Multinationals in the Middle East: Challenges and opportunities

This introduction to the special issue on Multinationals in the Middle East first reviews the historical growth and development of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the territory extending from Morocco to Turkey alongside the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean as far east as Iran, and south to Sudan and Yemen. Then, several opportunities and challenges affecting MNEs in the region are discussed, including economic and social diversity, non-market strategies and entry-mode choices, and animosity toward MNEs. The seven papers featured in the special issue that address these topics are then discussed.     

Brand and performance signals in the choice of franchise opportunities

When choosing a franchise chain, potential franchisees must incorporate into their decision process the signals of franchise chain quality being sent to the market by the franchisor. Some of these signals along with potential franchisees' choices of franchise chain are analyzed. The results show that brand value and franchisee performance were the key signals used by Spanish franchisees during the period 2002 through 2008, when deciding to open a franchise outlet. The aim of this study was to contribute to strengthening the relationship between entrepreneurship and franchising in Spain from an empirical viewpoint.     

Advanced information and communications technologies: Challenges and opportunities

The progressive diffusion of information and communication technologies will bring about far-reaching changes in society. How can the opportunities offered by the new technologies be maximised, while minimising the attendant risks?     

Corporate governance reforms in China and India: Challenges and opportunities

In this article, we examine the evolution of corporate governance reforms in the emerging economies of China and India. We first describe the two major driving forces behind governance reforms in these countries: privatization and globalization. After summarizing the evolution of governance reforms in each context, we identify four major obstacles that impede their implementation in both countries, namely: (1) lack of incentives, (2) power of the dominant shareholder, (3) underdeveloped external monitoring systems, and (4) shortage of qualified independent directors. Next, we highlight practical implications of these governance challenges for foreign firms contemplating, or already involved in, major investments in these emerging economies. We emphasize that foreign firms that are sensitive to context-specific challenges are more likely to put in place appropriate contractual or other safeguards, as well as identify more practical and meaningful forms of participation in the governance of their ventures. Finally, we conclude with some implications for future research.     

The Hong Kong tourism industry in transition: Challenges and opportunities

Despite some uncertainties, Hong Kong's prospects appear bright after the reinstatement of Chinese control.     

Internationalization strategies of emerging market banks: Challenges and opportunities

The greatly improved economic fundamentals of the major emerging economies over the last decade have propelled several emerging banks into the ranks of the world’s largest. Despite their importance in the global economy, the internationalization of emerging market banks remains an understudied phenomenon. This article examines factors that may influence the internationalization strategies of emerging market banks in the private banking sector, both when going abroad (take-off) and upon arrival in a host country (landing). The private banking sector is of significant interest given its importance in many leading financial centers around the world while undergoing major transformation due to the worldwide financial crisis, several recent scandals, and a fast-changing regulatory environment. We highlight the internationalization strategies of two banks from emerging countries, China and Brazil, and their experience in Switzerland’s traditional private banking sector. These two cases highlight factors that may influence successful internationalization such as prior industry experience, existing client base, entry strategy, ownership type, and the liability of foreignness. Our findings offer valuable implications for managers from other emerging economies by providing a better understanding of how emerging market banks expand internationally.     

Lean six sigma and assurance of learning: Challenges and opportunities

The importance, and associated challenges, of faculty ownership and engagement in the assurance of learning (AoL) process are well documented in the literature. The authors demonstrate how schools can further their AoL objectives by encouraging and subsequently supporting organic, faculty-led initiatives. Specifically, we present a case study of a faculty led initiative to explore and demonstrate, as a proof of concept, how Lean Six Sigma can be used to improve AoL practices.     

The effect of unavailable donation opportunities on donation choice

Marketing Letters - In the context of charitable donation decisions, we demonstrate that adding information to the decision context about a fundraising campaign one cannot act on (i.e., an...     

Entertainment in retailing: Challenges and opportunities in the TV game console industry

This study investigates the key development evaluation indicators of the TV game console industry based on the four dimensions of Saaty's ‘benefits, opportunity, costs, and risks’ model. The hybrid multiple attribute decision-making model is employed to create a new evaluation approach. The proposed hybrid model uses the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) to determine the influential relationships among dimensions and criteria, the DEMATEL-based analytic network process to obtain influential weights, and the modified VlšeKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje method to assess performance gaps in industry development. The influential network relationship map and influence weights help TV game console firms' managers understand the industry's complex assessment system and set priorities for improving the industry's performance. The results of the study indicate that the improvement priorities of the model's dimensions have the following order: benefits, opportunity, costs, and risks. Several implications for the industry's management are also discussed.     

