Examination of Factors Moderating the Success of Private Label Brands: A Study of the Packaged Food Market in China

No abstract available for this article.     

Same but Different: Chinese-American and Mainland Chinese Consumers’ Perceptions of and Behavior in a Service Failure Situation

Going beyond the traditional East/West consumer differentiation in studying service failure, this article examined the impact of acculturation, together with ethnicity of service staff and origin of a hotel brand on consumers’ perceptions and behavioral responses. The research drew on four focus groups conducted in Beijing with 34 participants, followed by an experiment for which data were collected from 451 Chinese-Americans and 464 Mainland Chinese. Results showed significant differences in perceptions and behavioral responses following a service failure between Chinese-Americans and Mainland Chinese, and among Chinese-Americans with different acculturation strategies. Implications of study findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

The Determinant of the Hospitality Industry's Unsystematic Risk: A Comparison Between Hotel and Restaurant Firms

ABSTRACT

Unsystematic risk is accepted as an important factor in stock valuation. Despite the importance, little has been done to study the relationship of unsystematic risk to stock values in the hospitality industry. This study attempted to advance the understanding of financial variables that could be related to unsystematic risk of hospitality firms. Regression models were developed for hotel and restaurant firms, using unsystematic risk as the dependent variable and financial variables as independent variables. The major findings of this study indicate: 1) more profitable hospitality companies have less unsystematic risk, 2) reducing reliance on debt financing could reduce unsystematic risk, 3) the positive relationship between operating leverage and unsystematic risk, suggesting that decreasing operating leverage could mitigate the stock price volatility of hospitality firms, and 4) large hotel and restaurant firms have less unsystematic risk than small firms. This study should help management of hospitality firms incorporate effects of shareholder expectations into their operational decision making as an integral part of long-range financial planning.     

Corporate Pyramids,Conservatism and Cost of Debt: Evidence From Taiwan

This study investigates the extent to which the span of corporate pyramids (as measured by the number of ownership layers) is associated with higher agency costs of debt, and whether conservatism can moderate the agency cost. Consistent with corporate pyramids generating higher agency costs and information asymmetries between corporate insiders and outside creditors, we find a positive association between the number of investment layers and cost of debt. However, we also find that multi-layered firms mitigate organizational opaqueness through increased financial reporting conservatism, which results in lower cost of debt capital. These findings provide new insights into the relationship between organizational structure and financial reporting quality.     

Corporate Philanthropy and Innovation: The Case of the Pharmaceutical Industry

For decades now, pharmaceutical companies have engaged in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to strengthen their reputations, brand names, marketing, and public relations. But evidence from the authors’ recent study suggests that one particularly effective form of corporate philanthropy has been direct contributions to universities and other non‐profit research organizations, many of which have led to relationships that have developed into highly productive research partnerships. Such direct industry support for academic institutions and other research partners has ranged from unrestricted gifts to fee‐for‐service, and has taken the form of joint ventures and new research institutions as well as research contests and other types of collaborations. Moreover, such corporate giving should be viewed as an important, and highly productive, part of these companies’ innovation strategies. In support of this argument, the authors report that direct contributions by big pharma result in a greater quantity and quality of innovations—as measured by new patents—than the research that results from other forms of corporate philanthropy, notably grants made to and administered by the companies’ own foundations. Such direct contributions are also associated with patents that are more likely to broaden the corporate scope beyond the firms’ traditional areas of expertise, and that tend to have greater success in obtaining FDA drug approvals, than the patents resulting from R&D conducted by corporate‐sponsored foundations.     

Firm Productivity and Mode of Foreign Expansion: Evidence from Taiwanese Manufacturing Firms

This paper builds on the recent literature on firm heterogeneity in international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), and aims to empirically examine how firm productivity affects a firm’s foreign market entry strategy beyond the simple binary choice between exporting and FDI. Utilizing the panel data of Taiwanese manufacturing firms during 2002–2012, we further classify FDI methods by whole ownership or a joint venture to investigate a firm’s foreign expansion decision. By performing Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) tests, we find that if a firm is more productive, it is more likely to choose FDI rather than exporting. However, productivity of firms choosing whole ownership is not so different from choosing a joint venture. Furthermore, a more productive firm is more likely to conduct both whole ownership of the foreign subsidiary and a joint venture formation in the case of FDI.