Multinational Headquarters Control of UK Subsidiaries' Advertising Decisions

This study confirms the relative importance of the multinational headquarters international coordinator as a main player in UK subsidiary-advertising agency relations. Five alternative headquarter strategies towards the subsidiary's advertising decision making are identified and their rationales discussed. In general, international headquarter advertising personnel are shown to have substantial control over strategic advertising decisions but allow local adaptation at a tactical level. The research also suggests that during the 1980s such control increased, and that a greater degree of standardized advertising decision making may be expected in the future.     

Using Artificial Neural Networks to forecast Exchange Rate,including VAR‐VECM residual analysis and prediction linear combination

The Euro US Dollar rate is one of the most important exchange rates in the world, making the analysis of its behavior fundamental for the global economy and for different decision‐makers at both the public and private level. Furthermore, given the market efficiency of the EUR/USD exchange rate, being able to predict the rate's future short‐term variation represents a great challenge. This study proposes a new framework to improve the forecasting accuracy of EUR/USD exchange rate returns through the use of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) together with a Vector Auto Regressive (VAR) model, Vector Error Corrective model (VECM), and post‐processing. The motivation lies in the integration of different approaches, which should improve the ability to forecast regarding each separate model. This is especially true given that Artificial Neural Networks are capable of capturing the short and long‐term non‐linear components of a time series, which VECM and VAR models are unable to do. Post‐processing seeks to combine the best forecasts to make one that is better than its components. Model predictive capacity is compared according to the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) as a loss function and its significance is analyzed using the Model Confidence Set. The results obtained show that the proposed framework outperforms the benchmark models, decreasing the RMSE of the best econometric model by 32.5% and by 19.3% the best hybrid. Thus, it is determined that forecast post‐processing increases forecasting accuracy.     

Religious commitment related to message contentiousness

Using an experimental design, we tested whether viewers with differing levels of religious commitment have differing unaided recall, aided recall and attitudes towards non-contentious and contentious TV commercials in terms of their perceived message cues. The study, using Bahrani Muslim interviewees, demonstrates that religiously stricter Muslims have significantly lower recall and a more negative attitude towards messages perceived as contentious, while their recall and attitude scores for non-contentious messages are similar to those of subjects with lower levels of religious commitment. We recommend that international marketers show increased sensitivity to the cultures and traditions of submarkets by manipulating message cues, like music and dancing, to strengthen the brand communication while retaining its strategic integrity.     

Commonalities in the Reasons for Switching Advertising Agencies: Corroboratory Evidence from New Zealand

Our replication study in New Zealand of failed advertising agency-client relationships provides findings to support previous UK and US research that a common set of reasons appears to exist, both between countries and over time, to explain why breakups occur. Advertisers responsible for over half of advertising account switches in New Zealand between 1993 and 1994 gave identical rankings to their counterparts in the UK and USA on the general factors explaining breakups, and also similar ratings on the relative importance of the thirty-five detailed variables associated with failure.     

房地产是厌恶性行业吗?

正对于大部分遵守游戏规则的开发商来说,每一个项目的风险和回报都是成比例的。"暴利"不过是个美丽的误会。香港近年来流行一个新兴的贬义词,叫做"地产霸权"。在国内,开发商也屡屡被部分人批评为"暴利行业",是高房价的始作俑者和得益者。为了社会稳定和谐,这个"暴利行业"被驯服在宏观调控政策或者小业主的维权光环下,是何等的大快人心!     

Perceptual gaps and similarities in buyer-seller dyadic relationships

The research aims to develop a conceptual framework to explore dyadic relationships across a range of industries, involving firms of different size (Medium Sized Enterprise (MSE) suppliers and Multinational Enterprise (MNE) buyers). The purpose is to explore dyadic views of three different relationship durations, identify where perceptual gaps may exist at the various stages, and address these in order to improve relational exchange. A triangulated methodology is implemented with data initially obtained from fifty-four dyads. These findings suggest: a) similar views are associated with the performance and importance attached to four relationship dimensions measured, b) significant perceptual differences are more apparent in shorter term relationships, c) overall suppliers have stronger views of the relationship, and d) relationships may not necessarily follow a linear development path over time. Three case studies offer qualitative insights, several managerial implications are extracted, and a strategic matrix developed related to the management of different typologies of relationship exchange.     

Organizations buying in new task and rebuy situations

Findings from a study of British industrial marketing managers support seven hypotheses on the relationship between buying classes and buying phases. Differences in the composition and size of buying centers in straight rebuy, modified rebuy, and new-task buying situations are examined. The managerial and theoretical implications of the study are discussed and compared with earlier work on organizational buying processes. The findings are related to the need for direct observation studies of buying decisions and behavior.     

New perspectives on marketing mix programme standardisation

The marketing mix programme standardisation/localisation policies of 63 UK multinationals operating in a developing market (the six Gulf States) are examined, using a three-factor, 53-variable model of country, firm and marketing mix programme factors. The research framework is unusually broad compared with other standardisation studies, which have also tended to concentrate more on the developed than the developing economies. Three firm variables and three country variables correlate closely with differing degrees of marketing mix programme standardisation. Product strategies are much more standardised and promotion, distribution and price more localised. Unexpectedly, industrial product firms appear to be no more standardised in marketing mix programmes than consumer goods firms in the Gulf. British Multinationals tend to treat the six Gulf states as a single market cluster with only minor variations between each state.     

Evaluating business value of IT towards optimisation of the application portfolio

Information technology has become heavily embedded in business operations. As business needs change over time, IT applications are expected to continue providing required support. Whether the existing IT applications are still fit for the business purpose they were intended or new IT applications should be introduced is a strategic decision for business, IT and business-aligned IT. In this article, we present a method that aims to analyse business functions and IT roles and to evaluate business-aligned IT from both social and technical perspectives. The method introduces a set of techniques that systematically supports the evaluation of the existing IT applications in relation to their technical capabilities for maximising business value. Furthermore, we discuss the evaluation process and results that are illustrated and validated through a real-life case study of a UK borough council and followed by discussion on implications for researchers and practitioners.