Sustainability concerns in luxury supply chains: European brand strategies and French consumer expectations

Sustainability in supply chain management has become a concern in both research and practice. Although consumption and purchasing have been significantly explored in the luxury sector, a gap in supply chain studies is still evident. Therefore, the aim of this article is to examine how industry bodies and supply chain partners address sustainability concerns in the European luxury sector and how they respond to consumer expectations. In an explanatory study, we have collected data about sustainable supply chain practices in 11 European luxury good companies, by interviewing and surveying 13 managers. In a first consumer study, we held interviews with French luxury consumers in Bordeaux about their sustainability expectations (N = 170). The results show that while the distribution of attention is dependent on the respective supply chain activities, luxury goods companies address sustainability concerns and aim to take responsibility for their activities. However, the emphasis is on the dimension of economic sustainability. A comparison with sustainability expectations of French luxury goods consumers suggests that business practices are not perfectly well aligned with these expectations. Consumers put more emphasis on social and environmental sustainability dimensions. On the other hand, business activities concerning waste reduction and raw material management rather well match consumer expectations.     

Gamified interactions: whether,when, and how games facilitate self–brand connections

Firms increasingly use games to interact with their customers. Yet, surprisingly little is known about whether, when, and how such “gamified” interactions engage consumers with a firm’s brand, thereby facilitating self–brand connections. Building on flow theory, we show that gamified interactions that are highly interactive and optimally challenging facilitate self–brand connections, because such games lead to emotional and cognitive brand engagement. A field study and three experiments across various product domains and game designs support our theory. We also identify conditions under which consumers do not become engaged with a brand, namely when firms restrict their decisional control either to voluntarily participate in the game (i.e., compulsory play) or to spend as much time as desired playing the game (i.e., time pressure). Our findings advance existing knowledge about the use of games in marketing and provide important implications for how marketers can harness their potential to build self–brand connections.     

Shrouding Add‐On Information: An Experimental Study*

We explore how increased competition affects firms’ obfuscation strategies in a laboratory experiment. Firms sell a base good and an add‐on product. Besides choosing the base‐good price, sellers take an action that mimics the effects of shrouding the add‐on product. Shrouding is an equilibrium but an unshrouding equilibrium coexists. In our experiment, more competition matters, in that only duopolistic markets are frequently shrouded whereas four‐firm markets are not. With repeated interaction, shrouding rates do not increase. However, the opportunities to shroud facilitate tacit collusion on the base‐good price for the duopolies: the unshrouding equilibrium serves as a credible punishment if deviations occur.     

ECB Monetary Policy Surprises: Identification Through Cojumps in Interest Rates

This paper proposes a new econometric approach to disentangle two distinct response patterns of the yield curve to monetary policy announcements. Based on cojumps in intraday tick data of short‐ and long‐term interest rate futures, we develop a day‐wise test that detects the occurrence of a significant policy surprise and identifies the market perceived source of the surprise. The new test is applied to 133 policy announcements of the European Central Bank (ECB) in the period from 2001 to 2012. Our main findings indicate a good predictability of ECB policy decisions and remarkably stable perceptions about the ECB's policy preferences. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Öffentliches und Geheimes

In the second half of 2009, the entire media agenda in Germany was dominated by the swine flu, next to the German Federal Parliament elections. Criticism was voiced in the media against the pharmaceutical industry for lobbying the nationwide swine flu vaccination, which was widely considered nothing but a product of the industry’s lobbying power. In order to avoid the usual interviews with lobbyists, we attempted to apply a new methodological framework approach in analysing lobbying processes and key stakeholders in the public sphere—and outside. Crucial to the diversified approach, which involves quantitative content analysis of media coverage and press releases, are interviews with journalists, lobbyists’ network analysis and internet research on biographies. Although a conspiracy could not be conclusively proven, the results do indicate associations that validate the criticism of the industry’s lobbying activities.     

On the Incentive Effects of Sample Size in Monitoring Agents – A Theoretical and Experimental Analysis

When agents compete for a bonus and their productivity in each of several possible occasions depends stochastically on (constant) effort, the number of times this is checked to assign the bonus affects the level of uncertainty in the selection process. Uncertainty, in turn, is expected to increase the effort made by competing agents (Cowen and Glazer, 1996; Dubey and Haimanko, 2003; Dubey and Wu, 2001). Theoretical predictions are derived and experimental evidence is collected for two competing agents, with the bonus awarded to that agent who outperforms the other. Sampling occasions (1 or 3), cost of production (high or low), cost symmetry (asymmetric or symmetric), and piece‐rate reward are manipulated factorially to test the robustness of the effects of uncertainty. For control, a single‐agent case is included. Results indicate that, for tournaments, greater uncertainty does indeed lead to greater than expected effort and lower average variable costs.     

Flexible collective bargaining agreements: Still a moderating effect on works council behaviour?

We analyse the interaction between different labour market institutions in Germany, namely, industry‐level bargaining and firm‐level codetermination by works councils. In particular, we are interested in the moderating effect of flexibility measures on the link between the existence works councils and collective agreements on wages and productivity. In presence of institutional changes, the question is whether works councils in covered plants still generate rather than redistribute rents, given recent decentralisation processes in the German system of industrial relations. We augment a theoretical model to provide hypotheses, which are then tested using empirical analysis of representative German plant level data. We find that the existence of flexibility provisions in collective bargaining agreements does not alter the effect of works council on firms' wages. We find, however, that with flexibility provisions works council presence is associated with higher productivity levels than without such provisions. These findings, however, depend on the level of collective bargaining: they can only be observed in plants covered by industry‐level contracts, but do not hold in plants covered by firm‐level contracts.     

LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS WITHIN A GLOBAL CONTEXT: AN OVERVIEW

This paper reviews 726 academic research studies covering logistics and supply chain management (L'SCM) applications within a global context. Articles are analyzed according to their publication year and outlet, common themes, and countries or regions investigated. The sample was drawn from the ABI/INFORM Global database, which includes almost 1,800 journal titles. The review offers a starting point for researchers, graduate students, faculty members or practitioners examining international L'SCM applications. The article also draws attention to the wide array of global L'SCM studies conducted, their settings and viewpoints. Additionally, this paper highlights some of the most interesting works and draws attention to lesser‐researched countries and regions of the world. The overview also provides an introduction for practitioners and managers to what academic research has covered in the area of global L'SCM. Practitioners can use this review as a starting point for the identification of relevant and useful references for their particular task.     

Determinants of bank merger premiums

This study examines the merger premiums paid for a sample of 320 bank acquisitions consummated during the period January 1982 through October 1990. The results of the research indicate that higher merger premiums were paid for, (a) smaller size targets, (b) targets with higher return on common equity ratios (pre-merger), (c) targets with higher leverage as measured by the percentage of primary capital to total capital, (d) targets in a different state than the bidder, and (e) transactions carried out through exchange of stock as opposed to a cash purchase.