Buzz marketing for movies

In today's dynamic entertainment environment, movies are struggling to stay afloat and remain profitable. Challenges such as piracy, digital theft, competition, overlapping movie campaigns, media fragmentation, and audience saturation are forcing marketers to stretch their film budgets and make every dollar as effective as possible. With more and more entertainment options crowding peoples' lives, marketers must search for innovative ways to reach movie audiences. By breaking through the daily clutter and noise, and capturing peoples' attention to the point that talking about a movie becomes an enjoyable experience to share, buzz marketing is one such promotional posture that drives audiences to theaters. In order to achieve success with buzz marketing, however, marketers must recognize the role it plays in the context of movie differentiation strategies to support the company's overall approach. To that end, this article analyzes buzz marketing as it pertains to six movie differentiation strategies (differentiation with cosmetic movie features, differentiation to reach market segments, growing a movie segment, positioning to support the movie image, positioning to extend the movie image, and differentiation via non-traditional channels) and offers steps for its successful implementation.     

我国城市老年人主观经济状况充足感分析

主观经济状况充足度指标是经常被用做分析健康、经济幸福感和心理幸福感等问题的重要自变量之一.以中国老龄科研中心2006年"中国城乡老年人口状况追踪调查"的城市数据为例,对全国16个省、市、自治区和直辖市的64个城市8018例60周岁及以上老年人相关数据进行分层多元回归分析.与国外研究相比,相同的结论包括老年人年龄越大、客观收入越多、健康状况越好、离退休及仍在工作的城市老人越愿意认为自己的主观经济状况是充足的;不尽一致的结论表现在老年女性、教育程度越高、已婚以及不与子女共同居住的城市老人越愿意认为自己的经济状况是充足的.在此基础上,分别从老年学理论和政策实践方面提出相关对策建议.     

Performance information use by politicians and public managers for internal control and external accountability purposes

Governance structures have changed fundamentally since the beginning of New Public Management inspired reforms. Particularly local public service delivery nowadays can be characterized as diversified and fragmented, leading to internal management and external accountability challenges for politicians as well as public managers. In this context the use of performance information is seen as a crucial element for effectively dealing with both issues. Nevertheless, empirical research considering different actors and contexts within one study is rare. The present paper fills this gap by applying a multi-theoretical perspective and testing hypotheses on the antecedents of performance information use by politicians and public managers for internal management as well as external accountability purposes in small- and medium sized local governments in Austria. The study results show that both groups use performance information to a greater extent within external accountability relationships than for internal management purposes. Results further illustrate that driving factors show similarities for both groups with reference to the latter mentioned purpose, while a more diverse picture is shown regarding factors impacting their use behavior toward citizens and supervisory authorities.     

Gender Differences in Double Standards

The purpose of the present study is to investigate gender differences in the use of double standards in ethical judgements of questionable conduct instigated by business or consumers. We investigate if consumers are more critical towards unethical corporate versus consumer actions and if these double standards depend on the gender of the respondent. In the first study, we compared evaluations of four specific unethical actions [cfr. DePaulo, 1987, in: J. Saegert (ed.) Proceedings of the Division of Consumer Psychology (American Psychological Association, Washington DC)] instigated by either the consumer or the corporation. In a second study, we investigated the perception of some general consumer and corporate (un)ethical actions in addition to DePaulo’s unethical scenarios. Both researches show that females are less likely to use double standards when it comes to their own (un)ethical behaviour compared to corporate (un)ethical actions. Furthermore, gender differences in the use of double standards depend on the type of unethical behaviour. Limitations and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Experience and the unexpected: risk and mitigation issues for operating underground storage silos for coal-fired power plant

