Exploring globalization and marketing performance at the 2012 Global Marketing Conference at Seoul

This special issue of the Journal of Business Research features sixteen articles selected from papers presented during the third Global Marketing Conference held in Seoul, July 19–22, 2012, hosted by Korean Scholars of Marketing Science, European Marketing Academy, Japan Society of Marketing and Distribution, International Textile and Apparel Association, and Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy. The articles offer readers an interesting mix of topics and methods in complex and global marketing environments. They offer marketing practitioners new ideas and approaches for dealing effectively with the increasingly challenging marketing world and provide marketing researchers insights that may inspire future research.     

Analysts' Forecasts Following Forced CEO Changes

This paper examines analysts' earnings forecasts during the period of uncertainty following a change of chief executive officer (CEO). It distinguishes between forced and non‐forced CEO changes, and examines whether analysts utilize their information advantage to reduce the heightened uncertainty of a forced change of CEO. Examining a sample of Australian companies followed by analysts between 1999 and 2009, we find that forecasting accuracy is lower and earnings forecasts are more optimistic for firms experiencing forced CEO turnover compared to firms not undergoing such a change. However, dispersion is not statistically different. The results suggest that forced CEO turnover events provide a challenge to the forecasting environment for analysts. During CEO changes, investors should be aware that forecasts are less accurate and have an optimistic bias.     

Auditors' Fee Premiums and Low‐Quality Internal Controls*

We examine the relation between low‐quality internal controls and audit fee premiums. Using a novel data set of audit hours and audit fees we find, consistent with the audit risk model, that auditors increase their effort (hours) owing to low internal control quality. We find that auditors also charge a significant fee premium to clients with internal control weaknesses. This premium is observed for severe internal control weaknesses and companies with low‐quality alternative governance mechanisms. The results are robust to multiple methods to address endogeneity, including company fixed effects, difference‐in‐differences design, and a propensity score‐matched sample. Taken as a whole, low internal control quality leads to fee premiums, which are a deadweight loss to client companies.     

Dress for success: the effect of exhibitors’ dress conformity and self-construal on attendees’ approach behavior

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the current study is to investigate how attendees’ approach behavior is influenced by exhibitors’ dress conformity. A 2 × 2 between-subjects quasi-experimental design was utilized for this study. Our results showed that conforming dress for exhibitors can lead to a higher level of approach behavior of trade show attendees as compared with nonconforming dress, and the effect of exhibitors’ dress styles on approach behavior is moderated by attendees’ self-construal. Findings of this study provide significant insights for trade show exhibitors and attendees.     

Game theoretic derivations of competitive strategies in conjoint analysis

While conjoint analysis has been applied in a wide variety of different contexts in Marketing, most applications fail to explicitly consider retaliatory reactions from competitors. In this paper, a methodological extension is developed for conjoint analysis by explicitly modeling competition in a game theoretic context. The Nash equilibrium concept is employed to model competitive reactions to produce design, and its implications for reactive product strategies are discussed. The optimal product design problem for each firm is formulated as a nonlinear integer programming problem, which is solved via a specialized branch and bound method combined with a heuristic. In order to compute a Nash equilibrium, a sequential iterative procedure is proposed. The proposed procedure is illustrated under several scenarios of competition using previously published conjoint data.This research has been supported by the Henry Rutgers Research Fellowship, Rutgers University.     

Social entrepreneurship as an essentially contested concept: Opening a new avenue for systematic future research

Social entrepreneurship has emerged as an active area of practice and research within the last three decades. Nevertheless, in spite of its growing popularity, scholars and practitioners are far from reaching a consensus as to what social entrepreneurship actually means. This has resulted in a number of different definitions and approaches within the field of social entrepreneurship. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the ongoing contestation of social entrepreneurship and to offer a novel conceptual understanding of the concept that can facilitate the development of systematic and structured future research. To this end, we analyze social entrepreneurship on the basis of the theory of essentially contested concepts, which was proposed by Walter Bryce Gallie in 1956. Building upon this theory, this article shows that social entrepreneurship can be regarded as an essentially contested concept and that a universal definition that would be accepted among contestant parties is hardly possible. Responding to this recognition, the article proposes the conceptualization of social entrepreneurship as a cluster concept, which can serve as a conceptual tool to help advancing social entrepreneurship as a coherent field of research despite its contested nature.     

