Ethnic Solidarity and Black Business

A bstract This paper examines the development of a separate economic niche for black entrepreneurs in Chicago's ethnic beauty aids industry. It argues that this economic niche developed in response to advantages black entrepreneurs had in mobilizing ethnic resources in the black community. The paper's findings lend support to general theoretical arguments stating that ethnicity, race, and other symbols for identity function as low-cost screening devices for evaluating the likelihood that trading partners will honor economic contracts, particularly in a market setting where formal market mechanisms are not fully developed. The findings are based on a series of in-person interviews with Korean, Jewish and black distributors of ethnic beauty aids in Chicago. Although this paper focuses on a single market niche, its conclusions indicate that greater attention needs to be paid to the effects of social, political, economic and structural factors on minority business development.     

企业融资需谨记10大原则

在过去的一年里,由于全球经济衰退的影响,风险投资人们都捂紧了钱袋,对企业而言获得融资变得更加困难.近日,DFJ Gotham Ven-tures公司投资人Mark Davis撰文提醒企业在筹资过程中应该遵循十大法则,这样能大大提高筹资成功率.     

Transforming economics into what? Heterodox economics and critical realism

The volume under review consists of comments on critical realismby heterodox economists. This paper addresses a number of themesfrom the book, e.g., history and reflexivity, sometimes expandingon the authors' comments on critical realism, other times respondingto them on behalf of critical realists. It considers the goalsof critical realism and ask to what extent the book furthersthem. It concludes that the high level of abstraction at whichcritical realism operates encourages those commenting on itto do so at a similarly high level of abstraction. As it stands,critical realism and the contributions to the book are too divorcedfrom the concerns of concrete economic theorising to be of greatuse to practising heterodox economists.     

Implementing a customer relationship strategy: The asymmetric impact of poor versus excellent execution

The benefits of developing customer relationships are well established. However, a well-intentioned relationship marketing strategy may fail because of poor implementation. In this study, the authors look at the effects of implementing a customer relationship strategy. Specifically, they examine the implementation of a personal-banker strategy as a means to developing customer relationships in the retail banking industry. The authors show that an “excellent” personal banker can increase overall customer satisfaction and loyalty compared to customers who do not have a personal banker. However, a poorly performing personal banker can result in lower overall customer satisfaction and loyalty than if no personal banker had been available. Moreover, the effects seem to be asymmetric, with the negative effects of a poor relationship strategy exceeding the positive benefits ofan “excellent” strategy. Mark R. Colgate is a senior lecturer in services marketing at the School of Business and Economics, University of Auckland, New Zealand. His research focuses on customer inertia, relationship marketing, and the interface between information technology and marketing. His research has been published in theEuropean Journal of Marketing, theInternational Journal of Service Industry Management, andThe Service Industries Journal and other services journals. Peter J. Danaher is a professor in the Department of Marketing Department at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has a Ph.D. in statistics from Florida State University and an M.S. in statistics from Purdue. His primary research interests are media exposure distributions, advertising effectiveness, customer satisfaction measurement, forecasting and sample surveys, resulting in many publications in journals such as theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Advertising Research, theJournal of the American Statistical Association, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Business and Economic Statistics, and theAmerican Statistician. He has consulted extensively with Telecom, Optus Communications, Unilever, ACNielsen, and other market research companies.     

Inflation and monetary regimes

Correlations of inflation with the growth rate of money increase when data are averaged over longer time periods. Correlations of inflation with the growth of money also are higher when high inflation as well as low-inflation countries are included in the analysis. We show that serial correlation in the underlying inflation rate ties these two observations together and explains them. We present evidence that averaging increases the correlation of inflation and money growth in more when the underlying inflation rate has higher serial correlation.     

Green marketing strategies: an examination of stakeholders and the opportunities they present

As green marketing strategies become increasingly more important to firms adhering to a triple-bottom line performance evaluation, the present research seeks to better understand the role of “green” as a marketing strategy. Through an integration of the marketing, management, and operations literatures, an investigative framework is generated that identifies the various stakeholders potentially impacted through the environmentally friendly efforts of a firm. Specifically, the inter-connected nature of the core business disciplines of marketing, management (both strategy and human resources), and operations are examined as controllable functions within an organization from which strategies can be enacted to affect a firm’s stakeholders. The prior research in these areas is examined to identify potential research opportunities in marketing while also offering a series of representative research questions that can help guide future research in marketing.