Vol. 5(11) November 2012
Speed-Marketing: A New Strategy for Fast Decision-Making
Avichai Shuv-Ami
Marketing & Advertising Department, The College of Management,
7 Yizhak Rabin Blvd., Rishon Lezion 75190, ISRAEL
shuvami@gmail.com
Current marketing literature, academic and non-academic, offers very little in the
way of explaining the concept of "speed marketing". Most academic studies
deal with the problem of accelerating the time necessary to develop new products
in order to gain a time-to-market advantage. Non-academic papers mainly discuss
how to cut the time required in developing digital marketing strategies. But speed
marketing is much more than a time reduction tool. On the contrary, speed marketing
is a systematic, decision-making process that attempts to deal with unexpected (positive
or negative) marketing events that can affect the livelihood of a company. The current
paper proposes a six-step systematic process that can provide marketing managers
with the tools for operating methodically and efficiently under pressure and in
sometimes chaotic situations in order to solve problems and exploit opportunities.
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The Global Trends and Development in Financial Reporting – A study
Velavan M.
Shivani School of Business Management, Trichy Dindigul High Road, Navalur Kuttappattu,
Trichirappalli 620009 (Tamil Nadu), INDIA invitation@zorpia.com
The growing interest of the governments in publication of financial reports truly
reflecting the affairs of the country comparable with other countries and with different
periods has fuelled the interest for financial reporting reforms in the public sector.
Financial reports of the governments have to be relevant, reliable and easily understandable
to the common man. With the fall of Enron and WorldCom the importance of true and
fair reporting was understood by the entire world. The heat of these changes is
being felt by the governments and many undertook far reaching financial reporting
reforms. Already a handful of countries have moved towards accrual based accounting
while many more are in the migration path towards this difficult journey. New Zealand,
Australia, United States, Canada and United Kingdom were in the forefront of this
force while the others are following the trend. International Federation of Accountants
(IFAC) has made a commendable commitment towards this effort by publishing International
Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) and other study reports including Transition
to Accrual Accounting.
The financial reporting has changed from Development Focus where there were no standards
in the era of 1930s to the Homogenization Focus with the introduction of accounting
standards in the 1970s. The financial reporting further changed to Consolidation
Focus in the 1980s, Fair Earnings Focus in the 1990s and Value Focus in the 2000s,
with the introduction of host of ideas such as governance, non financial reporting
and sustainability reporting and value reporting (environmental value added, social
value added and economic value added etc) with the current developments. Today the
accounting profession is moving away from historical cost accounting and reporting
to fair value accounting and reporting which is going to be a paradigm shift in
financial reporting while the public sector by and large is unconcerned of these
developments particularly in India.
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Institutional Framework of Public Utility Privatisation in Developing Countries
Cheng Kuo-Tai
Institute for Human Resource Development, National Hsin-Chu University of Education,
TAIWAN
tigercheng@mail.nhcue.edu.tw
Privatisation programmes in many developing countries (DCs) have been slow, uneven
and plagued by many obstacles. Drastic, technical and unpredictable changes in the
‘enabling environment’ that affect the initiation and implementation
of privatisation programmes are required.13, 34, 37 This environment is expected
to encompass the political, legal and institutional setting along with the financial
and fiscal systems and thus enhance the ability of governments to undertake successful
privatisation programmes.
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No-frills Accounts - An Instrument to combat 100% Financial Exclusion in Rural
India
Veerakumar K.
Department of Commerce and Management Studies, SASTRA University, SRC, Kumbakonam
(Tamilnadu), INDIA. Veera_8090@yahoo.co.in
As per NSSO (National Sample Survey Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme
Implementation, Government of India) report, 51% of 89.3 million farmers households
are excluded from both formal/informal sources. Only 27% of the total farmer households
access formal source of credit (i.e. 73% of farm households do not have access to
formal credit sources). More than 65% of marginal farmer households excluded from
basic banking services. Only 14 out of 100 adults have loan accounts on an all India
basis as well as in the rural sector. In rural areas it is just 9.5 per cent. Approximately
400 million people live in nearly six million villages and semi-urban areas waiting
for small loans and other banking services. There is scope for lending Rs.45,000
crores to these people. Against this potential, only about 20 million have been
served so far by the organized financial sector with total disbursements of about
Rs.3,900 crore.