Consumer vulnerability and complaint handling: Challenges,opportunities and dispute system design

Effectively designed complaint handling systems play a key role in enabling vulnerable consumers to complain and obtain redress. This article examines current research into consumer vulnerability, highlighting its multidimensional and expansive nature. Contemporary understandings of consumer vulnerability recognize that the interaction between a wide range of market and consumer characteristics can combine to place any individual at risk of vulnerability. While this broad definition of consumer vulnerability reflects the complex reality of consumers’ experiences, it poses a key challenge for designers of complaint handling systems: how can they identify and respond to an issue which can potentially affect everyone? Drawing on current research and practice in the United Kingdom and Australia, the article analyses the impact of consumer vulnerability on third party dispute resolution schemes and considers the role these complaint handling organizations can play in supporting their complainants. Third party complaint handling organizations, including a range of Alternative Dispute Resolution services such as ombudsman organizations, can play a key role in increasing access to justice for vulnerable consumer groups and provide specific assistance for individual complainants during the process. It is an opportune time to review whether the needs of consumers at risk of vulnerability are being met within complaint processes and the extent to which third party complaint handlers support those who are most vulnerable to seek redress. Empowering vulnerable consumers to complain presents specific challenges. The article discusses the application of a new model of consumer dispute system design to show how complaint handling organizations can meet the needs of the most vulnerable consumers throughout the process.     

Using stated response choice data to enrich revealed preference discrete choice models

There is growing interest in exploring the view that both revealed preference (RP) and stated preference (SP) data have useful information and that their integration will enrich the overall explanatory power of RP choice models. These two types of data have been independently used in the estimation of a wide variety of discrete choice applications in marketing. In order to combine the two data sources, each with independent choice outcomes, allowance must be made for their different scaling properties. The approach uses a full information maximum likelihood estimation procedure of the hierarchical logit form to obtain suitable scaling parameters to make one or more data sets comparable. We illustrate the advantages of the dual data strategy by comparing the results with those obtained from models estimated independently with RP and SP data. Data collected as part of a study of high speed rail is used to estimate a set of illustrative mode choice models.     

What retailers need to understand about website inaccessibility and disabled consumers: Challenges and opportunities

This research uniquely contributes to the marketing policy literature by illuminating the widespread yet seldom studied problem of online inaccessibility of retail websites affecting approximately 30 million disabled Americans. When a website is not designed to be navigated easily or is not compatible with assistive technology such as a screen-reader, these potential customers are not able to independently search for information and conduct transactions. Blind and low vision participants in an empirical study provide their opinions regarding accessibility policy issues and reveal that their frustrations with inaccessible retail websites may result, not only in avoidance of the retailer in its different sales channels but also in antifirm behaviors driven by negative attitudes toward perceived retailer accessibility/disability policy that spur feelings of online marketplace discrimination. Using two different evaluation tools, the top 100 retailers in the United States were evaluated on the accessibility of their websites over the past 4 years (2015–2018). Results show that most websites contain many design errors making navigation very difficult or even impossible for vision impaired consumers. The argument is made that online retailers who proactively address these inaccessibility issues on their websites may significantly increase their customer base and profitability.     

Operationalizing opportunities in entrepreneurship research: use of data envelopment analysis

Despite the impressive development of substantive theories in entrepreneurship, without the development of measurement theories, further advancement of the field is problematic. In particular, the notion of opportunities, central to entrepreneurship research, requires adequate macro-level operationalization. We demonstrate how to employ data envelopment analysis (DEA) to operationalize not only innovative opportunities, but also technological arbitrage opportunities. We provide an illustrative example based on a sample of 66 countries during the period of 1993–2002. We include estimates of innovative and arbitrage opportunities for possible use by other scholars, discuss the promise and limitations of such estimates, demonstrate how both innovative and arbitrage opportunities correlate with the rates of entrepreneurial activity, and suggest several possible directions for future research.     

A structural equation model of latent segmentation and product choice for cross-sectional revealed preference choice data

We consider the problem of simultaneously performing market segmentation and predicting product choice for a given population of consumers. This behaviour-based segmentation model uses several types of information characterizing individual consumers and their market context: sociodemographic, psychographic and product choice data. These data are combined in a normative conceptual framework that posits the formation of latent segments, each of which displays differing degrees of sensitivity to relevant product attributes. This permits results obtained by the proposed model structure to differ significantly from those of traditional segmentation techniques, which usually produce a set of groups characterized by smaller within-group than between-group variation in sociodemographic and/or psychographic variables. By making the segments behaviour-based, it is argued that the segments produced by the model will be more actionable and more directly relevant to management decision-making. The proposed model is applied to a data set involving choice of a beauty product offered by five national brands. The results show that the explanatory power of the latent segmentation and choice model is far greater than that of the MNL model, which is nested within our more general specification. The types of results available from the model are illustrated through the application.     

