Conducting Immersive Research in Second Life: A Hotel Co-Branding Case Study

This study explains the first known hospitality research conducted exclusively in a virtual world for the purpose of researching hotel co-branding. This article explains how immersive research techniques were used to capture data in real time through avatar activity in Second Life. This article considers the research methodology, the data collection process and gives a brief summary of the initial research findings. The virtual environment offers an opportunity for researchers to reach a global audience, conduct the research in a relatively short time frame, and do the research inexpensively. The study will be of interest to researchers who may wish to use a virtual 3D environment for their own research.     

The Channel That Offers the Lowest Online Room Rates: A Case Study of Hotels in Hong Kong

Online distribution channels increasingly serve as platforms hotels can use to offer competitive room rates to attract price-sensitive customers and maximize yield. Capturing the lowest and highest daily room rates over a 360-day period from five of the most popular online travel agencies, and two batches of data showing the lowest room rates over 28 days from a last-minute bookings website, this study compares the lowest prices offered. The results indicate that no single online channel outperforms the others in any of the hotel star-rating categories, and that the last-minute reservation service provides the lowest hotel room rate across different star ratings.     

An interest-rate-spread-based measure of Turkish monetary policy

A coherent method to measure the effectiveness of a monetary policy improves the monetary authority’s management capacity and renders the possibility of applying sound policies prior to and during a crisis. The trend in employing complicated and ambiguity-bearing unconventional monetary tools in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis has increased the value of such a method. The aim of this article is to introduce a coherent and consistent monetary policy evaluation method for Turkey. Accordingly, we suggest that innovations in the spread between overnight interest rates and Treasury auction interest rates are informative for exchange rate, output, and prices. Empirical evidence for this identification reveals that positive innovation in spread (implying a tight monetary policy measure) decreases output temporarily, permanently decreases prices, and appreciates local currency. This result is also robust to alternative specifications.     

Value-at-risk-based risk management: optimal policies and asset prices

This article analyzes optimal, dynamic portfolio and wealth/consumptionpolicies of utility maximizing investors who must also managemarket-risk exposure using Value-at-Risk (VaR). We find thatVaR risk managers often optimally choose a larger exposure torisky assets than non-risk managers and consequently incur largerlosses when losses occur. We suggest an alternative risk-managementmodel, based on the expectation of a loss, to remedy the shortcomingsof VaR. A general-equilibrium analysis reveals that the presenceof VaR risk managers amplifies the stock-market volatility attimes of down markets and attenuates the volatility at timesof up markets.     

How do restaurant customers make trade-offs among rate fences?

This study examines how restaurant customers make trade-offs among several restaurant rate fences using a sample of mainland Chinese travelers to Hong Kong. A total of six restaurant rate fences (i.e., lunch/dinner pricing, weekday/weekend pricing, table location pricing, restricted coupon pricing, meal period, and reservation and seating policy) and menu price were selected, and a conjoint analysis was performed. Findings reveal that price, restricted coupon pricing, and meal period are the most important attributes when restaurant customers select a restaurant. This study is the first attempt to examine the relative importance of different types of restaurant rate fences. The findings will help restaurant operators to better understand the decision-making process of Chinese travelers and design appropriate rate fences accordingly.     

An examination of executive compensation in the restaurant industry

The purpose of this empirical study is to examine executive compensation in the restaurant industry. The effects of a set of accounting-based performance measures, market-based performance measures, and executive-related factors on the compensations of firm CEOs, other senior executive managers, and board members were examined. Drawn from 16 consecutive years of data and a sample of over 2200 observations from restaurant companies, the findings revealed that determinants of equity based compensation vary by different types of executives. In addition, this study supports the notion that executive compensation in the restaurant industry is determined not only by firm performance measures but also by executive-related characteristics such as tenure.     

Consumption choice and asset pricing with a non-price-taking agent

Summary. This paper develops a pure-exchange model to study the consumption-portfolio problem of an agent who acts as a non-price-taker, and to analyze the implications of his behavior on equilibrium security prices. The non-price-taker is modeled as a price leader in all markets; his price impact is then recast as a dependence of the Arrow-Debreu prices on his consumption, allowing a tractable formulation. Besides the aggregate consumption, the endowment of the non-price-taker appears as an additional factor in driving equilibrium allocations and prices. Comparisons of equilibria between a price-taking and a non-price-taking economy are carried out. Received: March 29, 1996; revised version October 29, 1996     

It affects,it affects not: A quasi-experiment on the transfer effect of co-branding on consumer-based brand equity of hospitality products

Although co-branding is postulated to be beneficial for hospitality brands, empirical test of either transfer effect or spillover effect of co-branding on consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) of hospitality brands is yet to receive attention from researchers. A quasi-experiment design was applied to test the transfer effect of co-branding on the CBBE of the composite brand, controlling for the familiarity, compatibility (fitness) and complementary of the partner brands. A within-subject (repeated measures) design with four steps measuring the CBBE of internationally known and compatible hotel and restaurant brands and their co-brand, as well as respondents’ own most familiar hotel and restaurant brand and their co-brand was applied in four steps to a class of 46 students enrolled for a tourism and hospitality class at a Tourism and Hotel Management School based in Asia. The t-test of differences revealed that the co-brand of the internationally known and compatible hotel and restaurant brands lead to synergy with both brands being winners and none losers, while the co-brand of respondents’ own most familiar brands lead to losses mostly, despite their high ratings individually. Implications and future research suggestions are provided.     

Offsetting the implicit incentives: Benefits of benchmarking in money management

Money managers are rewarded for increasing the value of assets under management. This gives a manager an implicit incentive to exploit the well-documented positive fund-flows to relative-performance relationship by manipulating her risk exposure. The misaligned incentives create potentially significant deviations of the manager’s policy from that desired by fund investors. In the context of a familiar continuous-time portfolio choice model, we demonstrate how a simple risk management practice that accounts for benchmarking can ameliorate the adverse effects of managerial incentives. Our results contrast with the conventional view that benchmarking a fund manager is not in the best interest of investors.