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The Impact of Financial Tsunami in 2008 on Temporary Labour Market - A Reflection
on Higher Education
Sung Lee Ching1* and Wei Chao Chen2
1. No.510, Zhongzheng Road, Xinzhuang District., New Taipei City 24205, TAIWAN 2.
No.1, University Road, Tainan City 701, TAIWAN
*chingsunglee@gmail.com
Hospitality student interns play an important role as temporary workforce of the
hospitality industry. The Financial Tsunami in 2008 has imposed pressure to the
temporary labour market and directly affected the hospitality internship in Taiwan.
The purpose of this study was to explore the problems existed in the hospitality
higher education through the impact of Financial Tsunami in 2008. The data collected
in this study was conducted through face-to-face in-depth interviews. The finding
indicated four problems existed in higher education: (1) Faculty members possess
higher education degree but not hospitality own profession; (2) Students are managerial-level
oriented educated but not entry-level oriented trained, (3) Hospitality education
focuses on quantity increasing but not quality improving; and (4) Hospitality schools
are academic research oriented but not practical experience pass-down.
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Dynamics of Creating and Maintaining Retail Image
Shukla Parag S.
Department of Commerce and Business Management, The M.S. University of Baroda, VADODARA
(Gujarat) 390 002 parag_shukla2000@yahoo.com
Indian retail sector is poised for developments that are unprecedented not only
in India but almost anywhere in the world. Economic impact will be felt across the
entire economy from consumers to producers and manufacturers to service providers
to retailers. The high private consumption is one of the major factors for the growing
retail industry. Over 62 per cent of the private consumption share is towards the
retail sector, of which 55 per cent is the contribution from the rural areas, indicating
the increasing significance of retail presence in rural areas. The new demanding
Indian consumer has higher needs and expectations from life in general, and retailing
in particular, than ever before. This has been created by the well-educated smart
shopper, a new communications paradigm, pervasive advertising, and a surplus of
just about everything (wheat, money, manufacturing capacity, merchandise, retail
space, and stores, etc.) except time. The result is the “I want it better,
cheaper, easier, faster and now” consumer who knows that if he/she cannot
have these demands met by your business there are a dozen alternatives.
In short, India is attempting to do in 10 years what took 25 or 30 years in other
major markets in the world and shall bypass many stages of “evolution”
of modern retail. India is likely to see emergence of several “innovative”
India-specific retail business models and retail formats in the coming years.
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On the Economic Benefit of Hosting the Olympics
Levy Ben1* and Berger Paul D.
2
1. Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA 2. Bentley University,Waltham, MA
02452, USA
*Benlevy68@gmail.com
Mega Sporting Events generally are classified as the Olympics, World Cup and UEFA
(Union of European Football Associations) Championship in Europe. Since the significant
positive economic impact of $2.3 billion realized by Los Angeles after the 1984
Summer Olympic Games, the number of bids by cities for these mega sporting events
has increased significantly. Also, this success inspired economic evaluations of
the Olympic Games to be conducted to better estimate the financial benefit to the
host city. Utilizing improved methodologies, as well as superior data, models have
found that, in reality, it is more difficult than anticipated to realize an economic
benefit from hosting the Olympic Games. We conduct statistical analyses on the financial
data for several of the Olympic cities since 1990. We also discuss data available
from the British government which estimates the economic outcome of the 2012 Summer
Olympic Games in London.
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Customers’ Satisfaction in Public and Private Sector Banks and their Comparison
Ayyanar G.