Overcoming data limitations for store choice modelling.: Exploiting retail chain choice data by means of aggregate logit models

This paper reports on research aimed at exploiting certain data sources for store choice modelling purposes. Many databases, such as some consumer panels, only record the firm chosen by consumers and not the specific store at which they shop. Four alternative approaches are proposed in order to use this raw information for studying patronage determinants at store level: (a) an ordinary logit model in which chain utility is averaged across stores within; (b) an ordinary logit model in which the choice set is assumed to be composed of the nearest store for each chain; (c) a straightforward application of an aggregate logit model; and (d) the application of an aggregate logit model with choice sets spatially bounded by a distance threshold representing the maximum distance that consumers are willing to travel for shopping. The models are empirically tested in the context of spatial choice behaviour. Goodness of fit indicators reveal that only models (b), (c) and (d) acceptably represent competitive interaction dynamics. As performance of (b) is slightly better than that of (c), it seems that a priori the ‘nearest store assumption’ is a better approach than the modelling of aggregate choice structures. However, when the latter approach is applied with more reliable choice sets, as suggested in model (d), the best performance is achieved. The results thus lead us to think that the aggregate logit model is a promising methodology for solving the problem at issue, but subject to an appropriate definition of the consumers’ choice sets. In fact, such an approach provides a more suitable modelling solution to the extent that the saturation and the intra-firm store heterogeneity become more intense, because these situations presumably imply that consideration sets include several stores from the same chain.     

Big web data: Challenges related to data,technology, legality,and ethics

The digital data available online is currently measured in zettabytes. These vast repositories of big web data are increasingly viewed as a strategic resource comparable in value to land, gold, and oil. This big web data can be extracted and analyzed by organizations to gain a better understanding of their internal and external environment and improve organizational performance. Because of these opportunities, automated retrieval and organization of web data (i.e., web scraping) for research projects is becoming a common practice. This article outlines the data-related, technical, legal, and ethical issues related to web scraping. Awareness of these issues can help researchers save time and resources and, most importantly, mitigate the potential risk of ethical controversies or lawsuits related to the retrieval and use of big web data.     

Challenges and opportunities of new retail horizons in emerging markets: The case of a rising coffee culture in China

Economic growth and a rising middle class consumer base make emerging markets an attractive prospect for many international businesses. Changing patterns of retail in these countries present opportunities for business expansion that many are keen to capitalize on, but also present challenges for reaching their ambitions. This article examines the growth of the coffee shop industry in China—considering its key dynamics and drivers—in order to address questions about successful retail expansion in emerging markets. We aim to explore how changing consumer cultures have contributed to a rapidly growing industry and what strategies businesses have used to enter the market and maintain growth, as well as considerations for potential retail success in the future.     

Data-driven business and data privacy: Challenges and measures for product-based companies

To leverage the opportunities provided by the Internet of Things (IoT), product-based companies are exploring new data-driven business opportunities. They may miss these same opportunities, however, owing to data-privacy challenges. These challenges start with the customers of product-based companies, extend to the wider business ecosystem, and continue with the companies themselves. This article identifies 12 data-privacy challenges and introduces 12 measures to address them. These include intuitive recommendations, such as enabling cross-product consent collection, as well as less intuitive measures, such as fostering a can-do attitude in legal units, closing the gap between legal and business initiatives, or implementing a clear process for well-reasoned risk-taking. The following four principles were found to support companies in implementing these measures: (1) letting privacy and data-driven business go hand in hand, (2) putting customers first and turning their privacy preferences into opportunities, (3) aligning risk-management activities with the process of digital service development, and (4) using technology to professionalize legal processes.     

未来是道“选择题” 大变局下会议业的机遇与挑战

2019年作为开启变革时代的起始年,给全球经济发展带来了不小的影响。同时,2019年也是经济环境受国际政治因素影响最大的一年。大国沙文主义频现端倪,贸易保护主义抬头,民粹主义盛行,各国汇率调整浮动变化较大,技术革命引发的市场形态的转变以及频遭气候环境影响等多重因素,使得全球经济市场环境遭遇到近半个世纪以来前所呆有的巨大挑战。发展的道路该如何走,已经成为摆在各国政府、机构与企业面前一道最难的选择题。