Determinants of financial worry

Grounded in the transactional stress-coping theory and the Tallis and Eysenck (1994) model of nonpathological worry, the present study sought to advance the conceptual and empirical understanding of financial worry (FW). We positioned objective financial stressors (OFS), subjective financial stressors (SFS), and coping resources as key variables in understanding the determinants of financial worry (FW). The cross-sectional data consisted of responses from a representative sample of 19,385 adults, aged 18 and older, drawn from a large U.S. survey. Hierarchical linear regression results revealed that OFS, SFS, household income, and financial capability (FC) are all key determinants of FW. Furthermore, the results revealed adverse effects of OFS and SFS on FW. These effects were moderated by household income, FC, age, and gender. Implications for future research, employers, practitioners, and policymakers are discussed.     

Prospecting Research: Knowing when to Stop

An important aim of many surveys is to undertake prospecting research: the search for new possibilities and an understanding of the diversity in a population. This paper develops a method—the extrapolation of resampled possibilities (ERP)—for predicting how much new information will be revealed by extending a sample. This is useful for deciding whether it is likely to be worthwhile sampling more cases, bearing in mind the costs and the benefits. The method avoids making any assumptions about the nature of the underlying population, apart from the information implicit in the existing sample.     

凯玛特成长的烦恼

美国凯玛特公司一直在世界零售百强排行榜上名列前茅,多次挤进前三名,即使是在2000年,他们以370亿美元年销售额名列第八位.但是,大有大的难处,不扩张就有可能被市场淘汰,扩张就需要投资,在零售行业进入微利时代的今天,投资并不一定有收益,2000年凯玛特的利润率为-1%.回顾凯玛特的成长过程,我们会得到一些启示.     

Using humour to increase effectiveness of shameful health issue advertising: testing the effects of health worry level

ABSTRACT

Communicating shame-inducing health issue information is a challenging task as the feelings of shame might elicit withdrawal and avoidance coping, leading to delay in health screening and treatment. With the cognitive and emotional buffering benefits, using humour as a message strategy might help increase approach coping. Real-world ad campaigns dealing with these health issues have been using humour as an advertising tool, and with the lack of humour effects research in health communication, this is a pending topic to pursue. Given that past studies have found health worry to be a significant contributing factor in health behaviours, the audience factor of the individual's general health worry level is investigated. Three experimental studies provide evidence to humour benefitting low health-worry-level individuals in lower shame contexts and high health-worry-level individuals in higher shame contexts. Theoretical and practical implications provide the significance of the findings.     

Click here to agree: Managing intellectual property when crowdsourcing solutions

Tapping into the creativity of a crowd can provide a highly efficient and effective means of acquiring ideas, work, and content to solve problems. But crowdsourcing solutions can also come with risks, including the legal risks associated with intellectual property. Therefore, we raise and address a two-part question: Why—and how—should organizations deal with intellectual property issues when engaging in the crowdsourcing of solutions? The answers lie in understanding the approaches for acquiring sufficient intellectual property from a crowd and limiting the risks of using that intellectual property. Herein, we discuss the hazards of not considering these legal issues and explain how managers can use appropriate terms and conditions to balance and mitigate the risks associated with soliciting solutions from a crowd. Based on differences in how organizations acquire intellectual property and limit associated risks, we identify and illustrate with examples four approaches for managing intellectual property (passive, possessive, persuasive, and prudent) when crowdsourcing solutions. We conclude with recommendations for how organizations should use and tailor the approaches in our framework to source intellectual property from a crowd.     

初战告捷有隐忧--入世一年之际的思考

我国加入世界贸易组织已近一年,惯例到了"盘点"的时候,我们于是惊喜地发现这是一份出乎意料优异的成绩单:国内法律政策体系完善进展顺利,已经完成2300多件法律法规和规章的清理修订工作;市场开放也在按承诺进行,5300多个税目降低了关税,关税总水平降低了3.3个百分点,金融、电信、分销等服务贸易领域的开放也在推进;进出口贸易增长迅速。1至9月进出口贸易同比增长18.3%,其中出口增长19.4%,进口增长17.2%,预计全年对外贸易总额将首次突破6000亿美元;外商投资再掀高潮。1至9月合同外商投资增长38.4%,实际外商投资增长22.6%,预计全年实际外商投资将达到创记录的520亿美元左右……我们原来担忧的冲击都没来。预期的好处却提前到了——初战告捷,真让人高兴得不知说什么才好。拿着这份成绩单,心里却又有些惶恐与疑虑,发现许多不那么令人塌实的地方——或许就是所谓的隐忧?     

三大产业:远忧近虑各不同

如果我们忽略了九亿农民的声音,如果我们只让他们贫困和无知,如果我们不给本国农民以全面的国民待遇,我们将犯大错误.     

