Here be dragons… exploring the ‘unknown unknowns’

Since ancient times, the phrase ‘Here be Dragons’ has been used to signify dangerous and unexplored territories. While wayfarers of the past realised that lack of knowledge necessitated increased vigilance and caution, today's ‘Here be Dragons’ generally remain hidden and unwanted. Human psychology, institutional frameworks and scientific convention have removed these unrecognised sources of ignorance from the mental maps of modern society. This omission is critical in today's interconnected, interdependent world. It is now time to counter current myopia by using the new digital tools available to draw on wider societal framing in conjunction with scenarios methodologies. This process could provide the meta risk analysis suitable to enable the ‘Here be Dragons’ to be identified, monitored and tackled, thereby ensuring that decision-makers and ultimately society become more aware of intractable uncertainty and adaptive in the face of inevitable change.     

An Empirical Segmentation of Users of Mobile Banking Apps

Digital technologies have squeezed the entire world into a small frame. Trade and transactions never stop, and they go where the customer is. Marketers must reinvent their strategies and toolkits to win in this hyper-connected world. Companies are creating new and improved ways for engaging and involving their consumers, and one significant tool now used by companies for these purposes is the app. Mobile phones have registered the highest growth among all technological evolutions, and mobile apps are proliferating. Apps are being used across a diverse range of industry verticals, including banking, e-commerce, travel, and tourism. This article studies a set of twenty different banking apps and segments consumers based on their adoption and usage of the apps. This article emphasizes the role of mobile technologies to change established channels and banking services, and also analyzes how the Indian banking sector has benefited from the adoption of mobile apps.     

Developing countries' strategic opportunities

The rapid transition from the industrial age to the knowledge age may require developing nations to reassess their strategies toward the attraction of foreign investment. Highly focused technology villages based on the creation of industry-specific technology infrastructures blended with educated and trained nationals may be the best alternative for benefiting from the global economic changes. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Pricing and managing risks of ruin contingent life annuities under regime switching variance gamma process

We propose a model for valuing ruin contingent life annuities under the regime-switching variance gamma process. The Esscher transform is employed to determine the equivalent martingale measure. The PIDE approach is adopted for the pricing formulation. Due to the path dependency of the payoff of the insurance product and the non-existence of a closed-form solution for the PIDE, the finite difference method is utilized to numerically calculate the value of the product. To highlight some practical features of the product, we present a numerical example. Finally, we examine numerically the performance of a simple hedging strategy by investigating the terminal distribution of hedging errors and the associated risk measures such as the value at risk and the expected shortfall. The impacts of the frequency of re-balancing the hedging portfolio on the quality of hedging are also discussed.     

Section 1. Description of the Riskworld project process

This paper describes the Riskworld project design and process in further detail and provides an indication of how the ideas, key themes and questions evolved at each phase.     

The role of leadership in salespeople’s price negotiation behavior

Salespeople assume a key role in defending firms’ price levels in price negotiations with customers. The degree to which salespeople defend prices should critically depend upon their leaders’ influence. However, the influence of leadership on salespeople’s price defense behavior is barely understood, conceptually or empirically. Therefore, building on social learning theory, the authors propose that salespeople might adopt their leaders’ price defense behavior given a transformational leadership style. Furthermore, drawing on the contingency leadership perspective, the authors argue that this adoption fundamentally depends on three variables deduced from the motivation–ability–opportunity (MAO) framework, that is, salespeople’s learning motivation, negotiation efficacy, and perceived customer lenience. Results of a multi-level model using data from 92 salespeople and 264 salesperson–customer interactions confirm these predictions. The first to explore contingencies of salespeople’s adoption of their transformational leaders’ price negotiation behaviors, this study extends marketing theory and provides actionable guidance to practitioners.     

Ecological tourism in the state image policy structure. Experience and problems of modern Russia

The article deals with the problems of ecological tourism in Russia. The authors give various approaches to the understanding of ecological tourism in modern science, analyse the reasons of interest in this kind of tourism, consider its types and identify specific features. The article provides an overview of the main regions and countries where ecological tourism is developed at a high level and considers some national policy models in the field of ecological tourism. Specific attention is paid to the analysis of the development of ecological tourism in Russia and its current status; the examples of different programmes aiming at support of ecological tourism are given. Specific impetus is given to Russia's resources for the development of ecological tourism, for example, natural landscapes, national parks and nature heritage sites. The authors explore the main challenges to ecological tourism in Russia, identify factors that hinder its development and suggest measures to improve the ecological tourism in the Russian Federation. The authors focus on the projects that promote the improvement of Russia's image as an eco-touristic destination. The authors pay specific attention to the analysis of international cooperation in this field. The article discusses various projects carried out within the framework of bilateral cooperation. The article discusses the role of ecological tourism as a tool for image policy. The article analyses in detail which elements of the Russian image are under the influence of ecological tourism and what are the future prospects of ecological tourism.     

Examining shopping mall consumer decision-making styles,satisfaction and purchase intention

Understanding consumer decision-making (CDM) styles is essential for market segmentation, positioning and crafting marketing strategies within a market. Few studies have examined the structural relationship among decision-making styles that consumers exhibit during mall shopping, level of satisfaction and purchase intention. The purpose of this study was to examine CDM styles as the antecedents and predictors of level of satisfaction and purchase intention. Based on the Consumer Styles Inventory, eight CDM styles that individual exhibit during shopping mall activities are proposed in terms of utilitarian and hedonic perspectives. We hypothesize these eight CDM styles as a set of predictors of customer satisfaction and purchase intention. A total of 327 valid paper-and-pencil questionnaires were collected from several shopping malls in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Partial least squares (PLS) path modelling approach, a structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique was performed to test the proposed structural relationships. The empirical assessment supports that hedonic shopping styles consumers that exhibit high level of habitual, brand consciousness, fashion consciosness, recreational conscious style have lower levels of satisfaction and purchase intention during mall shopping while novelty and fashion conscious style consumers have lower level of satisfaction but do not unveil lower purchase intention. Utilitarian shopping styles consumers that exhibit high level of price conscious, confused by overchoice and high-quality conscious style have higher levels of satisfaction while impulsive/careless shoppers do not; and while price conscious, impulsive/careless, confused by overchoice consumers have higher levels of purchase intention but the high-quality conscious consumers do not unveil higher purchase intention. Further, there is a positive relationship between satisfaction and purchase intention. The practical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Analysis of travel and tourism competitiveness index in middle-east countries

The purpose of this research is to analyze tourism competitiveness in middle-east countries by using travel and tourism competitiveness index published in the report of the world economic forum. The used model is performed to analyze Promethee model and comparative analysis on the basis of data in 2015 and 2017. The analysis results showed that although Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon and yamen improved their situation in comparison to 2015, they couldn’t improve their own competition power in comparison to other middle-east countries, and they were located in the group of countries with lower tourism competitiveness.