The interplay of culture and situational cues in consumers' brand evaluation

This research examines the effects of situational cues in consumers' brand evaluation; more importantly, this relationship is explored across the US and Korean cultures. The findings suggest that consumers prefer brands with personality traits that are congruent with the social situations. Furthermore, as predicted, this brand‐situation congruity, for which brand preference increases when the social situational cues are congruent vs. incongruent with the brand personality, is stronger among Korean vs. American subjects.     

包容性增长:基于相对贫困视角下的探析

包容性增长致力于解决相对贫困的三个维度,即收入不平等、人的发展和人的脆弱性问题,与此相对应,包容性增长的内涵也可概括为可持续的与平等的增长、社会包容和赋予权能及安全。包容性增长在中国实现的三个关键因素是,坚持公有制的主体地位,不断完善市场机制,坚持以人为本。第一,坚持公有制的主体地位,实行初次分配改革,提高劳动报酬在初次分配中的比重;第二,完善社会主义市场经济体制,使国民待遇逐步趋同;第三,以人本发展观取代物本发展观,加强发展中对人的关注,提高人的发展水平,保障人的安全。     

Does Ethics Statement of a Public Relations Firm Make a Difference? Yes it Does!!

Attempting to determine solutions for unethical practices in the field, this research was designed to assess the effectiveness of public relations firms’ ethics statements in decreasing the incidence of malpractice. This study revealed an encouraging finding that practitioners working in firms with ethical parameters were significantly more likely to engage in ethical practices. Moreover, educating public relations practitioners about the content of ethics statement could positively influence their ethical practices. At the same time, this study’s findings suggest further questions for consideration in future scholarship and in the application of ethics statements to practice within the field.     

企业社会绩效与品牌金融价值关系的实证研究

本文运用世界品牌实验室(World Brand Lab)发布的《中国500最具价值品牌排行榜》中的上市公司作为样本,以中国社会科学院发布的2009年中国企业社会责任发展指数计量企业社会绩效,实证分析了企业社会绩效与品牌金融价值之间的相互关系,结果发现:企业社会绩效与品牌金融价值存在相互促进的关系;企业规模不仅影响企业社会绩效,也影响品牌金融价值;企业社会绩效与企业性质存在显著的负相关,国有企业比非国有企业承担更多地企业社会责任,而对于品牌金融价值,无论是国有企业,还是非国有企业,均不受企业性质的影响。     

Approach to service design based on customer behavior data: a case study on eco-driving service design using bus drivers’ behavior data

Various types and massive amounts of customer behavior data are collected in various industries, such as transportation, healthcare, hospitality, and logistics. The use of customer behavior data can improve the design activities of service firms. Despite the applicability of customer behavior data to service design, only a few studies have examined an approach to utilize customer behavior data in service design. This study proposes an approach for designing services with customer behavior data. The approach is based on a case study on eco-driving service design with the behavior data of bus drivers. This study extends the research on service design by demonstrating how customer behavior data are utilized for service design and assisting service designers in designing services with customer behavior data.     

FAIR ALLOCATION OF DISPUTED PROPERTIES

We model problems of allocating disputed properties as generalized exchange economies. Therein, agents have preferences and claims over multiple goods, and the social endowment of each good may not be sufficient to satisfy all individual claims. We focus on market‐based allocation rules that impose a two‐step procedure: assignment of rights based on claims first and voluntary exchange based on the assigned rights afterward. We characterize three focal egalitarian rights‐assignment rules that guarantee that the allocation rules are fair. We apply our results to problems of greenhouse gas emissions and contested water rights.     

Does an economically active population matter in housing prices?

This article examines the link between the population structure and housing prices. We use a panel of 23 countries from 1976 to 2013 in our empirical analysis. We find statistically significant impacts of the proportion of the economically active population aged 15–64 to the total population on housing-price growth. Our study supports a policy for stable population growth to moderate housing-price growth and economic cycles.     

Stakeholder relations and the persistence of corporate financial performance

We examine the effect of a firm's relations with its nonfinancial stakeholders, including its employees, suppliers, customers, and communities, on the persistence of both superior and inferior financial performance. In particular, integrating and extending the resource‐based view of the firm and stakeholder management literatures, we develop the arguments that good stakeholder relations not only enable a firm with superior financial performance to sustain its competitive advantage for a longer period of time, but more importantly, also help poorly performing firms to recover from disadvantageous positions more quickly. The arguments are supported by the analysis of a series of first‐order autoregressive models. Our findings further suggest that the positive effect of good stakeholder relations on the persistence of superior performance is not as strong as that of some other firm resources, such as technological knowledge, but it is the only factor examined that promises to help a firm recover from inferior performance. Therefore, the role of positive stakeholder relations in helping poorly performing firms recover is found to be more critical than its role in helping superior firms sustain their performance advantage. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An exploratory study on part-time MBA program choice factors and characteristics of part-time MBA students

The majority of master of business administration (MBA) students are presently enrolled in part-time programs, yet little is known about their preferences, perspectives, and program selection processes. To fill this gap, the authors address three issues related to part-time MBA programs. First, they review important MBA program choice factors in the literature. Second, based on results of a survey with current MBA students, they identify the following as choice factors for part-time MBA programs: overall value/cost, location convenience, flexibility, and program quality. Third, the authors offer implications for part-time MBA programs that are related to employer reimbursement programs and program flexibility.     

世界林业发展的必然趋势—生态林业

本文通过实例和数据分析了常规林业的困境,指出生态林业是世界林业发展的必然趋势。提出多样性是生态林业的一项重要原则,并通过实例说明下列关系成立: 生态上的相互适应与抗干扰力增强多样性< >稳定性市场经济中的弹性与竞争能力增强文中还对边缘效应在生态林业中的应用作了进一步说明。