Best practice network business model for internationalization of small and medium enterprises

Small and medium enterprises’ entry to international markets leads to their continuous growth and facilitates national and global economic development. In an attempt to substantiate these outcomes, they seek to acquire best practices and experiences in order to facilitate entering, surviving, and growing in global markets. To address this challenge practically, the present paper introduces a media for networking and a system for transferring internationalization best practices across small and medium enterprises under the concept of Best Practice Network. Subsequently, the paper tries to depict Best Practice Network as a viable business and establish a guideline for implementing it by developing its business model. To achieve this objective, the authors have administered multi-case study research among the top managers of international small and medium enterprises in the information and communication technology sector of Iran. The resulting model is based on business model ontology and proposes a bird’s eye view of the Best Practice Network including product, customer interface, infrastructure management, and financial aspects. Moreover, by proposing a media for sharing related best practices, this paper can lead to the decline of the stage theory of internationalization and can excel the born global theory of small and medium enterprises.     

Exchange Rate Behavior of Canada,Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States

We revisit a significant research topic on exchange rate behavior by restating the test procedures with an appropriate econometric methodology to re-examine three aspects. (i) Does the inflation (price) factor affect nominal exchange rate? (ii) Do relative interest rates affect a country’s exchange rate? (iii) Do the price and interest rate effects hold if controls for non-parity factors are embedded in tests? The quarterly data series for this study are taken over 55 years. The traditional parity condition model with price and interest rate as criterion variables is extended to take into account recently-verified non-parity factors, namely trade, productivity and foreign reserves. The results affirm that both parity factors and also the non-parity factors significantly affect the exchange rates of Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. In our view, these findings relating to four free-floating currencies help extend our knowledge on how currency behavior is consistent with parity and non-parity theorems using a relevant methodological approach in this study.     

The impact of exchange rates on stock market returns: new evidence from seven free-floating currencies

This paper provides evidence of a significant exchange rate effect on stock index returns using data from seven selected countries practicing free-floating exchange rate regimes. This research uses parity and asset pricing theories, thus placing it within the monetary-cum-economics framework for international asset pricing. In this study, we apply a system of seemingly unrelated regression to control for unobserved heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. The findings constitute evidence of a statistically significant exchange rate impact on stock index returns across selected countries. These findings can be considered as falling under the arbitrage pricing approach of the international capital asset pricing model of Solnik who also used the parity-theoretical framework on exchange rate determination.     

From Decision to Run: The Moderating Role of Green Skepticism

This paper examines the impact of corporate ability, environmental attitude, and environmental knowledge on consumers’ purchase intentions, information seeking, and actual green purchase behavior; additionally, green skepticism is examined as a moderator of these relationships. A sample of Gokarn’s organic products consumers, in Tehran, is used. The structural model is examined by the partial least squares approach by using Smart PLS 2.0 software. The findings suggest that environment attitude and corporate ability are the main factors in building green purchase intentions and information seeking, while environmental knowledge is not a significant predictor. The results show that green skepticism has a significant moderation impact on the relationship between corporate ability and environmental knowledge, and information seeking.     

Risk mitigation of post-earthquake fire in urban buildings

Post-earthquake fire (PEF) is considered one of the most high risk and complicated problems affecting buildings in urban areas and can cause even more damage than the earthquake itself. However, most standards and codes ignore the implications of PEF and so buildings are not normally designed with PEF in mind. What is needed is for PEF factors to be routinely scrutinized and codified as part of the design process. A systematic application is presented as a means of mitigating the risk of PEF in urban buildings. This covers both existing buildings, in terms of retrofit solutions, and those yet to be designed, where a PEF factor is proposed. To ensure the mitigation strategy meets the defined criteria, a minimum time is defined – the safety guaranteed time target – where the safety of the inhabitants in a building is guaranteed.     

Ranking the strategic actions of Iran mobile cellular telecommunication using two models of fuzzy QFD

Mobile cellular telecommunication success in target markets first requires ranking the customer’s expectations and then prioritizing the engineering characteristics (ECs) to meet the expectations. In this paper, two prioritization models based on quality function deployment (QFD) are developed to rank the strategic actions (SAs), or the ECs of Iran mobile cellular telecommunication. QFD is a widely used customer-driven tool for which the success of its applications may be the result of some of its benefits, such as greater customer focus. It uses a matrix called House of Quality (HOQ) to translate Customer Attributes (CAs) into ECs. However, due to the high degree of subjectivity in constructing the HOQ, the application of fuzzy logic provides an efficient tool to handle the subjective assessments. On the other hand, taking into consideration the gap between the current state and the positive ideal state for each CA, TOPSIS is used to rank CAs in a first model. In addition, in a second model, using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), more criteria are taken into consideration in ranking CAs. Also, a fuzzy utility factor, B_j, is used to rank SAs in both models. Both presented models have the ability to capture the vagueness of human thinking style, and let customer oriented organizations, such as MCI, derive benefits from the voice of the customer (VOC) in a more expressive way.     

Market Moods and Network Dynamics of Stock Returns: The Bipolar Behavior

The authors show that a simple mood-separable preference in a network study of stock returns captures a variety of stylized facts regarding stocks’ provisional (ab)normal behavior. These behaviors are articulated in a multistate complete Euclidean network model that specifies the existence, direction, and magnitude of a self-organized dynamics for each individual stock during abnormal market moods. In the empirical setting, the authors apply suggested model along with 2 established visual approaches (multidimensional scaling and agglomerative hierarchical clustering) for benchmark purposes. Results reveal different levels of erratic return dynamics for each stock and the entire market in different abnormal market moods. The authors model and interpret these self-organized dynamics as evidence of stocks’ and market’s bipolar behavior.     

Asian medical marketing,a review of factors affecting Asian medical tourism development

Recently, medical tourism has been considered as a profitable economic sector in developing countries. In this study, we have reviewed articles from 2000 to 2017 on medical tourism marketing in Asian countries. We have found that perceived service quality and satisfaction are the most important factors to attract medical tourists. Moreover, a lack of factors like coordination among medical market stakeholders, medical services quality, insurance coverage, and effective laws are the major barriers to medical travel cited in studies. The results suggest that more specific models should be presented for Asian medical marketing, especially in niche markets of this industry.     

Impact of Perceived Security on Trust,Perceived Risk,and Acceptance of Online Banking in Iran

This study examines the relationship between perceived security and acceptance of online banking with the mediating effect of perceived risk and trust in Internet banking in Iranian customers. Researchers used structural equations model (SEM) to examine their hypotheses and conceptual model. Statistical data were gathered via a questionnaire from 395 randomly selected customers of Bank Saderat Iran in Semnan. Cronbach’s alpha and internal compatibility were used to check the reliability of the questionnaire. The justifiability of the research variables was checked and confirmed using the first- and second-order confirmatory factor analysis. According to the SEM results, the variables of perceived security and trust in Internet banking had a significantly positive impact on the acceptance of online banking. Although perceived risk had no significant impact on the acceptance of online banking, the results showed that perceived risk had a significantly negative impact on trust in Internet banking.