Service Orientation: Its Impact on Business Performance in the Medical Service Industry

From the viewpoint of internal marketing, employees who are content in their job may be motivated to satisfy their customers better than ones who are not content. Another relevant premise is that the content employees, because of their work motivation, would eventually help improve the performance of their firm. To verify these relationships, some previous studies looked into the effects of organisational service orientation on employee's satisfaction. But only few of them investigated the mediating effects of variables such as service value and customer orientation for their role in linking service orientation to business performance. This study examines how an organisation's service orientation had an effect on its performance at hospitals. For this purpose, verification of the mediating role of service value perceived by employees as well as the role of customer orientation on the firm's performance was attempted. For this study, a total of 292 usable questionnaires were collected from hospital staffs located in metropolitan cities of Korea. The hypotheses concerning relationships among service orientation, service value, employee satisfaction and customer orientation were verified by covariance structural modelling, using SPSS 10.0 and AMOS 4.0 programs. The result is as follows. First, organisational service orientation had a positive effect on both employee satisfaction and service value perceived by hospital staff. Second, employee satisfaction had a positive impact on service value and customer orientation. Finally, service value as well as employee's customer orientation were found to exert positive influence on the medical firm's performance.     

Uncertainty in foreign policy making: A Bayesian game analysis of Korea

Bayesian games are used to analyze situations where at least one player is uncertain about the other's preferences. For the past decade or so, the Bayesian models have been rigorously applied to various aspects of international relations involving uncertainty. These models have contributed to our understanding of international relations by uncovering complicated strategic interactions through deductive reasoning and by generating many empirically testable hypotheses. Apart from these efforts for general theory developments, however, scholars rarely applied Bayesian models to analyze real‐world international events, although many of them involve situations where one or more players are uncertain about the other's preferences. Some of these events are interesting and important in their own right, given their potential impact on regional security and the amount of attention paid by scholars and politicians alike. Therefore, these cases warrant independent studies utilizing Bayesian models. In this paper, we have developed two Bayesian models for the changing relationships North Korea has with South Korea and the United States. We also discuss another interesting aspect of North‐South Korea‐United States relations where North Korea is simultaneously playing similar, but separate, games with South Korea and the United States.     

Exploring the missing point of view in international advertising management: local managers in global advertising agencies

In the decades-long debates about whether standardised or adapted strategies are better for global brands, and whether centralised or decentralised international communications planning is more effective, little attention has been given to the perspective of local managers in the subsidiaries of global agencies. This paper reports on the experiences and opinions of account managers and creative directors in Korean subsidiaries, with regard to the international advertising policies of their agencies and clients. The authors find less centralisation than prior research has reported and yet more negative experiences with standardised global advertising. Creativity is a key consideration for the Korean managers, especially for products, be they consumer or industrial, that have universal demand. The perspective of subsidiary managers in multinational corporations should be considered in the advertising planning process in order to avoid conflict which could decrease the effectiveness of global campaigns.     

Reputation and product tampering in service industries

This theoretical paper aims to identify the role of trust and reputation between consumers and firms when there is product tampering or other types of product liability. When product tampering occurs, trust implicitly built towards brand or corporation by consumers or customers can be dissipated. This article assesses the impact of quality uncertainty and measurement costs on the trust relationship between consumers and corporations. The ideas are also applied to the case of bank runs. Preliminary findings indicate that in cases where the trust between consumer and firms is strong, and there are high measurement costs and uncertainty, the reputational relationship between customers and firms can experience strong repercussions.     

Supplier–supplier relationships in buyer–supplier–supplier triads: Implications for supplier performance

A growing number of studies and evidence from industries suggest that, besides managing the relationship with its suppliers, a buyer needs to proactively manage the relationships between those suppliers. In a buyer–supplier–supplier relationship triad, the buyer, as the contracting entity, influences the suppliers’ behaviors and the relationship between them. By considering the relationships in such a triad, we are able to gain a richer and more realistic perspective of buyer–supplier relationships. In this study, our goal is to examine supplier–supplier relationships in buyer–supplier–supplier triads, focusing on how such relationships impact the supplier performance. We frame the supplier–supplier relationship as co-opetition—one in which competing suppliers work together to meet the buyer's requirements. We investigate the role of the buyer on such relationships, and how the buyer and co-opetitive supplier–supplier relationships affect supplier performance. We find mixed empirical support for our hypotheses. However, we are able to demonstrate the dynamics of supplier–supplier co-opetition in the buyer–supplier–supplier triad. We point out the need for further studies in this area.     

To integrate with a high- or low-wage country: That is the question

This paper considers the question of whether a country with the intermediate capital–labor ratio is better off forming a free trade area with the higher or lower wage country. Typical analyses of gains from trade ignore the effects of free trade on factor prices. When Europe forms a free trade area with a high-wage economy, the equalized wage rises and rent declines, while the price of the importable declines. Workers unambiguously benefit, but integration has an ambiguous effect on capitalists. However, consumers as a whole benefit from the integration and workers can more than offset the losses of the capitalists. On the other hand, Europe's integration with a low-wage economy raises rent but lowers the wage and the price of the labor-intensive good. Accordingly, capitalists unambiguously benefit, but integration has an ambiguous effect on workers. Again, welfare of all consumers rises and the capitalists can more than offset the losses of workers.     

An SAO‐based text‐mining approach for technology roadmapping using patent information

A technology roadmap (TRM) links technologies with a company's strategic objectives and so supports acquisition of required technologies in advance of needs. It is a powerful tool for strategic planning and technology management. Because technology is changing rapidly and market competition is fierce, the role of a TRM is becoming increasingly important. To support the role of a TRM, many firms and governments that use roadmapping are becoming interested in reducing costs while retaining objectivity during TRM development. One suggestion to achieve these goals is to use the keyword‐based quantitative approach to creating a TRM, but the information provided by the approach is limited because of the characteristics of keyword information. To solve this limitation, this research uses the concept of ‘function’ to support quantitative analysis for developing a TRM. The concept of function can provide information on the uses and purposes of a technology. To represent a function, a subject–action–object structure is commonly used. The suggested approach allows research and development (R&D) managers to extend the views of product and technology during development of a TRM. In addition, by reducing the time required to develop a TRM, the proposed approach supports quick and accurate decision‐making by R&D managers.     

Dividend‐Rollover Effect and the Ad Hoc Black‐Scholes Model

One of the most widely used option‐valuation models among practitioners is the ad hoc Black‐Scholes (AHBS) model. The main contribution of this study is methodological. We carefully consider three dividend strategies (No dividend, Implied‐forward dividend, and Actual dividend) for the AHBS model to investigate their effect on pricing errors. We suggest a new dividend strategy, implied‐forward dividend, which incorporates expectational information on dividends embedded in option prices. We demonstrate that our implied‐forward dividend strategy produces more consistent estimates between in‐sample market and model option prices. More importantly our new implied‐forward dividend strategy makes more accurate out‐of‐sample forecasts for one‐day or one‐week ahead prices. Second, we document that both a “Return‐volatility” Smile and a “Return‐pricing Error” Smile exist. From these return characteristics, we make two conclusions: (1) the return dependency of implied volatility is an important explanatory variable and should be controlled to reduce the pricing error of an AHBS model, and (2) it is important for the hedging horizon to be based on return size, that is, the larger the contemporaneous return, the more frequent an option issuer must rebalance the option's hedge. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 32:742‐772, 2012     

The effects of product attributes and service quality of transportation card solutions on service user’s continuance and word-of-mouth intention

Service Business - Product attributes are an inherent quality considered as an essential factor for consumers’ purchasing intention for product. Despite the increase of consumer interest in...