Cruise ship passenger spending patterns in Pacific island ports

The cruise business has recorded a solid growth rate in the past 20 years, with this development being driven by corporate mergers and takeovers, the launching of mega‐ships, the opening up of new destinations and the growing propensity of people who choose to cruise. This study measures the expenditure patterns of cruise ship passengers in seven Pacific island ports of call. Some of these ports receive up to 32 cruise ship visits per year and their economies are partly reliant on them. It is important, therefore, for service suppliers, retailers and handicraft producers to know what appeals to cruise passengers so that they can continue to produce the products in demand profitably. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

客户愉悦对提高客户忠诚度的作用

事件之间的关系 当企业赢得了客户永久的忠诚时,请一定谨记赢得忠诚度本身并不是我们的最终目标。而只是帮助企业通向最终商业成功的一个步骤。企业试图通过构建客户的忠诚度来取得更进一步成就的这个过程,我们称之为满意——利润链。     

Managing for stakeholders,stakeholder utility functions,and competitive advantage

A firm that manages for stakeholders allocates more resources to satisfy the needs and demands of its legitimate stakeholders than would be necessary to simply retain their willful participation in the firm's productive activities. We explain why this sort of behavior unlocks additional potential for value creation, as well as the conditions that either facilitate or disrupt the value‐creation process. Firms that manage for stakeholders develop trusting relationships with them based on principles of distributional, procedural, and interactional justice. Under these conditions, stakeholders are more likely to share nuanced information regarding their utility functions, thereby increasing the ability of the firm to allocate its resources to areas that will best satisfy them (thus increasing demand for business transactions with the firm). In addition, this information can spur innovation, as well as allow the firm to deal better with changes in the environment. Competitive advantages stemming from a managing‐for‐stakeholders approach are argued to be sustainable because they are associated with path dependence and causal ambiguity. These explanations provide a strong rationale for including stakeholder theory in the discussion of firm competitiveness and performance. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Characteristics of Ethical Business Cultures

The purpose of this study was to identify general characteristics attributed to ethical business cultures by executives from a variety of industries. Our research identified five clusters of characteristics: Mission- and Values-Driven, Stakeholder Balance, Leadership Effectiveness, Process Integrity, and Long-term Perspective. We propose that these characteristics be used as a foundation of a comprehensive model that can be engaged to influence operational practices in creating and sustaining an ethical business culture.     

Contracts,the Spot Market Wage and Unemployment Benefits

This paper presents a model of the labour market with a contract and a spot market sector. Contracts are binding and enforceable, but unemployed contract workers are free to work in the spot market. The contracting wage is shown to be constant across states. A non‐trivial result shows that the spot market wage is increasing with product price. An increase in product price has an ambiguous effect on contract employment. An increase in unemployment benefits increases the contracting sector wage whilst stabilizing the spot market wage, and may have ambiguous effects on unemployment.     

Nature-based tourism,resource dependence,and resilience of Arctic communities: framing complex issues in a changing environment

Current research on tourism in the Arctic has focused largely on the extent, location, and type of tourism activities that occur in the region. Recently, challenges have been identified that the tourism industry is likely to face in the wake of global changes, including climate change. Related research, conducted within and outside of the Arctic, suggests that rural communities can become economically dependent on natural resource extraction (e.g. oil, gas, timber harvesting, and mining of minerals) and non-extractive resources (e.g. nature-based recreation and tourism), limiting diversification and potentially threatening resilience of rural communities. In the western USA, communities have become dependent on both extractive and non-extractive natural resource activities including nature-based tourism; however, it is less clear whether a similar situation is occurring in Arctic communities. In this article, we propose a framework and indicators to analyze the potential dependence of Arctic communities on nature-based tourism and the resilience of Arctic communities to potential boom–bust cycles of nature-based tourism. To do so, we examine the current state-of-knowledge about tourism and nature-based tourism in the Arctic through the lens of boom–bust dynamics and social-ecological systems.     

Product Innovativeness and Entry Strategy: Impact on Cycle Time and Break-even Time

New product development time, or cycle time, has become a critical competitive variable, particularly for small high-tech manufacturing firms. The business press is filled with examples about large firms that have successfully reduced cycle time. This article investigates the relative impact of product innovation and entry strategy on cycle time and initial market performance of small firms. Using a sample of seventy-three small manufacturing firms, Abdul Ali, Robert Krapfel, Jr., and Douglas LaBahn find that faster product development is associated with shorter break-even time. Their results also indicate that these firms are achieving shorter cycle time not by sacrificing product quality, but by keeping the technical content of the product simple. Past research has not taken into account this relationship, and this may be one of the reasons why researchers have often suggested conflicting impact of entry strategy on market performance.