Investigating Quality Perceptions of International Services by Chinese Consumers

Consumers are known to use the country of origin (COO) of a product to infer the quality of products. Products of technologically advanced countries such as the United States and Germany are known to enjoy positive country‐of‐origin effects. Conversely, products made in the developing countries typically suffer from negative COO effect. While this influence of COO is widely recognized for products, the same cannot be said about services. Only a handful of studies have empirically investigated the relationship between COO and perceived service quality. Additionally, most of these studies in this research paradigm are undertaken in developed markets; hence, their findings cannot be extrapolated to the newly industrialized countries (NICs) that offer tremendous market potential for global services. It has, therefore, become imperative for multinational companies to understand if and how consumers in the major NICs use COO and other cues to infer service quality. This insight is critical in developing effective pricing and promotion strategies for these markets. Using data collected from consumers in Beijing in the People's Republic of China, we demonstrate significant COO effect on two service categories: hotels and restaurants. We also highlight how these research findings will help managerial decisions about pricing and promotion. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Customer Service as a Strategic Weapon in International Operations

Customer service is an important competitive weapon in international markets becuase of its ability to acquire and retain overseas customers (especially intermediate firms) and, thus, enhance companies' revenues. Customer service is especially critical when foreign vendors are perceived as offering similar products at comparable prices, and purchasers have doubts about suppliers' willingness to carry out various post-purchase responsibilities. This paper reports the results of a study of the customer service programs of 151 U.S. non-service companies with international operations in five or more foreign countries. Sixty-nine firms responded to their customer service efforts in international markets and 81 addressed domestic customer service programs, allowing for comparisons to be made between international and domestic customer service operations. The study's results indicate that copmanies realize the importance of customer service in marketing to international customers, yet customer service for international markets is not considered to be appreciable more important than it is for domestic ones. Much similarity in perceptions about international and domestic customer service programs being in place. Whether this similarity occur from a careful analysis of domestic and international markets or simple expediency is uncertain.     

Australian Exports of Dairy Products

Abstract

Exports of dairy products are becoming increasingly important in terms of export earnings for Australia. The industry is the fourth highest foreign exchange earner compared to all Australia's food exports. However, Australian exports of dairy products account for about 67 per cent of the total Australian production of dairy products, and about 13 per cent of total world exports of dairy products. About 68 per cent of Australian dairy products exports are sold on Asian markets. The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenging issues and opportunities for Australian exports of dairy products on world markets and to identify potential and emerging export markets for Australian dairy products. Australia is highly restricted on its access to world dairy product markets by the impact of export subsidies and other trade barriers of overseas markets. The current economic and political crises in Asia are also not favourable to maintain export sales on some of the Asian markets. The export support scheme in Australia has made exporting attractive relative to domestic sales. But it is anticipated that the termination of the scheme after June 2000, will reduce production and exports by 6 and 20 per cent, respectively in the short run. However, in the long run, resources will be efficiently used without government intervention and Australian dairy products will also be competitive on the domestic market. There is scope for greater market opportunities in the emerging markets in Asia and other parts of the world for Australian dairy products. Australia will also benefit from the agreement on international trade that directs exporting countries to reduce export subsidy and remove nontariff trade barriers on exports of dairy products. Australia should implement appropriate measures to inaease the milk yield per cow, to improve the quality of dairy products and to identify the need for market promotion and research in order to increase the volume of dairy product exports on world markets, especially in Asia and other potential markets such as Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas.     

Standards and export decisions: Firm-level evidence from developing countries

Standards and technical regulations set in importing countries have become a rising concern to exporters, especially to those in developing countries. This paper examines the importance of various types of standards in developing-country firms' export decisions. Drawn from the World Bank Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Survey database, we find that different types of standards exhibit sharply distinct relations with firms' intensive and extensive margins of exports. Quality standards are positively correlated not only with firms' average export volume across markets and products but also their export scope, measured by the number of export markets and products. A similar relationship is found between labeling requirements and export scope. Certification procedures, however, are associated with a significant decline in the number of export markets and export products. Our results suggest that different approaches should be taken to address each type of technical regulations. Not all standards need to be negotiated away to boost trade, but negotiations on certification procedures with the aim of reaching Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) can help firms improve economies of scale and scope.     

Country of origin perception and industrial purchase decision-making in New Zealand

This paper focuses on the impact of country of origin (COO) factors on New Zealand purchasing managers’ perceptions of two categories of industrial products, namely machine tools and component parts. These products are from 17 countries which are categorised in three kinds, namely developed, newly industrialised and industrialising countries. In this study a distinction is also made between country of design and country of assembly. Despite the debate that COO effects may no longer be clearly delineated because of globalisation of markets and outsourcing, this study confirms the importance of COO in industrial purchase decision-making by managers in New Zealand.     

