IT Controlling – Concepts and Transformation into Practice

In the first part the paper depicts central IT controlling terms and selected IT controlling concepts of the last decade. In the second part a performance oriented IT controlling concept describes central processes of the IT controlling concept by using a three step life cycle model in terms of a reference model. Finally some important results from a current survey concerning the development of IT controlling in German speaking countries are given. Based on these facts the paper describes the needs for action in academia and practice: The role of the IT controller has been established in German speaking countries, but there is disagreement concerning targets, tasks and processes of IT controlling, cost oriented tasks and reporting are dominating the practitioner’s work, established economic methods of IT controlling are not consistently used in companies. This article is also available in German in print and via http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de: Gadatsch A (2009) WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: 10.1007/11576-009-0166-x.     

Distribution of Marketing Research Material to Universities: The Case of Archive of Market and Social Research (AMSR)

ABSTRACT

The aim of this note is to understand how content relating to marketing and market research is distributed to and within universities. The focus of the study includes the behavior of all those in this market for information, namely suppliers (whether content generators, aggregators, packagers, or distributors of content) of marketing research, university staff, and students. The case study method was implemented to collect data. The case study focuses on UK Higher Education. Specifically, the authors use the case study of the newly developed Archive of Market and Social Research (AMSR) to explore how content relating to marketing and market research is distributed to and within universities. The research involved personal interviews with 15 librarian senior managers selected from 14 universities.

The interviews with librarians provided insight into how AMSR could be distributed to university libraries and how it could be accessed. The findings highlight the role of university academics in specifying the content of marketing and market research. They focus on ‘real world’ management problems to deliver research with impact and relevant teaching. Therefore, they need company and industry information and are more likely to use current sources. The study maps the process of acquisition of marketing and market research content by universities and identifies the different roles involved in this process. The study is in line with the emerging literature that focuses on the role of education in explaining the relevance gap in marketing research. The study contrasts between the situation in the university market and industrial buying and adds to our understanding of the complexities associated with the distribution of the marketing research material. The result is expected to be a much sharper focus for the marketing of the archive material, leading to greater use of recent high-quality market research by marketing educators, and changes to marketing and market research syllabuses.

This note provides insight into how suppliers (whether content generators, aggregators, packagers, or distributors of content) of market and marketing research should market to universities and ensure the use of their information resources by students and teachers and how they should. The findings of the study contribute to understanding customer needs and shaping a new service product proposition. In addition, the study provides insight into how university students and staff access and should access commercial research on marketing from the market research industry (in particular from the Archive of Market and Social Research) and use it in their learning, so that their knowledge will be more up to date and their employability will be increased. Adding several insights to the issue of distribution of marketing research material to universities. The paper relates to the marketing of information resources to universities, specifically to the work of the Archive of Market and Social Research, in marketing their information assets to universities, and more specifically the relationship between the “push” of suppliers, libraries, journal and textbook suppliers and information aggregators (such as EBSCO and JISC) and the pull coming from academic researchers and lecturers, who might use this information in their teaching and research. The present study can be seen as a classic case study of understanding buyer behavior, but in a modern world of information platforms, aggregation, and the digital economy.     

Administration of Questionnaires for Collecting Quantitative Data in International Marketing Research

This paper discusses the various methods of questionnaire administration for collecting quantitative survey data in international marketing research. The general characteristics of telephone, computer assisted telephone, in-home personal, mall intercept, computer administered CRT interviews, mail, and mail panels are examined. The applicability of these methods for conducting marketing research in North America, Europe, newly industrialized countries, and developing countries is evaluated. Some guidlines for the selection of appropriate methods for conducting international marketing research are provided. The paper concludes with some additional observations on the administration of survey questionnaires in an international context.     