Accessing Tourists’ Unconscious Associations about International Destinations: Data Fuzzification of Reaction Times in the Implicit Association Test

Starting with the proposition that shorter reaction time implies stronger implicit preference, this study assesses destination-related top-of-mind awareness (TOMA) by examining respondent reaction time to specific destination icons. A total 87 college students were recruited to complete self-report surveys and computer-based implicit association tests (IAT). The results show that participants’ responses vary depending on the two measures (i.e., self-report surveys and IATs). Through a data fuzzification method, the study demonstrates that the IAT would enhance our understanding of tourist TOMA, particularly related to familiarity issues. The implications of the study pertain to destination marketing are fully discussed.     

The iron cage exposed: Institutional pressures and heterogeneity across the healthcare supply chain

The healthcare industry has been known to operate in a strong institutional environment (i.e. government regulations), and the implementation of inter-organizational systems (IOS) has followed an institutional process. Extending this perspective across different tiers in the healthcare supply chain, we investigate how organizations in different tiers in the supply chain (i.e. hospitals, distributors and manufacturers) respond to institutional pressures when implementing IOS. How institutional dynamics unfold across multiple tiers of a supply chain is an uncharted area of research, and we take the theory-building case study approach using data collected from ten organizations. Because organizations are embedded in their respective tiers, our within-tier analyses are equivalent to cross-organization analyses. In this regard, the cross-case analyses occur at two different levels: at each tier level (i.e. across multiple hospitals, multiple distributors and multiple manufacturers) and across the supply chain (i.e. across all three tiers). The study shows how different institutional pressures such as coercive, mimetic, and normative manifest across the tiers. It also demonstrates how a differential mix of endogenous and institutional pressures lead to mixed organizational responses across the tiers. The propositions developed from the study enrich institutional theory arguments within the information systems and supply chain management disciplines. They highlight how the IOS implementation dynamics within and across different tiers in a supply chain result in heterogeneous rather than isomorphic consequences, thereby exposing the “iron cage” of institutionalization.     

The relationship between multinationality and performance: Knowledge-intensive vs. capital-intensive service micro-multinational enterprises

This research explores the relationship between multinationality and firm performance (M-P) in the context of micro-multinational enterprises (mMNEs) within the service sector. We examine the moderating effects of industry characteristics using a data set of 1082 Spanish service mMNEs over an eight-year period. The empirical results provide statistical evidence that knowledge-intensive service mMNEs exhibit an inverted U-shaped M-P relationship, while capital-intensive service mMNEs present a U-shaped relationship. Our findings demonstrate that knowledge-intensive service mMNEs increase their performance in the initial stage of multinationality, encounter a threshold of internationalization at relatively low levels of multinationality and have a propensity to over-internationalize. By comparison, capital-intensive service mMNEs experience negative performance effects at low levels of multinationality and positive ones as they further internationalize. Given that their operations are scale-sensitive, they tend to expand internationally by concentrating their operations in few foreign markets as a means to overcome the liabilities of internationalization and smallness. We contribute to the literatures on multinationality research in the service sector and on SME internationalization by showing that the effects of multinationality on the performance of mMNEs depend on industry characteristics and that such contextual factors provide a better understanding of the M-P relationship.     

Co-Evolution: Law and Institutions in International Ethics Research

Despite the importance of the co-evolution approach in various branches of research, such as strategy, organisation theory, complexity, population ecology, technology and innovation (Lewin et al., 1999; March, 1991), co-evolution has been relatively neglected in international business and ethics research (Madhok and Phene, 2001). The purpose of this article is to show how co-evolution theory provides a theoretical framework within which some issues of ethics research are addressed. Our analysis is in the context of the contrasts between business systems (North, 1990), and in particular the distinction between informal systems and those systems where institutions are formalised in law. This complements the growing research on comparative corporate governance and capitalisms (Chandler and Hikino, 1990; Choi et al., 1999; Whitley, 1994). The synthesis of co-evolution and analysis of divergent institutional environments in ethics research can also complement the globalisation and MNE approaches to international business research.