Examining the casual relationship among service recovery,perceived justice,perceived risk,and customer value in the hotel industry

This study elucidates the causal relationships between service recovery, perceived justice, perceived risk, and customer value. Data were collected by questionnaires validated for reliability and validity. The findings were as follows: perceived justice is positively affected by service recovery, whereas perceived risk is negatively affected by perceived justice. Furthermore, perceived risk is directly and negatively affected by service recovery; perceived risk is also indirectly influenced by service recovery through perceived justice. Finally, customer value is affected by perceived risk. However, customer value is not directly related to perceived justice; customer value was found to be indirectly affected by perceived justice through perceived risk. Therefore, the path of this casual relationship is ‘service recovery, perceived justice, perceived risk then customer value’. Future studies may explore the influence of internal factors or dimensions of the forgoing variables on perceptions of customer value. In practice, hotel managers can refine the relevant service recovery approach and optimize financial investment to increase customer value.     

Brand equity,warranty costs,and firm value

Warranty management is frequently discussed in the context of businesses’ ongoing efforts to reduce costs. However, how marketing can contribute to warranty cost reduction is empirically unclear. This opacity led to the current study, which focused on how warranty claim costs and abnormal warranty accrual costs mediate the relationship between brand equity and firm value—as well as the contingencies for the mediation. The result shows that brand equity reduces warranty claim rate and abnormal warranty accrual rate through which it increases firm value. In addition, product innovativeness decreases the association between brand equity and warranty claims and between brand equity and abnormal warranty accruals. As such, the findings revealed the roles of brand equity and product innovation in warranty cost reduction and thus suggested the need for managers to build and leverage their marketing resources when attempting to control warranty costs.     

Spatial differentiation in the supermarket industry: The role of common information

In this paper, I investigate the geographic location decisions of supermarkets to infer their tradeoffs between locating close to favorable demand conditions and differentiating themselves geographically from rivals. The model is based on a discrete-choice game between two types of supermarkets, and incorporates firm uncertainty arising from firm- and location-level private information as well as researcher uncertainty arising from location-level common information. Thus the model addresses the concern that firms’ actions may be based on factors that are unobservable to the researcher, thus correlated conditional on observables. The estimates reflect a significant level of common information. Importantly, I find that ignoring unobserved location heterogeneity results in biased estimates of both the competitive effects and the effects of location-specific observables on profits. Counterfactual predictions are therefore misleading if unobserved location heterogeneity is unaccounted for.     

Brand personality and its outcomes in the Chinese automobile industry

The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between ‘brand personality’ and key outcomes in the Chinese automobile industry. A secondary aim of the study is to look at whether or not these relationships hold across purchasers and non-purchasers. The major conclusion is that while brand personality dimensions are somewhat consistent across both purchasers and non-purchasers, the brand personality outcomes differ somewhat between the groups. First, brand personality plays a critical role in improving perceived quality and creating brand trust, a key finding given the intensely competitive nature of the Chinese automobile industry. Second, perceived quality plays an important role in mediating the relationship between brand personality and brand commitment for both groups. Third, perceived quality does not affect brand trust for the purchaser group. In the context of Chinese automobile industry, increasing the level of perceived quality of a particular brand requires convincing non-purchasers that the brand is valuable, and that the information being provided is useful. Fourth, since the relationship between perceived quality and brand trust was found to be non-significant, future research studies may wish to focus on obtaining a better understanding of Chinese cultural perspectives to shed further light on why perceived quality and brand trust are not related for the automobile purchaser group.     

Enhancing value creation of device vendors in the medical service industry: a relationship perspective

Around the world, hospitals receiving government funding and insurance payments are under increasing pressure to cut costs. Based on the literature in relationship value and transaction cost economics, long-term relationships between suppliers and customers can be beneficial to cost reduction and value creation. This study explores the value of long-term relationships between medical device vendors and hospitals from the hospital perspective. In-depth interviews were conducted employing a grounded theory approach. The results show that in addition to product benefits/costs and supportive services, vendor reputation and sales personnel specificity are most influential towards the value of their long-term relationships.     

The UK supermarket industry: an analysis of corporate social and financial performance

In a previous paper (Moore, 2001), the headline findings from a study of social and financial performance over three years of eight firms in the UK supermarket industry were reported. These were based on the derivation of a 16‐measure social performance index and a 4‐measure financial performance index. This paper discusses the formulationof the indices and then reports on: discussions with two supermarket firms concerning the overall results; inter‐relationships between individual financial performance measures; inter‐relationships between individual social performance measures; stakeholder group analysis; and inter‐relationships between turnover, age and gearing with social performance measures. The paper discusses these inter‐relationships, incorporating comments from the interviews with the two supermarket firms, and reports on both factor and cluster analysis. The interviews lend support for Preston and O’Bannon’s (1997) Available Funding Hypothesis in both its positive and negative form. The findings show that there are individual or combinations of related measures that could be used as surrogate measures for social and financial performance, instead of deriving a full index. However, the recommendation is that a full index continues to be used until there is further corroboration of these results. The findings also provide statistically significant support for the Negative Synergy Hypothesis (Preston and O’Bannon, 1997), show a statistically significant association between pre‐tax profits (both lagged and contemporaneous) with community contributions, and show that all statistically significant associations between individual social performance measures are positive – suggesting that they are mutually reinforcing. The association of size with social performance, noted in the previous paper, is also reinforced. Findings in relation to the proportion of women managers and the number of women on the Board and positive associations with other social and environmental performance measures raise interesting gender issues for business ethics. Factor analysis leads to no clear conclusions but cluster does show two or three clear clusters of firms, where size would seem to be the main but not sole factor. Further areas of research are noted.     