Speaking vs. listening? Balance conversation attributes of voice assistants for better voice marketing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is shaping marketing in an unprecedented way. Empowered by AI, voice assistants are increasingly capable of speaking and listening like humans, offering a great opportunity for a new marketing approach - voice marketing. This research examines how conversation attributes of voice assistants determine consumer trust and intention to engage in voice shopping. Using a sequential mixed-method design, three studies consistently show that consumers perceive the speaking attribute of voice assistants as more human-like than the listening attribute. We find that such incongruency between the two conversation attributes can undermine consumers' trust in voice assistants, leading to reduced willingness to accept product recommendations from voice assistants and shop via voice assistants, which would hamper the development of voice marketing. Accordingly, this research suggests that AI giants with strong technological strength and capital support should distribute more resources to advance the underlying technologies enabling human-like listening (e.g., natural language understanding and voice recognition). But for AI startups with limited financing ability and technical talents, they may consider appropriately reducing investments in the underlying technologies enabling human-like speaking (e.g., natural language generation and voice synthesis) to enhance the congruency level between the conversation attributes of voice assistants.     

German Consumer Decision‐Making Styles

The lack of previous relevant consumer research in Germany, together with the need to test the generalizability of consumer decision‐making styles in different countries and with non‐student samples, prompted an investigation of German shoppers. The original U.S. eight‐factor model could not be confirmed completely, but support was found for six factors: Brand Consciousness, Perfectionism, Recreational/Hedonism, Confused by Overchoice, Impulsiveness, and Novelty‐Fashion Consciousness. Variety Seeking was novel to Germany and replaced brand loyalty and price‐value consciousness factors found in previous countries. Explanations for the differences are discussed as well as the marketing implications.     

Managerial and Public Attitudes Toward Ethics in Marketing Research

This research updates and significantly extends Akaah and Riordon’s (J Market Res 26:112–120, 1989) evaluation of ethical perceptions of marketing research misconduct among marketing research professionals. In addition to examining changes in perceptions toward key marketing research practices over time, we assess professionals’ judgments on the ethicality, importance, and occurrence of a variety of new marketing research ethics situations in both online and offline contexts. In a second study, we assess ethical judgments of the public at large using a representative sample of US consumers—key stakeholders ignored in prior research on unethical marketing research practices. Generally speaking, disapproval of unethical research conduct has grown across the board in the last 20?years for both managers and marketing researchers. The same misconduct elicits a stronger disapproval in the online environment compared to the offline environment. Compared to marketing researchers, managers tend to think that unethical research conduct occurs more frequently. Those who conduct marketing research or use its findings (i.e., marketing researchers and managers) are less tolerant of unethical research conduct than the general public.     

International marketing strategies in industrial clusters: Insights from the Southern Hemisphere

This paper examines co-operative marketing strategies among clustered-based firms in the most important wine producing and exporting countries in the ‘new world’. The research examines the development of active inter-firm marketing co-operation undertaken by firms to achieve competitive positioning in international markets. The results of a survey of managers located in Argentina, Australia, Chile and New Zealand are presented. The empirical contribution comes from the unique comparative data from regional clusters in four countries which are seen internationally as innovative producers and marketers, all strongly export-oriented, but at different stages of economic development and positioning in the global marketplace. In addition, this study makes a significant contribution to agglomeration theory by confirming the importance of sharing marketing knowledge to build sustainable competitive advantage in international markets. The theoretical contribution builds understanding of international marketing strategies within the Southern Hemisphere group of emerging countries and offers new insights on international marketing practices for emerging firms from both the developed economies in the Pacific Ocean region and Latin American emerging economies.     

Ethical Theory in German Business Ethics Research

This article offers an overview over the wide scope business ethics has reached in German speaking countries; works which in their majority are not yet available in English translation. The proposed concepts range from a focus on the individual manager and a focus on moral education of managers, via the procedural model of discourse ethics to pressure group ethics and business ethics from a Christian point of view. Other authors suggest an economic theory of moral behaviour, or see ethics as an assurance for decisions under uncertainty or argue for a more enlightened concept of economic rationality.     

Why Is It (Un-)ethical? Comparing Potential European Partners: A Western Christian and An Eastern Islamic Country – On Arguments Used in Explaining Ethical Judgments