Observed autoignition events and extinguishing the resulting smouldering fires in an underground storage system of a coal-fired power plant have provided insight into the array of contributing variables, and some experience on quantifying the risk with alternative scenarios of event initiation, progress and potential mitigation. Although the first attempts to quantify the risk suggest high sensitivity to the sequence of action taken after fire alarm, and no similar storage sites really exist, some recommended preventive, corrective and other mitigating activities can be at least partly defined and improved by using the cumulative experience and parallel efforts in other closed or underground storage sites. However, there are also so-called black (or at least grey) swans: unexpected events for which the facility may be poorly prepared for. In the case of the underground storage silos, such an event was experienced when incoming cold coal during a harsh winter season froze the sewer system that normally protects the stored coal from seepage water. With blocked normal bypass, the seepage water found its way to the coal silos and created large clumps of icy coal that blocked the coal conveyors. Although freezing weather is not unusual at high-latitude power plants, the common methods to combat freezing of coal are mainly useful for open storage sites and above-ground transport. Options for mitigation are discussed, as well as the event chain leading to an event that had never previously occurred. The case is discussed from the point of view of options to prepare for rare or unforeseen events.     

Three scenarios for the greater Hamburg region

In this paper, three scenarios for the metropolitan region of Hamburg within the next 30 years are presented. The scenarios are based on an assessment of decisions, opportunities and bottlenecks faced by the region in the areas of economic restructuring, demographic and societal changes, city-development and environmental changes. Many core questions that the region is dealing with are representative for Western European cities and highly industrialised regions worldwide. Accordingly, insights gained about strategies and future possibilities for the study region may be of use to other metropolitan regions. Extensive expert interviews were combined with a comparative analysis of the strong and weak points in the development of Hamburg and other big cities to identify trends and critical and strategic success factors. It is argued that economic, political, societal and environmental processes evolve in close interdependency and need to be treated in conjunction. A central question in this context is the meaning of radically different routes of port development—expansion, re-orientation and discontinuation—for the city's economy, the region's environment and socio-cultural renewal. Beneficial outcomes for quality of life, economic development and environmental state are generally found to depend on a combination of economic, societal and political requirements.     

Early-Life Circumstances Predict Measures of Trust among Adults: Evidence from Hunger Episodes in Post-War Germany

Can a major shock in childhood permanently shape trust? We consider a hunger episode in Germany after World War II, and we construct a measure of hunger exposure from official data on caloric rations set monthly by the occupying forces, providing regional and temporal variations. We correlate hunger exposure with measures of trust using data from a nationally representative sample of the German population. We show that individuals exposed to low caloric rations in childhood have significantly lower levels of trust as adults. This finding highlights that early-life experiences can have long-term effects in domains other than health, where such effects are well documented.     

Inside the black box: How important is the credit channel relative to the interest and exchange rate channels?

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model to assess the importance of the credit channel relative to the interest and exchange rate channels. It is motivated by increasing theoretical and empirical evidence that credit market conditions affect the propagation of cyclical fluctuations in the economy. The relative contribution of each channel is determined by comparing the impulse responses when the relevant channel is suppressed with the impulse responses when all three channels are operating. The analysis shows that all three channels affect business cycle dynamics. But the interest rate channel has the largest effects in the transmission of shocks to the economy. The results suggest that it is substantially more important than the credit channel.     

Analysing the environmental antecedents of innovation adoption among politicians and public managers

This study presents evidence on public innovation from the perspectives of politicians and public managers. Environmental antecedents are analysed with regard to their impact on innovation adoption. Data are drawn from a survey of over 600 mayors and managers in Austrian local government. Results show that they identify the same innovation types but indicate different antecedents of innovation adoption. Findings for managers are broadly in line with results from larger jurisdictions. Since there are crucial dissimilarities in the factors explaining the adoption of innovation, we suggest that politicians and managers both be included in future studies of local government innovation.     

From Theory to Practice: Policy Analysis,Cultural Bias and Organizational Arrangements

This article discusses the inter-relation between policy analysis (PA) in public policy making, cultural bias and organizational arrangements. It provides a theoretical explanation for differences of PA approaches based on adherance to various organizational contexts and political cultures and lays the ground for future research on an important but rather neglected study area.