An integrative approach to relationship marketing,customer value,and customer outcomes in the retail banking industry: a customer-based perspective from Turkey

Given how important it is to provide superior value to customers and to maintain customer loyalty for a sustainable competitive advantage, the aim of this paper is to examine the relationships among relationship marketing components of – trust, competency, commitment, communication, and conflict handling, – relationship investment, relationship quality, perceived customer value, satisfaction and loyalty in an integrated framework in the Turkish retail banking industry. Unlike previous studies, this research extends the literature by analysing affective as well as cognitive dimensions in the same model with a holistic view by simultaneously examining the direct and indirect effects of the related concepts. The distinctive nature of this study is its evaluation of customer satisfaction and loyalty from the perspective of actual consumers. The research model was tested using data collected from 685 retail banking customers by applying structural equation modelling. The findings show that relationship marketing induces loyalty through relationship quality, customer value, and satisfaction, which are mainly provided by trust, communication, and relationship investment. Furthermore, relationship investment and relationship quality are the most important factors in the development of customer value, satisfaction, and loyalty. The emotional value dimension, which captures the affective aspects of perceived value, has the strongest effect on both satisfaction and loyalty.     

The lead–lag relationship between equities and stock index futures markets around information releases

This paper documents a strengthening in the lead of stock index futures returns over stock index returns around macroeconomic information releases. Some evidence of a strengthening in feedback from the equities market to the futures market and weakening in the lead of the futures market around major stock‐specific information releases is also provided. This is consistent with the hypothesis that investors with better marketwide information prefer to trade in stock index futures while investors with stock‐specific information prefer to trade in underlying stocks. A small weakening in the contemporaneous relationship between stock index futures returns and stock index returns around both types of releases is also documented. This is consistent with disintegration in the relationship between the two markets associated with noise induced volatility. One by‐product of this study is new comparative evidence on the performance of adjustments for infrequent trading of index stocks based on a commonly used ARMA technique versus recalculation of the stock index using quote midpoints. The results suggest that the quote midpoint index performs at least as well as the ARMA adjusted index across the entire sample period, as well as around the different types of information releases. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 20:467–487, 2000     

Integrated marketing communications in the Australian and New Zealand wine industry

Integrated marketing communications and the management of brands is a vital area for research in many industries. The global wine industry is facing significant changes including: retail concentration; proliferation of brands and labels; fragmenting consumer markets; and over-production. Improving the planning, implementation and integration of marketing communications activities is essential for the survival of brands and companies operating under these conditions. This research reports on findings into marketing communications integration in the context of the Australian and New Zealand wine industries. The research employs Duncan and Moriarty's (1997) abbreviated Integrated Marketing Audit to examine key communications issues and demonstrates that a higher level of integration is associated with better brand-related performance.     

PTE,innovation capital and firm value interactions in the biotech medical industry

Unlike previous studies which only focus on the main effect between IC and FV, this research includes PTE with the gap of resource-based view. IC is a key element in creating a competitive advantage, as it has a great influence on FV. A company may put relatively less into IC if it demonstrates higher efficiency. However, previous studies have neglected the fact that relative efficiency and IC affect FV and stock returns directly and indirectly. The research period was from 2006 to 2010 and the main research methods include HRA and DEA. The main research findings include the following. (1) There is a space for improvement in terms of the total technical efficiency. (2) PTE has a significant moderating effect between IC and FV. (3) IC and PTE have a significant influence on FV. (4) Apart from PTE and stock returns, IC and FV show significant differences within the sub-industry.     

Brand value creation: Analysis of the Interbrand-Business Week brand value rankings

Brand value has become an important corporate performance metric, as can be observed from the close following of the annual Top 100 Brand Values ranked by brand consultancy firm Interbrand and reported in Business Week. In this study, we employ a simultaneous equations model to examine the non-linear influence of lagged advertising, marketing promotions and R&D expenses on brand value after controlling for net income and lagged brand valuation. We infer that these lagged expenses yield diminishing returns to brand value. The effect of R&D expense is the weakest, possibly because it is confounded with the advertising and promotional effects. Differences across industry segments or country base are not statistically significant.     

