The Prospect of Infrastructure Public‐Private Partnerships in Kuwait,Saudi Arabia,and Qatar: Transforming Challenges into Opportunities

This article examines the prospect of using infrastructure public‐private partnerships (PPPs) within Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar in light of the drastic drop in oil prices since mid‐2014. It argues that, while PPPs appear to be a strategic policy option for the three Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to tackle growing fiscal deficits, these states are constrained by numerous governance‐related, administrative, and regulatory challenges that make PPPs problematic. Effective implementation of the inherently complex and contractual PPP policy requires addressing the existing institutional, economic, bureaucratic, and cultural constraints within these three states. This article concludes with recommendations to mitigate these challenges, that require serious political will and sufficient time to yield positive results, and to attract international investors and contractors to the Gulf region. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Trends in international business thought and literature: The Arabian gulf countries

The Arabian Gulf countries represent an important economic segment of the Arab world and a vital market for foreign investors and exporters. Yet, most observers agree that the past successful economic growth derived from oil revenues cannot continue unless the economies in the Arabian Gulf are diversified and privatized. This structural adjustment process poses many challenges but also opportunities for local and foreign managers. This article reviews selected business trends in the region. These trends concern government economic policies, environmental concerns, services marketing, and management education.     

Gulf Arab E‐Business Environment: Localization Strategy Insights

The Gulf Arab region, particularly Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), took significant steps toward adopting e‐business and is poised to become a significant online marketplace. The region has a number of vital ingredients that could make it an e‐commerce powerhouse; however, e‐commerce has not reached its full potential. In this article, the authors explore the e‐business environment in the Gulf Arab region and shed light on some of the opportunities and challenges that are shaping and restricting e‐business infiltration. The article places greater emphasis on the idea of localization and how it may impact consumer behavior and expansion of e‐commerce. We argue that by increasing the focus on culturally customized online content by considering country‐level cultural, geopolitical, and linguistic factors, this region could be lucrative for companies looking to attract online consumers. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

About the authors

The uncertain market conditions in Eastern Europe pose new challenges for marketing planning. Techniques such as risk analysis and matrices may not be applicable in assessing the attractiveness of markets, which are subject to discontinuous change. This paper analyses 15 cases of entry into Ukraine by western Multi‐national Corporations. The process whereby they assessed the risks and opportunities of operation in the market are studied. The implications of the findings of this study are discussed.     

Consuming to Be Good: Therapeutic Ideology and Transracial Adoptive Mothers

This study reveals the therapeutic origins of the “good mother” ideal in a rarely studied context, that of transracial adoptive mothering. Using a comparative discursive analysis supplemented by illustrative case analysis, we show that what it means to be a “good mother” in transracial adoptive mothering discourse differs significantly from the ideal established in mainstream mothering discourse. The key differences uncovered relate to publicly contested challenges to legitimacy, the experience of stigma for families adopting children of difference races, and a relative dearth of market‐based solutions to these challenges. We propose therapeutic ideology as a powerful macro‐level theoretical construct capable of explaining the self‐reinforcing cycle of mothers' anxiety, expert advice, and market‐mediated solutions.     

Consumers as innovators in the electricity sector? Consumer perceptions on smart grid services

This article assesses the possibilities of using consumer innovation in the electricity sector, which is slow‐moving, yet faced with huge challenges and opportunities to become “smart” and “low carbon.” We study the benefits of engaging innovative consumers (“lead users”) in product, service, and business innovation in terms of (a) the capacity of lead user‐consumers to innovate in the highly regulated electricity market, (b) the attractiveness of such lead‐user generated ideas for mainstream consumers, (c) the usefulness of lead‐user engagement for companies in the energy industry, and (d) the usefulness of lead user engagement for the necessary broader societal transition processes. We conclude that consumers can stimulate industry‐wide innovation even in challenging contexts like “smart” and “low‐carbon” solutions and the highly regulated energy industry. Lead user‐consumers can also articulate societal and social responsibility concerns that are relevant for the entire market.     

Creating markets for eco‐labelling: are consumers insignificant?

The proliferation of voluntary certification and labelling schemes for environmentally and socially responsible production is often seen as driven by companies and consumer demand. Through a careful examination of the initiation and spread of such initiatives in the fishery and forestry sectors, this paper challenges a rational–economic perspective that sees the spread of nonstate governance schemes primarily as a market‐driven phenomenon. Drawing on a political consumerism perspective, the paper argues that transnational environmental group networks and their targeting of firms were key to the emergence of nonstate eco‐labelling schemes, and that most firms decided to support or participate in such schemes only after intensive environmental group pressure. The paper opposes the view that nonstate governance challenges traditional state authority, by showing that states, through public procurement policies and support, contributed to create markets for forestry and fishery labelling in many countries. Although some states have been more sceptical of fishery labelling, largely because of the way fishery resources are managed, they have come to accept it as a helpful supplement to public rules and regulations.     

