Ideational item The politics of the press

The public press has often been criticized for anti-business bias. A recent study surveyed journalists' political views in an attempt to find sources for such a bias.     

Professionals' views of comparative advertising and the scholarly research literature: A review and synthesis

Comparative advertisements that contrast identifiable, competing products or services may be among advertising's most important tactical weapons. Despite nearly a century of use in the USA, growing use by advertisers in many other countries, and decades of scholarly research, some researchers continue to argue that the status of empirical knowledge regarding comparative advertising's effectiveness remains equivocal. This study addresses this equivocality with a review of the research literature and comparisons with the findings of a recent survey of US advertising creative executives. The findings reveal substantial agreement among the beliefs of academic researchers and advertising professionals in regard to when and how comparative advertising will likely be effective. In addition to offering confirming evidence that academic researchers and advertising professionals do sometimes arrive at the same destination in regard to their shared understandings of advertising effects, the findings also point the way toward important directions for future research on comparative advertising.     

Gemeinsame Entscheidungen sind bessere Entscheidungen

Verantwortung als Team übernehmen — Ein konstruktives Miteinander von ?rzten und Pflegenden ist keine Utopie. Voraussetzung ist jedoch, dass bei Entscheidungskonflikten jeder bereit ist, seine Position zu überdenken und Kritik – ohne verletzend zu sein – zu üben und anzunehmen.     

Can the United States Transform Itself Into an Exporting Juggernaut?

The United States is capable of becoming an exporting juggernaut if it follows the right policies. This paper discusses what goals the United States should pursue and how it should go about reaching them. The goals should be ambitious—more ambitious than current policy suggests. Gross exports should increase to about 20 percent of GDP, whereas the current account deficit should decline to about 2 percent. The most important instruments to achieve these goals are liberalization of export controls, aggressive pursuit of trade agreements, and exchange rate correction—particularly with China. The paper gives estimates of what can be achieved by these instruments.     

Ethics in Small Minority Businesses

The management literature is replete with studies on business ethics. Unfortunately, most of these studies have dealt exclusively with ethics in large businesses. Although a handful of studies can be found on small business ethics, none has paid attention to the issue of ethics in small minority businesses. Similarly, several studies on ethics have utilized the Wood et al. (1988) 16-vignette ethics scale, although reliability and validity issues associated with the scale have never been fully addressed. In this study, a purification (via content analysis) of the above mentioned scale was performed. Three reliable factors were extracted from the purified scale. They were used to investigate the ethics in small minority businesses. The study found an association between business ethics and demographic and company-related variables. In the case of age of respondents, findings ran counter the usual relationship of age being positively related to ethical attitudes. The implications of these findings are also discussed.     

Reforming the GATT: The use of trade measures for balance-of-payments purposes

The GATT rules which govern international trade are to be reformed during the current Multilateral Trade Negotiations. It is widely agreed that among the rules most in need of change are those relating to the use of trade policy measures, such as import quotas and surchages, for balance-of-payments purposes. This article reviews the role of such measures under international monetary regimes based on both fixed and flexible exchange rates, and concludes that they should no longer be authorized by the GATT. If they do remain part of the system, a number of major changes are needed in both the substantive and procedural rules which govern their use.     

Socio-economic and demographic determinants of consumer problem perception

Studies on consumer satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and complaining behaviour provide no consistent picture of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the consumers involved. This study indicates that consumers with different socio-economic characteristics perceive and experience different numbers and types of consumer problems.Younger people experience more problems with commercial information. Persons of lower income and full nest families report more problems with usage costs and product quality. Problems with after-sales service are more often experienced by male and upper class consumers. Differences in problem perception may affect subsequent satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and complaining behaviour.

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Sozioökonomische und demographische Einflüsse auf die Wahrnehmung von Verbraucherproblemen

Zusammenfassung Untersuchungen zur Zufriedenheit, zur Unzufriedenheit und zum Beschwerdeverhalten von Konsumenten ergeben kein konsistentes Bild der sozioökonomischen und demographischen Eigenschaften der untersuchten Konsumenten. Die vorliegende Studie deutet darauf hin, daß Konsumenten mit unterschiedlichen sozioökonomischen Eigenschaften sich hinsichtlich der Anzahl und der Art der wahrgenommenen Verbraucherprobleme unterscheiden.Jüngere Verbraucher empfinden mehr Probleme mit kommerzieller Information. Verbraucher mit niedrigerem Einkommen und Familien mit Kindern nehmen mehr Probleme mit den Gebrauchskosten und mit der Produktqualität wahr. Probleme mit dem Kundendienst treten dagegen häufiger bei männlichen Konsumenten und solchen aus höheren Schichten auf. Unterschiede in der Problemwahrnehmung wirken sich auf die Zufriedenheit und das Beschwerdeverhalten von Konsumenten aus.

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Dick A. Francken is a Research Fellow at SWOKA, Institute for Scientific Research on Consumer Affairs, Kon. Emmakade 192–195, NL-2518 JP The Hague, The Netherlands. W. Fred van Raaij is Professor of Economic Psychology at Erasmus University, Department of Economics, P.O. Box 1738, NL-3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands.