Doing business in the new Eastern Europe: A risk profile

The sweeping changes in Eastern Europe make the area seem very tempting. But it's important not to look through rosey colored glasses before making a major commitment. Recognize that there is a downside to doing business there.     

What does luxury really mean to millennial consumers?

The aim of this study was to determine how millennial luxury consumers define luxury based on a holistic systems theory perspective. The human ecosystem and its components were used to fully investigate the system of the millennial luxury consumer. A mixed methodology was used by conducting interviews and then a consumer survey. Based on the findings from this research, the definition for luxury based on the view of the millennial luxury consumer is as followed: Luxury is the characteristics of the product themselves, addresses the consumer's personal needs, and addresses the consumer's social needs. This study suggests that the ecosystem of the millennial luxury consumers, including its environments and interactions, helped in constructing their definition of luxury. This definition delivers millennial luxury consumer insights for luxury retailers and may provide strategic adaptations to help attract and retain millennial luxury consumers, while also supporting business sustainability in a challenging retail environment.     

Corporate governance or governance by corporates? Testing governmentality in the context of China's national oil and petrochemical business groups

Like other industrial sectors with significant – ‘pillar’ – importance in China's overall economy and development, oil and petrochemicals are governed by state-owned business groups. In this context, ‘corporate governance’ of these groups is of fundamental interest. This study probes corporate governance of 31 national oil and petrochemical business groups by examining their structure, development and business activities in the period from 2007 to 2011. The post-1998 restructuring of China's qiyejituan business groups, their related party transactions and related party corporate finance all yield insight into how property rights are decisive in how corporate governance based on governmentality – or the interrelation of corporate, state and social relations – is structured. This study sheds light on how China's big business policy and governance of the state-business interface progresses in a socialist market economy. It has clear implications international trade and investment as well as multinational corporations doing business with China.     

Exit from the high street: an exploratory study of sustainable fashion consumption pioneers

In today's fashion system, dominated by business models predicated on continual consumption and globalized production systems that have major environmental and social impacts, the consumption of ‘sustainable fashion’ takes on an almost paradoxical quality. This paper explores this paradox by focusing on a previously under‐researched group of consumers – ‘sustainable fashion consumption pioneers’ who actively engage and shape their own discourse around the notion of sustainable fashion consumption. These pioneers actively create and communicate strategies for sustainable fashion behaviour that can overcome the nebulous and somewhat paradoxical reality that sustainable development in the fashion industry presents. Specifically, we use passive netnography and semi‐structured interviews to illuminate the role of motivational and contextual factors that help shape these consumers' definitions of sustainable fashion including such key behaviours as purchasing fewer garments of higher quality, exiting the retail market, purchasing only second‐hand fashion goods and sewing or upgrading their own clothing. Central to much of these behaviours is the notion that personal style, rather than fashion, can bridge the potential disconnect between sustainability and fashion while also facilitating a sense of well‐being not found in traditional fashion consumption. As such, our research suggests that for these consumers sustainability is as much about reducing measurable environmental or social impacts as it is about incorporating broader concepts through which to achieve goals beyond the pro‐environmental or ethical.     

Mexico

Not understanding the cultural aspects of doing business overseas can jeopardize the success of international negotiations, entry strategies, joint ventures, technology transfer, marketing, and human resources. This article reports a study of the perceptions of U.S. and Mexican executives concerning the importance of 15 cultural dimensions of doing business in Mexico (our second largest trading partner). It found that, whereas Mexican executives believed more strongly than U.S. executives that the cultural dimensions of doing business in Mexico were more important than the product or service offered and the accompanying terms of sale, the U.S. executives, surprisingly, assigned higher levels of importance to the 15 cultural variables. Both Mexican and U.S. executives strongly agreed on which of the 15 variables were most important. All eight subgroups of U.S. executives assigned higher levels of importance to the 15 cultural aspects of doing business in Mexico than did their Mexican counterparts. When four comparisons of the executives of the eight subsets of U.S. companies‐large vs. small, border location vs. nonborder location, doing business in Mexico vs. not doing business there, and doing business there more than 5 years (pre‐NAFTA) vs. doing business there 5 years or less (post‐NAFTA)—were made of the level of importance they attached to the cultural variables, no significant differences were found. Based on the study's findings, implications for doing business in Mexico are indicated. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Does sustainability really matter to consumers? Assessing the importance of online shop and apparel product attributes

