Intra and inter-country comparative effects of symbolic motivations on luxury purchase intentions in emerging markets

Emerging markets, and especially lower-tier cities within these markets, are seen as the future growth engines for luxury brands. However, extant literature on the drivers of luxury consumption has predominantly focused on Tier-1 cities. Grounded in the theory of network effects, this study offers first such intra and inter-country comparison of the symbolic motivations (i.e. snob, bandwagon and Veblen motivations) underpinning luxury purchases between and within Tier-1 and lower-tier cities in two prominent emerging markets, China and India. The findings offer first account of similarities and differences in consumer motivations that drive luxury consumption within and between these markets. While most luxury brands have ubiquitous strategies for emerging markets, the results will assist managers in developing distinctive brand strategies catering to the intra and inter-country differences.     

Unfilled orders and price changes: A simultaneous equations system

We have developed and statistically estimated a model which suggests that chances in price and in unfilled orders are simultaneously determined. Estimated systems for five industries suggest that, in the short run, unfilled order accumulations do absorb fluctuations. Our statistical analysis also indicates that anticipated increases in demand will affect current price adjustments if the increased demand is expected to lead to an acceleration in production rates in the not-too-distant future. The statistically determined weights of the industrial activity variable suggests that price is primarily determined more by the future conditions than ex post indications of industrial activity levels. Our analysis also supports Zarnowitz's interindustry comparison hypothesis that price responses are inversely related to the ratios of mean unfilled orders of shipments.     

Unbiased product estimators

Summary The paper presents a comparative study of product estimators proposed byRobson [1957] andMurthy [1964]. It is seen that the Robson's estimator gives a better performance.     

Managing Customer Relations in a Modern Business Environment: Towards an Ecosystem-Based Sustainable CRM Model

The adoption of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has witnessed tremendous growth across sectors, geographies, and management cultures in the last several decades. The perception of CRM as an IT-based tool has undergone a paradigm shift and is now treated as a strategic indulgence by modern-day businesses where IT is an indispensable enabler. CRM has garnered the interest of both academicians and practitioners over the years. In this article, the authors establish the value of sustainability in CRM and make an attempt at proposing a conceptual framework for modern businesses through its integration with various social networking sites that produces volumes of real-time data. The article also explores the importance of Customer Experience Management (CEM). The authors provide a thorough investigation of CRM models in the period of 1990 to 2016 through a survey of the literature explaining the need for managing experiences and engagement around existing CRM processes. In addition to exploring the intricate relationship between CRM and CEM, the authors also provide an interactive ecosystem-based framework for the creation of a sustainable CRM framework.     

Algorithm portfolios for logistics optimization considering stochastic demands and mobility allowance

The vehicle routing problem with stochastic demand (VRPSD) is a well known NP-hard problem. The uncharacteristic behaviour associated with the problem enhances the computational efforts required to obtain a feasible and near-optimal solution. This paper proposes an algorithm portfolio methodology based on evolutionary algorithms, which takes into account the stochastic nature of customer demand to solve this computationally complex problem. These problems are well known to have computationally complex objective functions, which make their solutions hard to find, particularly when problem instances of large dimensions are considered. Of particular importance in such situations is the timeliness of the solution. For example, Apple was forced to delay their shipments of iPads internationally due to unprecedented demand and issues with their delivery systems in Samsung Electronics and Seiko Epson. Such examples illustrate the importance of stochastic customer demands and the timing of delivery. Moreover, most of the evolutionary algorithms, known for providing computationally efficient solutions, are unable to always provide optimal or near optimal solutions to all the VRPSD instances within allocated time interval. This is due to the characteristic variations in the computational time taken by evolutionary algorithms for same or varying size of the VRPSD instances. Therefore, this paper presents portfolios of different evolutionary algorithms to reduce the computational time taken to resolve the VRPSD. Moreover, an innovative concept of the mobility allowance (MA) in landmoves based on the levy’s distribution function has been introduced to cope with real situations existing in vehicle routing problems. The proposed portfolio approach has been evaluated for the varying instances of the VRPSD. Four of the existing metaheuristics including Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), Artificial Immune System (AIS), TABU Search (TS) along with new neighbourhood search, are incorporated in the portfolios. Experiments have been performed on varying dimensions of the VRPSD instances to validate the different properties of the algorithm portfolio. An illustrative example is presented to show that the set of metaheuristics allocated to certain number of processors (i.e. algorithm portfolio) performed better than their individual metaheuristics.     

Estimation of a regression coefficient after two preliminary tests of significance

Summary The estimation of the regression coefficient of a population, defined byE (y)= +x, incorporating two preliminary tests of significance has been discussed. The experimenter has two random samples of different sizes from two such populations, as defined above, with regression coefficients ₁ and ₂ respectively, where ₂ may possibly be equal to ₁. Besides this, it is also conjectured that the common conditional variance ² of the two populations has a specified value ₀ ² . The two preliminary tests are used to resolve these two uncertainties.The author has rejoined Lucknow University, Lucknow India on Oct. 4, 1976 after availing leave for two years.     

Environmental supply chain management in the construction sector: theoretical underpinnings

Environmental implications of a product/project are typically spread across its supply chain, from design through to end-of-life. This is particularly acute for construction sector because of the inherent nature and complexity of its supply chain. The sector, therefore, could benefit from the application of environmental supply chain management (ESCM), a systematic and integrated approach towards restraining the adverse environmental impacts emanating from the supply chain. Unfortunately, uptake of ESCM in construction vis-à-vis other sectors is limited and fragmented. This formed the motivation, which using 39 interviews across 20 firms in the UAE construction sector, provide systemic insights on the various facets of ESCM namely, core and facilitating environmental practices, internal and external drivers (pressures/motives) and barriers/challenges affecting environmental practices’ implementation, and relevant environmental performance measures across different firm types and stakeholders with the support of several established/emerging theories. The findings is expected to enhance the application of ESCM in construction.     

Corporate governance and IPO underpricing in a cross‐national sample: A multilevel knowledge‐based view

Prior studies of IPO underpricing, mostly using agency theory and single‐country samples, have generally fallen short. In this study, we employ the knowledge‐based view (KBV) to explore underpricing across 17 countries. We find that agency indicators are insignificant predictors, board of director knowledge limits underpricing, and external knowledge both substitutes for and complements internal board knowledge. This third finding suggests that future KBV studies should consider how internal and external knowledge states interact with each other. Our study offers new insights into the antecedents of underpricing and extends our understanding of comparative governance and the KBV of the firm. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Linking Sources of Consumer Confusion to Decision Satisfaction: The Role of Choice Goals

Previous empirical research on the relationship between consumer confusion and customer satisfaction has largely neglected the role of choice goals. In a context of technologically complex products, the authors analyze the effect of selected choice goals on the consumer confusion‐decision satisfaction link. The empirical findings, which are based on a field study of smart phone users, show that different sources of confusion have distinctive effects on choice goals, which in turn influence decision satisfaction. For example, while confusion caused by ambiguous information and choice overload is found to reduce choice confidence, perceived attribute similarity between products or brands increases choice confidence. Among the choice goals, evaluation costs and negative affect are found to increase decision satisfaction. The findings have important implications for marketers and consumer policymakers in terms of marketing communication and customer satisfaction.