Relationship equity and switching behavior in the adoption of new telecommunication services

This paper first defines and then presents a model of “relationship equity” for business markets. It points out that the potential benefits of managing relationship equity have been largely ignored and that a general model and stream of relevant research questions could be useful to marketing and relationship practitioners. The model developed considers the special case of key account management as antecedent, two different types of moderator variables, relationship equity as a perception by the buyer, and switching behavior via adoption of new telecommunication services as a result of this perception. The model is used as a basis for developing a number of working propositions.     

Enhancing Stock Market Return with New Product Preannouncements: The Role of Information Quality and Innovativeness

To advance development and application of signaling theory in the new product preannouncement literature while seeking to resolve ambiguity regarding the influence of innovativeness on stock market return, the role of information quality is examined. Specifically, this study investigates the effect of innovativeness across low and high levels of information quality. The results, ascertained using event study methodology on a sample of 243 new product preannouncements collected over a nine‐year period, indicate that higher information quality increases the strength of the positive relationship between innovativeness and stock market return. The findings offer managers insight into what role information quality plays in new product preannouncements that can help their firms generate higher stock market return.     

Aufdeckung von Versicherungsbetrug bei Kfz-Schäden mit Hilfe des Benford-Tests

The German Insurance Association estimates a yearly amount of damage of € 1.5?bn to German motor vehicle insurance companies because of systematic fraud by insurance holders. It is supposed that about 10% of submitted claim applications contain manipulated data, therefore insurance companies are forced to complete a detailed and cost intensive case-by-case review of each single application. An alternative method to detect fraud in empiric data is the method of digital analysis based on Benford’s law. The Benford method uses a mathematical law of specific logarithmic distribution attributes of first digits. According to this approach, the data of a Benford set confirm with the expected digit distribution, if the data is not manipulated, whereas fraudulent interventions lead to a deviation from Benford’s law. Hence, until now there has not been any investigation whether the Benford method can also be applied on insurance data. The present article analyses a dataset consisting of more than 120,000 damage claim applications to answer this question as well as to identify the impact of specific characteristics on the probability of fraud contained in claim applications, such as the repair of the vehicle in a franchised or an independent workshop, the vehicle brand or the examination by insurance companies experts. Indeed it could be shown that Benford’s Law is only applicable on second digits of insurance data, but delivers very strong results here: All results of the considered characteristics could be verified by plausible arguments. For this reason insurance companies can benefit from making use of the Benford method to identify those claim applications with a high probability of fraud, which should then be reviewed in more detail so that resources can be allocated in a much more cost efficient way.     

The Big Family: Informal Financing of Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Businesses by Guanxi

Guanxi facilitates interaction between companies and people in Confucian societies. Does this type of social construct still play the key role, when the entrepreneurs live in Western societies? The objective of this article is to verify the impact of Guanxi on the capacity of small and medium‐sized businesses accessing financial resources informally. To this end, data collected from small Chinese entrepreneurs active in the principal business center of Brazil were used. From nonparametric tests, the results suggest that: (1) different levels of Guanxi allow small and medium‐sized businesses to access informal financial resources; (2) different types of informal financing are mostly used, or judged to be more significant, depending on the level of Guanxi of the entrepreneur in terms of parental and nonfamily ties; and (3) unlike the Western literature on the financial cycles of start‐ups, this type of informal financing can extend beyond the initial stage of the business. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Secondary cancer rates following breast cancer diagnosis

Life table analysis and other mortality methods apply well to end points other than mortality. This paper demonstrates the application of mortality experience methodology to the recurrence of breast cancer and/or new primaries in women previously diagnosed with primary breast cancer. Specific recurrence rates are broken out by duration as well as attributes available at the time of primary breast cancer diagnosis: stage, histology, age band, and year of diagnosis. Use of attained age is demonstrated to control for the effect of aging over long durations. Breast cancer recurrence is shown to drop to a relatively low rate compared with the rate of new primary occurrence.     

When do B2B brands influence the decision making of organizational buyers? An examination of the relationship between purchase risk and brand sensitivity

The dominant perspective on organizational buying behavior suggests that buyers tend to rely on objective criteria when making product choice decisions and that the potential influence of subjective cues, such as brands, on buyer decision making decreases with increasing risk. An alternative perspective, confirmed in this study by in-depth interviews with various managers, suggests that brands serve as a risk-reduction heuristic, whereby the influence of brands on decision making increases as a function of risk. Building on risk and information processing theories, this research builds on these complementary perspectives to propose that risk and brand sensitivity relate in a U-shaped manner, where brand sensitivity is highest in relatively low- or high-risk situations. The results of scenario- and survey-based field studies—involving 206 and 180 members of buying centers, respectively—suggest that both perspectives have merit and support the proposed nonlinear relationship. Moreover, the findings reveal that the risk-brand sensitivity relationship is moderated by competitive intensity, such that the linear (negative) and quadratic (positive) effects are stronger when competitive intensity is low.     

Investigation of damage and repair of a 1000 MTD horizontal ammonia converter

An operational upset caused by a diapharagm failure in the high pressure casting of the synthesis gas compressor resulted in major pressure/flow surges in the synthesis loop.     

Environmental scanning the future of event design

This paper used multiple sources of information in order to identify the forces likely to impact event design. Content analysis of key informant interviews and selected trade publication articles identified key forces impacting event design. Technology, the environment and green issues, security and safety, and globalization were forces identified by both the key informants and the trade literature. Neither of the sources gave much attention to political forces. This article contributes to our understanding of the forces impacting event design and suggests some environmental scanning methodologies that can be used with both key informants and the trade publication literature.