Search results

Fonkoze is the largest Microfinance Institution in Haiti whose clients are mostly poor women. The authors had access to documents and meetings of the organization for an extended period, and observed the growth of the organization from a single office to 21 branch offices. In so doing, their staff had to spend increasing time in fundraising so that they could make more loans to the existing and new customers. This case presents the decisions of the Board and the management to alleviate some of those problems. Against a backdrop of political and civil turmoil, the case could be instructive for students and instructors alike. The Board had to decide whether to apply for status as a regulated bank, or to transform into some other financial entity.

Reports on a case study conducted at Fairfield University, USA, on the rapid increase in information technology implementation. The study replicated the work of Levy and extended it by examining aspects of the Internet, World Wide Web, and client/server computing. Survey instruments were the primary means of data collection, augmented by interviews and internal documents. The results show potentially large increases in expenditure ahead as users feel the need to use the new technology. Users, however rejected most of the listed sources of funds to pay for the increase in expenditure. Recommendations include more formal server capacity planning and configuration, and shorter information technology planning cycles.

The current Industry 4.0 era is considered not only as a process that dominates technological developments but also as a process that influences the leadership styles. Management 4.0 is essential for businesses to find and apply the appropriate technologies in the age of Industry 4.0. The leadership styles that business managers will adopt in order to be successful in this process and to survive in an intensely competitive environment can play an important role. At this point, a significant problem arises: identifying leadership styles that will bring success. In this context, the primary purpose of this chapter is to explain the modern leadership styles that business managers can adopt or follow in the age of Industry 4.0. In line with this purpose, the chapter first describes the historical development of leadership, leadership theories and modern leadership styles, such as transactional, transformational, technological, strategic, visionary and agile leadership, and all these concepts are discussed based on the Industry 4.0 perspective.

This chapter examines patterns of neighbouring in the small Essex town of ‘Eastside’, located in London’s eastern suburban periphery. Drawing on qualitative interviews, two groups of resident interviewees are discussed: established, long-term, white British residents who have lived in Eastside for many years, and ethnically diverse newcomers who have recently moved to the area. This chapter focuses on patterns of neighbouring – both positive in the form of ‘neighbourliness’ and negative in terms of ‘unneighbourliness’ – and considers whether neighbouring provided the basis for residents to develop a sense of community. Basic neighbouring activities, such as saying ‘hello’ and the mutual provision of support, were commonplace, although proactive intervention and socialising with neighbours were more limited. Only a minority of both long-term and incoming interviewees identified a sense of community based upon neighbouring. The dominant aspect of the former’s sense of community was a ‘narrative of decline’ in which they lamented the loss of the more intense neighbourliness that they recalled from the past. Unneighbourliness was also evident, for example, in relation to noise, and various reasons for this are analysed including deficiencies within the physical environment, tenure prejudice, and established/newcomer resident tensions.

This paper examines the effects of virtual advertising in a sports broadcast setting. We analyse the conspicuousness of virtual advertising and match the results with explanatory variables like brand awareness, duration of exposure and frequency of exposure. Furthermore, we measure the role of attitudes towards advertising in general and its impact on attitudes towards virtual advertising of the respondents. Our results indicate that most respondents recognise virtual advertising as such. Advertising effectiveness is driven to a large degree by the frequency of exposure. A positive attitude towards advertising in general leads to a positive attitude towards virtual advertising of the participants.

This study links ethnic identity and global identity with perceptions of brand globalness (BG) and brand local iconness (BLI) regarding home country brands. Identity Theory considers consumer behavior as driven by multiple identities concurrently and interactively.

Samples from two populations, Mexicans living in Mexico and Mexican Americans in the United States, were exposed to eight randomly presented real-world Mexican brands, followed by existing measures for several constructs. Comparing such populations is uniquely appealing for studies of immigrants’ home country brands. Data is analyzed via linear regression.

Ethnic and global identities have an interactive effect on BG, BLI, and purchase intention even after controlling for ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism. With the interaction term between ethnic identity and global identity included in the model, (a) global identity exhibits more efficacy than ethnic identity in explaining purchase intention; and (b) relationships involving BLI grow stronger while those involving BG become weaker. The direction of the effect of global identity depends on whether BG or BLI serves as the mediator. Ethnic identity has a significant effect on purchase intention through BLI among Mexican Americans.

Simultaneous focus on two interacting identities is novel in the international branding space. This approach is useful for illuminating the effects of brand attributes including BG and BLI as well as studying branding effects where self-symbolizing is of interest.

This article compares consumer decision‐making styles between Singaporeans and Australians. Utilising Hofstede’s framework, the paper argues that cultural dimensions influence consumer decision making styles. It is essential that managers understand cross‐cultural consumer decision‐making styles to make strategic decisions or effectively handle members of these nationalities. Marked differences were found between the two populations for: brand consciousness, innovativeness and overchoice confusion. The results suggest that some consumer decision‐making styles differ due to consumers’ cultural values. Managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.

This paper aims to apply the Product Life Cycle (PLC) and Product Evolutionary Cycle (PEC) frameworks to the nicotine and tobacco market to predict the impact of television commercials for electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) on youth.

Surveys were administered over a three-year period to 417 alternative high school students from Southern California who had never used e-cigarettes, cigarettes or cigars at the baseline. Covariate-adjusted logistic regression causal mediation models were used to test competing hypotheses from the PLC and PEC frameworks.

Results support a refined version of the PEC framework where e-cigarette commercials increase the odds of e-cigarette use, which leads to subsequent use of competing products including cigarettes and cigars.

This investigation demonstrates the utility of frameworks that conceptualize youth-oriented marketing as a two-part process in which potential customers are first convinced to adopt a behavior and then enticed to use a specific product to enact the behavior.

Rising rates of nicotine and tobacco product use among youth may be partially attributable to e-cigarette commercials.

Regulations in the USA that permit television commercials for e-cigarettes but restrict the promotion of cigarettes and cigars have created an opportunity to study product adoption among youth consumers when one product has a strategic marketing advantage.