What constitutes a “good assortment”? A scale for measuring consumers' perceptions of an assortment offered in a grocery category

This research investigates how consumers form subjective judgments of what constitutes “a good grocery assortment”. By conducting three exploratory focus groups and a field study, we develop a multi-item scale that reflects consumers' cue utilization processes in forming perceptions of a grocery assortment. Our findings suggest that consumers use only a limited number of informational cues to form perceptions about four higher-level assortment dimensions: (1) the assortment's pricing, (2) its quality, (3) its variety, and (4) its presentation. In line with the attitude theory, we found that consumers integrate these higher-level assortment dimensions into a summary evaluation of the grocery category's attractiveness. Accordingly, we derive the grocery assortment perception (GAP) scale as a second-order construct composed of four first-order factors. Significant positive relationships between the GAP scale and customer satisfaction as well as loyalty intentions provide empirical support for the scale's predictive ability and nomological validity. In the last section of this article, we discuss how the GAP scale will support category managers in their assortment decisions and provide directions for further research.     

Project management in retailing: integrating the behavioral dimension

The retail environment is globalizing, requiring high levels of consistent experimentation. Project management can be used to help retailers test new ideas and implement the most successful ones. Unfortunately, project management in the retail setting often delivers unsatisfactory results. Project management has traditionally focused on conventional planning tasks. The people dimension is often overlooked as a key to project management success. However, human behavior is particularly important in the retail setting, where projects are generally focused on testing new concepts, increasing collaboration, and implementing new technologies. This research examines the role of the behavioral dimension in retail project management and supports the view that the behavioral dimension is central to retail project management success.     

The structure of the South African labor market, 1970–83

The structure of the labor market in the Republic of South Africa over 1970–83 is strongly linked to the Natives Land Act of 1913, No. 27, which dispossessed blacks of their legal right to land ownership. One of the intended results of this act was to increase the supply of cheap black labor to South Africa’s predominantly white-owned industry. Thus, over the 1970–83 period, as before, blacks occupied the lowest ends of the educational, occupational, employment, and income distributions among all races in South Africa. On the other hand, the white minority lived at a standard equal to that of Americans and Scandanavians. However, even within these constraints, the demographics of South Africa are such that over the next decade or more, and even in the absence of major political upheaval, blacks may comprise an increasing percentage of the workforce and occupy positions which have been mainly occupied by whites to date.     

The Agrarian Land Question in South Africa in Its Historical Context, 1652-1988

A bstract . The highly uneven land distribution in South Africa which favors the White ruling minority has its roots in many historical events and legislative measures. These include the "Great Trek" (the migration of Dutch farmers into the interior of South Africa), squatter laws in British colonies and Dutch republics , and the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910 whose parliament immediately took up the issue of land distribution and passed the ultimate land expropriation legislation, the Natives Land Act (1913), No. 27. Since the passage of this landmark act, indigenous Africans have been virtually landless while South Africa has emerged as one of the world's most economically advanced nations.     

A General Stationary Stochastic Regression Model for Estimating and Predicting Beta

A beta regression model is proposed where the coefficients follow a general class of stationary stochastic processes. The procedure identifies the process and estimates the parameters of the model simultaneously from the information contained in the return series. The returns of each of the Dow Jones 30 securities are examined. Betas of 5 of the securities are nonstationary and do not appear to follow a particular form of nonstationarity. Conclusions of many earlier studies may be suspect since they are based on procedures tailored to adoption of a specific form of beta nonstationarity and, thereby, based on an erroneous a priori assumption regarding such form. The ordinary least squares model is also found to be quite robust, providing reliable beta and intercept estimates not materially different from the more complex procedure with 25 of the return series.     

Corporate Carbon and Financial Performance: The Role of Emission Reductions

This article uses econometric techniques to examine the effect of corporate carbon performance on corporate financial performance. I extend the existing literature in this research field by differentiating between two measurement perspectives: carbon performance expressed as annually reported carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission equivalents and improvements in carbon performance over time. Thereby, the article re‐addresses the research question ‘when and how does it pay to be green?’ in the context of carbon emissions and climate change mitigation. Using a nonlinear modeling technique, the findings indicate that it pays to be green for companies with superior carbon performance but not for companies with inferior carbon performance. The results also show that carbon emission mitigation is linearly and significantly positive related to return on sales (ROS) but negatively related to Tobin's q . These contradictory findings help us to understand why – in spite of growing regulatory pressure – companies have been slow to respond with effective action to tackle climate change beyond marginal efficiency improvements that correspond to ‘low‐hanging fruits’. The empirical analysis is based on an unbalanced sample of 7625 firm‐year observations covering carbon emission data (Scope 1 and Scope 2) for 1640 international firms from 2003 to 2015. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Reporting of Internal Control Weaknesses and Debt Rating Changes

This article examines the effect of corporate reporting of internal control weaknesses on debt rating changes. Bond rating agencies utilize (among other factors) financial statement information to assess a firm’s liquidity and long term solvency as important inputs in determining corporate debt rating. Reporting of internal control weaknesses increases the reliability and transparency risk of the financial statement information, which may lead rating agencies to revise corporate default risk. Our results indicate that reporting of internal control weaknesses is significantly associated with debt ratings after controlling for other firm specific factors. Specifically, these findings suggest that reporting of internal control weaknesses can result in downgrades of the firm’s outstanding debt.