Brand value chain in practise; the relationship between mindset and market performance metrics: A study of the Swedish market for FMCG

For decades, managers have analysed, planned and implemented long-term brand strategies based on customer mindset metrics (MSMs). Typically, such MSMs are customer satisfaction, liking, brand preference and Net Promoter Score (NPS). One of the core pillars, in brand management literature, is the assumed link between certain customer-based brand assets, often operationalized as MSMs, and future long-term market performance. However, few studies have systematically and broadly evaluated how the most common MSMs relate to actual performance data. This study investigates the link between the customer MSMs, most commonly used by practitioners, and their relationships with actual market performance. The paper explores 10 MSMs and 14 market performance metrics, in 10 categories, in the Swedish fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market. The study is based on survey data from 2007 that is compared to purchase panel household data from 2007 and 2010. Although MSMs are highly correlated to each other, their relations to brands' long-term market performance differ. A more nuanced approach to the MSM-market performance link is proposed, as there appears to be no single “silver bullet” MSM to rely on. Using a cash flow-oriented framework, the authors recommend opting for different MSMs depending on which of the three generic types of market performance (enhanced, sustained or accelerated) are targeted.     

Knowledge-intensive service activities in the success of the Australian mining industry

No other industry in Australia has achieved a greater significance in economic development terms as mining. The mineral industries have built a national infrastructure throughout Australia for more than a century and Australia's minerals boom has produced generations of mining technology services (MTS) companies. This paper discusses the role of MTS firms in the transformation of the mining industry into the knowledge economy. Results from a study of Australian MTS and mining firms suggest that innovation results from the interaction of these firms through knowledge-intensive service activities.     

品牌战略开启中国文化创意产业的未来

继高新技术产业之后,文化创意产业在各国逐渐兴起,被认为是全球经济发展增长的一个新亮点。在经济全球化的背景下,文化创意产业对于国家综合国力的竞争和持续发展具有举足轻重的作用。然而,与欧美、日本、韩国等强国相比．我国现有的文化创意产业基础还十分薄弱。     

Identifying multi-channel value co-creator groups in the banking industry

The purpose of this paper is providing a value co-creation management framework in the banking industry using the data analysis. Moreover, a multi-channel segmentation approach will be developed in order to identify customer segments based on the use of each channel. Managing value co-creation can be defined as determining the channel that may be used by the customer and the kinds of encounters that lie in these channels to have different impacts on the customer for various types of encounters. The model is built on the basis of the related literature and the collaboration of a Customer Relationship Manager in a large bank in Iran. Then, a multi-channel segmentation model is developed based on the RFM variables of the five banking channels for each customer. Next, about 11,000 customers of the bank is segmented by comparing the k-means and DBSCAN algorithms. Finally, by adapting customer segments on the value co-creation framework, three general groups are identified based on the type of encounter that lies in each channel. Moreover, twenty-seven small groups are recognized based on the desirability of the customer use of the channels.     

基于城市、产业、企业品牌互动视角的连云港城市品牌策略研究

城市品牌建设是一项长期的、复杂的、艰巨的工程,连云港在实施城市品牌策略过程中,应理清城市品牌与优势产业、名牌企业之间的互动关系,以城市品牌为龙头、以产业品牌为平台,以企业品牌为基础,推动城市、产业、企业的协同互动,真正实现连云港城市品牌、产业品牌与企业品牌的共同发展,打响连云港城市品牌,提升连云港城市竞争力。     

品牌、交易成本与房地产品牌

交易成本是品牌产生、创建与品牌价值形成的关键要素。房地产商品特性和政策约束,使房地产交易成本呈现“部分刚性”,从而加大了房地产品牌创建的难度。房地产企业应在经营规模、产权确认、信息供给和交易执行机制上作出努力,通过降低购房者的交易成本,方可有效创建房地产品牌。     

浴火重生：创造品牌新境界

品牌在商业运作中至关重要，而网络在传统品牌的塑造方面是无所不能的。现在已经到了进行品牌再造的时候了。     

Triadic relationship between customers,service providers and government in a highly regulated industry

This study investigates the triadic interplay among the government, service providers and customers in a highly regulated environment in a centrally planned economy influenced by communist political ideology. In order to answer the research question, we conducted two studies: Study 1 is a qualitative study aiming at exploring various aspects of the triadic interplay among customers, service providers and the regulatory framework, and Study 2 employed a quantitative approach to validate some findings in Study 1. It was found that the relationships between the three main entities in the market were not balanced. Service providers were more passive in their relationship with regulators. In addition, communications between customers and regulators were limited and not well-established. Customers had not been sufficiently engaged and thus, had little voice in the formulation of regulations. Furthermore, the perception of a firm's service quality and innovativeness was different among customers with different levels of perceived regulatory control and regulatory knowledge. As regulatory control and knowledge increased, customers were more likely to perceive a higher level of service quality and innovativeness. The research extends the domain of relationship marketing by incorporating the influence of the government or regulatory framework in the relationship between customers and service providers. The findings of this study can provide practical insights for policymakers and help service providers to effectively manage the relationships with their customers and regulatory bodies.