Immediate or delayed! Whether various types of consumer sales promotions drive impulse buying?: An empirical investigation

In the present study we investigate whether various types of sales promotions together with hedonic shopping motivation (value shopping) and positive affect drive impulse buying. The study further explores the moderation impact of trait constructs viz deal proneness and impulsive buying tendency in impulse buying. In our research, sales promotion tools are classified into four categories namely, (a) monetary-immediate (MI), (b) non-monetary-immediate (NMI), (c) monetary-delayed (MD) and (d) non-monetary delayed (NMD) types of sales promotions. Data were analysed using SEM. Results revealed that out of the four categories of promotional tools only MI and NMI drive impulse buying. Each of MI, NMI, MD and NMD is found to be related to positive affect whereas MI, NMI and NMD impact value shopping but MD does not. The role of IBT and DP as moderators has been evident. The study has significant theoretical as well as managerial implications. Test of mediation confirmed the role of urge to buy as mediator.     

市场能量影响因素的影响机理研究

本文在分析市场能量影响场因素具有波动性特征的基础上,论述了影响因素的影响场干涉理论,并用该理论诠释了市场突变性等问题,旨在为市场预测提供理论和方法的支持。     

Perceived human resource system strength and employee reactions toward change: Revisiting human resource's remit as change agent

Although scholars have highlighted human resource's (HR's) important role as a change agent, we know little about the extent to which HR influences the change context to foster positive employee responses and support organizational changes. This study positions perceived HR system strength as an important internal context factor that influences employees' reactions toward change. Drawing on emotion theory and social exchange theory, we analyze the mechanisms through which employees' perceptions of HR system strength lead to positive employee responses to organizational change. Data from 704 employees in a UK police force showed that employees' perceptions of HR system strength were positively related to their ability to cope with organizational change and that this relationship was simultaneously mediated by state positive affect and perceived organizational support. Moreover, our findings demonstrated that coping with organizational change was positively related to employees' change‐supportive behavior. This study is important because it broadens the remit of HR's role as change agent and provides valuable insight into how HR positively influences employee outcomes during organizational change.     

The quality and variety of exports from the new EU member states

The goal of this article is to evaluate the variety and quality of exports from the new EU member states (NMSs) in the period 1999–2009. The practical relevance of such an analysis is threefold: recent studies underline the importance of export variety for economic growth; empirical results show that export variety was influenced by the EU membership; and looking separately at export quality permits a better understanding of price competitiveness. Our results show that all NMSs significantly increased the average number of brands exported to the EU market, the largest increases being observed in 2004 and after. This indicates that integration into the EU market occurs in the extensive as well as the intensive dimension. We also find that all NMSs increased the average quality of their exports during the decade studied although there are differences between countries. Thus, a large part of the increase in the prices of exports from NMSs resulted from improving quality and did not result in a loss of competitiveness. Finally, estimates of relative quality are much more stable than relative prices, suggesting that our measure of relative quality is better than the traditional proxy.     

International arbitration of investment disputes: are poor and badly governed respondent states more likely to lose?

Compelling empirical evidence on whether investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) is systematically biased against poor respondent states hardly exists. We focus on disentangling the effects of the respondent state’s per-capita income and the strength of domestic rule of law on ISDS outcomes. We find that both higher income and stronger than ‘normal’ rule of law reduce the probability of investor wins in international arbitration of disputes.     

Revisiting Sweden’s response to the Great Depression of the 1930s: economic policy in a regional context

This intra-Scandinavian comparison provides a corrective to existing comparative literature on Sweden's response to the Great Depression at three levels: policy conception, case selection and mode of explanation. The paper's holistic view of economic policy shows that the Swedish response was not just about fiscal policy. A broadly defined Swedish response becomes even less distinctive when compared with its Danish and Norwegian counterparts. The paper makes three points to explain the intra-Scandinavian variation (convergence and divergence). First, the regional-metropolitan context matters. Facing similar international challenges, the three small states developed a defensive reflex by striking domestic compromises, abandoning the gold standard, devaluing their currencies and effecting monetary expansion. Second, the political-economic development experience matters. On one hand, proportional representation entrenched Scandinavian farmers as a critical political force, thus ensuring agricultural protectionism across the region. On the other hand, the cross-national divergence in industrialisation largely shaped industrial policy: Sweden’s relative trade and domestic liberalism sharply contrasted with Denmark’s exchange controls and Norway’s import substitution. Third, ideology matters. Whereas the Danish Social Democrats’ traditional liberalism and their Norwegian counterparts’ radicalism buttressed fiscal orthodoxy, the Swedish Social Democrats’ ideational and programmatic renewal paved the way for the fiscal experiment of the crisis years.     

Boredom in Free Time: Relationships with Personality,Affect, and Motivation for Different Gender,Racial and Ethnic Student Groups

The propensity to experience boredom in free time was investigated by exploring relationships with the individual's demographic characteristics, personality, motivational orientation, and affective style assessed through group-administered questionnaires to 999 university students. The self-as-entertainment personality attribute consistently predicted the likelihood that students would be bored, and inverse relationships with extraversion and intrinsic motivational orientation were found for all student groups. Multiple regression analyses revealed that race, ethnicity, and gender were the only significant demographic predictors of the likelihood an individual would be bored in free time. Group similarities and differences in depicting students who were prone to experience boredom in free time are described.     

Quantifying the effects of capital controls in small states

Capital account liberalization can potentially have important effects on the economy. Numerous techniques have been employed in the literature to quantify these restrictions. These include ex-post macroeconomic indicators, regression-based indices and qualitative indices of capital control legislation. This paper evaluates the effect of the removal of capital account controls on small island developing states. In order to evaluate the robustness of the relationship between capital account liberalization and growth, the study uses a bootstrap approach to index construction. This approach allows one to assess the potential effects of differences in index specification as well as explain inconsistencies reported in the published literature. The results reported in the study suggest that the relationship between capital account liberalization and growth is fragile but positive. These results imply that the countries should approach capital account liberalization with caution, as simply removing restrictions does not guarantee growth.     

Power and developmental regimes in Singapore,China and Malaysia

This paper examines three developmental regimes in Singapore, China and Malaysia. In these three cases, heavy state intervention was necessary because their economies required significant economic restructuring. For Singapore, state intervention was necessary for the process of industrial transformation. For Malaysia, state intervention was necessary because the government wanted to reallocate economic resources as a means to deal with ethnic conflict. For China, state intervention was necessary in order to gradually “marketize” the socialist economy. The paper also briefly discusses the impact of the Asian Financial Crisis (1997–1999) on these developmental regimes. It finds that for all three cases, economic restructuring was successful because of long-term and heavy state intervention. It explains that, unlike the other developmental states of Asia, these developmental regimes were able to undertake such significant restructuring because of the state's power base, which even managed to survive the Asian Financial Crisis. It concludes with some comments about the future of state intervention in a rapidly globalizing world.     

Women in the Labor Market (Volumes I and II), edited by Marianne A. Ferber

Abstract

European states vary in eldercare policies and in gendered norms of family care, and this study uses these variations to gain insight into the importance of macro-level factors for the work–care relationship. Using advanced panel data methods on European Community Household Panel (ECHP) data for 1994–2001, this study finds women's employment to be negatively associated with informal caregiving to the elderly across the European Union. For the countries included in the study, the effects of informal caregiving seem to be more negative in Southern Europe, less negative in Nordic countries, and in between these extremes in Central Europe. This study explains that since eldercare is a choice in countries with more formal care and less pronounced gendered care norms, the weaker impact of eldercare on women's employment in these countries has to do with the lesser degree of coercion in the caring decision.