Attitude of Muslim Consumers Toward Sex Appeal in Advertising: A Comparative Study Between Subcultures in Malaysia

This research was designed in order to explore the subculture differences in Malaysian consumers’ responses to sex appeal advertising. This study employs a 2 × 2 × 2 full factorial between subjects design. There are two levels of model gender (male/female), two levels of sex appeal (high/low), and two levels of religion of the subjects (Muslim/non-Muslim). When comparing Muslims and non-Muslims in the responses to the ads, it was generally found that Muslim subjects’ attitudes were significantly lower than non-Muslims attitudes toward the same ads. Future research should adopt a more representative sample and test different product categories.     

Inherent factors of family business and transgenerational influencing tourism business in Malaysian islands

ABSTRACT

There is an indication that the existence of transgeneration enterprise has unique ability as a ‘resilient factor’ in sustainable tourism development. It bridges the relationship between resilience and sustainability. This paper highlight evidences of the relationship using two successful case studies of Small-Medium scale tourism enterprises on the islands in Malaysia, namely the islands of Langkawi and Tioman. The most important factors influencing successful family business in transgeneration enterprise by priority within the business wealth point of view are aspect of survival, followed by low-entry barriers, ‘passing the baton’, bridging relationship, ‘smallness’, and adapt and change. From the socioemotional wealth point of view, aspect of belonging followed by family welfare priorities, structural generation change, contextual embeddedness, attitude, informal decision making and friendly working environment influence the success of family business in transgeneration enterprises. Hence, sustainable tourism development in the context of local community empowerment might only be achieved once the ‘resilient factor’ is present or in place and ready at the tourism destination.     

Consumers' interest in learning about cooking: the influence of age,gender and education

General and governmental interest in cooking has increased recently. In part this may be because the acquisition of food preparation skills may make individuals less dependent on processed foods and reduce risks of overweight and obesity. However, little research has been conducted on consumers' interests in learning about cooking. Therefore in 2012 an online survey was conducted in Australia among 1023 adult food preparers with the aim of determining what and how they wanted to learn to cook. Questions were asked about interest in learning about cooking‐related topics, specific main meals and cooking techniques, preferred ways to learn, and their demographic characteristics. Frequency and cross‐tabulation analyses were used to compare the responses across demographic categories, and content and correspondence analyses were used to analyse meal preferences and age‐related differences. The findings show that 71% of the sample wanted to learn more about cooking. Respondents wanted to learn to cook a wide range of evening meals, especially ethnic dishes (e.g. Chinese, Thai, Italian, ‘Asian’). Most preferred to learn from television (68%), newspapers and magazines (41%), although attendance at cooking classes (34%), YouTube (27%) and special newsletters (24%) were also popular. There were few, weak associations between interest in cooking and the respondents' demographic characteristics. The findings are discussed in relation to the common problems faced by all domestic food preparers and the major opportunities to communicate about cooking.     

Spectrum auction designs and revenue variations

This study examines a sample of 93 national 3G spectrum auctions for the period 2000–2011 to identify the sources of substantial revenue variations. An implied reduced-form econometric model that recognises the censored nature of the sample relates per capita winning bid (per Mhz, per million populations) values to regulator-determined auction design characteristics, auction competitiveness, mobile wireless market conditions and spectrum package attributes identified from tender documents. The analysis reveals that among other factors, all auction design characteristics independently impact on realized 3G spectrum auction revenues.     

An opinion survey of malaysian middle level managers and professionals

This study reports the results of an opinion survey of a Malaysian managerial subelite, potential future business and government leaders. Their responses to propositions put forth in a detailed questionnaire indicate that they have values conforming to those associated with Western bureaucratic society. The results of this 1982 survey are discussed under the topics of attitudes toward women, attitudes toward business and religion, station in life, and peer trust levels.Bernard Sarachek is with the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Aziz Abdul Hamid and Zakaria Bin Ismail are with the Faculty of Business Management, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.     

Forecast accuracy in initial public offerings and the impact of external constraints relative to managerial choice: a research note

We examine the accuracy of earnings forecasts published in prospectuses, under conditions where external influences of state regulation and economic condition act as constraints to mitigate management optimism. Our results indicate that regulation has no significant impact, but economic condition and management optimism are significantly associated with forecast accuracy. We conclude that a study of forecast accuracy over time must take into account external influences and that attempting to use regulation to improve forecast accuracy is not an effective strategy when there are strongly adverse economic conditions and when promoters or managers are optimistic in forecasting.     

Bertrand-Edgeworth equilibrium in a cash-in-advance economy

This paper is about price and wage competition in a dynamicgeneral equilibrium model. We consider an equity financed economywhere firms need money to finance their input costs. Part ofthe output is sold for money to be used in the next period asworking capital and the remaining part is distributed to ownersas real dividends. We first characterize the steady state competitiveequilibrium path. Second, we study whether this competitiveequilibrium can be supported as a pure strategy Nash equilibriumin price and wage setting games. We prove a positive resultfor price competition and a negative one for wage competition.     

The Need for Regulating a Bayesian Regulator

This paper analyzes the Baron and Myersons (B–M) (Econometrica 50: 911–930 [1982]) scheme of monopoly regulation, a standard representative of Bayesian mechanisms. As is well known, the hboxB–M mechanism (and other related mechanisms) have as an explicit starting point the assumption that the regulator has an unchallenged prior belief about the cost function of the regulated monopolist.We analyze here the consequences resulting from the possibility that this prior belief may be subject to influence or manipulable. As we show in detail, under the B–M scheme, consumers and the regulated monopoly are highly sensitive to the regulators prior belief about the (private) cost information of the monopolist. Therefore, if a regulators beliefs are unaccountable to and unverifiable by a higher ity, the regulator has both the incentive and the possibility to change and/or misrepresent his prior belief when facing pressure or payoffs from interest groups representing consumers or the regulated firm. The results here show that the outcomes under a B–M mechanism favoring one or another interest group can vary over a wide spectrum. The results are consistent with capture theory and rent-seeking explanations of monopoly regulation and suggest the need to exercise care in using the insights and results of Bayesian regulatory theory to inform practice.     

Change of numeraire in the two-marginals martingale transport problem

In this paper, we apply change of numeraire techniques to the optimal transport approach for computing model-free prices of derivatives in a two-period setting. In particular, we consider the optimal transport plan constructed in Hobson and Klimmek (Finance Stoch. 19:189–214, 2015) as well as the one introduced in Beiglböck and Juillet (Ann. Probab. 44:42–106, 2016) and further studied in Henry-Labordère and Touzi (Finance Stoch. 20:635–668, 2016). We show that in the case of positive martingales, a suitable change of numeraire applied to Hobson and Klimmek (Finance Stoch. 19:189–214, 2015) exchanges forward start straddles of type I and type II, so that the optimal transport plan in the subhedging problems is the same for both types of options. Moreover, for Henry-Labordère and Touzi’s (Finance Stoch. 20:635–668, 2016) construction, the right-monotone transference plan can be viewed as a mirror coupling of its left counterpart under the change of numeraire.