Constructing an index for brand equity: a hospital example

If two hospitals are providing identical services in all respects, except for the brand name, why are customers willing to pay more for one hospital than the other? That is, the brand name is not just a name, but a name that contains value (brand equity). Brand equity is the value that the brand name endows to the product, such that consumers are willing to pay a premium price for products with the particular brand name. Accordingly, a company needs to manage its brand carefully so that its brand equity does not depreciate. Although measuring brand equity is important, managers have no brand equity index that is psychometrically robust and parsimonious enough for practice. Indeed, index construction is quite different from conventional scale development. Moreover, researchers might still be unaware of the potential appropriateness of formative indicators for operationalizing particular constructs. Towards this end, drawing on the brand equity literature and following the index construction procedure, this study creates a brand equity index for a hospital. The results reveal a parsimonious five-indicator brand equity index that can adequately capture the full domain of brand equity. This study also illustrates the differences between index construction and scale development.     

Gay men's identity attempt pathway and its implication on consumption

This paper integrates sociological and psychological perspectives to examine gay consumption practices in relation to the dynamics of gay identity development. Specifically, this paper investigates how internal motivational factors underlying gay identity formation and external social influence work in concert to affect gay identity attempts throughout the gay identity development process. The findings of this study reveal that the consumption patterns of gay men are continuously evolving and correspond to attempts at discovering, disclosing, constructing, maintaining, (re)constructing, suppressing, and/or disposing the gay social identity. Precipitated by individual differences, two divergent pathways—the linear progression and pendular progression pathways—of identity attempts emerged from the gay identity development process. The data used in this study were collected through in‐depth interviews with gay men in Taiwan, where homosexuality is traditionally stigmatized but is gradually gaining acceptance with the global emergence and spread of the gay subculture. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The impact of changes to the human resources function in Australia

With the rapid development of information technology (IT) in the late twentieth century, a 'real-time' global economy is now taking shape. The social costs of being networked in the global economy vary across nations and regions. Some report job losses and fragmented working conditions, and in general social structure is endangered. The idea of maintaining a nation's social safety net and the traditional concept of the welfare state is now challenged. In this article, we deal with three issues. First, we point out that new social risks are formed by the structural change in the labour market. Second, the interaction of the nation-state and global economy is addressed; in facing new social risks, we argue, the role of nation-state is still important. However, the traditional paradigm of the welfare state needs to be re-conceptualized. Third, with the expanding view of the welfare state, this paper examines the developments of constructive welfare policies and discusses the social transformation processes in Singapore, especially in the face of the new social risks caused by globalization.     

Expiration‐day effects on individual stocks and the overall market: Evidence from Taiwan

On expiration days of the MSCI‐TW index futures, the Taiwan spot market is associated with abnormally large volume and high index volatility, along with mild index reversal. The effects concentrate only in the last five minutes of expiration days and appear to be strengthened by the adoption a call auction closing procedure by the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Individual index stocks show high volatility and strong tendency of price reversal, with large‐ and small‐cap stocks being affected more than the medium‐sized stocks. The highest‐weighted stocks exhibit excessive volume and volatility, which is disproportionate to the impact on all other index stocks, indicating that the expiration‐day effects may have been amplified by the attempt of price manipulation using large‐cap stocks. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:920–945, 2009     

Price discovery in the options markets: An application of put‐call parity

This study investigates the relative rate of price discovery in Taiwan between index futures and index options, proposing a put‐call parity (PCP) approach to recover the spot index embedded in the options premiums. The PCP approach offers the benefits of reducing model risk and alleviating the burden of volatility estimation. Consistent with the trading‐cost hypothesis, a dominant tendency is found for futures and a subordinate but non‐trivial price discovery from options. The relative weight of options price discovery is sensitive to the methodology employed as the means of inferring the option‐implicit spot price. The empirical evidence suggests that the information contained in the PCP‐implied spot encompasses that provided by the Black‐Scholes‐implied spot. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 28:354– 375, 2008     