Located at the crossroads of the Eastern and Western world, Turkey today is characterized by a demographically versatile and modernizing society as well as a rapidly developing economy. Currently, the country is negotiating its accession to the European Union. This article yields some factual grounding into the ongoing value-related debate concerning Turkey’s potential EU-membership. It describes a mixed-methodology study on moral reasoning in Austria and Turkey. In this study, the arguments given by individuals when evaluating ethically problematic situations in business were compared. Although there were major consistencies, a number of differences were found. These differences, however, were not in the substance (categories) of arguments used but in their relative frequency. Overall, our findings suggest that young, well-educated urban individuals from Western Christian and Eastern Islamic countries are highly consistent in their moral reasoning. Katharina J. Srnka is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Vienna, Austria, and has been teaching at different European universities and institutions. Dr. Srnka received her Ph.D. from University of Vienna for her work on cultural influences on ethical decision making in marketing. Her research interests concern qualitative and mixed research methods, consumer behavior, and cross-cultural marketing ethics. A. Ercan Gegez is Associate Professor of Marketing at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey. Dr. Gegez holds a Ph.D. from Marmara University in the field of International Marketing. He is one of the founding members of The Turkish Marketing Association and he has served as a member of the supervisory board. His research interests include international marketing, marketing research and marketing ethics. S. Burak Arzova is Associate Professor of Accounting at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey. Dr. Arzova holds a Ph.D. from Marmara University in the field of Accounting for his work on Activity Based Cost Management. His research interests comprise accounting ethics, cost management and international financial standards.     

Attitudes of University Students toward Business Ethics: A Cross-National Investigation of Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong

With the current globalisation and complexity of today’s business environment, there are increasing concerns on the role of business ethics. Using culture and religion as the determinants, this paper presents a cross-national study of attitudes toward business ethics among three countries: Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. The results of this paper have shown the attitudes toward business ethics to be significantly different among the three countries. It was also found that respondents who practised their religion tend to consider themselves more ethically minded than those who do not. Additional findings on gender have also revealed significant differences between the males and females for respondents in Singapore and Australia. Males are generally considered more ethical than females across the three countries studied. Dr. Ian Phau teaches Marketing at the Curtin University of Technology. He is an avid researcher in the area of country image and branding issues. He also edits a peer reviewed marketing journal. Garick Kea is a researcher with the Curtin University of Technology. His research interests include consumer ethnocentrism, Consumer Animosity and marketing ethics.     

How to take customers into consideration in service innovation projects

At a time of great change within the higher education sector, this paper focuses on the challenges facing marketers in the UK's higher education industry. Specifically, the research identifies the extent to which university marketing managers are conscious of the importance of market segmentation particularly with regard to the growing mature learner segment, and to what extent such marketers are using the web to engage and influence this older segment. The evidence presented in this study suggests that the sample universities display an inadequate state of readiness to respond to the marketing challenges arising in the changing environment and that the opportunity to influence the growing and affluent mature learner market through online communication remains largely unexploited. A general lack of a marketing orientation within the sector prevails.     

Marketing practices in less-development countries

This paper presents a symmetric analysis of the approaches used in the study of marketing practices in less-development countries, and develops another approach which has substantial promise. The proposed approach is composed of two stages. The first stage groups LDCs into specific categories followed by a matrix treatment to determine research priorities in studying marketing practices in LDCs.     

来源国效应研究述评

来源国效应相关理论在国际市场营销和国际化战略领域占据重要地位,国外相关研究由来已久,研究内容也已形成理论族群,但该领域的研究仍然存在相关概念的模糊和理论框架的缺失;针对来源国效应的检验由于样本差异、控制变量差异等因素的存在,相关结论尚无法形成体系化理论支撑。尤其是针对发展中国家逆向拓展发达国家市场时的来源国效应研究相对匮乏,一些调节变量的影响机理仍有待揭示。国内学者最近几年才开始关注来源国效应,主要聚焦于不同属性产品的来源国效应检验。文章回顾了来源国效应的相关概念演变,梳理了来源国效应的三种理论基础,总结了发展中国家企业进入发达国家的品牌战略,整合了研究内容的理论框架,概括了该领域常用的研究方法,并在此基础上指明了未来研究方向。文章作为一篇理论综述,希望通过文献梳理和分析,厘清研究主干和研究分支,为后续研究提供基础和参考,克服“只见树木、不见森林”的弊端。     

Relative Presence of Business-to-Business Research in the Marketing Literature

Relative to its contribution to the U.S. and other developed countries economies, industrial and business-to-business marketing have been underrepresented in the marketing literature. To determine the extent of this underrepresentation, the authors have evaluated thirty-one marketing journals beginning with the initial publication of the Journal of Marketing in 1936. Without the introduction of journals whose specific focus is industrial marketing, the underrepresentation would have been even more severe than it is currently. Six general research areas were also looked at to determine what trends in industrial marketing research have existed. These areas are: buyer behavior, sales management, marketing relationships, innovation and new product development, marketing strategy, and channels of distribution.     

