Consumer workers as immaterial labour in the converging media markets: three value‐creation practices

This paper takes a practice‐based approach to consumer studies and focuses on the strategic and productive roles that consumers play as immaterial labour or consumer workers in the converging media markets. Based on a case study of a print media organization and its customers, the aim is to discuss the collaborative practices through which value is created in the market. By means of a textual analysis of online and interview data, three value‐creation practices are abstracted and illustrated: constructing a sense of belonging and collective identity, mutual helping and peer support, and building pride and self‐respect. Overall, the paper suggests that in global media environments, consumer‐customers are playing increasingly significant strategic roles in the practices and processes through which value is co‐created in the market. It is therefore concluded that the idea of consumers, and media audiences in particular, as recipients of communication and targets of marketing activities needs to be problematized and the dynamic strategic roles that consumers currently play in the market need to be acknowledged and actively incorporated into the business praxis of media corporations.     

Measuring the Perceived Quality of Professional Business Services

Professional firms serving business clients are recognizing the need for improved quality services. Unfortunately, measures of professional service quality have proven difficult to develop. This paper reports on the use of SERVQUAL, an instrument commonly used to assess consumer perceptions of service quality. This instrument was employed with a sample of business owners who were asked to rate the quality of service received from their accounting firm. Although several dimensions of the scale proved useful, additional quality related factors emerged from the analysis.     

Measurement scale for eco-component of hotel service quality

Growing acknowledgement of the need to achieve more sustainable forms of development has resulted in environmentally conscious tourists who have indicated a dissatisfaction with existing hotel service quality. The objective of this study was to investigate tourists’ ecological expectations referring to the quality of spas and wellness hotel services in order to develop and test a scale for measuring the ‘eco-component,’ a new component of hotel service quality. The findings revealed four dimensions of the eco-component: hotel staff's eco-behaviour; environmentally friendly and healthy equipment; efficient use of energy and water; and bio-food. Tourists also demonstrated a hierarchy of eco-dimensions, with the most important being hotel staff's eco-behaviour and the least important being bio-food. Tourists’ expectations about the level of eco-dimensions differ significantly with respect to their income, nationality, and the hotel certification. However, no significant difference emerged in their expectations due to different educational levels.     

Enhancing service quality improvement strategies of fine-dining restaurants: New insights from integrating a two-phase decision-making model of IPGA and DEMATEL analysis

The traditional IPA model has been considered to be a decision-making tool for service quality management. However, the IPA model does not meet the assumptions of the service quality gap, and also cannot explore the connection between service quality attributes, which can easily lead to decision-making errors of service quality management. The purpose of this study is to apply the IPGA model and DEMATEL to explore the service quality improvement priority of fine-dining restaurants and the causal relationship between service quality attributes, and use it as the decision-making reference of service quality strategy planning and resource reorganizing for the restaurant industry with limited resources. The study applied the customers of 8 fine-dining restaurants in Taipei City as the study object, and there are 502 effective samples. The study result shows that the dimensions of reliability, responsiveness, and assurance are concentrated here, and are the restaurant service quality dimensions that most need to be improved from the customer perceptive. In addition, the total effect of reliability is the highest among all the service quality dimensions. Reliability and responsiveness, in addition to impacting each other, will impact assurance and empathy. According to the study result, through IPGA and DEMATEL, the service quality performance of fine-dining restaurants and the resource input priority can be grasped more objectively and accurately, which can be used as a reference for manager to plan the service quality improvement strategy.     

Book Reviews

This article will investigate why German business leaders during the 1950s resisted the American lead for advanced management training but instead developed theirvery own model, the Baden-Badener Unternehmergespräche (BBUG). The article explains the origins, set-up and methods of the BBUG; it also analyses the background of the talks' participants during its first decade of existence. In so doing, it provides another viewpoint to the debate on the ‘Americanisation’ of German management in the post-war years.     

Does the law and finance hypothesis pass the test of history?

For the body of work known as the law and finance literature, the development of financial markets and the concentration of ownership across countries is to a large extent the consequence of the legal system nations created or inherited decades or hundreds of years ago. Despite the seemingly historical nature of this explanation, most of the body of work supporting the law and finance hypothesis has been ahistorical. This paper summarises the business history literature and provides evidence on investor protection and financial development over the long run that challenges the main tenets of the law and finance literature.     

科学发展观指导下财政学研究生培养模式的思考

本文通过对科学发展观的内涵的阐述,以及对研究生培养模式相关文献的回顾,说明了运用科学发展观来指导构建财政学研究生培养模式的重要意义,提出了运用科学发展观来指导财政学研究生培养模式构建的要点和原则。     

军地物流一体化保障研究

在界定基本概念的基础上,揭示了军事物流与地方物流本源的统一性,分析了二者互为发展动力的内在因果关系。并以此为基础,明确了构建军地物流一体化的意义、保证机制以及实施要求。     

基于K-means算法的企业服务创新方向选择研究

企业在进行服务创新过程中,首先需要考虑到企业发展战略与其自身优势能力的匹配性,结合这两点来确定服务创新的发展方向。本文研究了企业基于自身已有的优势能力,运用K-means算法建立了企业服务创新战略方向选择模型,识别并确定了企业服务创新战略方向,由此得出企业进行服务创新时的最佳服务定位策略。     

基于4R理论的海外旅游专业硕士课程设置的思考

现代旅游业的国际化需要大批具有丰富行业管理经验的应用型、外向型人才．美国教育专家多尔的建构性4R理论为解决我国高等旅游教育课程设置中存在的问题提供了理论依据．在分析4R理论的基础上，对10多个国家及地区旅游专业硕士课程进行比较研究，并以西安外国语大学为例，结合其办学特色，从国际化、应用性、职业化人才培养视角，探索旅游管理专业硕士课程建设问题，以期使课程结构体系及内容符合市场要求．并随着旅游教育目标群体及教育者群体多样化拓宽，使高等旅游教育大众化走向完善，实现就业意义上的“供给创造需求”。