Although there is a shift in consumers' consumption behavior towards more sustainable patterns across a variety of different contexts, sustainable apparel has still not become a mainstream trend despite the textile industry's excessive usage of valuable resources. Albeit extant research found different potential barriers elucidating why consumers hesitate to purchase such apparel, it remains unclear whether sustainability really matters to consumers in a clothing context and further, which aspects are of relevance during consumers' purchase decision. We thus conducted two studies with four best-worst scaling experiments in which 4,350 online shoppers assessed the importance of both conventional and sustainable apparel attributes, as well as sustainable apparel attributes only, and the willingness to pay for sustainable product attributes. We further inquired the importance of conventional as well as sustainable online shop attributes. Our findings indicate that conventional apparel attributes such as fit and comfort, price-performance ratio, and quality are of higher relevance to consumers than sustainable attributes. The most important sustainable apparel attributes are the garment's durability, fair wages and working conditions, as well as an environmentally friendly production process. Consumers also indicated to prefer the latter three attributes to a 20% discount. Moreover, consumers demand less as well as sustainable packaging, free returns, and discount campaigns. Our findings reveal a gender gap regarding green consumerism with female respondents assessing most sustainable attributes as more important than male respondents do.     

Discount development in france: The introduction of the format and the competitive response

This article aims to set forth and clarify the factors that caused the rapid development of the hard discount business in France over the past 2 years and to highlight their key impacts. The hard discount business is supposed to have triggered an “intratype” competitive reaction by many French companies which diversified their businesses into this segment, as well as an “intertype” set of reactions by both supermarkets and hypermarkets which implemented the new strategies described in this article based on either cost‐cutting policies and/or trade names differentiation. Conclusions may be drawn following an analysis of the features of this formula as well as the consumers' and competitors' responses. One conclusion may be that the discounters are also bound to increase their market share further once the economic crisis is over. In fact, this business meets the on‐going purchasing and shopping needs by most of the consumers.     

Increasing Price Transparency: Implications of Consumer Price Posting for Consumers' Haggling Behavior and a Seller's Pricing Strategies

In an attempt to gain a better position in haggling, consumers often seek a seller's pricing information (e.g., whether the posted price is negotiable, the discount and transaction prices) before going to that seller. Although traditionally difficult to obtain, such information is becoming increasingly available due to consumer price posting (CPP), whereby consumers post and share their purchase price information on the Internet. In this analytical study, we consider a market in which a seller, who chooses between a fixed price policy and a haggling policy, serves two types of consumers who differ in their willingness to pay and haggling costs. We explore how CPP can affect consumers' behavior and the seller's pricing strategies (i.e., pricing policy and the associated prices). In the absence of CPP, our model features a two-sided uncertainty: the seller does not know individual consumer's type and thus may find it optimal to use a haggling policy to price discriminate consumers, whereas consumers do not readily observe the seller's cost type and pricing policy, and thus are uncertain whether their haggling will be fruitful. In the presence of CPP, consumers' uncertainty about the seller's pricing policy is resolved. Because CPP can improve price transparency, inhibit consumers' acceptance of a posted price and spur price haggling, it seems apparent that it should benefit consumers and hurt the seller. However, our analysis shows that CPP can lead to fewer purchases, higher prices and even a greater seller profit. It further shows that although CPP surely increases information accessibility, it can also reduce the amount of information available to consumers. These results are in sharp contrast to the conventional wisdom in the literature.     

Sustainability seen from the perspective of consumers

An important step in promoting sustainable consumption is to find out how consumers understand the concept of sustainability. In this paper, we report on a study among Norwegian consumers in which we explored their understanding of sustainability at two levels. First, we investigated consumers' understanding of the general sustainability concept; specifically, we studied how important the following five sustainability dimensions are in consumers' conception of sustainability: the environmental, social, economic, temporal and the developmental dimension. Second, we investigated how consumers' understanding of sustainability manifests itself in consumption decisions: We studied consumers' opinions about how important various attributes are for sustainable products and which product labels they consider indicative of sustainable products. We found that all five sustainability dimensions occurred as elements of consumers' understanding of the sustainability concept. The environmental dimension, the social dimension and the developmental dimension were particularly outstanding. With regard to attributes that are important for sustainable products, consumers placed high emphasis on recyclability of the packaging, fair payment of producers, low energy use and low carbon dioxide emissions during production and shipping. Humane animal treatment was also considered an important attribute of sustainable products. The product labels that were considered most indicative of sustainable products were the Nordic Swan and the Norwegian Debio label. Consumers' judgments of how indicative the labels are of sustainable products were related positively to familiarity with the labels.     

