International marketing strategy in the retail banking industry: The case of ICICI Bank in Canada

This study presents an overview of the marketing strategy that a retail bank may pursue when it targets home country nationals in a foreign market. An analysis of the marketing strategy of ICICI Bank in Canada reveals that a transnational strategy coupled with an ethnocentric staffing policy allows the parent firm to retain control, while the choice of a subsidiary as an entry mode allows for local responsiveness. Further analysis illustrates that the blend of various variables in the services marketing mix (ie price, place, promotion, participants, physical evidence, and process) can help in attaining customer satisfaction.     

The performance implications of power–trust relationship: The moderating role of commitment in the supplier–retailer relationship

The current research examines how coercive power and non-coercive power affect trust and how these relationships are affected by affective and calculative commitment. It also expands the understanding of the role of an under-researched dimension of performance, i.e., strategic performance, and studies it as a mediating variable in the relationship between trust and financial performance. The proposed model is empirically tested using Partial Least Squares (PLS) in supplier–retailer channel in Taiwan. The findings reveal that affective commitment has a positive moderating effect on the negative relationship between coercive power and trust, while calculative commitment has a negative moderating effect on the positive relationship between non-coercive power and trust. The results also indicate that strategic performance partially mediates the effect of trust on financial performance. The research advances theoretical understanding on the complex power–trust relationship and provides insights into the role of commitment in both enabling and undermining channel relationships. The findings highlight the importance of building affective commitment in channel relationships and the critical role of strategic performance in the trust–financial performance relationship.     

The Location Choices of Foreign Investors: A District‐level Analysis in India

This paper analyses the determinants of the location choices made by foreign investors at the district level in India to gauge the relative importance of economic geography factors, local business conditions, institutional conditions and the presence of previous foreign investors. We employ a discrete‐choice model and Poisson regressions to control for the potential violation of the assumption of independence of irrelevant alternatives. Our sample includes about 19,500 foreign investment projects approved in 447 districts from 1991 to 2005. We find that foreign investors strongly prefer locations where other foreign investors are. This effect is significantly positive and robust across different years, sectors and different types of foreign direct investment (FDI). Moreover, path dependence remains significantly positive when controlling for institutional conditions at the state and district level. Foreign investors tend to follow not only previous investors from the same country of origin but also investors from other countries of origin. They are also attracted to industrially diverse locations and to districts with better infrastructure and institutional conditions, although these findings are less robust. Surprisingly, districts in the neighbourhood of large metro areas do not benefit, in terms of attracting more FDI, from having easier access to these markets than remote Indian districts. On the contrary, our results suggest that large metro areas divert FDI projects away from neighbouring districts, thereby perpetuating or even widening the urban–rural divide. We conclude that the concentration of FDI in a few locations could fuel regional divergence in post‐reform India.     

The moderating effect of nationality on crowding perception,its antecedents,and coping behaviours: A study of an urban heritage site in Taiwan

Due to the significant increase in international tourism arrivals, academic attention that addresses the heterogeneity among nationals with respect to the congestion impact at attraction sites is called for. This study evaluates the moderating effect of nationality on crowding perception, its antecedents, and coping behaviours in order to identify the sensitivity of user groups towards crowding issues. A Taiwanese urban historical site was selected as a case study to assess the differences among domestic Taiwanese, mainland Chinese, and foreign visitors in response to an increase in use pressure. Results supported the moderating effect of nationality on all crowding relationships, and indicated that Taiwanese and foreign visitors were more crowd intolerant and had a higher tendency to engage in coping behaviours than those from mainland China. Good crowding perception, social norms for acceptable behaviours, travel format, and bilateral sociopolitical relationships are suggested as explanations for user differences.