Reactance:

Frequently, public sector marketers seek to persuade individuals to engage or not engage in certain forms of behavior. However, research examining reactance suggests that certain choice-restricting messages that are conveyed in public sector promotional campaigns may actually result in promoting more of an undesired behavior or less of a desired behavior. Thus, an understanding of factors associated with reactance arousal may be critical to the overall success of promotional efforts undertaken by public sector marketers. In this paper, these factors are reviewed, and implications of reactance theory for designing promotional campaigns of non-profit and public sector organizations are discussed.     

The Cuban market:: Opportunities and barriers

To open our feature on business in Cuba, Kaplowitz presents a brief overview of the dramatic changes in the Cuban market since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Until 1988, 85% of Cuban two-way trade was with the former Soviet Union, but by 1993 the COMECON nations accounted for only 20% of Cuban trade. The resulting chaos has created openings for Latin American, European and Canadian businesses to fill the investment void in Cuba. Kaplowitz lays out how recent developments have affected Cuban laws on foreign investment and trade, reviews which foreign companies are barkening to Cuba's call, and what the opportunities might be for U.S. businesses should relations between the two countries improve over the long-term. Her article is the first of seven articles in this feature.     

Purchasing involvement in product development:: a framework

Both within academia and practice, the involvement of purchasing and suppliers in product development has attracted considerable attention during the last decade. However, most research is limited to the context of single development projects, focusing on possible short-term contributions such as the reduction of development lead-time. Long-term issues like technological alignment between supplier and manufacturer are relatively ignored. Therefore, this article seeks to develop a coherent framework of specific activities across a number of different management areas within purchasing involvement in product development. Such a framework may help to implement, improve and audit this involvement.     

Marketing:

This exploratory study investigates the relationship between certain personal, institutional and country characteristics and the opinions of professors in developing countries on macro and micromarketing concepts and issues. The results indicate that the opinions of professors in the better-off developing countries are similar to traditional marketing views while the opinions of professors in the poorer developing countries are more radical. The study also points out the implications of these results for academcics and managers.     

FOCUS: Studying Risks: The Science of Cindynics

'Catastrophes are not accidents.'All complex organizations can take steps to prevent catastrophe by enlisting the new scientific study of danger. The author is a member of the Scientific Committee of 1'Institut Européen de Cindyniques and Directeur général adjoint of L'Union des Assurances de Paris. This article is part of a presentation made to the 1992 Paris Conference of the European Business Ethics Network, of which the author is a Council member. The subject of the Conference was the role of business in the shaping of cities, but the author's reflections on learning from risks are of considerably wider application.     

FOCUS: Business Ethics Research: A Cultural Perspective

Why do certain ethical values and beliefs work within the realities of organisation life, while others do not? Research into corporate culture in its various expressions can provide a means of relating corporate rhetoric to actual performance and provide a deeper understanding of the conditions for practical change. Dr Brigley is a member of the Centre for the Study of Organisational Change in the School of Management, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY. He wishes to acknowledge the benefits received from discussion with his colleagues in the Centre and especially with its Director, Dr Paul Bate.     

FOCUS: Investment

'Although the empirical and conceptual underpinnings of New Finance have been rigorously tested, its ethical underpinnings have not been explored.'These are seen to derive from the social remoteness of late twentieth century individualism, which needs to be countered by sensitivity to the social context of finance and to the developmental nature of ethical behaviour. The author is Fellow in Finance at Templeton College, Oxford.     

Supplier Relationships:

Merchant/wholesaler sales forces are extensions of the mill/supplier marketing organization they represent. The Sales Force Effectiveness Study revealed significant areas of the supplier/vendor relationship that are critical to merchant sales force effectiveness: formal supplier evaluations, coordination to reach target markets, partnership agreements, and coordination of policies and procedures. Effective supplier relations propel merchant sales forces to top performance ranks. Research results suggest that improving sales force effectiveness is a channel-wide effort. To achieve these desired results, mills and merchants must work together to clearly define the role, structure, and functions of the sales forces operating throughout the marketing channel.     

Global Expansion:

The strategy of franchising has become an important vehicle for growth among a wide variety of businesses. Fast-food restaurants have been the most successful category of franchising and are the focus of this study. The industry environment is examined first, followed by a look at some of the primary motivations for these firms going abroad. After common patterns of foreign entry are detailed, the standardization issue is examined. Since the transfer of fast-food franchise system packages to foreign markets has been proven to be quite variable, it is projected that these companies will continue to provide a valued service to an ever larger global consituency in the 1990's.     

FOCUS: Ethical Business: Thinking Thoughts and Facilitating Processes

Doing business ethics and conducting ethical business has to be much more than conducting a rational enquiry. Much also depends on the motivation of individuals and how a positive moral vision of business can unite intellectual and affective approaches to the conduct of business. The author is a lecturer in Philosophy at Warwick University, Coventry CV4 7AL, and a Research Associate at the Local Government Centre at Warwick Business School. He is also an independent organisation development consultant specialising in helping organisations develop their learning processes and value-based forms of leadership.     

An econometric assessment of the Canadian wage and price control program: 1975:4–1977:4

This paper presents an econometric assessment of the Canadian Wage and Price Control Program. The assessment is specifically designed to determine whether controls have been effective in reducing the long-run inflation rate in Canada. The method of evaluation of the control program is to compare the behavior of inflation under controls to the behavior which would have occurred in the absence of controls. In addition, the paper analyzes inflation in the post-control period to test for the “catch-up” phenomenon. The results suggest that the control program exercised a permanent effect on the inflation rate.     

