The role of product type and country‐of‐origin in decisions about choice of endorser ethnicity in advertising

Two experiments examine the effects of endorser ethnicity and product country of origin on consumer responses toward ad and brand, and investigate the moderating role of utilitarian versus hedonic product type. In Experiment 1, for utilitarian products, participants showed more favorable responses when the endorser's ethnicity was incongruent with the product's country of origin compared to when it was congruent, supporting an attribution‐theory explanation. For hedonic products, however, participants preferred ads that featured an endorser whose ethnicity matched their own, irrespective of the product's country of origin. In Experiment 2, building on the attribution explanation, two endorsers of different ethnicities generated more favorable responses than two of the same ethnicity. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Creating New Relationships Through Tourism: A Qualitative Analysis of Tourist Motivations of Older Individuals in Japan

The current study is an exploration to examine older Japanese individuals’ motivations for travel. The study employed an open-ended survey and in-depth interviews in order to gain insight into the creation of human relationships through tourism. Our results show that tourism is perceived as offering extraordinary opportunities to meet new people, and to form and develop new relationships by Japanese older individuals, who experience fewer opportunities to interact with other people in their everyday lives compared to individuals in younger generations. In particular, distinct features of tourism settings, such as liminality and touristic communitas, allow older tourists to express themselves more freely by escaping from their existing relationships as well as from many social norms, hierarchies, and prohibitions.     

Time-series momentum in China's commodity futures market

This study examines the time-series momentum in China's commodity futures market. We find that a time-series momentum strategy outperforms classical passive long and cross-sectional momentum strategies in terms of the Sharpe ratio, risk-adjusted excess returns, and cumulative returns. The time-series momentum strategy with a 1-month look-back period and a 1-month holding period exhibits the best performance. We observe clear time-series momentum patterns and find that the time-series momentum strategy is effective in the Chinese commodity futures market. However, the momentum lasts for less time in China than in the United States because China's futures market seems to have a greater number of speculative investors.     

Tourism climatic condition over PDR Korea

ABSTRACT

Climatic condition has a remarkable influence on tourism activity. This paper evaluates the tourism climatic condition over DPR Korea applying Tourism Climate Index (TCI). Results show that (1) climate of present resorts is favorable to tourism from mid-April to early October, with TCI scores for most of them well above 70 (very good) from mid-April to late June; (2) seven key tourism resorts have a very good tourism climatic condition, with Mt Guwol, Sariwon, Nampo and Pyongyang at a higher TCI score; (3) six proposed sites have higher TCIs during warm season, and tourism industry could be planed and developed.     

The impact of net buying pressure on index options prices

This study examines whether the demand for options, as measured by the net buying pressure of index options, explains the implied volatility structure created by options prices. We decompose the buying pressure into the direction‐motivated (i.e., delta‐informed) and the volatility‐motivated (i.e., vega‐informed) demand for options. After controlling for options traders' hedging demand, we find that both delta‐ and vega‐informed trading play significant roles in explaining changes in implied volatility. Foreign institutions are more directionally informed in index options trading than their domestic counterparts are. Domestic investors effectively implement volatility trading using put options.     

Market Reform and Efficiency: The Case of KOSPI200 Options

The Korean government and exchange have identified a need to regulate excessive speculative trading and to protect domestic individual investors from foreign and professional traders. As such, they have proposed an options market reform that requires higher levels of margin accounts for options trading and that increases the basic options multipliers in the KOSPI200 options market. This study examines how this market reform affects the price disagreement and adjustment behaviors of the index options market. Our analyses indicate that the efficiency and information quality of out-of-the-money options trades have increased since the reform took effect.