Well-being effects of self-employment: A spatial inquiry

Our paper presents an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial well-being using a large-scale longitudinal household survey from the UK that tracks almost 50,000 individuals across seven waves over the period 2009–2017, as well as a number of exploratory case studies. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating how entrepreneurial well-being varies across locations along the urban-rural continuum, and across wealthy-deprived neighbourhoods. We use a Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) approach to compare the well-being outcomes of individuals who switch into self-employment from waged employment, and show that entrepreneurial well-being, in the form of job satisfaction, is significantly higher for those living in semi-urban locations, relative to those living in urban and rural locations. We argue that semi-urban locations provide an optimal combination of ease of doing business and quality of life. Our results also show that individuals in wealthy neighbourhoods who switch into self-employment experience higher job satisfaction than otherwise comparable individuals living in materially deprived neighbourhoods, although the latter experience greater levels of life satisfaction following the switch.     

Income comparison,collectivism and life satisfaction in Turkey

The current research examines the impact of income comparisons on life satisfaction in Turkey which has a feature of “collectivism” or “low individualism”. This is done by analyzing the results of the “Life Satisfaction Survey” applied by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) for 2011. Using ordered logit estimations, this paper reveals that most of the income comparison, interaction variables and socio-economic variables have a significant explanatory power on life satisfaction levels in Turkey. The main emphasis of the paper is that reference group’s self-reported life satisfaction is related to income comparisons, along with other socioeconomic factors. The impact of comparisons is asymmetric, in that in most cases, under-performing one’s benchmark had a greater effect than out-performing it.     

Innovation Strategy and Entry Deterrence

We model an incumbent’s decision to pursue radical or incremental innovation when facing a rival entrant. The radical innovation may yield lucrative financial returns but entails significant technological and market‐related uncertainties. It is also particularly attractive to the rival entrant: if the market for it pans out, such an innovation obsoletes the existing technology and any incremental improvements to it. Each firm has its own assessment of the market potential for the radical innovation, and the reliability of these market forecasts can differ. We show that when the entrant’s market‐assessment capability is weak, the incumbent will pursue incremental innovation and postpone its plans to develop radical innovation even when it thinks highly of the market potential for the radical innovation. The incumbent does so to avoid validating the high market potential to the entrant, who may otherwise be encouraged to invest aggressively. The incumbent thus prefers to look “soft” with respect to its innovation strategy in order to discourage entry. Even if its innovation strategy is not observable, we show that an incumbent that assesses the commercial potential for a radical innovation favorably may pursue an incremental path and communicate its plans publicly; this strategy serves to reduce entry by affecting the entrant’s beliefs about the market potential of the innovation. Finally, we extend the model to investigate the entrant’s decision to communicate its innovation intentions. We find that the entrant communicates its plans to aggressively pursue radical innovation only if the incumbent’s market‐assessment capabilities are strong. In doing so, the entrant acts preemptively to discourage the incumbent from pursuing the radical innovation, and is less concerned with validating market potential.     

Can free-shipping hurt online retailers?

Quantitative Marketing and Economics - In this paper, we investigate optimal pricing strategies for an online grocery retailer that derives its profits from delivery fees and grocery sales. We base...     

The role of family conglomerates in emerging markets: What Western companies should know

Large, diversified, family‐owned businesses are dominant players in the economies of most emerging markets and can be excellent business partners for Western companies. This article highlights the evolutionary patterns of family conglomerates (FCs) and delineates principal drivers of their growth, expansion, and internationalization. Those aspects of FCs examined in this study include early mover advantages, foreign alliances, competitive market positioning, and diversification. Also discussed are entry‐mode considerations for Western companies contemplating doing business in the fast‐growth markets of East Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Alliance orientation: Conceptualization, measurement, and impact on market performance

