Revisiting the financing behavior of restaurant firms: The firm-size perspective

In International Journal of Hospitality Management, Jang and Ryu [Jang, S., Ryu, K., 2006. Cross-balance sheet interdependencies of restaurant firms: a canonical correlation analysis. International Journal of Hospitality Management 25 (1), 159–166] published a research article about the financing behavior of restaurant firms, using a canonical correlation analysis. Even though the study presents a general picture of financing in restaurant firms, the financing behaviors of firms of different sizes may differ because they often face different financing environments. Thus, this study re-examines restaurant firms and compares the results with Jang and Ryu [Jang, S., Ryu, K., 2006. Cross-balance sheet interdependencies of restaurant firms: a canonical correlation analysis. International Journal of Hospitality Management 25 (1), 159–166] to further enhance the understanding of the financing behaviors. The results show that, despite the differences in firm sizes, overall financing behaviors are similar to those reported by Jang and Ryu [Jang, S., Ryu, K., 2006. Cross-balance sheet interdependencies of restaurant firms: a canonical correlation analysis. International Journal of Hospitality Management 25 (1), 159–166], although they also suggest that restaurant firms of different sizes do indeed exhibit some different cross-balance sheet interdependencies including relatively more reliance on accounts payable among small and medium firms and more use of long-term debts among large firms. Moreover, long-term assets related to stockholder equity more among large firms but related to supplier credit more among small and medium firms.     

Moderating effects of self-image congruity on the relationship between advertisement message strength and revisiting intention

This research note delineates the effect of restaurant customers’ perceived self-image congruity (i.e., the match between the image of a product or brand and customers’ image of themselves) on the relationship between the strength of a restaurant advertisement and customers’ intention to revisit that restaurant. This study posits that customers’ preference for a restaurant brand, formed by their perceived self-image congruity, can alter the effects of ad message strength on their revisiting intention. More specifically, due to the biasing effect caused by self-image congruity, the effect of an ad’s argument strength on behavioral intentions may be diminished when customers have a high perceived level of self-image congruity. The findings indicate that strong ad messages elicit significantly higher revisiting intentions than weak ad messages when customers perceive a mismatch between the image, the brand, and themselves; however, no significant difference in revisiting intentions was detected between strong and weak ad messages when customers perceived a match between image and restaurant brand. Furthermore, this study examines how gender-based information-processing tendencies influence this effect of self-image congruity on the relationship between ad message strength and revisiting intention. Overall, this study provides a theoretical understanding of the biasing effect of self-image congruity on customers’ information processing and has important managerial implications for restaurant marketing.     

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Influence of restaurants' physical environments on emotion and behavioral intention

The purpose of this study is to add to the body of knowledge on customer loyalty in professional services in business-to-business markets. The authors build on the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing group constructs and relate them to affective commitment, relational benefits and, through these two, to customer loyalty. The results show that trust and social bonds positively influence affective commitment, while adaptation and knowledge transfers positively influence relational benefits. Although both affective commitment as a more emotional construct and relational benefits as a more rational construct positively influence customer loyalty, emotional motivation seems to be much stronger than rational motivation. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed on the basis of the empirical findings.     

Insider ownership and firm performance: An examination of restaurant firms

This study investigated the relationship between insider ownership and firm performance in the restaurant industry. Convergence-of-interests and entrenchment hypotheses were tested via cross-sectional and panel two-stage least square (2SLS) GMM estimation methods for linear and non-linear models. The study found that there is an overall positive and significant relationship between insider ownership and firm performance. The quadratic model showed that restaurant firm performance increased until insider ownership was between 38 and 40%, whereas it decreased after that point. Consistent with the quadratic model, the piece-wise regression model showed that insider ownership had a positive impact on firm performance within a range of 5–25% and a negative influence beyond 25% insider ownership. Consequently, this study revealed that convergence-of-interests and entrenchment effects of insider ownership co-exist in the restaurant industry. While convergence-of-interests effects are effective, an excessive granting of stock options or awards to managers could weaken firm performance due to entrenchment effects.     

