How did the Welsh government manage to reform council tax in 2005?

Repeated calls have been made for council tax (CT) in the UK to be reformed. A ‘tyranny of the status quo’ suggests that politicians will avoid this because they fear a backlash from the losers of reform. This paper claims that the tyranny of the status quo is not a fixed law. The Welsh government revalued CT in 2005 but did not communicate the complexity of reform sufficiently. Reform requires greater efforts to communicate the complexity of winning and losing.     

A characterization of virtual Bayesian implementation

We provide a characterization of virtual Bayesian implementation in pure strategies for environments satisfying no-total-indifference. A social choice function in such environments is virtually Bayesian implementable if and only if it satisfies incentive compatibility and a condition we term virtual monotonicity. The latter is weaker than Bayesian monotonicity—known to be necessary for Bayesian implementation. Virtual monotonicity is weak in the sense that it is generically satisfied in environments with at least three alternatives. This implies that in most environments virtual Bayesian implementation is as successful as it can be (incentive compatibility is the only condition needed).     

Evaluating the Adequacy of Parametric Functional Forms in Estimating Monotone and Concave Production Functions

We consider situations where the a priori guidance provided by theoretical considerations indicates only that the function linking the endogenous and exogenous variables is monotone and concave (or convex). We present methods to evaluate the adequacy of a parametric functional form to represent the relationship given the minimal maintained assumption of monotonicity and concavity (or convexity). We evaluate the adequacy of an assumed parametric form by comparing the deviations of the fitted parametric form from the observed data with the corresponding deviations estimated under DEA. We illustrate the application of our proposed methods using data collected from school districts in Texas. Specifically, we examine whether the Cobb–Douglas and translog specifications commonly employed in studies of education production are appropriate characterizations. Our tests reject the hypotheses that either the Cobb–Douglas or the translog specification is an adequate approximation to the general monotone and concave production function for the Texas school districts.     

Conceptualizing and measuring capabilities: methodology and empirical application

This paper attempts to operationalize and measure firm‐specific capabilities using an extant conceptualization in the resource‐based view (RBV) literature. Capabilities are conceived as the efficiency with which a firm employs a given set of resources (inputs) at its disposal to achieve certain objectives (outputs). We expand on extant theoretical literature on relative capabilities, by delineating the conditions that have to be met for relative capabilities to be measured non‐tautologically. We then proceed to suggest an estimation methodology, stochastic frontier estimation (SFE), that allows us to infer firm capabilities. We illustrate this technique with a sample of firms in the semiconductor industry. Our findings underscore the heterogeneity in R& D capability across firms in this industry, as well as the persistence in these capabilities over time. We also find that the market rewards high R& D capability firms, in that they show the highest average values of Tobin's q. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Marketing channel management and the sales manager

For years, the channel manager remained an organizational position found mainly in textbooks and the literature and seldom on company organization charts. Recently, however, persuasive evidence has revealed that marketing channel management comes chiefly under the purview of the sales manager. Accepting this new reality, sales management training will need to be dramatically expanded to include these new channel management responsibilities. But, are all levels of sales managers involved or equally involved in channel management? If not, channel manager training must be tailored for specific levels of sales management in order to achieve desired channel effectiveness and efficiency. To date, no published research has explored whether channel management involvement varies at different levels in the sales manager hierarchy. In this age of channel dynamism, successful companies must determine the specific involvement of each sales management level in channel management so that appropriate training and support can be provided to optimize performance in this critical area of market competition. To address the foregoing issues, data were drawn from a random national sample of sales managers. Results indicate that sales managers at all hierarchical levels participate in administering various aspects of marketing channel management. The degree of involvement, however, varies significantly by sales manager level. Sales management implications are discussed, and areas for future research are suggested.     

The Impact of Frequent Shopper Programs in Grocery Retailing

Frequent shopper programs are becoming ubiquitous in retailing. Retailers seem unsure however about whether these programs are leading to higher loyalty, or to higher profits. In this paper we analyze data from a U.S. supermarket chain that has used a number of frequent shopper rewards to improve sales and profitability. We find that while these programs are profitable, this is only because substantial incremental sales to casual shoppers (cherry pickers) offset subsidies to already loyal customers. In this way our findings are inconsistent with existing theories about how frequent shopper programs are supposed to work. We construct our own Hotelling-like model that explicitly models cherry picking behavior and show that its predictions match the data quite closely. We further test the predictions of our model by characterizing the impact of such programs on trip frequency and basket size. We then use the model to examine more complex scenarios. For example, our analysis suggests that frequent shopper programs may be unprofitable if they eliminate all cherry picking. This may explain why some retailers seem dissatisfied with their programs. We end by proposing a solution that retains the benefits of the frequent shopper programs and yet continues to let supermarkets benefit from price discrimination.     

What is strategic management,really? Inductive derivation of a consensus definition of the field

It is commonly asserted that the field of strategic management is fragmented and lacks a coherent identity. This skepticism, however, is paradoxically at odds with the great success that strategic management has enjoyed. How might one explain this paradox? We seek answers to this question by relying first on a large‐scale survey of strategic management scholars from which we derive an implicit consensual definition of the field—as tacitly held by its members. We then supplement this implicit definition with an examination of the espoused definitions of the field obtained from a group of boundary‐spanning scholars. Our findings suggest that strategic management's success as a field emerges from an underlying consensus that enables it to attract multiple perspectives, while still maintaining its coherent distinctiveness. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How brand attribute typicality and consumer commitment moderate the influence of comparative advertising

This study examines how product attribute typicality and brand commitment influence the effects of comparative versus non-comparative ads on brand attitudes. Employing perspectives from the literatures on typicality and commitment, the study examines the effects of commitment to the comparison brand on the effectiveness of comparative versus non-comparative advertising. A between-informants experiment uses data from 466 student informants. It is hypothesized that (a) when the attribute under consideration is typical (atypical), among comparison brand committed informants, a non-comparative ad is more (no more) persuasive than a comparative ad, (b) when the attribute under consideration is typical, among comparison brand non-committed informants, a comparative ad is more persuasive than a non-comparative ad, and (c) when the attribute under consideration is atypical, among comparison brand non-committed informants, a comparative ad is likely to be more persuasive than a non-comparative ad, but the effect will be weaker than in the case of a typical attribute. Hypothesis (a) is supported while (b) has directional support. The results support a three-way interaction between consumer commitment, attribute typicality, and type of advertisement. The findings are relevant to a variety of contexts, such as markets characterized by high levels of market share and commitment for the market leader as well as fragmented markets where market share and commitment levels are low.