An alternative to the weighted score card approach to measuring performance: An analysis of English and Welsh probation boards

The UK government published a weighted score card approach in 2003 to analyse the performance of Probation Boards in England and Wales. However, there has not been a thorough analysis of whether non-parametric methods could provide more advanced options for analysing performance than the standard Weighted Score Card approach – a variant of the Balanced Score Card. Our results show there is considerable divergence in the ranks of Probation Boards from that of the WSC when we include the input variable ‘resource expenditure’ within a DEA model, calling into question recent policy initiatives to increase efficiency in the national probation service.     

IS THE DOLLAR REALLY UNDER-VALUED?

In the second of tow articles focusing on the determinants of real exchange rates Jenni Greenslade and John Whitely look at estimates of "equilibrium" exchange rates derived from the FEER approach. They find evidence that the dollar is currently under-valued but its equilibrium level is expected to depreciate in the future. Estimates of equilibrium rates are shown to be sensitive to assumptions about trade elasticities and the opening up of the service sectors in international trade.     

Supporters’ Perceptions of Benefits Delivered by Different Charity Activities

Donating time and money are traditional ways individuals support charities. Other support activities include buying charity products, attending events, or sponsoring others. The proliferation of activities means that charity marketers often face difficult decisions when designing a portfolio of support-generating activities. This research draws on the social exchange theory to examine 11 charity-support activities from the supporter’s perspective. Drawing on Australian data from a survey of 248 supporters of a wide range of charities, we use correspondence analysis to map each activity against four benefit dimensions (material, social, expressive, and personal commitment). We quantify overall supporter perceptions of benefits delivered by engaging in each activity and use multinomial logistic regression to identify how past experience can shape perceptions of activities. We discuss academic and managerial implications, including whether or not specific attributes are more useful to recruit or to retain supporters.     

Correction to: Are two brands better than one? Investigating the effects of co-branding in advertising on audience memory

Marketing Letters - The article Are two brands better than one? Investigating the effects of co-branding in advertising on audience memory, written by Cathy Nguyen, Jenni Romaniuk, Margaret...     

IQ and Audit Quality: Do Smarter Auditors Deliver Better Audits?

This study examines the role of an individual auditor's cognitive ability in delivering high‐quality audits. Our results from analyzing archival data from Sweden show that audit partners' IQ scores obtained from psychological tests are positively associated with going‐concern audit reporting accuracy and audit fee premiums. We also find some, albeit weak, evidence that audit partners' IQ scores are negatively associated with the income‐increasing abnormal accruals of the client. These results suggest that, although audit services are standardized through various control mechanisms and audits are conducted by teams rather than by individual auditors, the cognitive ability of audit partners responsible for an audit remains important in delivering high‐quality audit services.     

Out of control or right on the money? Funder self-efficacy and crowd bias in equity crowdfunding

Our findings extend the entrepreneurship literature by highlighting the mechanism through which self-efficacy can hinder rather than enhance performance in entrepreneurial settings. Using two complementary experimental studies and a third quasi-experimental field study on equity crowdfunding decisions, we demonstrate that self-efficacy is negatively related to decision-making performance. This relationship is mediated by reduced searching effort. Our research also indicates that high self-efficacy funders tend to exhibit a “crowd bias” whereby they over-weight the opinions of the crowd, increasing the likelihood that they will fund poor quality ventures when such ventures are favored by the crowd. We introduce the term crowd bias and explore its effects, establishing that social indicators in the form of crowd cues can exasperate the negative effects of self-efficacy.     

Is consumer psychology research ready for today’s attention economy?

ABSTRACT

Attention has become an area of major interest in marketing research as a dependent or moderating variable. In this article, we argue for respondent attention as a pivotal part of any consumer psychology research protocol and highlight the risks of not incorporating realistic attention components into research design. We propose four areas where this approach can help the external validity of consumer psychology research. Our recommendations include accounting for variability in the baseline attention levels; smart use of distractions; allowing for variability in attention over the task and avoiding attention leading/assumptive questions.     

The way forward: Leadership research in the hospitality industry

This paper constructs a framework for researching leadership in the hospitality industry and reviews previous approaches to hospitality leadership. Four paradigms were constructed from an analysis of the general field of leadership and are used to represent the underlying perspectives of researchers who operate within them. As a result of this analysis the paper seeks to demonstrate how each paradigm can contribute to the application of leadership theory to the hospitality industry and provides a number of new avenues for future research.     

Unfolding implementation in industrial market segmentation

Market segmentation is an important method of strategic marketing and constitutes a cornerstone of the marketing literature. It has undergone extensive scientific inquiry during the past 50 years. Reporting on an extensive review of the market segmentation literature, the challenging task of implementing industrial market segmentation is discussed and unfolded in this article. Extant literature has identified segmentation implementation as a core challenge for marketers, but also one, which has received limited empirical attention. Future research opportunities are formulated in this article to pave the way towards closing this gap. The extent of implementation coverage is assessed and various notions of implementation are identified. Implementation as the task of converting segmentation plans into action (referred to as execution) is identified as a particularly beneficial focus area for marketing management. Three key elements and challenges connected to execution of market segmentation are identified — organization, motivation, and adaptation.     

Benchmarking buyer behavior towards new brands

New brand launches are risky endeavors for marketers, as many fail to attract a sustainable customer base. This research examines the buying behavior of customers acquired by a new brand and revisits the theoretical norms of the NBD-Dirichlet model benchmarks. Investigating 40 new brand launches in the UK, across a wide range of brand and category conditions, we find that in the first 12 months, new launches have more, but less loyal buyers than expected from NBD-Dirichlet benchmarks, irrespective of type, price point, or the sales gained by the new launch. Further we find exploratory evidence that new buyers of brands have weaker associations than existing buyers. We propose that the combination of the new experience that lacks distinctiveness in encoding means that the experience of buying the new brand creates weaker memory traces in new buyers and that these buyers need additional marketing reinforcement to consolidate the memory of buying the brand to establish the brand in their ongoing repertoire.