Studying Ethical Judgments and Behavioral Intentions Using Structural Equations: Evidence from the Multidimensional Ethics Scale*

The linkage between ethical judgment and ethical behavioral intention was investigated. The Multidimensional Ethics Scale (MES) was used to measure ethical judgment ratings of hypothetical behaviors in retail, sales, and automobile repair scenarios. Confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of 300 undergraduate business students showed that a model with three latent variables representing three correlated ethical dimensions of moral equity, relativism, and contractualism, three correlated scenario latent variables, and correlated residuals presented a good fit to the data. Further, structural models of the relationship of ethical judgment to behavioral intentions revealed that behavioral intentions were more highly related to the scenario factors than to the ethical dimensions across three scenarios. Adding a method factor to the model improved goodness-of-fit and changed some structural model conclusions.

Market Concentration, Economic Welfare, and Antitrust Policy

The authors review the foundation for incorporating market concentration directly into consumer utility functions, and develop a general equilibrium model to derive welfare-maximizing principles for optimal enforcement of antitrust policies toward concentrated market structures, including merger policy. An intriguing result is that increased market concentration can fail to maximize economic welfare even if a proposed merger might generate positive net efficiencies.

Self-referencing and consumer evaluations of larger-sized female models: A weight locus of control perspective

In two experiments, we show that the beliefs women have about the controllability of their weight (i.e., weight locus of control) influences their responses to advertisements featuring a larger-sized female model or a slim female model. Further, we examine self-referencing as a mechanism for these effects. Specifically, people who believe they can control their weight (“internals”), respond most favorably to slim models in advertising, and this favorable response is mediated by self-referencing. In contrast, people who feel powerless about their weight (“externals”), self-reference larger-sized models, but only prefer larger-sized models when the advertisement is for a non-fattening product. For fattening products, they exhibit a similar preference for larger-sized models and slim models. Together, these experiments shed light on the effect of model body size and the role of weight locus of control in influencing consumer attitudes.

The effects of entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation, and marketing subunit influence on firm performance

The study investigates how an organization’s entrepreneurial orientation moderates the interplay between market orientation and marketing subunit influence on firm performance. The hypothesized model predicts that the positive interaction between market orientation and marketing subunit influence has a weaker effect on firm performance under conditions of high entrepreneurial orientation. The regression and supplementary analyses provide support for most predictions and, most importantly, for a negative three-way interaction effect: At higher levels of entrepreneurial orientation, the positive moderating effect of marketing subunit influence on the market orientation–business performance relationship is reduced. The authors discuss the managerial and theoretical implications of their findings and provide a number of directions for further research.

Bayesian estimation of multivariate-normal models when dimensions are absent

Multivariate economic and business data frequently suffer from a missing data phenomenon that has not been sufficiently explored in the literature: both the independent and dependent variables for one or more dimensions are absent for some of the observational units. For example, in choice based conjoint studies, not all brands are available for consideration on every choice task. In this case, the analyst lacks information on both the response and predictor variables because the underlying stimuli, the excluded brands, are absent. This situation differs from the usual missing data problem where some of the independent variables or dependent variables are missing at random or by a known mechanism, and the “holes” in the data-set can be imputed from the joint distribution of the data. When dimensions are absent, data imputation may not be a well-poised question, especially in designed experiments. One consequence of absent dimensions is that the standard Bayesian analysis of the multi-dimensional covariances structure becomes difficult because of the absent dimensions. This paper proposes a simple error augmentation scheme that simplifies the analysis and facilitates the estimation of the full covariance structure. An application to a choice-based conjoint experiment illustrates the methodology and demonstrates that naive approaches to circumvent absent dimensions lead to substantially distorted and misleading inferences.

Internationalisation of technology-oriented firms in Germany and the UK

Based on longitudinal data, this article examines empirically the long-term export behaviour of German and British technology-oriented firms founded between 1987 and 1996. Applying logit models, the results show that firms can overcome high entry costs by acquiring firm-specific assets. Similarly, firm-specific resources prevent high-tech companies from exiting the international market. The strategic role of investment in R&D is stressed in particular by the data.

Business Ethics Training: Insights from Learning Theory

This paper explores research in educational psychology and learning theory in a search for insights to enhance business ethics training Useful educational principles uncovered are then applied to the development of an ethics training initiative for sales professionals. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research to help enrich business ethics training.

Private labels and new product development

This paper provides a positive theory of private labels in new product development when a non-integrated distribution channel is faced with demand uncertainty. We consider a regular marketing environment in which a manufacturer endowed with a branded product seeks to design a new product to resolve its retailer’s mis-targeting problem and to optimally screen consumers. Assuming that only linear pricing schemes are available and that the retailer learns the state of demand earlier than the manufacturer does, we show that the presence of a private label always improves channel efficiency. Moreover, a private label is more likely to prevail when the existing branded product is a premium item.

New entrepreneurial ventures in a globalized world: The role of market orientation

The present study examines the performance consequences of a market orientation for new entrepreneurial ventures in a globalized world. We show that market orientation indeed positively impacts the performance of new entrepreneurial ventures, regardless of their geographical setting. While market orientation turns out to be a general success factor in a globalized world, the strength of the performance relationship however is contingent to the national culture as one major differentiator between geographical settings. The effect turns out to be stronger in collectivist and high uncertainty avoidance cultures. Findings are derived based on large samples with German and Thai new entrepreneurial ventures. Partial least square is applied as the method of analysis.

