Branding and relationships: Customer and supplier perspectives

This paper explores and investigates the role of branding within financial services. Specifically, the study aims to assess the importance of branding and its associated elements including brand image and brand experience in the relationships that exist between consumers and their financial brands. It aims to achieve this through research, which identifies gaps between the managerial and consumer perspectives on branding in relationships in retail financial services. It is well established that the characteristics of services are different from those of manufactured goods and that service personnel play a central role in the services experience. Moreover, the concept of relationship marketing within services proclaims the importance of one-to-one relationships between businesses and customers as well as relationships between consumers and their brands. Drawing from the fields of brand management, relationship marketing and services marketing, this research aims to investigate the perceptional differences between consumers and suppliers in relation to the importance of branding in financial service relationships. The research findings indicate that brand experience appears to be far more salient than brand image in shaping and building meaningful and lasting brand perceptions and promoting customer retention.     

Mature Australian consumers' adoption and consumption of self-service banking technologies

The slow diffusion of self-service banking technologies (SSBTs) into the mature consumer market necessitates research to understand better this growing section of the population and the diversity that exists within this market. This research analyses the 50+ market through a segmentation approach based on the level of use of SSBTs. Three segments were identified: non-users, low users and medium-to-high users of SSBTs; these are profiled by frequency of use and demographic variables. The medium-to-high user segment embraces a range of SSBTs and uses credit cards to facilitate their financial activities. Non-users and some low users prefer the customary way of conducting transactions and enjoy the personal interaction with the bank employee. These two segments do, however, have a moderate level of credit card use. Finally, a small percentage of diffusion discontinuance was identified in this study of the mature consumer market.     

西北地区的生态旅游与可持续发展

西北地区旅游业的发展应坚持可持续发展的生态旅游.因为西北地区发展生态旅游有着丰富的旅游资源和良好的市场前景。进入20世纪90年代尤其是1993年以来,全国旅游业发展迅猛,旅游市场走俏。国际市场稳步扩大,国际旅游外汇收入由1986年的世界第20位,上升到1997年的第9位,接待人数     

BEA's Regional Economic Accounts Program: Recent and Planned Improvements

This article highlights recent improvements and plans for further improvements to each of BEA’s major regional economic accounts programs. The improvements focus on the acceleration of release of the estimates and on the preparation of new and extended estimates. There also is a brief discussion on BEA’s research effort to improve the regional accounts.JEL Classification E010     

我国内部控制规范建设历程及现实思考

本文从我国内部控制规范建设历程的回顾入手,总结出我国在内部控制规范建设方面的特点,进而结合我国的现实情况提出在借鉴国际先进经验,尽快完善内部控制规范体系的基础上进一步优化内部控制环境,推进内部控制规范的实施的建议。     

创业初期如何构建企业核心竞争力

首先论述了创业企业初期所面临的诸多问题,并通过对所面临各个问题产生原因的分析,指出了创业企业要想最终成功创业,其关键在于识别出创业初期构建核心竞争力的各个因素,并由此着手进行构建。