Sorting it out: pile sorting as a mixed methodology for exploring barriers to cancer screening

We discuss a mixed methodology for analyzing pile sorting data. We created a list of 14 barriers to colon cancer screening and recruited 18, 13, and 14 participants from three American Indian (AI) communities to perform pile sorting. Quantitative data were analyzed by cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling. Differences across sites were compared using permutation bootstrapping. Qualitative data collected during sorting were compiled by AI staff members who determined names for the clusters found in quantitative analysis. Results showed five clusters of barriers in each site although barriers in the clusters varied slightly across sites. Simulation demonstrated type I error rates around the nominal 0.05 level whereas power depended on the numbers of clusters, and between and within cluster variability.     

Growth and value hybrid valuation model based on mean reversion

This article proposes a novel valuation model, growth and value hybrid model, to estimate the stock price. This proposed model combines the essence of the asset-based approach, the income-based approach, and the principle of mean reversion to develop the theoretical closed-form formula consisting of three coefficients: value coefficient, value support coefficient and growth coefficient. Regression analysis is employed to fit market data to determine these coefficients. Moreover, this study proposes the double sorting method to build the quantile regression models of the formula to estimate the stock price at a specific quantile. The results show that the predictive capability of the hybrid valuation model is superior to the model without using value support coefficient, which supports the assumption that the PBR is not associated with the ROE when the ROE is less than a threshold. In different time periods of the stock market, no significant difference exists on the value support coefficient. However, the variations of the value coefficient and the growth coefficient are significant.     

Modeling religious involvement: a qualitative integration based on female role visualization consumption

The application of religious symbolism is important in the evolution of medical consumption. Chinese religious belief integrates concepts of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. People personify god and goddess’ characters in religious stories which influence our ideal personality in reality. According to the Match-up Hypothesis in medical product advertising, female role portrayal in patriarchal society involves the blending of beautification ritual, utilizing the marketed product, with idealized female beauty into a package intended to provide the best possible match with the prevailing ideal. Due to the influence of traditional sex stereotypes in eastern or western societies, such female portrayals provide culturally reasonable advertisements of the value of products being displayed for visualization consumption. This ideology is part of the moral fabric of society and reveals a possible social collective consciousness. The authors adopt five dimensions of religious involvement (DRI—Ideology, Ritualistic, Experiential, Consequential, and Intellectual) to explain a process of portrayals visualization and discuss the template image orientation for presenting product information in the marketplace. This study proposes the female role visualization consumption (FRVC) model to identify different elements of female role evolution stemming from religious ideology.     

Stereotype Processing's Effect on the Impact of the Myth/Fact Message Format and the Role of Personal Relevance

This research examines the effectiveness of the myth/fact message format (MFMF)—a message format that first presents a common misperception as a myth then counters it with a correcting fact—within the health‐care and social marketing context of mental illness (MI). Stereotype processing theory predicts that the use of a negative aspect of the stereotype in a MFMF may further instantiate the negative belief, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the message. Conversely, using a message format that conveys only facts (i.e., new positive beliefs) without inclusion of the myth will lead to more positive attitudes. However, this effect will only be seen among people with personal relevance with MI as only they are sufficiently motivated to suppress the automatically activated stereotype and elaborate on the message. A study demonstrates that advertising utilizing a fact‐only format leads to more positive attitudes than the MFMF among people with personal relevance while people without personal relevance to MI demonstrate no differences in attitude between myth/fact and fact‐only message formats. Personal relevance had the opposite moderating effect on perceived learning. These findings suggest that the MFMF's impact on attitudes, the typical focal point of social marketing campaigns targeting misconceptions about stereotyped groups, may be ineffective. Thus, using a fact‐only format that conveys new positive beliefs in a social marketing message is recommended within the specific context of MI and may be warranted in other health‐care and social issues.     

