Segmenting Green Consumers in the United States: Implications for Green Marketing

The purpose of the current study was to segment U.S. consumers into four distinct clusters based on their beliefs and motives regarding pro-environmental consumer behavior. Using a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults from Experian Simmons (N = 22,348), this study revealed that: (a) there are four clusters of consumers in the United States with a unique set of beliefs and motives regarding consumer environmentalism; (b) the clusters have distinct demographic and media usage profiles; and (c) the groups have varying responses to the industry's initiatives to protect the environment. Implications of the research are discussed in light of developing message and media strategies for green marketing.     

Developing a quality prioritization procedure for IPTV service

This study developed a procedure to determine the quality priorities of the internet protocol television (IPTV) service. First, a set of key elements of IPTV service quality was developed based on a literature review and a focus group interview. Second, analytic hierarchy process and the Kano model were applied to identify the requirements of experts and customers, respectively. The experts measured the importance and difficulty of management, whereas the customers measured the satisfaction level and importance of each quality element. Third, quality priorities were calculated through the entropy principle and scenario-based analysis. The proposed procedure is illustrated with a case study of a telecommunications company in Korea.     

How to catch their attention? Taiwanese flashpackers inferring their travel motivation from personal development and travel experience

Backpackers first appeared in the seventeenth century. The twenty-first century has witnessed the rise of a new backpacker subculture given the changing times: one that is closely related to technology use is called flashpackers. The research discussed in this article explores the relationships between travel experience, personal development, and travel motivation of flashpackers. The study uses convenience sampling taken in the lobby of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. A total of 400 questionnaires were issued and 375 valid questionnaires were recovered; the rate of return was 93.8%. The results of this study are the following: (1) there are differences between travel experience and travel motivation for Taiwan’s flashpackers; (2) there is a relationship between personal development and travel experience of Taiwan’s flashpackers; (3) there is a correlation between personal development and travel motivation for Taiwan’s flashpackers; and (4) personal development moderately affects the relationship between travel experience and travel motivation for Taiwan’s flashpackers. This study contributes to the tourism industry by enhancing direct targeting of customers, and it provides hospitality and travel agency managers with the means to determine appropriate marketing strategies for flashpackers.     

Assessing Poverty Trends in Indonesia by International Poverty Lines

Indonesia has made well-documented and drastic progress in raising average incomes and reducing poverty. This article adds to the literature by providing a complementary perspective of poverty between 1984 and 2011. We discuss the evolution of poverty in Indonesia using international poverty lines—$1.25 per person per day (in 2005 purchasing power parity dollars) and $2.00 per day, and we add $10.00 per day. We generate estimates of poverty since 1984 and make projections based on various trends in growth and inequality. We find that Indonesia has the potential to become a high-income country by around 2025 and end $1.25-per-day and $2.00-perday poverty by 2030, but this will require strong economic growth and favourable changes in distribution. Looking ahead, the end of poverty in Indonesia may mean that a large proportion of the population will remain vulnerable to poverty for some time to come, suggesting that public policy priorities will need to balance insurance and risk-management mechanisms with more ‘traditional’ poverty policy.     

Inside the Crystal Ball: New Approaches to Predicting the Gasoline Price at the Pump

Appropriate real‐time forecasting models for the US retail price of gasoline yield substantial reductions in the mean‐squared prediction error (MSPE) at horizons up to 2 years as well as substantial increases in directional accuracy. Even greater MSPE reductions are possible by constructing a pooled forecast that assigns equal weight to five of the most successful forecasting models. Pooled forecasts have lower MSPE than the US Energy Information Administration gasoline price forecasts and the gasoline price expectations in the Michigan Survey of Consumers. We also show that as much as 39% of the decline in gas prices between June and December 2014 was predictable. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does stable ownership create value? Evidence from the global financial crisis

We investigate the value of stable ownership for a sample of European firms using the global financial crisis as an exogenous shock and pre-and post-crisis years as benchmark periods. Consistent with the argument that stable ownership allows managers to focus on the creation of long-term value, we find that stable ownership resulted in higher stock returns and a higher market-to-book ratio during the crisis. This positive effect of stable ownership was not reversed after the crisis. Stable institutional blockholdings were more valuable in countries with weaker investor protection. However, the positive effect does not apply to firms in which a family is the largest blockholder. Finally, we also find that ownership stability was associated with a higher level of investments, illustrating that stable ownership affects real corporate decisions.

     

Subsidiary staffing,cultural friction,and subsidiary performance: Evidence from Korean subsidiaries in 63 countries

Drawing from the notion of cultural friction and based on the agency theory rationalization of multinational enterprise (MNE) headquarter–subsidiary relationship, we examine the impact of cultural friction in foreign subsidiaries on subsidiary performance. We argue that cultural friction, arising due to a high presence of parent country nationals (PCNs) in culturally distant locations, has a detrimental effect on subsidiary performance. This effect is the strongest when the cultural friction is at the top management team (TMT) level and the weakest when friction is at the regular employee level. However, this relationship is contingent on factors that work as drags or lubricants for cultural friction between PCNs and host country nationals (HCNs). We identify governance mode and language differences between home and host countries as drag parameters and host country experience and subsidiary interdependence as lubricants that condition the effect of cultural friction on subsidiary performance. Empirical findings based on a longitudinal sample of 7,495 foreign subsidiary observations of 467 Korean MNEs in 63 countries during 1990–2014 provide robust support for our theoretical predictions.     

The prospect of decent work,decent industrial relations and decent social relations in China: towards a multi-level and multi-disciplinary approach

Abstract

Decent Work is a key initiative launched by the International Labour Organization in 1999. The initiative is to promote decent and productive employment with decent conditions of freedom, equality, security and human dignity. In reviewing academic literature on decent work, existing studies have been conducted primarily from a legal and political economic perspective. It is also largely situated outside any national industrial relations framework, both theoretically and practically. Decent work is an advocacy initiative of ILO, but the promotion of universal values embodied in the notion (e.g. equality, fairness, justice and dignity) needs to be tailored to specific societal contexts. Drawing on existing academic literature, this review article examines ideological, institutional and cultural distances between decent work and the reality of employment in China. It argues that achieving decent work requires an ideological transition of ‘traditional’ Chinese work ethics and a cultural transition from collectivism and altruism towards individualism and an emphasis on individual rights. This study also examines and highlights regulatory enforcement deficits and the inadequate role of the trade union in facilitating the advancement of decent work at various levels. Finally, the article argues that the study of decent work should be mainstreamed as an integral part of decent industrial relations and ultimately, decent social relations. It calls for a multi-level and multi-disciplinary approach to examining the historical, political, economic, ideological and cultural context of specific countries in fulfilling the ‘Decent Work’ agenda.     

The synergistic effect of insurance and banking sector activities on economic growth in Africa

It is widely understood that the insurance and banking sectors of every economy perform some functions in driving economic growth. What is not yet well documented is whether their roles are complimentary or substitutive. With the aid of the dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique, this paper evaluates the synergistic effect of both sectors on economic growth in a panel of 10 African countries that are responsible for most of the activities in the continent’s financial sector. The insurance-banking-growth nexus was also examined through bootstrap panel causality tests. The results show that the life insurance market and the banking sector, as well as the non-life insurance market and the banking sector, are complimentary. We find that, overall, the relationship between the insurance and banking sectors in Africa is a complimentary one and that their synergistic impact on economic growth is positive. The feedback hypothesis was also confirmed in the relationship between the insurance sector and economic growth and between the banking sector and economic growth.