Toward a theory of customer engagement marketing

Customer engagement marketing—defined as a firm’s deliberate effort to motivate, empower, and measure customer contributions to marketing functions—marks a shift in marketing research and business practice. After defining and differentiating engagement marketing, the authors present a typology of its two primary forms and offer tenets that link specific strategic elements to customer outcomes and thereby firm performance, theorizing that the effectiveness of engagement marketing arises from the establishment of psychological ownership and self-transformation. The authors provide evidence in support of the derived tenets through case illustrations, as well as a quasi-experimental field test of the central tenet of engagement marketing.     

Government debt and private leverage: An extension of the Miller theorem

This paper shows how government financing decisions can influence the corporate decision to use debt or equity finance. In particular, it is shown that an increase in the stock of taxable government debt reduces the equilibrium quantity of corporate debt, and that an increase in the stock of tax-free government debt reduces the equilibrium quantity of corporate equity. The effects of inflation rate and tax rate changes are also considered.     

The Impact of Population Aging on the Socially Optimal Rate of National Saving: A Comparison of Australia and Japan

This paper calculates, using a representative-agent model of a small open economy, the optimal rate of national saving for Australia and Japan for the period from the middle 1990s to 2050. The calculations focus on the implications of making allowance for the aging structure of the population in both economies on employment participation, consumption demands, and labor productivity. It is found that for Australia the optimal rate of national saving increases up to the year 2011 and then decreases. For Japan the optimal national saving rate decreases from the mid-1990s until 2020. The subsequent pattern to 2050 is generally one of decrease with the exact pattern being sensitive to the weight placed on the consumption demands of old people. The contrast in these patterns between Australia and Japan is due to the fact that, compared with Australia, the aging effect on the structure of population in Japan occurs sooner and will be of greater severity.     

Modelling Impacts of Wildlife Tourism on Animal Communities: A Case Study from Royal Chitwan National Park,Nepal

This paper describes the development of a generic model which allows for the analysis of wildlife-tourism interaction impacts in the natural environment. The development of a computer system to facilitate the collection of data and the use of this model is described, using data collected on large mammals in Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal. The computer system stores parameters describing wildlife tours and animal characteristics for an area and plots regions of disturbance and non-disturbance for the animal in that area. Predictions can then be made regarding the potential impacts of tourism on the animal species for the area. Applications for this model and computer system include the management of high tourism areas at sustainable levels so that tourist enjoyment is maintained and animal disturbance is minimised.     

Online Investors: Do the Slow Die First?

We analyze 1,607 investors who switched from phone-based toonline trading during the 1990s. Those who switch to onlinetrading perform well prior to going online, beating the marketby more than 2% annually. After going online, they trade moreactively, more speculatively, and less profitably than before—laggingthe market by more than 3% annually. Reductions in market frictions(lower trading costs, improved execution speed, and greaterease of access) do not explain these findings. Overconfidence—augmentedby self-attribution bias and the illusions of knowledge andcontrol—can explain the increase in trading and reductionin performance of online investors.     

Financial Disclosure and Customer Satisfaction: Do Companies Talking the Talk Actually Walk the Walk?

Previous research demonstrates that consumers support firms’ CSR activities, and increasingly demand socially responsible products and services. However, an implicit assumption in the extant literature is that the purchaser and the consumer of the product are the same person. The current research focuses on a unique form of socially responsible consumption behavior: gift-giving. Through 30 depth consumer interviews, we develop a typology of consumers based on whether consumers integrate CSR-related information into purchases, and whether the purchases are for themselves or for others (i.e., gifts). We find that in some instances, consumers actively avoid purchasing products from socially responsible organizations and do so with the intention of managing their impressions with the gift recipient. This is counter to previous research that suggests consumers often choose to make socially responsible consumption decisions in efforts to satisfy self-presentation concerns. In addition, the decision to engage in socially responsible consumption for oneself but not for others was motivated by a variety of factors including the role of the recipient and a concern over the credibility of socially responsible gifts. Finally, some participants who do not incorporate CSR into their own personal consumption chose gifts based on a variety of CSR activities in an effort to build awareness for socially responsible organizations.