Call for papers: Special issue on Latin America

In green advertising research, images of pleasant nature scenery have been classified as vague, unspecific and possibly ineffective green claims, as opposed to substantive, informational claims. In this study, the concept of virtual nature experiences is introduced to point out a perceptual mechanism through which the association of a brand with nature imagery may indeed lead to significant advertising effects. Consumers’ exposure to specific nature imagery in green brand communications may lead to pleasant feelings analogous to those experienced in ‘real’ nature. If adequately conditioned, these ‘virtual nature experiences’ may enhance the consumer’s attitude towards a given brand. The perceptual and attitudinal effects of substantive green claims and nature imagery are analysed in the scope of an experimental study. The field study consisted of a national survey, allowing for the relative statistical representativeness of the sample. Results of the study confirm significant perceptual and attitudinal effects of both informational claims and virtual nature experiences. The latter are identified as a distinct perceptual dimension of green brand associations, and turn out to wield additional positive influences on the consumer’s attitude towards the brand.     

Understanding voter orientation in the context of political market orientation: is the political customer king?

Abstract

This article develops a conceptual framework and measurement model of political market orientation (PMO). The relationships between different behavioural aspects of PMO and the attitudinal influences of such behaviour are analysed, and the study includes structural equation modelling to test several hypotheses. While the results show that political parties focus on several different aspects of market-oriented behaviour, especially using an internal and societal orientation as cultural antecedents, a more surprising result is the inconclusive effect of a voter orientation on PMO. This lends support to the argument of ‘looking beyond the customer’ in political marketing research and practice. The article discusses the findings in the context of the existing literature on political marketing and commercial market orientation.     

GROWTH AND WELL-BEING: INTRODUCING DISTRIBUTION-WEIGHTED GROWTH RATES TO REEVALUATE U.S. POST-WAR ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

In order to improve on the income growth rate as an indicator of changes in well-being, four composite indices of growth and income distribution are introduced and compared. When applied to the United     

Matthias Prinz Honorarprofessor an der FU Berlin

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Separating Leadership from Pay

Performance management and incentive systems can play an important role in shaping a company's culture and promoting internal collaboration. Yet, in an uncertain and rapidly evolving world that rewards organizations for agility, performance management systems based on a single individual overall rating are being viewed with growing skepticism; and the once common practice of tying pay directly to such ratings is being reconsidered—and in many cases abandoned. But when carrying out this process of “separating leadership from pay,” companies must commit to providing employees with extensive ongoing feedback, as well as significant opportunities for development and growth that are not linked directly to financial rewards. In place of traditional bonus schemes whose payoffs are tied to individual performance measures, the authors also recommend the use of company‐wide bonus plans—similar in spirit to the General Motors plan described earlier in this issue—that reflect a philosophy of “sharing success” that aims to encourage and reinforce a culture of collaboration and agility. But for compensation plans built around sharing success to be effective, careful attention should be given to the “quality” of the results achieved. This can be accomplished by supplementing the use of Key Performance Indicators—such as, for example, economic profit—with the use of so‐called “boundary” KPIs—such as the percentage of satisfied clients—for which a minimum threshold must be met.     

Gender discrimination in China revisited: a perspective from family welfare

The strong son preference tradition in China has been weakened by the rapid development in the cultural, economic, political, and social environment, which leads to a rather ambiguous picture regarding the situation of women and girls. This article revisits this issue by comparing two approaches inspired from Engel’s method to identify equivalence scales, and directly measures and tests gender bias using household expenditure and food consumption data. Using both parametric and semiparametric estimates, we find that households need a higher compensation for the arrival of a boy than the arrival of a girl, implying that gender inequality still exists in China, particularly in rural China. We find no evidence that education reduces gender inequality in China, and the results are quite robust to using different methods. Our study indicates that gender inequality does not only extend to sex-selective abortions but still affects living children. To reduce this inequality, more attention and efforts are needed to reduce son preference. More generally, the method developed in this study can also be used to proxy welfare changes in household.