The Transitioning of Marketing Practices from Segment to Customer-Centric Marketing in the African Business Context: Toward a Theoretical Research Framework

ABSTRACT

Although marketing has long been posited to be shifting from segment marketing to customer-centric marketing, there is little theoretical insight into the status of such transformation, especially in emerging African economies. Therefore, this paper develops an integrated theoretical framework for assessing (a) the extent to which firms in African economies use the segment marketing mix (4Ps) versus the customer-centric marketing mix (4As) as well as (b) their antecedents and performance outcomes. Propositions drawn from qualitative data and theoretical tenets in strategic management and in institutional theory are offered to guide systematic empirical research.     

TIC y crecimiento de la productividad del trabajo en el África Subsahariana

Se investigan los efectos de las TIC en la productividad del trabajo en 43 países subsaharianos. Se observa que el desarrollo de la telefonía fija y móvil celular estimula el crecimiento de la productividad en forma de retornos crecientes, lo cual confirma la presencia de efectos de red: cuando se duplica la tasa de penetración de la telefonía fija y de la móvil, el crecimiento de la productividad del trabajo aumenta en alrededor de 0,12–0,15 por ciento y 0,05 por ciento, respectivamente. La inclusión financiera aparece como uno de los posibles vectores de los efectos de la telefonía móvil en la productividad en los países estudiados.     

Moral Opinions are Conditional on the Behavior of Others

In social dilemmas individual behavior creates external effects on others. In such situations, a person's opinions concerning right and wrong might influence his behavior. Understanding moral opinions therefore is important. This paper reports on an experiment which shows that moral opinions are conditional on the behavior of others. This is demonstrated by the finding that a large majority of subjects in a public good game experiment report personal normative beliefs that increase with the actual contributions made by group members. This finding is important for the design of policies attempting to sustain public good provisions.     

The undervaluation of corporate reputation as a supplier selection factor: An analysis of ingredient branding of complex products in the manufacturing industry

Prior research studies on supplier selection factors assess vendor reputation as a low ranked criterion. Reputation in these articles, however, only refers to the position in the industry, without considering the role of the final customer. Our results from a survey with 565 individuals suggest that the end user as a stakeholder should be also considered when analyzing a vendor’s prestige. We demonstrate that a supplier’s standing has negative as well as positive reputational effects on the buyer. Depending on the relevance of the purchased good as well as the reputation of the supplier and the buyer, low/high-ranked ingredients significantly decrease/increase the final customer’s perception of the buyer.     

Embedding environment and sustainability into corporate financial decision-making

The business case for sustainability can be built upon: (i) cost reduction from efficient resource utilisation, (ii) revenue enhancement, (iii) risk management, and (iv) intangible assets. However, executives often adopt a short-term perspective owing to executive compensation, investor pressure, and decision-making criteria tied to fixed financial reporting systems. We propose an integrated conceptual framework, which highlights how firms could embed environment and sustainability into their long-term financial decision-making framework. To give this goal structure, the firm could adopt: (i) longer-term executive compensation plans, (ii) longer-term financial reporting, and (iii) flexible financial decision-making models which embed intangibles.     

Reorganization of Intra‐ASEAN 5 Trade Flows: The ‘China Factor’*

There are claims that China's influence on ASEAN is direct in that she has encouraged more exports to flow into her huge markets and changed trade flows among member countries. Demand and supply are thus deemed to have become more China‐centered. This study therefore explores the plausibility of China as a ‘factor’ that influences bilateral intra‐ASEAN 5 trade flows through demand (exporting country) and supply (importing country). The results imply that China's integration in the region increases the size of the key ASEAN member economies export market. There is also no indication that import sourcing from China by ASEAN 5 countries reduces export expansion within the latter. The results accord with the fact that although China has become an important export destination and an import source for individual ASEAN 5 countries, this has not reduced intra‐ASEAN 5 trade.     

Improving the accuracy of outlook price forecasts

This study investigates the predictive ability of outlook hog price forecasts released by Iowa State University relative to alternative time‐series and market forecasts. Under root mean squared error (RMSE), the futures market forecast is most accurate at the first and second horizon but less accurate than Iowa outlook and the other forecast methods at the third horizon. In terms of the individual time‐series models, some vector autoregressions (VARs) and Bayesian VARs flexible in specification and estimation and model averaging tend to perform better than Iowa outlook forecasts. Evidence from encompassing tests, more stringent tests of forecast performance, indicates that many price forecasts can add incremental information to the Iowa forecast. Simple combinations of these models and outlook forecasts are able to reduce forecast errors by economically significant levels. Overall, the results indicate that it is possible to provide more accurate forecasts than Iowa outlook at every horizon.     

Saint-Simonian Feminism

By 1832, followers of Saint-Simonianism, a utopian-socialist movement in France, had become preoccupied with the social and economic roles of women. Barthélemy-Prosper Enfantin, a leader in the movement, and a few disciples developed an increasingly utopian and abstract theory that justified "protecting" women from the hardening influence of the world and removing them from the public sphere, while arguing that in the new world women would play a role distinct from, yet equal to, that played by men. The theory treated both men and women as beings embedded in a social network, rather than as separate individuals with independent goals. After women were eliminated from the Saint-Simonian hierarchy in 1831, a group of female adherents founded a newspaper as the center of a separate organization, which would work for the extension to women of the same political and civil rights that men enjoyed. This separatist group focused on policy reform rather than theory, on the present rather than some indefinite future, and on the common concerns that united women across social classes. The different ways in which the two groups (the doctrinaire Saint-Simonians and the breakaway women's organization) conceived of economic agents mirror contemporary disputes in feminist economics.     

Mature and Emerging Organic Markets: Modelling Consumer Attitude and Behaviour With Partial Least Square Approach

Although the organic food sector has been researched for around 20 years, still little is known about consumer behaviour when comparing developed and emerging organic markets. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the determinants of organic food consumption in a mature (Germany) and an emerging (Chile) organic market using a model based on the theory of planned behaviour and partial least squares for parameters estimation. The reported results have implications for decision makers in both countries. The use of altruistic arguments in organic food marketing is a key aspect to increase organic food demand in both countries. However, egoistic motives might also gain importance in Chile, as they already have in Germany. In both countries, the barriers for organic food consumption have to be addressed with great attention—a lack of information and availability, especially in Chile, and scepticism about organic food in Germany.     

THE IMPACT OF FEMALE WORK ON FAMILY INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES: BLACK-WHITE DIFFERENTIALS*

Using data from the 1973 National Survey of Family Growth, the present study analyzes, for blacks and whites separately, the impact of female market activity on the inequality of the income distribution among households. The family life cycle is divided into three stages, according to the presence and age of children: (1) the interval between marriage and the birth of the first child, (2) the child-rearing interval, and (3) a final period which begins when all the children have reached school age. Using the coefficient of variation as an indicator of inequality, the empirical results show that in period 1, the contribution of white working wives has a large equalizing impact, while that of their black counterparts results in a slight increase in dispersion. In the child-rearing and post child-rearing stages, the labor supply of mothers decreases family income inequality by a small amount for both black and white households. A decomposition of the squared coefficient of variation of family income is presented to aid in the interpretation of these findings.