The role of brand schemas,information transparency,and source of message on apparel brands' social responsibility communication

In today's complex business environment, apparel brands are communicating about their socially responsible (SR) practices through marketing messages to create a niche for themselves and show their SR efforts. However, SR aspects of products are difficult to verify by consumers. To help brands effectively communicate their SR efforts, this study assessed how consumers process an apparel brand's SR messages based on their prior experiences with that brand (brand schemas). Information transparency on messages and source of messages were tested as external cues to influence consumers' brand schemas and SR message evaluations in a mixed method repeated measures online experiment using a national US consumer sample. Results from regression-based conditional process analyses indicated that increased congruity of consumers' schemas to the fact that brands are SR led to more favorable attitude toward brands' SR messages. Also, presence of high information transparency on SR messages influenced consumers' schemas positively, and in turn, they evaluated messages more favorably. However, consumers were not influenced by whether messages were made by brands or third-party organizations. The study results show the importance of brand schemas and information transparency on apparel brand communications, helping both apparel brands and educators create effective SR-related marketing strategies.     

Accessing and affording sustainability: the experience of fashion consumption within young families

Despite the ever increasing levels of fashion consumption, neither retailers nor consumers have as yet implemented sustainability principles to a significant degree. This is despite the fact that sustainability principles are increasingly understood and will be applied by consumers, as long as affordable alternatives in mainstream fashions are available. In a highly competitive fashion retail sector, there exists an opportunity for UK high street fashion retailers to differentiate their brand image through aligning products with consumers' moral frameworks. Using phenomenological interviews, this research explores the fashion consumption experiences of professional women with young children and living in or near Edinburgh, with particular focus on their expression of their own sustainability concerns in their day‐to‐day practices. The findings reveal that in the absence of suitable products, information and labelling, consumers apply heuristics to their choices, especially price. They refer to the more familiar ethical food market which serves as a metaphor for fashion‐related practices. They talk about trustworthy retailers and about how they deal with and rationalize their own practices where they reveal an obvious attitude‐behaviour gap. The women's role of providing for the family adds further complexity in a sector which provides affordable alternative options.     

Positive business: doing good and doing well

This article investigates the meaning of doing good and doing well in positive business. It examines the relationship between the two expressions and discusses their relevance, shedding new light on the significance of ‘positive’ in positive business and positive organizational scholarship (POS). Thus, this article illuminates the ultimate end of positive states and practices. ‘Positive’ primarily represents values and assumptions. These lead to the creation of beneficial situations and marked improvements, which put individuals and organizations on an upward trajectory toward achieving excellent functioning, assuring profitability in addition to sustainability and social well-being. Doing well, with reference to economic performance and profits, is partly constitutive of doing good. This presents a new approach regarding the role of economic outcomes in positive business and POS. It means that financial criteria do not have priority. Profits are considered vital and necessary, but the final ‘raison d'être’ of positive states and practices is the overall well-being of the stakeholders.     

On achieving sustainable development: The Costa Rican model

One of the hottest buzzwords in today's global corporate environment is “sustainability.” But long before the topic became “cool,” it was on the mind and on the agenda of Costa Rica's president, José María Figueres. In this well‐thought‐out article, Figueres maps the route that he forged for Costa Rica's future as a developing country leveraging its resources into a model of sustainable development for Latin American emerging economies. Using concrete examples, he explains the thought leadership behind projects that have moved Costa Rica into the forefront of countries doing well by also doing good. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The impact of retailers’ sustainability and price on consumers’ responses in different cultural contexts

Consumers want sustainability, but at what price? With growing demands for environmental and social sustainability, retailers aim to understand how consumers might react to adaptations in retail practices. This research examines consumers’ perceptions towards retailers’ environmental and social sustainability practices and the moderating effect of price in different cultural contexts. Quantitative research methodology using scenario-based experiments was employed. Two experiments were conducted using research participants from the US (a more individualist country) and Turkey (a more collectivist country) and measured one dimension of culture, individualism versus collectivism. The results reveal that high prices negatively moderate consumers’ response to retailers’ sustainability efforts. Even though there is no significant interaction between either type of sustainability and price on purchase intention, high sustainability along with a low-price strategy leads to an increase in consumers’ commitment, satisfaction, and loyalty. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that high prices have a more negative effect on consumers’ responses in a collectivist country. This study highlights the importance of price in both individualist and collectivist cultures and provides a better understanding of a neglected dimension of sustainability, social sustainability. Managers need to be aware of the increasing demand from consumers for environmentally and socially sustainable practices but need to recognize that consumers may not be willing to pay more for these products. Companies need to formulate business strategies based on low priced-sustainable products and the cultural context of the country in which they operate.     