New perspectives on marketing mix programme standardisation

The marketing mix programme standardisation/localisation policies of 63 UK multinationals operating in a developing market (the six Gulf States) are examined, using a three-factor, 53-variable model of country, firm and marketing mix programme factors. The research framework is unusually broad compared with other standardisation studies, which have also tended to concentrate more on the developed than the developing economies. Three firm variables and three country variables correlate closely with differing degrees of marketing mix programme standardisation. Product strategies are much more standardised and promotion, distribution and price more localised. Unexpectedly, industrial product firms appear to be no more standardised in marketing mix programmes than consumer goods firms in the Gulf. British Multinationals tend to treat the six Gulf states as a single market cluster with only minor variations between each state.     

Entry barriers of small and medium‐sized software firms in the Japanese market

The Japanese software market size was U.S. $131,773 million in 2004. Due to limited domestic software production, Japan is highly dependent on imported software products. Despite the market potential for foreign software firms in Japan, almost no research exists on what kind of challenges foreign software firms encounter when they are entering the market. To fill this gap, this article investigates the entry barriers of small and medium‐sized software firms in the Japanese market by using a multicase study. The findings suggest that most of the barriers are firm‐specific and mainly related to firms' resources and capabilities to operate in the market. The entry barriers encountered also seem to differ somewhat from earlier investigations, which have mainly targeted large manufacturing firms. The new observations included common barriers related to the intensive information flow of customization and localization needs and market requirements of software products. The findings are useful for both practice and further research. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Does service intangibility affect entrepreneurial orientation?

Service firms face a unique set of challenges in their internationalization and foreign market growth. Their services' characteristics, particularly intangibility, constrain the options available to them for growth. When such firms are services International New Ventures (INVs), their challenges are combined with those related to rapid internationalization and growth. This research investigates how service intangibility and the typical challenges of INVs relate to the firms' Entrepreneurial Orientation and their foreign market growth. The findings show that indeed service intangibility has a relationship with firm proactiveness, risk-taking, and innovativeness; and that not all elements of Entrepreneurial Orientation have a positive impact on growth.     

An empirical study about the impacts of China's accession to the WTO on the telecommunications industry in China

Post‐China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), China's telecommunication industry now needs to face a much stronger competition in a relatively open market that has a number of diverse rivalries. There are specific benefits and risks associated with both domestic telecommunication (telecom) companies and foreign investors in the telecommunication or information technology area. To meet with these new challenges and take advantage of the competitive, strategic advantages to penetrate the market, both China's telecom industry and foreign investors must understand the impacts of China's accession to the WTO on its telecommunication industry and hence make the necessary adjustments and/or implementation improvements. In specific, we carefully examine the impacts such as prices, quality, and local protectionism in this article. We draw the findings based on the data collected from a survey and the resulting statistic analysis.     

Using social and consumer values to predict market‐place behaviour: questions of congruency

Social values and consumption values, although intricately linked, are not exactly the same. Nonetheless, marketers contend that the central premise of social value monitoring is that, if one understands people’s values, one can better predict how they will behave in the market‐place. This paper challenges this assumption because policy analysts and industries are relying on both the consumer and social value profiles at a time when society and the market‐place are undergoing a profound transition. Using Canada as a case study, the general societal values of consumers identified by pollsters are discussed relative to nine consumer values espoused by marketers. This comparative analysis suggests that many of Canadians’ alleged consumer values seem to be in direct conflict with their espoused social values. This conclusion implies that the validity of using social values as a proxy variable or predictor for consumer values needs to be examined by researchers and policy analysts. Also, future dialogue needs to occur about adhering to the convention of monitoring social and consumer values using public opinion polls while not marrying this process with public judgement dialogues. Finally, other countries are urged to examine the situation in their market‐place so as to facilitate cross‐cultural comparative analysis of consumer market‐place values.     

Teaching Applied Macro in Emergent Economies: Lessons From Bahrain

In this article we explore the challenges of adapting a standard introductory MBA course in applied macroeconomics to a student audience in a small open economy with a pegged currency. Our focus will be on the Kingdom of Bahrain, with reference to other countries in the Arabian Gulf region, where one would expect to use an open-economy theoretical course structure focused on the role of trade in the economy and the interaction of exchange rates and currency movements with that trade. Based on our experience in DePaul University's AACSB-accredited MBA program in Bahrain, we find that structuring the course content around open-economy macroeconomics requires a background in theoretical models which are beyond the time constraints of an MBA core curriculum. Alternatively, we consider how well a standard applied macroeconomic curriculum of output determination, business cycles, and monetary and fiscal policy can be adapted to students in the Gulf. We discuss how our approach is fraught with challenges which are both curricular and cultural.     

Challenges and Opportunities of Business Education in Southeast Europe: The Case of a Balkan Business School

In 2004, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) concluded a 4‐year, 10 million dollar contract with the University of Delaware to create the Sarajevo Graduate School of Business, the first Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business [AACSB]‐accredited business school in Southeast Europe. This case study examines inconsistencies in the school's mission and goals, the structure and operation of the joint venture between Delaware and the University of Sarajevo, the fit between Delaware's MBA program and the local environment, pricing in an emerging market, the impact of the school's business model on its sustainability, challenges of market estimation and new product introduction, and the realism of USAID's goal of cultural change. The article concludes with an up‐to‐date epilogue and summary of conclusions that pertain generally to organizational strategies in emerging markets.     

TIME‐CONSISTENT AND MARKET‐CONSISTENT EVALUATIONS

We consider evaluation methods for payoffs with an inherent financial risk as encountered for instance for portfolios held by pension funds and insurance companies. Pricing such payoffs in a way consistent to market prices typically involves combining actuarial techniques with methods from mathematical finance. We propose to extend standard actuarial principles by a new market‐consistent evaluation procedure which we call “two‐step market evaluation.” This procedure preserves the structure of standard evaluation techniques and has many other appealing properties. We give a complete axiomatic characterization for two‐step market evaluations. We show further that in a dynamic setting with continuous stock prices every evaluation which is time‐consistent and market‐consistent is a two‐step market evaluation. We also give characterization results and examples in terms of g‐expectations in a Brownian‐Poisson setting.     

Inducing Downstream Selling Effort with Market Share Discounts

Loyalty discounts and rebates are pricing schemes that offer incentives to buyers for reaching or exceeding certain sales thresholds. In the case of market share discounts, thresholds are expressed as a percentage of the buyer’s total purchase requirements. Although market share discounts may have exclusionary effects under certain circumstances when a seller has significant market power, there are plausible non‐exclusionary reasons for offering them as well. Two such reasons – rent extraction and inducing downstream selling effort – are explored in this paper. The paper considers the case of a manufacturer who sells a differentiated good through a network of heterogeneous, non‐exclusive retailers. The manufacturer offers market share discounts to induce non‐contractible selling effort such as brand‐specific information or customer service from those retailers who possess certain unobservable characteristics. In some instances, market share discounts induce increased selling effort and improve market performance as compared to linear pricing. In other instances, they have no effect on aggregate benefits, but merely shift the rents created by induced selling effort upstream to the manufacturer. In no instance, as long as the producers of substitute goods retain sufficient sales to remain viable, do market share discounts impair market performance.     

Venture capital secondary funds—the third exit option

This article highlights some of the challenges associated with investing in private equity and, specifically, venture capital, as well as the opportunities presented by the availability of secondary market solutions. Today, the secondary market allows venture capital investors to align liquidity solutions with investment objectives similar to those used in other established markets like real estate and lending. Over the last ten years, it has become clear that exit opportunities for venture‐backed portfolio companies correlate strongly with the state of the economy and its ability to support merger‐and‐acquisition (M&A) and initial public offering (IPO) market activity. Due to their experience and specialization, secondary funds know how to assess quickly potential investments and offer tailored investment solutions. Moreover, these funds offer an attractive exit option that is compelling not only in down economic cycles but also during periods of economic expansion. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The GCC’s Fixed Exchange Rate: A Major Anomaly for OCA Analysis

From the standpoint of traditional optimal currency area (OCA) analysis, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are a major anomaly. They successfully maintained pegged exchange rates among themselves for two decades while failing to meet a number of major OCA criteria. Contrary to the optimistic predictions of some of the most enthusiastic advocates of endogenous OCA analysis, intra‐regional trade has remained low and there is little synchronisation of their business cycles or harmonisation of their fiscal positions. We argue that their success in operating a fixed rate regime has been due to a combination of high oil revenue, the heavy use of foreign workers and the limited extent to which their economies rely on market forces. These are conditions that are not met by most other countries.     

The Profitability of Option‐Based Contrarian Strategies: An Empirical Analysis

Short‐selling restrictions limit investors' opportunities to profit from contrarian strategies in equity markets. We examine the proposition that incorporating options into contrarian strategies constitute a viable alternative to investors when short‐selling restrictions are in place. In particular, we combine equities with the call and put options traded on the Australian Stock Exchange to investigate the profitability of contrarian strategies in the hybrid market and options market alone. We assess the practical issues in the execution of these approaches, including testing for the effects of limited liquidity and transaction costs. We also investigate how fundamental factors (such as dividend yield, firm size, book‐to‐market ratio, earnings per share, price‐earnings ratio, value stocks, and market conditions) affect contrarian portfolios. The results show that employing options can enhance the profitability of contrarian strategies under certain market conditions.     

A Study of Exhibitor Firms at an Arabian Gulf Trade Show

Abstract

The 11th Joint Exhibition of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States provides a focus for a study of emerging market firms' behavior at a trade show. The exhibition industry continues to grow around the world. The purpose of the article is to expand the knowledge about exhibition behavior in different regions. Factor analysis is applied to investigate the underlying dimensions of the exhibition goals, the exhibition selection criteria and firms' perceived problems. Few differences were found between Gulf firms and firms previously studied in the USA, Canada and the UK. Implications for exhibitors, exhibition organizers, and researchers are presented.