The Need to Give Gratuitously: A Relevant Concept Anchored in Catholic Social Teaching to Envision the Consumer Behavior

The “gift exchange theory” articulated by Marcel Mauss, along with his core concept of a threefold obligation (giving/receiving/returning), is the dominant theoretical framework used to explain the majority of gift issues in marketing. This perspective assumes that some interest always lies behind gifts, such that a gift always implies a counterpart of receiving something in return. Despite the relevance of this approach in understanding the day-to-day consumer behavior, this paper presents empirical cases where the consumer is also able to give freely, that is to say without implying a counterpart or even expecting it. To explain those empirical cases, we mobilize a key teaching of the Catholic Church: the “gratuitous gift” and then introduce the concept of the “need to give.” We show that gratuitousness is a relevant concept to understand most of gifts made by consumers, and we develop the normative aspect of gratuitous gift for ethical marketers (i.e., what ethical marketers should consider to understand consumers properly and in a more humanistic way). We also show that Catholic Social Teaching offers an appropriate anthropology to understand consumer behaviors motivated by this need for gratuitousness. To conclude, we propose further avenues of research.     

Error correction exchange rate modeling: Evidence for Mexico

A set of error correction models are proposed for the nominal exchange rate between the Mexican peso and the United States dollar. The basic theoretical frameworks utilize balance of payments and monetary constructs. Empirical estimation results are fairly weak for both specifications irrespective of the interest rate variable selected. Although dynamic simulation properties of the equations are acceptable, in no case do they generate levels of accuracy that exceed those associated with a random walk. Partial funding support for this research was provided by El Paso Electric Company, the Fulbright Council for International Exchange of Scholars, the Center for Inter American and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Econometric research assistance was provided by David Torres and Roberto Tinajero. Helpful comments were provided by two anonymous referees, Joachim Zietz, Luis Berrnardo Torres, and participants at the 2001 American Statistical Association meetings in Atlanta.     

The influence of price and brand loyalty on store brands versus national brands

Abstract

This article investigates how price and brand loyalty of three frequently purchased product categories can influence the purchase decision process of store brands versus national brands. A multinomial logit model was constructed to analyse the data obtained from a consumer panel. The results confirmed that brand loyalty is the main variable which influences the purchase decision process of both national and store brands. The influence of price on the purchase decision process is product specific. There is a clear distinction between the buyer's profile of store brands and national brands. But there is no evidence of any correlation between demographic variables and national brands or store brands.     

Conflict and agreement in stakeholder attitudes: residents’ and hotel managers’ views of tourism impacts and forest-related tourism development

This paper probes differences in attitudes toward tourism impacts between two leading stakeholder groups in tourism, local residents and the managers of tourism facilities. It uses case study surveys of residents and managers in Belek, Antalya, Turkey. Differences in attitudes across seven main areas are investigated, including the positive and negative economic outcomes of tourism; positive and negative sociocultural impacts; negative environmental impacts; views on further tourism development, and benefits and problems related to forested land close to destinations. The results reveal that some attitudes are held in common – especially positive attitudes including tourism's benefits in creating jobs and income. Differences were mostly observed not in the direction but in the strength of opinion. The most significant differences were found in managers' beliefs that tourism's environmental and social impacts were few, while residents were extremely negative about those impacts. Differences of attitudes on the future use of forestland headed the list of all differences between managers and residents. Divergent loyalties were revealed. Managers supported their business and employers; local people supported their local area. The need for further research, including the role of perhaps distant “moral stakeholders”, and for more comprehensive understanding, and more sustainable outcomes, are highlighted.     

Job satisfaction and commitment in the entrepreneurial SME

In the current global corporate climate that surrounds us, firms would do well to encourage the talent and creativity of their employees to achieve success. This is achieved, not by giving priority to individual talent, but by optimizing the collective as a whole and with the firm’s activities based on teamwork and joint effort. Heads of organizations might benefit from creating a favorable context for the birth and growth of collective internal cooperation, which is understood to be the collective ability to create and innovate on the part of the team, the firm or the organization. Having contrasted our hypotheses through research on Spanish firms, we have concluded that job satisfaction and commitment to the team are factors that have a direct and positive effect on Internal Entrepreneurship.      

The need to touch: Exploring the link between music involvement and tangibility preference

Amid the increasing consumption of digital music and generally declining sales of recorded music, physical formats persist as the preferred means of storing and listening to music for many consumers. The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of the relationship between music involvement and preference for tangible music formats. To achieve this, we test a research model and perform a segmentation analysis based on music involvement. Findings indicate that high music involvement is positively correlated with subjective music knowledge, tangibility preference, and portable player use. Quite naturally, involvement increases music consumption in all formats, including digitized forms, but high involvement appears connected to a perception of tangible records as more valuable. The behavior of highly involved consumers suggests that digital music is not necessarily eradicating physical formats but possibly fulfilling different needs; for example, sampling and complementing vs. collecting and displaying.     

High-involvement practices in human resource management: concept and factors that motivate their adoption

Using data on 250 Spanish firms, we examine the incidence of high-involvement practices and investigate what variables are associated with the adoption of these practices. Particularly, we analyse the influence of size, age, competitive advantage, activity sector, the existence of a recent crisis, culture, leadership style and the competitiveness of the environment on the adoption of high-involvement work practices. With all this, we try to offer an exploratory view of nature of the contexts that condition the adoption of such practices, with the aim of motivating future research more thoroughly.     

Relationships among functional units and new product performance: The moderating effect of technological turbulence

Though there has been plenty of research into new product success factors, only a few studies have tried to analyse whether these factors are important in different settings. In this study, we propose and test a model that links physical proximity among functional units, presence of product champions, cross-functional harmony, and new product program performance. The moderating effects of perceived technological turbulence on relationships between new product performance and its antecedents are also tested. Our results, obtained from 151 managers working for Spanish firms with a R&D department, confirm the different impact of these factors on the three measures of performance considered and also on two groups of organizations, the ones that perceive high technological turbulence and the ones that perceive low technological turbulence.     

Royalty licensing

Most patent licensing agreements observed empirically include either per-unit or ad valorem royalties. The theoretical literature generally focuses on per-unit royalties. We provide a simple justification for the presence of ad valorem royalties in licensing contracts.