A Tri-Country Marketing Project – Preparing Students for the Realities of a Global Marketplace

With rapidly increasing globalization, business students are required to understand complex global markets and adapt to the rapid changes in the global landscape. This paper discusses a project where students from International Marketing courses in Pakistan, the United States, and France used an interactive platform as a base to jointly explore the marketing of brand-name products across the three countries to better understand the realities of global marketing strategies. The results are discussed as are the difficulties and the recommendations for future projects.     

Mindset drives success: Selling beneficial products at the base of the pyramid

Why are so few organizations selling beneficial products at the base of the pyramid (BoP) successful? This is not simply a story of companies failing, and it is one with a dramatic consequence as low-income people do not benefit from products that can improve their way of life. Instead, they continue to drink unsafe water, cook on stoves that emit fumes that kill over 1 million people per year, light their homes with dangerous kerosene lamps, and fall ill from a mosquito bite. Based on a multiyear field research program conducted in 25 countries, we argue that having a specific mindset about BoP customers is consequential to an organization’s success. Many organizations start with the assumption that BoP customers lack money, knowledge, and jobs. By contrast, successful organizations start from the assumption that customers can and will pay if they are provided with a satisfactory solution to their needs and are reassured about the level of risk involved. We detail the different practices that follow from this mindset change in the areas of value proposition, communication, and distribution and show how these practices can make or break the organization’s financial sustainability.     

I thought it was over,but now it is back: customer reactions to <Emphasis Type="Italic">ex post</Emphasis> time extensions of sales promotions

In many industries, it is common practice to extend sales promotions ex post. That is, firms belatedly extend the initial deadline of a promotion shortly before or directly after the previously announced deadline, with the expectation of increased sales. Four experimental studies indicate both positive and negative effects of these ex post extensions. First, customers perceive an ex post extended promotional offer as less attractive, such that their repurchase intentions diminish. This negative effect arises consistently across different boundary conditions, such as different customer and product types. Second, the positive effect of ex post extensions stems from the possibility that the consumer can still use the promotional offer, so it emerges only for potential customers and existing customers of frequently bought products. Companies can mitigate the dark side of ex post extensions proactively, by designing the extensions to last for only a short time or offering an explanation for the extension that highlights the popularity of the initial promotion.     

The Meaning of Corporate Social Responsibility: The Vision of Four Nations

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has existed in name for over 70 years. It is practiced in many countries and it is studied in academia around the world. However, CSR is not a universally adopted concept as it is understood differentially despite increasing pressures for its incorporation into business practices. This lack of a clear definition is complicated by the use of ambiguous terms in the proffered definitions and disputes as to where corporate governance is best addressed by many of the national bodies legislating, mandating, or recommending CSR. This article explores the definitions of CSR as published on the Internet by governments in four countries (United Kingdom (UK), France, the United States, and Canada). We look for a consensus of understanding in an attempt to propose a more universal framework to enhance international adoption and practice of CSR using the triple bottom line. Our results concur with the findings of both national and international bodies and suggest that both within and among the countries in our study there exists no clear definition of the concept of CSR. While there are some similarities, there are substantial differences that must be addressed. We present a number of proposals for a more universal framework to define CSR.     

Individual Attitudes Towards Trade: Stolper-Samuelson Revisited

Open Economies Review - Using the 2007 wave of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, this paper finds statistically significant and economically large Stolper-Samuelson effects in individuals’...     

Immigrant selection before and after communism

The end of the Soviet Union and communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe led to sudden increases in emigration and large changes in wage inequality. This has provided a unique opportunity to understand how these changes altered incentives to emigrate during the transition period. In this paper, I analyze immigrant selection before and after the fall of the Soviet Union within a Roy Model framework, in which the relative return to skills determines the skill composition of immigrants. Using micro-level data from Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria, matched to Census data on immigrants from these countries in the United States, Spain and Greece in the post-Soviet period, I find evidence of positive selection of immigrants in the US, and negative selection for Greece and Spain. Using retrospective data from Ukraine during the communist period, I find that selection among Soviet men in the US was intermediate and selection among women was positive.     

Digitale Innovationen und Technologiesouveränität

Wirtschaftsdienst - Digitale Innovationen verändern zunehmend Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Es ist Aufgabe der Politik, diese Veränderungen im Dialog mit der Gesellschaft und im Einklang...