Why should I believe this? Deciphering the qualities of a credible online customer review

Online customer reviews have been shown to have a powerful impact on the sales of a given product or service. However, the qualities of a ‘credible’ online customer review are still subject to debate. Existing research has highlighted the potential influence of a range of factors on the credibility of an online customer review, but relies heavily on quantitative methods and a ‘top down’ approach. In turn, this can reduce our understanding of the influence of these factors into merely discerning whether one pre-determined factor is more influential than another is. This paper adopted a ‘bottom up’ thematic analysis of individual qualitative interviews with a purposeful sample of consumers who regularly utilised online customer reviews. The findings uncovered a range of factors that influenced the credibility of an online customer review that were attached to a reader’s personal experience and to the content of a specific review, and inferred the existence of a reciprocal relationship between the constructs of review helpfulness and review credibility.     

Contributions to Canadian economic history: The last 30 years

The cliometric revolution that transformed economic history in the US in the 1960s was soon embraced by Canadian economic historians. Many of the important issues surrounding Canadian development remained the same: the role of resources, the place of international trade, immigration, capital accumulation and interactions with Native Americans, among others. But beginning in the 1960s, and certainly over the last 30 years, economic historians of Canada have addressed them with the tools of modern economics, both theoretical and empirical. We highlight the recent work emphasizing not just the methods but also the fundamental ways our understanding of Canadian history has been changed.     

Urban growth and change in 1940s Southeast Asia

This article analyses demographic change in Southeast Asia's main cities during and soon after the Second World War Japanese occupation. We argue that two main patterns of population movements are evident. In food‐deficit areas, a search for food security typically led to large net inflows to main urban centres. By contrast, an urban exodus dominated in food surplus regions because the chief risk was to personal safety, especially from Japanese and Allied bombing. Black markets were ubiquitous, and essential to sustaining livelihoods in cities with food‐deficit hinterlands. In Rangoon and Manila, wartime population fluctuations were enormous. Famines in Java and northern Indochina severely impacted Jakarta and Hanoi through inflows of people from rural areas. In most countries, the war's aftermath of refugees, revolution, and political disruption generated major rural–urban population relocations. Turmoil in the 1940s had the permanent consequences of augmenting the primacy of Southeast Asia's main cities and promoting squatter settlement.     

Intra-urban journeys and activity linkages

Data from a travel diary study of Watford residents are used to examine the linkages between successive stages of multi-stage journeys. The linkage patterns in the journeys made each day by housewives and by other adults are described. A simple model of the number of stages to which journeys are extended is presented. The numbers of journeys made each week by various population sub-groups are also described. Some implications for planning and transport prediction are discussed.     

Double Two*

Double Two is a privately owned clothing manufacturer based in the United Kingdom. The case portrays the historical development of the company, with specific emphasis on the last 20 years. The case outlines the structural and strategic management accounting issues confronting the company particularly over the last 20 years. Students are exposed to issues associated with balanced scorecard construction and implementation and the use of return on investment to measure divisional performance.     

Towards a Negative Income Tax System for Australia

The undue complexity of the Australian tax-transfer system is outlined as are the associated high effective marginal tax rates for many individuals and families. A negative income tax system is a possible solution to these problems.
The most radical version of negative income tax is a 'basic income/flat tax' system which combines universal tax credits (that vary according to presence of children, disability etc.) and a flat tax rate on private income. Using NATSEM's microsimulation model STINMOD it is found that to ensure that no current social security beneficiaries become worse off under such a system would either be very expensive to introduce or require a tax rate that is likely to be unacceptably high. Less radical versions of negative income tax are also costed, incorporating the possibility of varying tax rates, the tapering out of tax credits, and placing some restrictions on the granting of tax credits. This makes negative income tax look more feasible.
The analysis does not incorporate behavioural responses. Since the motivation for a negative income tax system is largely to achieve such responses (for example, labour supply responses), this feasibility analysis might have been unduly harsh. Research is required to incorporate behavioural responses into the analysis.     

Further Evidence on the Determinants of Secured versus Unsecured Loans

Using a unique data set collected from financial statements of all Singapore listed firms from 1983 to 1991, we provide international evidence on the determinants of the amount of secured loans as a fraction of total secured and unsecured loans. This data set comprises a much wider range of firms than most previous studies. We show that consistent with the agency-cost hypothesis, firms with more growth opportunities use more secured loans. This is in contrast to the opposite result reported in Barclay and Smith (1995b) who measure secured debt as a fraction of total long-term fixed claims. We also find strong support for the hypothesis that smaller firms use more secured loans. In contrast, Leeth and Scott (1989), using survey data on small firms, find an insignificant firm size effect. Finally, we show that the use of secured loans is positively related to asset riskiness and loan size, and is negatively related to asset specificity. Firm quality has no explanatory power.     

Understanding the UK food consumer

Since the publication of quantified dietary guidelines in 198314, interest in food related issues has both increased and diversified. This paper describes changes in these issues and marketing response to these changes. There is, however, a marketing challenge which goes beyond reaction to individual issues and specific crises such as salmonella or listeria. This broader marketing challenge is the general increase in interest in food and in food related issues. This paper asserts that this phenomena itself is the greatest challenge to food marketers and further, that in today's consumer environment, it is a challenge which must be addressed without delay.

There is currently a merging of food and environmental/conservation issues along with the general increase in public awareness and information campaigns relating to “green” issues. This highlights the need for organisations in the food sector to take immediate action to rebuild customer confidence in the industry and in producers and in information produced by them. This problem is a shared one throughout the industry and when addressed will restore a more stable environment for competitive product marketing.

This paper is presented as a demonstration of the importance of the holistic view of research—of looking at the total situation and putting the issues or hypotheses in context of the total situation. It draws on a variety of sources, secondary and primary whilst also taking into account environmental factors such as media coverage and the particular history of the situation such as the distribution of the Villejuif list of food additives in 1986. It is, the paper concludes, important that a market situation is understood and reacted to in a sympathetic way for a marketing strategy to be successful.     

Autopoiesis in Disneyland: reassuring consumers via autopoietic brand management

This paper introduces a new concept of brand management: autopoietic brand management. Autopoiesis is a biological definition of life that stresses the radical autonomy of living systems. Organisational science has developed the concept, emphasising the capacity of autopoietic organisations to adapt spontaneously to external pressures. These facts support the following arguments. First, that the Disney brand is managed as an autopoietic system. The brand has its own operating code, self-defined boundaries, self-replicating ability and pace of operation. This conveys a sense of reassurance to Disney's customers. Further arguments about the brand's role in corporate socialisation and adaptation are developed. These claims focus on the brand's ability to represent the corporation's activity to itself via the self-referencing features of autopoiesis.