Managers,Workers, and Authority

In this paper, I examine the case made by Christopher McMahon for managerial democracy. Specifically, I examine the extent to which McMahon’s account is able to address a series of objections against the case for managerial democracy as articulated by Thomas Christiano. Christiano articulates two sets of objections. First, Christiano argues that McMahon does not succeed in ruling out the possibility that managerial authority is best understood as promissory in its basis, in which case there is no presumption in favor of its democratic exercise. Second, Christiano raises a series of objections to the effect that even if we accept McMahon’s account of the nature of managerial authority, the conclusion for the democratic exercise of that authority by workers at the level of individual economic enterprises does not follow. In the end, I argue that McMahon’s account contains the resources to address these objections if one adopts a specific view about the moral limits to relationships that involve the submission of the will on the part of one person to another. Adoption of this view, however, appears to come at the expense of what I take to be the account’s commitment to liberalism. As such, what I understand this paper to reflect more generally is the apparent difficulty for liberals in arguing that there is something inherently morally troubling about capitalist work relations.     

Reshoring: a strategic renewal of luxury clothing supply chains

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on reshoring by taking a value-driven enquiry into the renewal of supply chain strategy. It enhances the understanding of the use of reshoring in generating the value demanded by a changing business model. An iconic British high-end clothing brand, Burberry, is the chosen case study to explore the recent move towards reshoring because its changes of leadership, business model and evolving supply chain strategy from 1997 to early 2016 provide a timely and pertinent context. Burberry has continued to realign its business towards a brand-led and customer-centric model along with restoring its corporate heritage and core brand values. The changes in Burberry’s business model triggered the need to renew and realign its supply chain strategy through consolidating and rebuilding manufacturing activities back in the UK, in order to support its brand repositioning as quintessentially British and the company’s refocus on heritage products. The increased managerial control in the supply chain together with the close proximity of design and manufacture enables the promise of quality and brand provenance to be fulfilled. The renewal of Burberry’s supply chain strategy has contributed to an increase in revenues and brand values. These findings suggest that the renewal of supply chain strategy through reshoring and increasing control in supply chain operations can enhance value and firm competitiveness.     

How to Align your Brand Stories with Your Products

The role of stories and their influence on communication have been widely discussed, yet despite recent advances, the elements that constitute a good brand story and their alignment with product types remain unclear. This study uses four between-subjects experiments to test hypotheses pertaining to the appropriate stories for both search and experience products. Authenticity, conciseness, reversal, and humor are generally useful in engaging readers, though brand story elements influence customer attitudes differently for search versus experience products. Authenticity is more important for experience than search products; conciseness has a significant influence on brand attitude only for search products; reversal is more critical to improve brand attitude for experience than search products; and humor exerts a relatively greater influence for search than for experience products. These findings provide insights for marketers who want to design brand stories that align with their products.     

Evidence of herding and positive feedback trading for mutual funds in emerging Asian countries

When analysing the behavior of investors, the emphasis is usually on positive feedback and herding behavior, and the existing literature abounds with studies on the domestic strategy of mutual funds or on their impact. Due to the advantages in terms of the data, many studies investigate US data. However, with the increased flows of capital into emerging markets, studying the behavior of international mutual funds in emerging markets has become more and more important. Nevertheless, studies involving emerging markets are relatively rare. This study examines whether the positive feedback effect and herding behavior exist in Asian markets based on mutual fund data covering the period from 1996 to 2004. The long period enables us to test the sensitivities under the following four conditions, namely the capital volatility (volatile vs. stable), the degree of suffering during the Asian crisis (more suffering vs. less suffering), and the timing of the Asian crisis (pre-, during, and post-crisis), using the exchange rate regime. It was found in this study that mutual fund inflows into the Asian market were attracted by positive stock returns and currency appreciation. Furthermore, it was found that the positive feedback effect and herding behavior did exist in the Asian markets. However, the extent of the above behavior is not the same under different conditions.     

Expiration-day effects: Does settlement price matter?

We compare the expiration-day effects of two index futures contracts, TAIEX futures and SGX TW futures, which have the same underlying spot market, but different settlement mechanisms. By taking into account other factors such as open interests and institutional traders' activities, we find that the settlement mechanism and traders' structure affect expiration-day effects. In terms of minimizing expiration-day effects, the average price is better than the opening price, which in turn is better than the closing price settlement. Moreover, the results also demonstrate that foreign institutional traders' trading activities increase expiration-day effects.