The relational benefits of personalized communications in an online environment

This research investigates how personalized communications enhance customer‐company relationships, which ultimately produce favourable marketing outcomes. Two factors were manipulated in an online experiment: the perceived effort made by customers to obtain a personalized newsletter (high vs. low) and the level of relevance of the message (high vs. low). The results indicate that perceived effort positively affects calculative commitment (even more so for highly involved customers), while the level of relevance of the message increases affective commitment. In addition, the interaction between perceived effort and message relevance has significant effects on calculative and affective commitment. Finally, affective commitment partially mediates the relationships between relevance and both loyalty and word‐of‐mouth intentions. Managerial implications regarding the best usage of personalized communications are discussed. Copyright © 2013 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

国际制度与新进入国家的相互合法化

通常的观点认为,制度先行者塑造国际制度,新进入国家接受国际制度的塑造。作者对这一理论观点进行了修正,认为新进入国家参与国际制度的过程也是国际制度提高其合法性的一个同步过程:国际制度需要通过容纳新进入国家的关切来提高自身合法性;同时,新进入国家的关切得到容纳要以其接受制度宗旨为前提。双方产生了相互合法化的需要,它们需要同步接纳对方的合理诉求。一方面,国际制度是制度先行者互动形成的规则体系,未能包含更广泛的国家的关切事项,其合法性因而是有限的。另一方面,新进入国家参与国际制度通常需要接受已有制度的基本宗旨,否则它可能不会被接受为新成员。如果双方不能实现相互合法化,那么新进入国家与国际制度的关系将止步不前。而如果双方实现了相互合法化,使新进入国家取得国际制度成员资格成为可能。其结果是,新进入国家取得了为未来制定规则的机会,因而能够对国际制度的未来走向产生持续影响。     

Interest differentials and extreme support for uncovered interest rate parity

This paper addresses two findings from the empirical literature testing uncovered interest parity (UIP): (i) more favorable results when interest differentials (IDs) are large and (ii) instability across samples. Simulations demonstrate that explanations of the results using large IDs based on the hypothesis of a “zone of speculative inactivity” are inconsistent with empirical evidence. Furthermore, it is shown that, if agents forecast IDs based on long-run values, coefficient estimates will be unstable if rates of decay in IDs vary significantly and, for ex post UIP to hold, IDs must decay in absolute value. This is consistent with OECD country data.     

Sustainability Development and the Quality of Assurance Reports: Empirical Evidence

There is a rising trend among companies to publish their sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Assurance of these reports is a valuable voluntary tool to provide them with higher credibility. Nonetheless, the quality of assurance reports differs in practice and the objective of this paper is to provide evidence in this new area of research. Indeed, we are pioneers in developing an index to measure the quality of assurance reports. We choose the Spanish setting because it is the worldwide leading country as regards CSR reporting (KPMG, 2011; Sierra et al., 2012). We have found evidence on the determinants for CSR reporting posited by existing literature that have an impact on (a) the decision of companies to publish their CSR reports, (b) the decision to assure the CSR report or not and (c) the decision to hire the assurance services from an auditor or a consultant and the subsequent quality of the assurance report. Last but not least, our results from a sample of 161 CSR assurance reports evidence that assurance reports are of fairly acceptable quality, according to the index proposed. Furthermore, the value of the quality index is significantly higher if the assurance services are provided by an auditor (as opposed to a consultant) and if the CSR reporting company is larger. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Consumers as researchers – innovative experiences in UK National Health Service Research

Consumer involvement is an established priority in UK health‐ and social‐care service development and research. To date, little has been published describing the process of consumer involvement and assessing ‘consumers’ contributions to research. This paper provides a practical account of the effective incorporation of consumers into a research team, and outlines the extent to which they can enhance the research cycle; from project development and conduct, through data analysis and interpretation, to dissemination. Salient points are illustrated using the example of their collaboration in a research project. Of particular note were consumers' contributions to the development of an ethically enhanced, more robust project design, and enriched data interpretation, which may not have resulted had consumers not been an integral part of the research team.     

New products with a symmetric AIDS expenditure function

We study a symmetric AIDS expenditure function that allows for variation in the range of goods. Solving for the reservation prices for goods not available, a convenient form for the expenditure function is obtained. This functional form should prove useful in monopolistic competition models were the range of products changes due to entry and exit.     

Long haul freight network design using shipper–carrier freight flow prediction: A California network improvement case study

Transportation network design is a method for analyzing the interactive benefits of transportation projects applied to a network. In this paper, a network design model is developed for long haul freight movements which are represented by relationships between shippers and carriers. Additionally, an explicit capacity constraint is used to divert traffic volume from congested links. A case study based on the California transportation network is implemented to examine the effectiveness of this model when applied to a large network. A geographic information system is used to facilitate data management and analysis of the results.