On Hofstede's treatment of Chinese and Japanese values

Hofstede has identified four important work-related values, but he imposes his mental programming on the interpretation of other cultures, which are qualitatively different from those on which he relies to develop his constructs. This criticism is evidenced by Hofstede's treatment of Chinese and Japanese values. This paper discusses the treatment along the four value dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and masculinity, and their integration. The paper concludes that Hofstede's analysis of Chinese and Japanese values is inadequate because Japanese and Chinese (including people in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) may either have different interpretations of the same value scale, or have other value dimensions not tapped by Hofstede's value framework.     

Endogenous Specialisation and Endogenous Principal-agent Relationship

The paper develops a general equilibrium model with endogenous principal-agent relationship within a framework of consumer-producer, economies of specialisation, and transaction costs. It is shown that if transaction efficiency is low, then autarky is chosen as the general equilibrium where no market and principal-agent relationship exists. As transaction efficiency is improved, the equilibrium level of division of labour increases, comparative advantage between ex ante identical individuals emerges from the division of labour, and the number of principal-agent relationships increases. The following features of the model distinguish it from other principal-agent models in the literature. The principal-agent relationships are not only endogenous, but also reciprocal between different specialists. In a general equilibrium environment, choice between pure pricing and contingent pricing is endogenised. In the paper, the implications of endogenous transaction costs caused by moral hazard for the equilibrium extent of the market and related degrees of market integration, production concentration, trade dependence, diversity of economic structure, and productivity are explored. The model predicts two interesting phenomena: a man might work harder for the market with moral hazard than working for himself in the absence of moral hazard; a market with moral hazard might be Pareto superior to autarky with no moral hazard.     

Implications of Components of Income Excluded from Pro Forma Earnings for Future Profitability and Equity Valuation

Abstract:  This study addresses three research questions relating to total exclusions, special items, and other exclusions. Are each of these pro forma exclusion components forecasting irrelevant? Are each of the exclusion components value irrelevant? Are the valuation multiples on the exclusion components justified by their ability to forecast future profitability as predicted by the Ohlson (1999) model? Findings are generally consistent with the market-inefficiency results presented in Doyle et al. (2003) . Total exclusions are valued negatively by the market despite the prediction that total exclusions will be valued positively. Valuation results also suggest that stocks with positive other exclusions are overpriced.     

Incentives to Form Customs Unions and Quotas

This paper extends the well known Kemp–Wang proposition regarding customs unions and tariffs to the case of import quotas. It is shown that a customs union in the presence of import quotas will leave each country, whether a member of the customs union or not, not worse off than before the formation of the customs union. The partial-equilibrium approach is used in this study.     

Applying complexity theory to deepen service dominant logic: Configural analysis of customer experience-and-outcome assessments of professional services for personal transformations

Recognizing Gigerenzer's (1991) dictum that scientists' tools are not neutral (tools-in-use influence theory formulation as well as data interpretation), this article reports theory and examines data in ways that transcend the dominant logics for variable-based and case-based analyses. The theory and data analysis tests key propositions in complexity theory: (1) no single antecedent condition is a sufficient or necessary indicator of a high score in an outcome condition; (2) a few of many available complex configurations of antecedent conditions are sufficient indicators of high scores in an outcome condition; (3) contrarian cases occur, that is, low scores in a single antecedent condition associates with both high and low scores for an outcome condition for different cases; (4) causal asymmetry occurs, that is, accurate causal models for high scores for an outcome condition are not the mirror opposites of causal models for low scores for the same outcome condition. The study tests and supports these propositions in the context of customer assessments (n = 436) of service facets and service outcome evaluations for assisted temporary-transformations of self via beauty salon and spa treatments. The findings contribute to advancing a nuanced theory of how customers' service evaluations relate to their assessments of overall service quality and intentions to use the service. The findings support the need for service managers to be vigilant in fine-tuning service facets and service enactment to achieve the objective of high customer retention.     

A note on the maximum revenue tariff

This note attempts to prove that the maximum revenue tariff when the tariff revenue is measured in units of the exportable good will be higher than the maximum revenue tariff when the tariff revenue is measured in units of the importable good.