So Whaddya Think? Consumers Create Ads and Other Consumers Critique Them

With the availability of online creative tools, consumers create ad-like communications on their own or in response to company contests. These consumer-generated ads (CGA) are like word-of-mouth (WOM) in that they are consumer-to-consumer communications, yet they have the look and feel of traditional advertising. We examine consumer responses to both contest and unsolicited CGA and company ads using data gathered from consumers via netnography and depth interviews. Content analysis is used to compare the three ad types and reveals that the contest rules frame CGA so that they resemble company ads while unsolicited CGA differ from both ad types. Findings show that consumers respond to both types of CGA by engaging with the ad rather than the brand, much like an ad critic, while company ads elicit brand associations. Unsolicited CGA are seen as authentic, but not credible, while contest ads are seen as credible, but not authentic, revealing a boundary condition to the conventional view that authenticity leads to credibility.     

EDI success in small and medium‐sized enterprises: A field study

This research aims to identify empirically the success factors that have allowed small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) to obtain advantages from electronic data interchange (EDI). These advantages can be operational, managerial, and strategic in nature. Results of a field study done in 39 firms indicate that it is the quality of the organizational context of EDI (organizational support, implementation process, and control procedures) that is crucial to the attainment of benefits from this technology. In turn, the quality of the organizational context is higher when the small firm implements EDI voluntarily rather than having it imposed by a major client or supplier. These results are compared with those of a prior study done in a large business context.     

Closed-form solutions to stochastic process switching problems

This paper studies the price of an asset depending on both a fundamental and possible interventions of an authority. Using the martingale approach in continuous time, we provide closed-form solutions to switching problems involving irreversible, state dependent and intramarginal switch policies. The martingale approach provides additional information regarding the switching policy, namely the average time before authority intervention, the conditional probability of intervention, or the total time of intervention. Applications in international and financial economics include exchange rates modelling, corporate claims valuation and capital budgeting decisions.     

Are Older Workers Harmful for Firm Productivity?

This paper investigates the effects of the workforce age structure on the productivity of large Belgian firms. More precisely, it examines different scenarios of changes in the proportion of young (16–29 years), middle-aged (30–49 years) and older (more than 49 years) workers and their expected effects on firm productivity. Using detailed matched employer–employee data, we find that young workers are significantly more productive than older workers. Yet, results also show that age structure effects on productivity: (i) have substantially decreased over time and (ii) are much stronger in ICT than in non-ICT firms.     

On-the-job search equilibrium with endogenous unemployment benefits

This paper develops an on-the-job search model with wage posting where unemployment benefits are proportional to past wages. We emphasize that this contributes to increasing the reservation wages of unemployed workers and introduces a feedback effect of the distribution of wages on the distribution of unemployment benefits. We show that the model predictions are consistent with some stylized French facts and quantify the impact of inefficient rejections of low-wage offers by the unemployed. We find that, by reducing the indexing of unemployment benefits to previous earnings and increasing lump-sum transfers, it is possible to increase both employment and welfare.     

Narrow Replication of Yogo (2004) Estimating the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution when Instruments are Weak

This narrow replication exercise of Yogo (Review of Economics and Statistics 2004; 86 (3): 797–810) finds results identical to the original paper, and provides results on overidentification tests for specifications that do not suffer from the weak instruments problem. The null hypothesis of the Sargan test is rejected in several cases, in particular for US and UK quarterly data. When other combinations of instruments are used the null of the Sargan test is rejected again in several cases. These rejections cast doubts on either instrument validity or model specification. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Putting sense of place at the centre of place brand development

Developing a place brand involves highlighting the distinctive attributes of a place that could be used to enhance its attractiveness. This study is in line with recent literature where the concept of place identity is being replaced by sense of place, which provides an holistic view of a place by integrating all users’ experiences and feelings. Through a qualitative study involving 31 individual interviews with users and meetings with managers of a French coastal area, this paper proposes a five-dimensional definition of sense of place and its use as a tool for developing a place brand in 3 ways: defining the place brand concept, bringing together the internal stakeholders and invoving users in brand building.     

Breakthrough innovation in international business: The impact of tech-innovation and market-innovation on performance

The literature suggests that the greater the perceived novelty of a firm’s products and markets, the greater the potential value to the user (Lepak et al., 2007). In this study we analyze the extent to which breakthrough innovation (both tech-innovation and market-innovation) has a positive impact on both economic and strategic export performance. Tech-innovation incorporates technological developments to improve customer benefits versus existing alternatives in the market. Our findings reveal that tech-innovation has a positive impact on the economic and strategic export performance of firms. This relationship becomes stronger when more human resources are available and the exporter becomes more oriented toward the importer. In less competitive markets, the positive relationship between tech-innovation and both types of export performance becomes even stronger.Market-innovation occurs when the product concept or benefits depart from serving existing or conventional markets. Market-innovation was found to be negatively associated with strategic export performance, as it requires major learning effort by importers. This suggests that to create value, exporters need to develop solutions jointly with importers. Overall, these findings suggest that value creation in terms of both tech-innovation and market-innovation needs to involve importers to achieve expectations, thereby leading to improvement in a firm’s short-term and long-term export performance.