Can outstanding performance also be long‐standing?

Best practices in the business world are often identified by benchmarking in relation to products and the processes by which those products are created and delivered. This can take place inside a specific industry, but also in other industries and different countries. There, the main challenge for global firms is to decide how and how far to adapt those practices to the local environment, which is, in most cases, very different from their domestic markets. This article examines the performance of selected companies from various industries that have, in recent years, successfully developed and implemented new business concepts and new business processes in both their domestic and global markets while implementing their global strategy. The article also seeks to identify and evaluate the pitfalls or difficulties they had to face, as well as to compare their results with the objectives they wanted to achieve. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Countertrade with developing countries: New opportunities for North-South trade?

Unconventional forms of international trade (such as counterpurchase, compensation deals and barter) have assumed rapidly growing importance, especially in many developing countries, as a consequence of the fall in commodity prices and the worsening of international debt problems since the oil price increases of 1973–74 and 1979. By using these trading methods countries expect to be able to ensure a continuation of the urgently needed flow of imports, open up new markets for surplus products and bring about greater export diversification as between both regions and products. The following article therefore focuses on the countertrade of Third World countries, both among themselves and with industrialised countries.     

Congruency of humour and cultural values in print ads

International advertisers routinely struggle to adapt humorous ads for the domestic markets of different countries. In order to provide them with better guidelines, we conduct a content analysis of humorous print ads from China, the United States and France. We found that the cultural values deemed important in a given country are rarely portrayed in humorous ads. This suggests that advertisers may be using humour to promote their products and services with cultural values not endorsed by the general population. Alternatively, advertisers may be ridiculing values that are less important, to attract attention while not offending audiences. Finally, we found that the type of humour used when a given human value is made salient is usually not the same in different countries.     

Effects of the preference for environmental quality on the export competition between China and OECD countries

This study examines how importers’ preferences for environmentally friendly products influence the effect of China’s export growth on the exports of OECD countries to third markets. The effect of China’s export growth is systematically investigated using the theoretical gravity model, which assumes that importers’ environmental preferences are heterogeneous among countries. A new measure is also proposed to represent importers’ revealed preferences for environmental quality across countries. Panel data consisting of observations for 30 OECD exporting countries and 60 importing countries over the 2000–10 period confirm that the crowding‐out effect of China’s export growth on the exports of OECD countries observed in markets for consumption goods and the dampening effect observed in markets for intermediate goods are becoming weaker as the importer preference for environmental quality becomes stronger.     

Trade with developing countries and employment in the European Community

The opposition to a liberal stance on imports of manufactures from developing countries is growing as certain specific groups of products made in these countries prove increasingly competitive and the industrialized countries suffer from persistent high unemployment. Model computations for the six most important EC countries reveal however that the imports from developing countries have only a small impact on employment in these economies seen as a whole.     

Better marketing to developing countries: Why and how

Managers have long understood the rationale for investing in new products. Now, however, they face an even more compelling need: to invest in targeting new markets, specifically those in less developed countries (LDCs). The argument presented in this article, for initiating or increasing marketing efforts in these nations, makes two related points. First, a healthy world economy requires consumers in developing nations—particularly China—to spend more, because trade imbalances between the United States and LDCs cannot be sustained. Second, in order to foster consumption in LDCs and to profit from it, marketing expertise in the developed world must refocus. Success will require devising, promoting, and distributing products that will overcome economic constraints in some markets, and in others will overcome an understandable reluctance to spend rather than save. We suggest that lessons may be gleaned from examples regarding recent efforts targeting LDCs by a pharmaceutical company (Pfizer) and a food supplement marketer (Procter & Gamble), as well as efforts pioneered in less developed countries themselves (including low-cost private schools and $2,500 automobiles).     

浅析农产品对我国农村集贸市场的影响

园区农产品有别于一般的农产品,根据其特点可以为其制定出相应的营销策略。综合性大型超市是园区农产品销售的主要形式,农村集贸市场也是园区农产品的主要销售渠道。我国农村集贸市场存在一些问题,我们要积极应对,找出解决农村集贸市场问题的对策。     

Marketing of Banned Pesticides and Unapproved Pharmaceuticals and Unapproved Pharmaceuticals to Developing Countries

The United States sells $3.0 billion of pesticides and $7.0 billion of pharmaceuticals to consumers in export markets. Many of these products are banned and/or unapproved for use within the United States. This perplexing double standard continues to create unique ethical questions for United States based multinational corporations (MNCs) who sell pesticides and pharmaceutical products worldwide. This paper explores the issues related to export sales and how to effectively control and monitor the sale of these products to customers in developing countries.     