Resource management in big data initiatives: Processes and dynamic capabilities

Effective management of organizational resources in big data initiatives is of growing importance. Although academic and popular literatures contain many examples of big data initiatives, very few are repeated in the same organization. This suggests either big data delivers benefits once only per organization or senior managers are reluctant to commit resources to big data on a sustained basis. This paper makes three contributions to the Special Issue's theme of enhancing organizational resource management. One is to establish an archetype business process for big data initiatives. The second contribution directs attention to creating a dynamic capability with big data initiatives. The third identifies drawbacks of resource based theory (RBT) and it's underpinning assumptions in the context of big data. The paper discusses lessons learnt and draws out implications for practice and business research. The paper's intellectual and practical contributions are based on an in-depth case study of the European ICT Poles of Excellence (EIPE) big data initiative and evidence from the extant literature.     

Chubby cheeks and climate change: childhood obesity as a sustainable development issue

The rise of obesity is one of today's biggest societal challenges. Indeed, the obesity epidemic is not only impairing individuals' lives, but also societies' sustainability, most notably with regard to the social, the cultural and the economic dimension. Thus, to halt obesity has become a goal in several political sustainability strategies. The focus is on children since their health behaviour is expected to have a strong impact on consumers in adulthood. To fight childhood obesity, the challenge is to develop the ‘right’ policy toolbox. One complicating aspect amongst others is the numerousness of actors involved. To find a policy mix and assess its consequences for all actors, it is essential to understand the underlying mechanisms – the impact of external and internal factors on children's health behaviour. Tools such as regulation, information and education appear to be insufficient to curb this unsustainable consumption behaviour. One promising avenue to strike a new path is to exploit the possibilities of choice architecture as proposed by behavioural economics. The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to develop the conceptual nexus between obesity and sustainable development against the backcloth of obesity and sustainability research; second, based on a human ecological model, to outline selected influencing factors of childhood obesity; and third, to sketch the options of market and consumer policy actors to curb the pandemic.     

International strategies of mid-sized firms: A comparison of Indiana and Guangdong Province

A China strategy is becoming more important for a growing number of mid-sized companies as they observe China's increasingly greater impact on the U.S. economy. Our study surveyed Indiana and Guangdong firms to assess their interest in future international engagement in the other's country. Our results confirm current engagement by mid-sized firms from both countries in some activities with the other country, but there is a strong interest in doing more. Hence, there are opportunities for many Indiana organizations to play a role in assisting Indiana firms in developing international expertise, business development, and knowledge of China. In the study, 97 firms from the Guangdong Province and 105 Indiana firms identified their current international activities as well their future intentions relative to business development in the other's country.     

Environmental and Economic Dimensions of Sustainability and Price Effects on Consumer Responses

The lack of attention to sustainability, as a concept with multiple dimensions, has presented a developmental gap in green marketing literature, sustainability, and marketing literature for decades. Based on the established premise of customer–corporate (C–C) identification, in which consumers respond favorably to companies with corporate social responsibility initiatives that they identify with, we propose that consumers would respond similarly to companies with sustainability initiatives. We postulate that consumers care about protecting and preserving favorable economic environments (an economic dimension of sustainability) as much as they care about natural environments. Thus, we investigate how two sustainability dimensions (i.e., environmental and economic) and price can influence consumer responses. Using an experimental method, we demonstrate that consumers favor sustainability in both dimensions by giving positive evaluations of the company and purchase intent. In addition, consumers respond more negatively to poor company sustainability than to high company sustainability. In comparison, consumers respond more negatively to the company’s poor commitment to caring for the environment than to the company’s poor commitment to economic sustainability. We also find that consumers do not respond favorably to low prices when they have information about the firm’s poor environmental sustainability. Finally, we find support for an interaction effect between consumer support for sustainability and corporate sustainability; that is, consumers evaluate a company more favorably if the company shares the consumers’ social causes. Overall, we conclude, from our empirical study, support for the idea that consumers do respond to multiple dimensions of sustainability.