Market entry in Japan barriers,problems and strategies

The global strategic importance of the Japanese market can hardly be overemphasized. The presence of Western companies is in sharp contrast to this role. This paper presents the results of an empirical study on entry barriers and entry strategies in the Japanese market. German expatriates in Japan and Japanese managers perceive the overall difficulty of entry and specific barriers as being relatively high. German managers in Germany possess a biased perception of the barriers to entry, they perceive institutional barriers as being more and marketing barriers as being less important. The Japanese market is highly dynamic and competitive. A transfer of experiences from Western markets involves high risk. Endurance and commitment are the most important success factors, short term orientation and lack of flexibility are likely to lead to failure. The marketing performance of German companies is not well geared to the needs of the market. While German companies have strengths in quality, image and innovativeness, their position with regard to service, delivery and distribution is very weak. Market entry in Japan certainly is worth while the devotion of substantial resources and management capacity. But only an attack which is full-hearted and committed is likely to succeed.     

German Investment in Ireland and in the Central and East European Countries

The accession of Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) to the EU is expected by many to lead to the diversion of foreign direct investment towards the CEECs and away from other EU countries. The following paper focuses on the investigation of the internationalisation strategies and location choices of German multinational corporations (MNCs) in manufacturing against the background of growing regional economic integration, and particularly the fifth EU enlargement. It draws on the findings of a case study and interview results covering three German MNCs and their location choices for investment in both Ireland and the new EU member countries from Eastern Europe. This research project has been co-funded by the RIA in Dublin and DAAD. A first version of this work was presented at the September 2005 Irish Academy of Management Annual Conference in Galway.     

Country-of-Destination and Export Marketing Strategy:

As changes in the economic and political environment in many developing countries bring opportunities for multinational corporations, many U.S. and other MNCs find that they have little experience with marketing and exporting to such countries, having focused mainly on developed-country markets. In addition, there has been little research which has investigated issues relating to marketing in LDCs. This study explored these issues and found that different marketing strategies are used by U.S. companies which export to developing countries as opposed to those which market to developed countries, thereby highlighting the importance of taking the country-of-destination into account when planning export marketing strategies. In addition, a separate analysis of firms which export mainly to developing-countries revealed that direct distribution, the number of countries exported to, product standardization, and a focus on price are negatively associated with market share. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Transition Ethics: A Comparison of Ukrainian and United States Business Professionals

This article compares the ethical attitudes of Ukrainian business professionals with those of United States business professionals. A widely used survey instrument consisting of 16 hypothetical situations involving ethical dilemmas was employed to gather information on ethical attitudes in the two countries. On 13 of 16 vignettes, Ukrainian respondents demonstrated less stringent ethical attitudes than did their United States counterparts. Possible reasons for these differences are discussed, with primary emphasis on the transition from one economic system to another that is underway in Ukraine. Comments from Ukrainian respondents are presented so as to give an indication of the thought processes behind the questionnaire responses. Olena Vynoslavska is Head of Psychology and Pedagogics Chair at the National Technical University of Ukraine, Kyiv. She has been a research scholar under the sponsorship of the International Research and Educational Exchange program of the United States Department of State at Baylor University. Her research has included international comparative studies of entrepreneurship and management techniques. Joseph A. McKinney is Ben H. Williams Professor of International Economics at Baylor University. He was previously on the faculty of the University of Virginia, and has served as visiting professor or research scholar to universities in Japan, France, the United Kingdom and Canada. His research interests include business ethics, international trade policy, and regional economic integration. Carlos W. Moore is the Edwin W. Streetman Professor of Marketing at Baylor University, where he has been on the faculty for more than 30 years. His research interests include business ethics, marketing and advertising evaluation, and small business strategies. He has done consulting on bank marketing and new product development. Justin G. Longenecker is Emeritus Professor of Management at Baylor University. His research interests include business ethics, entrepreneurship, and family business. He is co-author of the leading text on small business management, and is the author of scholarly articles on various aspects of business management.