Price bundling presentation and consumer's bundle choice: The role of quality certainty

As bundling has become a prevalent marketing strategy, the existing literature has focused on how to present price discount information for bundled products. To further understand bundling in restaurant operations, this study examined the moderating role of consumer quality certainty on the relationship between the effects of price bundling and consumers’ bundle choices. This study analyzed different bundling phenomena from an acquisition–transaction utility theory perspective in order to investigate the effects of price presentation and quality certainty manipulation on consumers’ bundle choices. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that quality certainty had a significant moderating effect. The less confident a consumer is about the quality of the bundled food products, the more likely it is that price presentation strategies will affect his or her willingness to order a bundle menu. The results also showed that transaction utility becomes significant as price discount information is segregated and as consumers are more certain of the quality of the bundled products. Managerial implications for restaurant operations are also discussed.     

DETERMINANTS OF EARNINGS-PRICE RATIOS: A REEXAMINATION

This paper incorporates recent equity valuation theories into the examination of determinants of earnings-price (E/P) ratios to explain cross-sectional differences in E/P ratios. The results show that ex ante measures of risk and growth as well as the payout ratio are the main determinants of E/P ratios. The persistence measure is not significantly related to E/P ratios. The results are robust to ordinary least square models as well as to a tobit censored regression.     

Effects of debt collection practices on loss given default

In this article, we propose an LGD model that is solely based on legal and internal debt collection actions. Our model is supported by empirical tests in which it performs better than a usual firm specific model. This result is noteworthy when we recall that the model has only binary variables that indicate whether an action was taken. Our model can be applied to update the LGD of distressed firms in a timely manner reflecting the actions taken during the debt collection period. It also can be used to assess the effect of a recovery action and to determine whether to apply an action to certain types of debt.     

Assessing Customer Satisfaction in a V-commerce Environment

This article describes the design and implementation of a non-intrusive method of assessing customer satisfaction in a voice-enabled electronic commerce environment. After recording a customer's speech voice during his or her interaction with a voice-enabled Web system (VWS), a subsequent questionnaire survey was immediately administered to identify the satisfaction level of the customer. Afterward, a collection of recorded customer voice files and the corresponding values of customer satisfaction were used to construct an artificial neural network-based expert system, the satisfaction level assessment system (SLAS), which was thereafter integrated into VWS for automatically detecting the satisfaction level of VWS users. Experiments were performed to test the feasibility and applicability of the proposed method, and good preliminary results were derived. Instead of using the conventional questionnaire-based approach, SLAS is non-intrusive because it does not require users to fill out any questionnaire. The proposed method can be used by various voice-based business applications, such as call centers and customer relationship management, to achieve the business objective of improving customer satisfaction, enforcing customer loyalty, increasing re-purchase rate, and enhancing enterprise's benefits. The proposed SLAS (including method and system) that was filed for patent application was recently approved by the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office under Patent No. I268478.     

地方政府专项债经济增长效应的实证研究

自2015年地方政府专项债券产生以来,其发行规模不断扩大.经济下行压力的加剧,也使地方政府专项债被赋予了扩投资和稳经济的重要角色.在此背景下,文章运用2015-2019年省级面板数据实证分析了专项债与经济增长之间的关系,研究表明专项债不仅能够通过公共投资直接促进经济增长,还能够通过吸引民间投资间接拉动经济增长;此外专项债的逆经济周期调节能力呈现出区域异质性,相比于其他地区,地方政府专项债对东部或发达地区经济的促进作用更加明显.     

The effect of attribute-based and alternative-based processing on consumer choice in context

The current research proposes that the extent to which consumer choices are affected by the decision process depends on the underlying nature of the choice problem. Specifically, choices resulting from substantial inter-brand comparisons and tradeoff analyses are vulnerable to whether product information is evaluated by attribute- or alternative-based processing. By contrast, choices resulting from a minimal cognitive processing are less sensitive to variations in the decision strategy employed. We test our theory in the well-known domain of choice context effects. Across three studies using multiple operationalizations of the decision process (i.e., information display format, product presentation mode, and processing goal), we find converging evidence that the more cognitively involving compromise choice increases when the environment facilitates attribute- versus alternative-based processing. Conversely, the choice of asymmetrically dominating option, which is characterized by relatively little analytical processing, does not depend on the type of decision strategy highlighted by the task.