on the basis of time. This paper presents a study on the attitude of potential consumers on timeshare, and to investigate the current satisfaction level of timeshare owners in Singapore. Two questionnaires were designed to survey the attitude of potential consumers and the timeshare owners. The findings showed that potential consumers’ perception of timeshare is generally negative in Singapore. The main reasons for this negative perception include undesirable sales tactics used in the industry and negative media coverage which tainted the image of the industry. Developers should provide facilities at the resorts to help timeshare owners achieve their desire for rest and relaxation, amongst other reasons.     

Inventories,inflation dynamics and the New Keynesian Phillips curve

We introduce inventories into an otherwise standard New Keynesian model and study the implications for inflation dynamics. Inventory holdings are motivated as a means to generate sales for demand-constrained firms. We derive various representations of the New Keynesian Phillips curve with inventories and show that one of these specifications is observationally equivalent to the standard model with respect to the behavior of inflation when the model's cross-equation restrictions are imposed. However, the driving variable in the New Keynesian Phillips curve – real marginal cost – is unobservable and has to be proxied by, for instance, real unit labor cost. An alternative approach is to impute marginal cost by using the model's optimality conditions. We show that the stock–sales ratio is linked to marginal cost. We also estimate these various specifications of the New Keynesian Phillips curve using GMM. We find that the predictive power of the inventory-specification at best approaches that of the standard model, but does not improve upon it.     

Special economic zones and growth in China and India: an empirical investigation

This paper investigates the role of special economic zones (SEZs) in liberalizing the Chinese and Indian economies and their impact on economic growth. The policy change to a more liberalized economy is identified using SEZ variables as instrumental variables. The results indicate that export and FDI growth have positive and statistically significant effects on economic growth in these countries. The presence of SEZs increases regional growth but increasing the number of SEZs has negligible effect on growth. The key to faster economic growth appears to be a greater pace of liberalization.     

Policies for agricultural development in Peninsular Malaysia

This paper highlights land use changes in the agricultural sector of Peninsular Malaysia. Since rational land use necessitates consideration of alternatives in relation to the natural potential of the land, the author examines the land resource inventory based on soil suitability and land utilization. This is followed by a discussion of land use changes brought about by public sector land development agencies and the private sector. The author gives a review of current land use policies and concludes with possible alternatives for the future.     

Can Singapore maintain its competitive edge in manufacturing productivity vis-à-vis China and Malaysia?

This article investigates whether Singapore can maintain its competitive advantage in manufacturing from a labour productivity perspective vis-avis China and Malaysia, which are generally viewed as Singapore's competitors in manufacturing. We also investigate the extent to which China is closing the labour productivity gap with Singapore and Malaysia in technology-intensive segments of manufacturing. Our analysis reveals that China has the potential to develop a high labour-productivity and low-wage manufacturing sector. In terms of manufacturing labour productivity, China is moving towards convergence with Malaysia. Compared with Singapore, China's manufacturing labour productivity is still far behind, especially in key technology-intensive industries like electronics and chemicals, such that it is unlikely for China to catch up with Singapore within a decade.     

Estimating the long-term effects of advertising on sales: a co-integration perspective

Co-integration econometrics have important theoretical advantages over more traditional approaches to estimating the long-term effects of one variable on another. When advertising and sales data are co-integrated, adaptations of common econometric procedures may be used to estimate the long-term effects directly rather than inferring them from short-term relationships. This paper presents a method for detecting and estimating co-integrating relationships using ordinary least-squares regression procedures. The method is illustrated with the well-known Lydia Pinkham data from 1907 through to 1961. The results show that there was a strong positive relationship between Lydia Pinkham advertising and sales in the long-term. Implications of the method and findings are discussed.     

Perspectives on integrated rural development in peninsular Malaysia

Development strategies in the rural economy of peninsular Malaysia are examined in this article. Tactics used have included land settlement schemes, a guaranteed minimum price for paddy, input subsidies, grants, and agricultural credit at low or zero rates of interest. The number of development institutions has been multiplying. However, the author argues that the success of integrated rural development policies must be measured in terms of improved income for farmers. He concludes that Malaysian policy planners have yet to define their objectives clearly and to identify the priority target groups. The result has been little improvement in farm efficiency and rural poverty.