Exploring Critical Factors of Macau's Heritage Tourism: What Heritage Tourists are Looking for when Visiting the City's Iconic Heritage Sites

Although Macau is widely stigmatized as a gambling paradise, its colonial past has left the city with a wealth of heritage and cultural attractions that can be converted into priceless tourism resources. Macau's status as world heritage city further creates opportunities for the city to develop its heritage tourism business. This requires Macau to understand heritage tourists whose needs and wants may vary from ordinary travelers. A review of the literature, however, indicates that most academic discussions of Macau heritage are from a history or conservation perspective rather than from the prism of tourism; because of this, the present study aims to explore, from a tourism perspective, the critical factors that are essential to enhance tourist experience when visiting Macau's major heritage sites.     

Defensive Strategy’s Effect on Firm Value: Evidence from Public-Listed Companies in Malaysia

This study examines the relationship between defensive strategy and firm value for a sample of 596 listed firms in Malaysia over the period 2008 to 2015. For the sake of robustness, the institutional setting is considered in this research by gauging the ownership structure. More specifically, this study seeks to determine whether a firm’s ownership structure might have a significant contribution to the value of its defensive strategy. Additionally, the value creation of defensive strategy is compared among family firms, government-linked firms, and foreign firms. This study concludes that defensive strategy, especially retrenchment strategy, has a positive significance on a firm’s excess value. This implies that defensive strategy will improve the firm performance. The reduction of the costs and assets, the efficiency of monitoring structure, the threat of dismissal, and the promotion of stewardship can enhance a firm’s benefits. Low profitability is found to be better for the firm performance. However, the ownership structures of government-linked and foreign firms tend to have a discount value on the excess value when these firms adopt retrenchment actions. The implication of this study lies in two main points. Firstly, it enriches the body of knowledge by showing how an effective defensive strategy creates value, and the role corporate governance plays in that relationship. Secondly, it helps to inform regulator and policymakers about how defensive strategy might have a good corporate governance to create value.     

An exploratory study on the returns management process in an online retailer

The returns management process is gaining increasing importance both in academia and among supply chain professionals, not only as a tool in the practice of sustainability, but also for its strategic role in many economic sectors. Several studies show how efficiently returns management can reduce costs and provide a competitive advantage to companies. Likewise, electronic commerce, or e-commerce, has shown significant growth in many countries and, due to its very nature, it presents much higher return rates than traditional trade. However, despite the importance of returns management operation for electronic commerce, few studies explore this theme in the literature. The aim of this paper is to describe the process of returns management of the largest online retailer of the Brazilian market, showing its evolution and analysing its performance, as well as identifying its main shortcomings. We conclude with suggestions for improvements and the implementation of a more efficient system.