The quality of British marketing: A comparison with US and Japanese multinationals in the UK market

This paper presents the findings of an empirical study comparing the marketing strategies and organisations of a matched sample of British companies and their US and Japanese competitors in the UK. Hypotheses about Japanese marketing are tested and provide a framework for the comparative analysis of the marketing effectiveness of the three sets of competitors. The findings highlight significant weaknesses in the marketing effort of British companies, these being exacerbated by excessive focus on short‐run financial gains. The US competitors, equally concerned with short‐term profits, were less committed to the UK market than their Japanese rivals, their market position being in danger of deteriorating further as the Japanese close the technological gap between them. The Japanese were unmistakably aggressive, single‐minded in their pursuit of market share and undeniably more market‐oriented than their US and British counterparts. This research was funded by the ESRC.     

Classroom Response Systems and Student Performance Improvement: Local Versus International Students

The clicker is one of the most popular mobile classroom response systems. A number of studies reported that clickers could effectively encourage students to participate in class. However, most of them are not talking about Chinese students and their finding seldom reported the difference in perception between Chinese and international students on using the mobile classroom response system in learning. They seldom examine the issue of cultural differences on the application of these learning management systems. The study can fill in the gap to collect their perception on using clickers in Hong Kong. The result shows that both Chinese and international students are keen on using clickers in class. The clicker is found to be able to advance learning efficacy and raise student participation in class.     

Are changes in spreads of external-market debt also induced by contagion?

As governments and private companies from emerging markets have increasingly issued foreign-currency denominated debt through the 1990s, the economies concerned have become more vulnerable to abrupt changes in sovereign risk. At the same time, with closer economic integration countries have become more likely to be affected by economic problems that arise in neighboring countries. The following article uses the example of four Latin American countries to evaluate empirically the extent to which “contagion” explains changes in sovereign risk.     

Housing Reform in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, China

It has been widely suggested that housing reforms in China face many obstacles, such as the entrenchment of the work unit system and low affordability of households. Housing policy development is now an important area for research, resulting in a large number of publications inside China. Most of these, however, are related to Beijing and Shanghi only. The objective of this paper is to provide an up-to-date review of housing reforms in Southern China by examining the two wealthiest cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The study is baseed onan an alysis of the literature, government legislation documents, interviews with government officials and press articles.     

设计印象深刻的标识

标识设计对设计师来说可以是很棘手的。市面上充斥着大量设计拙劣的标识,这些都是由电脑/软件的普遍使用引起的。获奖的设计公司可以设计一个标识,但是互联网广告吹嘘说标识设计只需花费25美元。两者提供的服务质量是一样的吗?什么样的标识才是好的设计呢?成功的标识,可以投射出公司或产品的形象风格,并且让人一见难忘。作为设计师,可能并不需要常常要设计标识。然而,了解一些设计成功标识的大概原则还是有用的。保持风格简单大部分的成功标识都是很简单的,只有少量的元素、线条、颜色、字体、装饰或花招。虽然也有例外,例如Anheuser-Busch的精细的鹰和A标志,但总的来说,既复杂又成功的标识还是很少。简单的标识便于人们更快速的浏览,易于理解并且记住。哪一个更能让你记住呢,是只有寥寥几字的设计还是复杂如字典的设计?一个简单的设计也通常具有更突出的轮廓,这也有助于快速辨认。而且,一个简单的标识可以更大量的使用,并且花费较小(刺绣、压花、模具裁剪和雕刻等等)。简单的颜色很少成功的标识会使用超过三种以上的颜色。在财富500企业的标识中,你很少会发现颜色复杂的。颜色使用的越多,印刷成本越高——有时甚至是不可能做到——要简单复制的难度也就越大...     

Shopping motives,store attributes and shopping enjoyment among Malaysian youth

Youth shoppers are an emerging age group that is recognized as a meaningful market segment, yet there is lack of extant shopping enjoyment research explicit to the cohort especially in Malaysia context. This study endeavors to measure shoppers' shopping enjoyment and to explore the effect of both internal and external factors in influencing their shopping enjoyment levels. Shopping motives as the internal contributor is personal-specific while store attributes serve as the external aspect is regarded as situational-specific. By employing hierarchical multiple regression analysis, it was found that anticipated utility dimension from shopping motive variable and enhancement dimension from store attribute variable explained the variance in shopping enjoyment. Narrowing to the two variables identified, anticipated utility (β=0.198) from shopping motives was having more influential power than enhancement derived from store attributes (β=0.163) in explaining shopping enjoyment. The findings assist retailers in enhancing the perceived value of customers.     

The effect of outward processing trade on wage inequality: the Hong Kong case

This study uses time series analysis to investigate the impact of Hong Kong's increased outward processing trade with the Chinese Mainland on wage inequality. We found a significant positive association between outward processing trade and the wage premium of university graduates over primary school graduates and that over secondary school graduates. Moreover, a standard test showed one-way causality from outward processing trade to the widening of skill wage gap. Furthermore, the increase of outward processing trade is found to both increase the pay for well-educated people and decrease the pay for less well-educated people, thereby widening the wage gap.     

Is the Aggregate Investor Reluctant to Realise Losses? Evidence from Taiwan

We ask whether the typical investor and the aggregate investor exhibit a bias known as the disposition effect, the tendency to sell investments that are held for a profit at a faster rate than investments held for a loss. We analyse all trading activity on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) for the five years ending in 1999. Using a dataset that contains all trades (over one billion) and the identity of every trader (nearly four million), we find that in aggregate, investors in Taiwan are about twice as likely to sell a stock if they are holding that stock for a gain rather than a loss. Eighty‐four percent of all Taiwanese investors sell winners at a faster rate than losers. Individuals, corporations, and dealers are reluctant to realise losses, while mutual funds and foreigners, who together account for less than 5% of all trades (by value), are not.     

sk−p Fractional factorial designs in sb blocks

Draper and Guttman (1997) shows that for basic 2^k−p designs, p≥0, k − p replicates of blocks designs of size two are needed to estimate all the usual (estimable) effects. In this work, we provide an algebraic formal proof for the two-level blocks designs results and present results applicable to the general case; that is, for the case of s ^k factorial (p=0) or s ^k−p fractional factorial (p >0) designs in s ^b blocks, where 0<b<k− p, at least replicates are needed to clear up all possible effects. Through the theoretical development presented in this work, it can provide a clearer view on why those results would hold. We will also discuss the estimation equations given in Draper and Guttman (1997).  Research supported in part by the National Science Council of Taiwan, R.O.C., Grant No. NSC 89-2118-M110-010. Acknowledgement. The authors would like to thank the referee for very helpful comments.     

Accounting for output fluctuations in manufacturing

There is a substantial body of evidence to the effect that output is more volatile than sales among manufacturing industries. Numerous explanations have been advanced to account for this excess output volatility. Some examples are pro-cyclical inventory movements induced by a stockout-avoidance motive, cost and technology shocks and decreasing marginal costs. This article assesses the contribution of these different motives to output volatility for six different manufacturing industries. Linear–quadratic models are estimated for each of the industries and then dynamic simulations are employed to determine the volatility of output when one or more of the factors are removed from the model. Technology shocks provide the most significant contribution to output volatility. The stockout-avoidance motive is also important. Cost shocks provide a very small contribution and marginal production costs are increasing at the margin and thus stabilize output. It is also shown that output volatility declines when current values of sales and material costs are assumed known rather than forecasted from prior periods’ values.