Building strong brands in Asia: selecting the visual components of image to maximize brand strength

Asian brands have often struggled to develop quality images. The visual aspects of branding have received little attention on how they might be used to strengthen brand perceptions in Asia. Guidelines for designing visual brand stimuli are developed using evaluations of logos in China and Singapore. There is a significant relationship between design and the responses companies seek, including positive affect, perceptions of quality, recognition, consensus in meaning, and feng shui. How designs are perceived, and their effect on consumer responses, were similar between China and Singapore. Companies are encouraged to leverage design to strengthen their brands. In particular, they should select logo designs that are elaborate, natural, and harmonious as these created positive affect and quality perceptions, clear meaning, true recognition, and feng shui. Many of these relationships hold in the United Sates as well, implying that the visual aspects of brand strategies may accomplish companies' goals across international borders.     

On Perceptions of Fairness: The Role of Valuations, Outside Options, and Information in Ultimatum Bargaining Games

This study examines fairness perceptions in ultimatum bargaining games with asymmetric payoffs, outside options, and different information states. Fairness perceptions were dependent on treatment conditions. Specifically, when proposers had higher chip values, dollar offers were lower than when responders had higher chip values. When responders had an outside option, offers were higher and were rejected less often than when proposers had an outside option. However, a given offer was rejected more often when responders had an outside option. Therefore, similar to the first mover advantage, the “advantaged” or “entitled” player received a higher monetary payoff than they would otherwise. When there was complete information about payoff amounts (payoff conversion rates and outside options), rejections occurred more often, and given offer amounts were rejected more often than when there was incomplete information. When there was incomplete information, offers were higher in the initial rounds than in the final rounds. These results suggest that proposers made offers strategically, making offers that would not be rejected, rather than out of a concern for fairness.     

Illustrating the Power of fsQCA in Explaining Paradoxical Consumer Environmental Orientations

Prior research on proenvironmental and prosocial behavior focuses primarily on explaining consistent rather than paradoxical tendencies. Even though this field receives wide attention from different scientific disciplines, findings for many causal factors of such proenvironmental orientation are contradictory. Nevertheless, knowing who those individuals are who think and behave in a pro‐/antienvironmental way or show a paradoxical behavior in this regard becomes useful for many different parties in human societies including public policy makers, governmental and nongovernmental environmental protection organizations, and for‐profit firms. Therefore, this study identifies those individuals who show neither consistent proenvironmental nor consistent antienvironmental tendencies as the “walkers‐only” and “talkers‐only” (i.e., for short, “walkers” and “talkers”). The former are defined as persons who put much effort into the recycling of waste materials but do not support pollution standards, whereas the latter term describes individuals who have a strong opinion with regard to the support of pollution standards yet do not engage in recycling efforts. The present study reports evidence of the existence of walkers and talkers. Further, this research is the first study to employ “fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis” to identify the complex antecedent conditions for some individuals’ paradoxical belief–behaviors in the field of socially and environmentally directed behaviors and orientations. The findings yield valuable insights both into the applicability and benefits of configural analysis and for public policy makers and managers in waste management and recycling industries.     

Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Sustainable Seafood Made in Europe

Sustainability of increasing relevance also for seafood markets. The aim of this contribution is to analyze consumer preferences and their willingness to pay (WTP) for different sustainability claims, and to identify consumer segments according to their WTP. The contingent valuation method was applied to elicit consumers’ WTP in eight European countries. The WTP varies between seven and almost 20%, depending on attribute and country. Three consumer groups become apparent: the largest group without any additional WTP, a smaller group with a moderate additional WTP of plus 17%, and a very small group with an additional WTP of more than 40%. Clear differences between countries are obvious regarding preferences for different sustainability attributes, particularly in the segment with the highest WTP. A fraction of the consumers is willing to pay significantly higher prices for sustainably produced fish from Europe: given that trustful standards are applied and well communicated.     

How to Overcome Pro‐Change Bias: Incorporating Passive and Active Innovation Resistance in Innovation Decision Models

Adoption literature is largely subject to a pro‐change bias; researchers mainly assume that consumers are open to change and thus interested in evaluating new products. However, consumers often reject innovations without considering their potential, such that the adoption process ends before it really has begun. The present study instead argues that innovation resistance, prior to product evaluation, is a regular consumer response that must be recognized and managed to facilitate new product adoption. The authors suggest differentiating passive from active innovation resistance. While passive innovation resistance results from a consumer's generic predisposition to resist innovations prior to new product evaluation, active innovation resistance is an attitudinal outcome that follows an unfavorable new product evaluation. This study also extends extant innovation decision models by describing how passive and active innovation resistance emerge and how they affect decision‐making in later stages of the process.     

Real exchange rate persistence and the excess return puzzle: The case of Switzerland versus the US

The PPP puzzle refers to the wide swings of nominal exchange rates around their long‐run equilibrium values whereas the excess return puzzle represents the persistent deviation of the domestic‐foreign interest rate differential from the expected change in the nominal exchange rate. Using the I(2) cointegrated VAR model, much of the excess return puzzle disappears when an uncertainty premium in the foreign exchange market, proxied by the persistent PPP gap, is introduced. Self‐reinforcing feedback mechanisms seem to cause the persistence in the Swiss‐US parity conditions. These results support imperfect knowledge based expectations rather than so‐called “rational expectations”.     

What do Agricultural Income and Productivity Measurements Really Mean?

Statistical data on labour productivity and income in agriculture reveal large discrepancies between various EC member states, both with respect to their absolute levels and in relation to non-farm productivity and income in the respective countries. Insofar as they appear to reflect the failure of markets in allocating agricultural resources efficiently, and seem to be inconsistent with conventional wisdom concerning structural adjustment of agriculture, however, it can be seen that those data are misleading to a large extent. Based on a simple model of optimal time allocation between farm and non-farm activities of members of farm households, it is demonstrated that farm labour productivity and income must be different according to differences in the relation of farm to non-farm labour supply. The implications concerning international, interregional, intersectoral and intertemporal comparisons of income and productivity are discussed as well as the relevance of market failure in agriculture.     

Dealing with Wicked Issues: Open Strategizing and the Camisea Case

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate, based on an extensive study of the Shell-led Camisea gas project in Peru, how what we believe to be a new approach to dealing with stakeholders, focusing on sense-making and combining industry dynamics and stakeholder empowerment, was developed. The project’s success was measured by the fact that, unlike similar projects around the world, it did not meet with major opposition during its 4-year life span. Those involved in the Camisea project succeeded in creating an open approach to building stakeholder relationships, allowing them to navigate through a number of diverse and challenging socio-political and ecological issues. An integral part of Shell’s approach was acting upon its commitment to high standards of operation and values. The insights from this case clearly indicate that stakeholder management and theorizing can profit from a less controlled, open and sense-making oriented strategizing with stakeholders.