Doctoral Research:

Marketing specialists often expect management to accept without further elaboration that "market orientation" is good for all businesses. Yet there is much confusion as to what is meant by market orientation and whether it really is a source of lasting competitive advantage. This article summarises the evidence and argues that, despite some positive pointers, the case in favour remains unproven.     

Systematic Distortion:

Most marketers of food products feel that they know their target market in terms of how customers evaluate their product. Unfortunately, marketers may not know as much as they think the do! For some product groups, consumers may evaluate products and their characteristics differently from what is expected. Consumers may actually distort or bias their evaluation of food products in the marketplace. This article identifies a problem that may be costing marketers of food products thousands or even millions of dollars a year without their knowing it. The results of this study suggest that consumers may distort their evaluation of cereal products on the basis of beliefs about how certain product attributes should go together. Important implications and recommendations are discussed to aid marketers of food products address what is referred to as "systematic distortion."     

Innovation and intellectual property protection: : The software industry perspective

Digital commerce does not yet exist in a widely available, commercially viable form. Substantial amounts of innovation will be required to improve and customize existing technology and to create necessary new technologies for the digital marketplace. Recent months have witnessed the establishment of a broad array of new enterprises, joint ventures and business alliances aimed at preparing for a digital future. Driven by consumer demand, this trend will accelerate over the coming years. The author points out that a number of factors will be critical, however, in order for electronically harnessed information to become an established norm. For the software industry, the most important factor is strong protection of intellectual property rights. This is essential to the promotion and development of new applications and services. The author views the emergence of a digital marketplace as dependent on the combined advancements in technological safeguards and encryption techniques, and strong national and international legal safeguards for copyrighted materials.     

Environmentally Friendly Consumers:

While the number of environmentally friendly consumers continues to rise, government support for public and nonprofit services continues to decline. Therefore, it is important for marketers of nonprofit and public sector environmental programs to become more strategic with their efforts and expenditures. The purpose of this study was to explore the potential association between environmental consciousness and environmentally friendly behavior. The empirical results support the importance of educational programs and demonstrates that higher levels of environmental consciousness are associated with higher levels of participation in environmental protection activities. In addition, the research indicates that the environmentally friendly tend to be homogeneous, donate to more than one environmental cause, and participate in both individual activities and environmental protection programs. The implications of the research findings are discussed and some recommendations for increasing participation in environmental activities and programs are presented.     

Business Ethics: A European Review: Change and Continuity

As was announced at the beginning of this volume of Business Ethics: A European Review , the current editor is retiring from the editorship at the end of this year. It gives him great pleasure to announce that he will be succeeded as Editor of the Review by Dr Jane Collier, of the Judge Institute, Cambridge. In this invited article Dr Collier offers some reflections on how she envisages the future of the Review.     

Focus: Information Ethics

"The overall goal of information ethics is to integrate information technology and human values in such a way that IT advances and protects human values rather than doing damage to them" (Simon Rogerson). We are pleased to present in this issue five papers from a recent European conference on information ethics edited and introduced by Simon Rogerson, Director of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University, England.
We are also pleased to announce a major new feature of the Review, entitled Business Ethics on the Internet, which will be contributed from time to time by members of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University. This will provide regular up-to-date information and comment on the resources which are becoming increasingly available on the Internet relating to the study of business ethics and the practice of ethical business. It will be launched in our July issue in an article entitled "Business Ethics on the Internet".     

Expatriation: Traditional criticisms and international careers: Introducing the special issue

In this introduction to our special issue, we will first seek to discuss the extent to which recent expatriation research and literature is still subject to earlier criticisms. Second, we will discuss the future research needs concerning the theme of this special issue, international careers, briefly reviewing the dominating research theme within the international career context (i.e., the career impacts of international assignment) and suggesting some future research areas. After that, we will offer a particularly promising new avenue for future research: the new forms of international work. We will conclude by summarizing the articles for this special issue and illustrate how they fit within this new avenue. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Royalty: marketplace icons

The term “royalty” connotes people who either occupy the role of monarchs in society, or who are related to these figures by blood or marriage. Although many royal houses around the world occupy a symbolic/ceremonial rather than a political role, royalty and the “human brands” royal families contain remain important sources of aspirational and conspicuous consumption. In this essay, we focus on how the British Royal Family Brand (BRFB; Otnes, Cele C. and Pauline Maclaran. 2015. Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.) has remained the most visible and impactful royal variant in the world, even as its economic and political influence, and that of Britain, has waned. We discuss the influence of the BRFB in fueling consumption practices pertaining to commemorative purchasing and collecting, heritage management, perpetuating mass and social media narratives, supporting and perpetuating brands, and spawning and maintaining touristic trends. We observe that successful royal influence is due in part to the ability to leverage key universal narratives (e.g. the triumph of the underdog) and to tap into consumers’ desires to vicariously or actively engage with lifestyles typically accessible only to people who occupy the highest social stratum in their respective cultures. We discuss the implications of royalty on consumer culture, and suggest areas of future research.     

Tattoo: marketplace icon

ABSTRACT

The tattoo may be considered iconic in terms of its ability to reflect and contribute to consumer culture. It encapsulates contemporary tensions between the paradigm of plasticity that has engulfed the body and skin and a disavowal of that paradigm by marking the body in a permanent fashion. Tattoos also manage to articulate discourses of deviance and the mainstream, difference and sameness. Further, the “invariant processual contour” of tattoo remains the same across cultures and histories while also managing to evidence differences in emphasis. Similarly, the functions of tattoo in terms of decoration, ritual, identification, and protection continue to trace the boundaries of their possibilities. Ultimately, in a culture that values individuality, these coordinates of tattoo offer a clear opportunity to (re)story the self in infinitely customizable ways.