Interfirm collaborations have inspired a rich literature in marketing and strategy during the past two decades. Building on this extant work, the authors developed a new construct, alliance orientation, and explored its influence on firms’ alliance network performance and market performance. The authors drew on data collected from 182 U.S. firms with extensive experience informing, developing, and managing strategic alliances in marketing, new product development, distribution, technology, and manufacturing projects. Using structural equations modeling, the authors demonstrate that alliance orientation significantly affects alliance network performance, which in turn enhances market performance. The findings also suggest that market turbulence exerts a significant moderating influence on the relationship between alliance orientation and alliance network performance, whereas the moderating role of technological turbulence on that relationship does not appear to be significant. The study provides evidence that firms’ alliance orientations positively affect their performance in strengthening their alliance network relationships and in managing conflicts with their alliance partners. Destan Kandemir (kandemir@msn.edu) is a research associate in Center for International Business Education and Research at Michigan State University. She earned her PhD in marketing and international business from Michigan State University. Her articles have appeared in theJournal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, theJournal of International Marketing, and theJournal of Management. Her research interests include firm resources and capabilities, market-oriented knowledge management, and global alliance management. Attila Yaprak (attila.yaprak@wayne.edu) is a professor of marketing and international business at Wayne State University. He received his PhD from Georgia State University. His research interests include cross-national consumer behavior, global marketing strategy, and international alliances. His research has appeared in theJournal of International Business Studies, theJournal of International Marketing, theJournal of Business Research, andPolitical Psychology, among others. S. Tamer Cavusgil (cavusgil@msu.edu) is University Distinguished Faculty and the John W. Byington Endowed Chair in Global Marketing in the Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Michigan State University.     

Strategic Alignment and New Product Development: Drivers and Performance Effects

Strategic alignment is widely accepted as a prerequisite for a firm's success, but insight into the role of alignment in, and its impact on, the new product development (NPD) process and its performance is less well developed. Most publications on this topic either focus on one form of alignment or on one or a limited set of NPD performance indicators. Furthermore, different and occasionally contradictory findings have been reported. NPD scholars have long argued for the importance of fit between context and NPD activities. However, this body of literature suffers from the same weakness: most publications have a limited scope and the findings are not always consistent with results reported previously. This study addresses these deficiencies by examining (1) the effects of various internal and external factors on different forms of alignment, and (2) the effects of these forms of alignment on a set of NPD performance indicators. Strategic planning and innovativeness appear to affect technological, market, and NPD‐marketing alignment positively. Environmental munificence is negatively associated with NPD‐marketing alignment, but has no effect on the two other forms of alignment. Technological change has a positive effect on technological alignment, a negative effect on NPD‐marketing alignment, but no effect on market alignment. These findings suggest that internal capabilities are more likely to be associated with the development of strategic alignment than environmental factors are. Furthermore, technological and NPD‐marketing alignment affect NPD performance positively, while market alignment does not have any significant performance effects.     

IPO mechanism selection by using Classification and Regression Trees

The Turkish IPO market gives issuers and underwriters a choice of three different IPO selling mechanisms. The current paper sheds new light on the determinants of these issue procedures within the context of the following methods (i) book building mechanism, (ii) fixed price offer, and (iii) sale through the stock exchange. Most of the empirical models in the IPO literature use binary probit and logit models to determine the factors behind the choice of one method over another and try to answer the question of “why is such a mechanism chosen”. To understand the reasons on issuers’ selection of IPO mechanism, we have conducted a Classification and Regression Trees (CART) methodology to represent decision rules in a form of binary trees. Our results indicate that, CART methodology predicts a firms’ IPO selling mechanism with 77.42% accuracy. The most important variable that determines the IPO selling mechanism is the Arrangement Type between the issuer and the underwriter as in the form of best effort and firm-commitment.     

INTEREST RATE RULES AND WELFARE IN OPEN ECONOMIES

This paper analyses the welfare performance of a set of five alternative interest rate rules in an open economy stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities. A rule with a lagged interest rate term, high feedback on inflation and low feedback on output is found to yield the highest welfare for a small open economy. This result is robust across different degrees of openness, different sources of home and foreign shocks, alternative foreign monetary rules and different specifications for price-setting behaviour. The same rule emerges as both the Nash and cooperative equilibria in a two-country version of the model.     

The relationship between corporate reputation and organizational citizenship behavior: a comparative study on TV companies and banks

Corporate reputation (CR) is an increasingly emphasized issue in the management and organizational studies. Many research studies on the corporate reputation have revealed the impact of that issue on the informal performances of employees. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between corporate reputation and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The survey method has been conducted through random sampling. Four TV companies and four banks have been included in the survey. Results have been evaluated comparatively across two different sectors. The research has been composed of two parts; in the first part the corporate reputations of the chosen companies have been measured according to the Cravens et al. (2003) index. In the second part of the research the organizational citizenship behaviors of the employees in the eight companies have been measured and the relationship between corporate reputations of the companies and the employees’ OCBs have been analyzed through the correlation and regression analysis. It is revealed that there is a statistically significant effect of CR on OCB.