Member-organization connection impacts in affinity marketing

Affinity marketing collaboration is a growing practice in the marketplace, yet theories to explain its influence are scarce in the literature. This study suggests two complementary cause-related effects stemming from an organization's connection with its members to explain the underlying mechanism of affinity marketing. The convergent findings of a survey and an experiment reveal that the responses of consumers in affinity marketing are both empathetic and particularistic. These characteristics distinguish affinity marketing from general commercial co-branding and from cause-related strategies which call for sympathetic and altruistic responses. These effects are more pronounced among individuals with a high interdependent orientation in collectivistic cultures. The dual influence of these effects makes affinity marketing an ideal marketing strategy for improving customer loyalty in the more interdependent societies in Asia.     

如何应对创新大国:中国

中国刚刚取得一项举世瞩目的具有里程碑意义的成就:它已建成世界上最快的超级计算机——天河-1A号。该计算机比设在美国田纳西州橡树岭国家实验室的卫冕冠军快40%。这不是一个孤立的事件。多年来,其他能够反映中国科技能力在不断上升的常见指标,一直在不断涌现,比如,在世界领先的化学和物理学杂志上,来自中国的论文所占的比例在不断增加。     

Differences in Roma and non-Roma students’ ratings of their peers’ popularity: an inquiry into the oppositional culture in Hungarian schools with the use of a survey experiment

Quality & Quantity - Oppositional culture theory posits that students who belong to oppressed ethnic minority groups define their ethnic identity in opposition to the majority of students....     

The effects of Mongolia's booming mining industry on its agricultural sector: A test for Dutch disease

Dutch disease occurs when currency strengthening associated with a booming sector of an economy crowds out a lagging trade‐dependent sector. In this study, a Keynesian‐style model is specified to deduce hypotheses about how increased foreign direct investment (FDI) aimed at Mongolia's mining sector affects its agricultural sector. A key finding is that while econometric results suggest the increased FDI strengthened Mongolia's currency, its adverse effect on Mongolia's trade‐sensitive agricultural sector is not sufficiently strong to cause the sector to decline. Although Dutch disease was not detected, the posited mechanism clearly is important. Specifically, when currency strengthening is ignored the reduced‐form elasticity of agricultural value‐added with respect to FDI is 2.7 times larger than when currency strengthening is taken into account (0.103 vs. 0.038). Also, FDI‐induced currency strengthening causes the Keynesian multiplier to drop from 2.40 to 2.00 and the FDI multiplier to drop from 3.05 to 1.89.     

Telling their own stories: Māori entrepreneurship in the mainstream screen industry

We examined how factors from Indigenous entrepreneurship research (social capital, cultural capital, self-efficacy) help explain the high level of Māori entrepreneurial performance in the mainstream screen industry. Results, based on ten case studies and a one-year series of structured interviews, extend prior research by showing that these Indigenous entrepreneurs benefit jointly from two forms of capital: cultural and social. We found high levels of both forms to increase the desire for emancipation of cultural and community identity – not just individual identity – through entrepreneurship. Self-efficacy and storytelling helped ameliorate discontinuities across Indigenous and mainstream contexts. Our research sheds new light on how Indigenous ventures can pursue mainstream entrepreneurship while maintaining cultural identity. It also makes several distinct contributions to the Indigenous entrepreneurship literature. First, it provides an integrative theoretic review. Second, it illustrates a culturally appropriate methodology for researching Māori entrepreneurs with implications for other Indigenous communities. Third, it proposes cultural capital and social capital as a two-part framework for explaining Indigenous entrepreneurial action. Fourth, it shows how entrepreneurship can be empowering for Indigenous communities. Finally, our paper demonstrates that entrepreneurship is a promising mechanism for preserving and promoting the cultures of Māori and other Indigenous peoples.     

Evaluating the London 2012 Games’ impact on sport participation in a non-hosting region: a practical application of realist evaluation

In the literature on Olympic legacies and impacts, there is a dearth of materials that specifically address the issue of Olympic impact for non-hosting regions. The literature tends to deal with impacts at a national level, or at a hosting-city region level, neglecting in large part the degree to which benefits can be leveraged by non-hosting regions. A further limitation identified in the literature is a failure to engage in detailed formal evaluation of policy implementation where assertions of potential policy impact are based on untested assumptions. This study is intended to address both of these concerns. It presents an empirical, ‘bottom-up’ application of a Realist Evaluation framework to assess the impact of a policy initiative – Workplace Challenge – aimed at leveraging enhanced sports participation in a non-hosting region – Leicestershire – in the period leading up to the 2012 Games. In doing so, it seeks to identify which causal mechanisms worked within this particular context to produce the observed outcomes. The evaluation results demonstrate that the programme represented a positive approach to fostering regular engagement with sport and physical activities for some groups in some types of organisations, and that awareness and motivational factors associated with the London 2012 Games are, in this case, linked (albeit weakly) to an increase in sport and physical activity participation for specific groups taking part in the programme in particular organisational contexts.     

Are multinationals exporting jobs? The case of Taiwan

Does offshore production always result in job exportation? Using firm‐level data for Taiwanese multinationals that allow us to avoid reverse causality issues, this paper finds that while increasing offshore production has a negative impact on the demand for domestic manufacturing workers, this is not the case for domestic research and development workers who are often more skilled. The results also suggest that for Taiwan, there is geographical fragmentation of production activities in such a way that more skilled jobs are maintained domestically and less‐skilled jobs are exported to other developing countries. These findings confirm the prediction of the knowledge‐capital model.     

An Examination of Sales Promotion Programs in Hong Kong: What the Retailers Offer and What the Consumers Prefer

This study gives an insight into the retailer's capability of managing sales promotion by examining the sales promotion programs offered by Hong Kong cosmetic and toiletry retailers and the consumers’ preferences. The results indicate that instant-reward programs are popular among retailers and preferred by consumers. The results also show that the preferences for sales promotion programs are dependent upon consumers’ demographic and sociocultural characteristics. Implications for advertisers designing and communicating sales promotions are offered.     

Frictional wage dispersion with Bertrand competition: An assessment

I examine whether a version of the Cahuc et al. (2006) model can match the magnitude of wage dispersion, as measured by the ratio of the average and the lowest wage — the so-called mean-min ratio of Hornstein et al. (2011). I find that the workers? bargaining power is a crucial parameter: the mean-min ratio strictly decreases in the bargaining power up to a point near 1/2 and is essentially flat thereafter, generating the same amount of wage dispersion as the canonical wage ladder model, which is a special case of the CPVR model. Consequently, this model can yield large wage dispersion only for low bargaining power on the workers? side. I show that the share of job-to-job transitions with wage drops is decreasing in the bargaining power, calibrate the latter to the former, and demonstrate that the CPVR model generates an empirically plausible amount of wage dispersion. I also show that negative wages arise when workers have no bargaining power, and discuss the implications for the empirical findings of Postel-Vinay and Robin (2002b).