Banking Competition and SMEs Bank Financing. Evidence from the Italian Provinces

This work investigates whether local differences in banking competition impact on the amount of bank debt used by Italian small and medium sized manufacturing firms. Sample selection and Double Hurdle models are adopted as the process, which results in the choice of bank financing may differ from that determining its amount. Our main finding is that more competitive banking markets seem to be associated with relatively higher usage of bank debt by less transparent firms. On the other hand, a higher banking competition seems to have no effect on the probability of receiving bank loans.

Modeling CLV: A test of competing models in the insurance industry

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is one of the key metrics in marketing and is considered an important segmentation base. This paper studies the capabilities of a range of models to predict CLV in the insurance industry. The simplest models can be constructed at the customer relationship level, i.e. aggregated across all services. The more complex models focus on the individual services, paying explicit attention to cross buying, but also retention. The models build on a plethora of approaches used in the existing literature and include a status quo model, a Tobit II model, univariate and multivariate choice models, and duration models. For all models, CLV for each customer is computed for a four-year time horizon. We find that the simple models perform well. The more complex models are expected to better capture the richness of relationship development. Surprisingly, this does not lead to substantially better CLV predictions.

The effect of experience on Internet auction bidding dynamics

On the basis of the bidding history of a panel of new eBay bidders, we examine the impact of different types of experiences on bidding behavior evolution. Accounting for unobserved bidder heterogeneity, the results indicate that losing experiences make the bidders’ bidding behavior evolve toward the normative predictions of auction theory, in that they submit fewer bids and bid later. Winning experiences, however, do not have such an effect. Moreover, the experience effect pertains to the bidder’s entire previous bidding experience regardless of product categories. We also assess the potential bias introduced by using feedback ratings (compared with actual participation) as experience measures.

Avoiding aggregation bias in demand estimation: A multivariate promotional disaggregation approach

Demand models produce biased results when applied to data aggregated across stores with heterogeneous promotional activity. We show how to modify extant aggregate demand frameworks to avoid this problem. First a consumer-level model is developed, which is then integrated over the heterogeneous stores to arrive at aggregate demand. Our approach is highly practical since it requires only standard scanner data of the type produced by the major vendors. Using data for super-premium ice cream, we apply the proposed methodology to the random coefficients logit demand framework.

Entrepreneurship and competitiveness dynamics in Latin America

This study analyses the relationship between entrepreneurial dynamics and the level of competitiveness in Latin American countries. Based on a stage of economic development model, we demonstrate that Latin American countries under the model followed different paths related to competitiveness. These different paths can explain the effect of specific competitiveness conditions on entrepreneurial dynamics in Latin America.

The relationship between FSI advertising style and coupon redemption

We investigate the relationship between free-standing insert advertising style and coupon redemption. Results from two experiments indicate that the propensity to clip a coupon can be enhanced by matching ad tone (emotional vs rational) to the nature of a consumer’s primary motivation with respect to coupon usage. Moreover, this result appears to hold for consumers with both procoupon and anticoupon inclinations.

R&;D in SMEs: a paradox?

This paper has three objectives: (1) to survey the relevant literature addressing the (apparent) paradox of Research & Development investments carried out within Small and Medium Enterprises; (2) to provide focused summaries of the articles in this special issue; (3) to draw some general conclusions in terms of policy implications.

The shipping strategies of internet retailers: Evidence from internet book retailing

Managing the shipment of goods to consumers is one of the central aspects of retail competition on the internet. In this article, we analyze internet retailers’ shipping strategies using data from the internet book retailing industry. We find that, controlling for a variety of observable firm characteristics, firms with lower product prices offer lower shipping fees and higher quality shipping in terms of average delivery time, compared to firms with higher product prices. These patterns cannot be readily reconciled with a large class of models of competition under perfect consumer information. Theories based on imperfect consumer information can explain the findings better.

Services and innovation systems: European models of Technology Centres

In regional contexts with a dense fabric of small- and medium-sized companies, the promotion of knowledge-intensive services through Technology Centres is a key innovation policy. This paper examines four models of Technology Centres in Europe: Baden-Württemberg (Germany), Denmark, Emilia-Romagna (Italy) and the Valencian Community (Spain). Aspects such as the participation of private agents, the financing of the Centres, and the diversity and heterogeneity of the models are discussed. Both the economic-productive base (company structure, sector specialization, location patterns, etc.) and the political–institutional features (distribution of competences, available budget, etc.) are major points for establishing the definition of each model.

Optimal criteria for selecting price discrimination metrics when buyers have log-normally distributed willingness-to-pay

This paper investigates how a monopoly seller should determine the optimal set of pricing variables (pricing metrics) for third-degree price discrimination applications in which buyers have log-normally distributed willingness-to-pay (WTP). In a setup that closely resembles linear and probit regressions, this paper shows that when the monopoly seller is restricted to using one metric and no price discrimination cost exists, the pricing metric that best reduces the residual variance of buyers’ willingness-to-pay is the one that maximizes revenue. Equivalently, the explanatory power of willingness-to-pay is the ordering criterion. This paper also shows that this criterion is not universally true when willingness-to-pay follows other distributions. When the seller incurs price discrimination costs associated with different metrics, the ordering criterion becomes the explanatory power of each pricing metric divided by its cost. This paper also discusses how to apply this model to solve real-world pricing problems with contingent valuation models or using probit regression.

Simple and Painless? The Limitations of Spillover in Environmental Campaigning

The comfortable perception that global environmental challenges can be met through marginal lifestyle changes no longer bears scrutiny. The cumulative impact of large numbers of individuals making marginal improvements in their environmental impact will be a marginal collective improvement in environmental impact. Yet, we live at a time when we need urgent and ambitious changes. An appeal to environmental imperatives is more likely to lead to spillover into other pro-environmental behaviours than an appeal to financial self-interest or social status.