重卡市场:2004年风景独好2005年喜中有忧--2004年重型载货车市场分析及2005年展望

近年来，中国汽车工业一直处于高速发展的黄金时期。当我们回首2004年以前的中国汽车市场时会发现，其“井喷”式增长的车型主要是乘用车产品。然而，2004年却风云突变，在乘用车市场持续低迷中，载货车异军突起，其市场增幅三年来首次超过了乘用车；重卡更是风景这边独好，其市场增幅是各种细分车型中最高的。     

Preventing competition using side payments: when non-neutrality creates barriers to entry

Network neutrality is often advocated by content providers, stressing that side payments to Internet Service Providers would hinder innovation. However, we also observe some content providers actually paying those fees. This paper intends to explain such behaviors through economic modeling, illustrating how side payments can be a way for an incumbent content provider to prevent new competitors from entering the market. We investigate the conditions under which the incumbent can benefit from such a barrier-to-entry, and the consequences of that strategic behavior on the other actors: content providers, users, and the Internet Service Provider. We also describe how the Nash bargaining solution concept can be used to determine the side payment.     

A prototyping analysis of relationship marketing constructs: what constructs to use when

As relationship marketing research evolved, a number of key constructs emerged. Some scholars have argued that these constructs are not conceptually or empirically distinct. We investigate this phenomenon based on the premise that sustained research effort towards studying conceptually overlapping/redundant constructs, while treating them as independent, can hamper the development of the field. We use prototyping, a method adopted from psychology, to examine consumers’ views of these constructs, and then identify relationship contexts where constructs are distinct or redundant.     

Reward redemption effects in a loyalty program when customers choose how much and when to redeem

The redemption of loyalty program (LP) rewards has an important impact on LP members' behavior, particularly on purchase behavior before and after redeeming a reward. However, little is known about the interplay between members' purchase and redemption behavior when members are not pressured with point expiration and they choose for themselves when and how much to redeem. In this context, the effects of redemption are not straightforward, as little additional effort is required from an LP member to obtain the reward. Analyzing the behavior of 3094 members in such an LP, we find that the mere decision to redeem a reward significantly enhances purchase behavior before and after the redemption event, even when members redeem just a fraction of their accumulated points. Conceptually, we refer to this enhancement as the redemption momentum, which is an alternative and novel explanation of the existence of pre-reward effects that do not depend on points-pressure. In addition to the overall impact of redemption on purchases, prior purchase behavior also enhances redemption decisions. Finally, we find a number of moderating effects on purchase and redemption behavior that derive from the length of LP membership, age, income and direct mailings. Our study's most important managerial implication is that firms should avoid imposing point expiry and/or binding thresholds in order to enhance members' purchase behavior.     

Why and when firms respond accommodatively to the product-harm crisis: An institutional perspective

Accommodative response, as an attempt to manage product-harm crises to meet consumers' expectations by proactively accepting responsibility and actively taking remedial actions, is gradually becoming institutionalized. Our research explores the impacts of coercive, mimetic, and normative pressure on a firm's accommodating reaction and evaluates the possible mediating effects of top management beliefs (TMB) and participation (TMP), based on institutional theory and upper management echelons theory. The proposed hypotheses are empirically examined with survey data from 178 top managers in Chinese automobile firms. The potential endogeneity problem has been tackled by using firm size as the appropriate instrumental variable. Analysis results suggest that the three types of institutional pressures affect TMB and TMP differently, and TMP influences accommodative response positively while TMB exerts an indirect effect through TMP. Our findings emphasize the crucial mediating effects of top management and uncover the underlying mechanism through which institutional pressures affect accommodative response.     

Conform or rebel: when does keeping to the rules enhance firm performance?

This paper examines whether there are economic rewards to mimicking strategic actions of other firms. The strategic behaviour we study is the formation of technology collaborations with MNEs by Indian firms. We argue that conforming to the behaviour of other firms has differential performance effects across different classes of firms and suggest that the benefits of conformity accrue more to small than large firms. To test this, we measured each Indian firm's conformity to the average tendency of other similar firms to collaborate with an MNE and then regressed its performance on conformity. Results were consistent with our expectations that small firms gain more from conformity than do their larger counterparts. Copyright © 2009 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

黄金酒：五粮液“遭遇”史玉柱

2008年，全球性的经济减退、中国的市场环境也不容乐观。很多企业往往将收缩、保存实力的战略作为企业应对全球金融危机带来的冲击的策略。但是在各企业纷纷自保，缩减广告营销开支市场的大环境下，也有一些看准的这样一个时机，大胆杀人、攻城掠地。史玉柱的巨人集团与五粮液合作推出“黄金酒”就是其中的一例。