Male eco‐fashion: a market reality

With the fashion industry striving for competitive advantage, eco‐fashions provide an opportunity to distinguish environmentally friendly products from other fashion products. However, the viability of these eco‐fashion brands is questionable. An exploratory study is conducted to explain men's differences, particularly, as clothing styles vary for men and women. The research examines if men's purchase intent would make a difference to the eco‐fashion industry. A random sample is collected to examine men's purchase intentions for eco‐clothing by product attributes, environmental concerns and sustainable behaviour. Partial least squares is used to empirically test the sample. A conceptual model is developed. It was found that there are four significant exogenous variables, environmental concern, sustainable pricing, sustainable behaviour and sustainable branding with a moderately strong, negatively signed coefficient path. Perceived consumer effectiveness and faith in others are not found to be significant moderators. This defined male segment makes several theoretical contributions as well as generating useful recommendations for marketing practitioners.     

Uncovering Entry Deterrence in the Presence of Learning-by-Doing

This paper investigates a signaling entry deterrence model under learning-by-doing. We show that a monopolist’s practice of entry deterrence imposes smaller welfare losses (or larger welfare gains) when learning effects are present than when they are absent, making the intervention of antitrust authorities less urgent. If, however, the welfare loss associated to entry deterrence is still significant, and thus intervention is needed, our paper demonstrates that the incumbent’s practice of entry deterrence is easier to detect by a regulator who does not have access to accurate information about the incumbent’s profit function. Learning-by-doing hence facilitates the regulator’s ability to detect entry deterrence, thus suggesting its role as an “ally” of antitrust authorities.     

Analysis of the moderating role of the gender variable in service recovery processes

In this study, the authors focus on service recovery processes and identify a set of key factors that drive satisfaction with the recovery process, which ultimately leads to customer loyalty. In addition, the authors investigate the role of gender as a potential moderating variable in the recovery process. Using a sample of 202 customers who had experienced a problem with their provider, filed a complaint and received a response from the company, the authors empirically test the proposed framework in the mobile phone market. The findings reveal that men tend to be more demanding when dealing with service providers and less loyal, while women tend to exhibit a more fully-developed sense of justice and greater attitudinal and behavioral loyalty. These results provide valuable insights for the consumer services industry: Companies can use gender information to manage complaints in order to restore customer satisfaction and increase customer loyalty more efficiently.     

Sustainability drivers in food retail

Sustainability has become a relevant issue for retailers. We develop an integrated model with three drivers of retailer's investments in sustainability. First, the more their processes, human resources and customer driven capabilities are developed, the more investments in sustainability tend to occur. Second, retailers leverage their relationships with suppliers to invest in sustainability. Third, competition and economic instability may also lead to long run investments in social and environmental. We tested three hypotheses by surveying 101 retailers operating supermarkets, hypermarkets and neighborhood stores that focus mainly on food with a limited offering of general merchandise and apparel. Our results show the importance of customer driven capabilities for investments in sustainability. Communication with the supplier also has an impact on investments, while the process and policies of the supplier relationship do not. Retailers invest in sustainability to coordinate this relationship. Our study sheds light on the drivers for sustainability and offers an understanding of how a retailer may invest further in sustainability.     

Exporting Culture: A Strategic Issue for International Competitiveness

This study contributes to expand the knowledge available on immigrant entrepreneurship. Consistent with the notion of entrepreneurship as a process, a qualitative exploration of information and experiences acquired by immigrants in the catering sector was performed to ascertain their role in discovering entrepreneurial opportunities. Our sample consisted of four cases of Latin American immigrants. The findings showed that the discovery process is based on the interrelation established between information per se and the experiences acquired throughout the migration periods. The knowledge acquired in their home country constituted the bases for our study, while that acquired in the host country is supplementary as it fine-tunes, expands, and influences the discovery process. Furthermore, findings revealed that immigrants trust information coming from their social environment and consider it sufficient to take a decision to set up a business. Finally, this study suggests further lines of inquiry.     

Factors Affecting Skepticism toward Green Advertising

Abstract

Despite the growth of green marketing, there is a shortage of studies on green communication. Thus, this research aims to understand whether consumers who are concerned about the environment conserve resources and have environmentally friendly buying habits and whether they are skeptical about the green communications conveyed by companies. Using a proposal of a model about skepticism toward green advertising, several hypotheses are tested. The results indicate that the more environmentally concerned an individual is, the more skepticism he or she will be toward green claims exhibited on packages or featured in ads. In addition, results indicated no significant differences between men and women regarding this skepticism.     

Control and success in collaborative strategies

The establishment of cooperative relationships with other organisations is becoming crucial to businesses, in a way that interorganisational relationships constitute an important topic for research in management literature. This study analyzes interorganisational control, which represents one of the processes within interorganisational relationships that is receiving greater attention in the literature. Besides describing its concept and dimensions, there is an analysis of what influence the extent, the focus, the types and the mechanisms of control have on the success of the interorganisational relationships. To be specific, empirical evidence is provided by our study of the relationship between tour operators from Germany and the United Kingdom and the accommodation companies, which revolves around the control exercised by the tour operators over the accommodation companies.     

The dynamics of trade composition: Do trade-type interdependencies matter?

This paper explores the changes of trade composition in the Food Products, Beverages & Tobacco industry in the European Union (12 countries) from 1985 to 2007, using an empirical modeling framework based on the statistical support proposed by Márquez et al. The contribution of this study is mainly empirical. On the one hand, we investigate whether the interdependencies (complementary or substitutable) between trade types are significant and hence if they are able to affect trade composition. And on the other, we provide a ranking of the dynamic drivers of trade composition (such as market size, endowments, technology, and consumer tastes and preferences). The econometric analysis reveals evidence of significant interdependencies between some trade components. The results point to technological capital and market size as the most important drivers of Food Products, Beverages & Tobacco in European trade, and suggest some relevant economic policy recommendations to foster industries in the sector and positively influence its pattern of trade.     

The welfare impacts of a revenue-neutral switch from tariffs to VAT with intermediate inputs and a VAT threshold

The debate about replacing tariffs with value-added tax (VAT) in developing countries has paid little attention to the role of VAT as an input tax on the informal sector and has overlooked the usefulness of changing the VAT threshold in a revenue-neutral switch from tariffs to VAT. This paper contributes to the literature by addressing these two issues via a heterogeneous firm model of a small open economy with endogenous firm entry and VAT compliance. The results found indicate that the VAT collected on intermediate inputs consumed by the informal sector not only reduces the benefits of evading VAT, but also diminishes the production distortion between the formal and the informal sectors. The use of a change in the VAT threshold to offset lost tariff revenue leads to welfare gains; however, the source of such gains is different from that of a change in the VAT rate. While an increase in the VAT rate expands informality, a revenue-equivalent decrease in the VAT threshold reduces informality. These novel results suggest that the VAT threshold plays an important role in the design of revenue-neutral tax reforms.     

Intra-industry trade between the united states and the major latin american countries: Measurement and implications for free trade in the Americas

This paper presents estimates for the level of intra-industry trade in the 1991 bilateral commerce between the United States and Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela. As theory predicts, intra-industry trade is positively correlated with income and with foreign investment in this study. Furthermore, Mexico and the United States present high levels of intra-industry trade, whereas the other Latin American countries analyzed have relatively low levels. The paper concludes that Mexico should experience much less difficulty in adjusting to free trade with the United States than the other countries. The low levels of intra-in-dustry trade between the United States and the other Latin American nations signal that increased trade between these areas would bring about significant dislocation of resources and high adjustment costs.