Price-quality competition in the exports of the Central and Eastern European Countries

In the decade since the fall of the Berlin Wall the number of CEEC products able to compete in export markets has steadily increased. The quality level of these products still lags substantially behind that of EU products, however. The quality level of new CEEC products coming into the market is, in fact, lower than that of older surviving products, indicating that the CEEC countries are increasingly specialising in price-sensitive sectors. The following article uses the concept of unit value to analyse the changes in the price-quality competitiveness of CEEC exports. The author wishes to thank Daniel O'boyle Kelly for doing the statistical calculations and for Improving his English.     

Eastern European marketing systems and Western marketing research voids: A research agenda

Starting with détente, there has been a marked improvement in North American trade with the U.S.S.R. and other Eastern European countries. This trend is predicted to continue at an accelerating rate in the years ahead. Despite this, trading and business systems of these countries are not likely to alter much. In most cases, planned purchases are going to continue, although the intensity may vary. Public policy makers in these countries decide well in advance what type of products or services they are going to purchase, because their purchases must conform with the goals of the annual foreign trade plan and the allocations of foreign exchange available for that particular purchase.Most aspects of Eastern European markets and marketing practices are not well known by North American company managers dealing with these countries. In most cases, lack of information about these markets often leads to misunderstanding and, hence, lost opportunity. The purpose of this article is to determine the critical research voids in an effort to facilitate the expansion of North American-Eastern European trade. To this end, a four-step procedure is proposed to pinpoint areas of research for immediate attention.     

A framework for comparing socially responsible investment markets: an analysis of the Dutch and Belgian retail markets

The increasing popularity of socially responsible investment among individual investors throughout Europe reveals the need for a framework that allows the comparison of socially responsible retail markets in different European countries. This article proposes such a framework, containing 16 different characteristics of socially responsible retail markets describing the size, institutionalization and nature of this market and correcting for differences in the size of countries and financial markets. When this framework was applied to the Dutch and Belgian socially responsible retail markets, differences were found with respect to the nature of both markets (specifically the use of non‐financial criteria, the asset allocation, the number of solidarity funds and investors' preferences for socially responsible savings products). Similarities were found with respect to the (absolute and relative) size and the degree of institutionalization of the socially responsible retail markets.     

Low-wage country competition and the quality content of high-wage country exports

We study how competition from low-wage countries in international markets affects the quality content of high-wage country exports. We focus on aggregate quality changes driven by a reallocation of sales from low- to high-quality exporters, within industries. Two alternative indicators are used on firm-level data to measure quality changes. Both lead to similar conclusions. Namely, we show that the mean quality of French exports increased by 10–15% between 1995 and 2005. Quality improvement is significantly more pronounced in markets in which competition from low-wage countries has increased the most. This holds true for various specifications including two different identification strategies. The results are consistent with competition from low-wage countries leading developed countries to specialize within industries in the production of higher quality goods.     

The role of endowments,technology and size in international trade: new evidence from product-level data

Using product-level trade data, we empirically investigate the export patterns of more than 150 countries in their exports to the USA, Brazil, India, and Japan. We document strong evidence that exporters specialize according to their relative factor endowments, technology, and economic size. More developed, capital abundant countries are found to export products of higher unit values and a wider range of products to developed, emerging and developing markets. More developed, economically larger, and technologically advanced countries are also the major exporters of new products, spanning a wide range of product categories with high unit values. Our findings provide important insights into the macro phenomenon that a large proportion of the global trade takes place among developed economies, and that the latter are also major exporters to developing markets.     

EC agricultural policy and international trade

The world markets for agricultural products are in a state of crisis. This is manifested in phenomena such as record surpluses, falling incomes for farmers and constantly increasing agricultural expenditure in a number of industrial countries while, at the same time, people go hungry in many developing regions. What are the factors which have brought this situation about? What can be done to solve these problems?     

The internationalization of emerging stock markets

Stock markets in developing countries today account for about 7 per cent of world equity market capitalization, and this share is rising rapidly. Foreign investors have in the past often faced restrictive barriers to access to these emerging markets. A growing number of developing countries have now started to dismantle these barriers, however, resulting in an increasing interest by international portfolio managers in these emerging stock markets.