PG Department of Commerce & Centre for Higher Research, Yadava College (Autonomous),
Madurai 625 014 (Tamil Nadu), INDIA guruayyanaryc@gmail.com
Customers’ satisfaction is an important theoretical as well as practical issue for
most marketers and consumer researchers. Customers’ satisfaction can be considered
the essence of success in today’s highly competitive world of business. In general,
satisfaction is a person’s feelings of pleasure or disappointment resulting from
comparing a product’s perceived performance in relation to his or her expectations.
If the performance falls short of expectation, the customer is dissatisfied; if
the performance matches the expectations, the customer is satisfied. Customers become
the focal point for the banking business so that bankers have to involve themselves
totally in anticipating, identifying, reciprocating and satisfying their customers
in a mutually rewarding manner. Latest business models have attached the highest
importance to customer satisfaction for the success of an organization.
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Strengthening Intrinsic Motivation of University Students in Hong Kong
Yau Hon Keung*, Kan Man Shan and Cheng Alison Lai Fong
City University of Hong Kong, System Engineering and Engineering Management, Kowloon
Tong, Kowloon, HONG KONG *honkyau@cityu.edu.hk
This study is to identify the factors affecting the intrinsic motivation of the
university students in Hong Kong. The factors of curiosity and external regulation
with intrinsic motivation are taken into investigation in this study because it
is found that the relationships between these factors and intrinsic motivation of
the local university students have seldom been examined. This study adopting a survey
of 137 sampled students was conducted in a local university in 2011. Findings showed
that students with curiosity could stimulate their higher intrinsic motivation;
but external regulation was not found to be related to intrinsic motivation.
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Impact of Services Trade on Service Sector Labor-Demand Elasticities: Empirical
Evidence from China
Wei Hao*, Fu Qiang and Liu Shibin
School of Economics and Business Administration, Beijing Normal University, CHINA
*weihao9989@163.com
Through utilizing time series data of China’s services trade and service sector
from 1982 to 2009, this study analyses the impact of services trade on service sector
labor-demand elasticities. The empirical work yields the following main conclusions.
First, no matter in the long run or in the short term, China’s services export exerts
distinctly stimulative impact on the service sector labor-demand elasticities. In
the long-term influence, substitution effect is much more powerful than the output
effect, however, as to the short period, output effect is a little stronger than
the substitution effect. Second, in the long run, we cannot reject the hypothesis
of no relationship between service import openness and labor-demand elasticities
of the service sector. Whereas, studying the result of the short term, trade liberalization
of services import does affect the service sector labor-demand elasticity weakly.
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Another Angle on the HRM Convergence and Divergence Debate: Preliminary Evidence
by comparing a Foreign versus Local Bank in China
Chan Ka Wai, Wyatt Thomas A.1, Peng Kelly
Z.2, Yiu Daphne W. and Wong Chi-Sum3*
1. Department of Business Administration, University of Macau, Taipa, MACAU 2. Department
of Business Administration, Hong Hong Shue Yan University, North Point, HONG KONG
3. Department of Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T. HONG
KONG
*cswong@baf.msmail.cuhk.edu.hk
In the international human resource literature, there is a long lasting debate concerning
the extent to which foreign companies should adopt local human resource management
(HRM) practices. However, evidence for both convergence and divergence can be found
and there is no clear answer to the trend of convergence. In this study, we attempt
to provide a different angle to approach this debate. Specifically, we argue that
to gain legitimacy in attracting and retaining necessary human resources, quality
of work life which reflected the end results of HRM practices will be similar among
organizations. For individual HRM practices, they will be affected by the interaction
between specific institutional forces and the organization’s strategic choice. Using
this perspective, we are able to explain the similarities and differences of the
quality of work life and individual HRM practices in a foreign and local bank operating
in Shanghai. There are two important implications. First, while individual HRM practices
may differ among organizations, the end results of these practices – quality of
work life provided – have to be similar. Second, both the institutional forces and
the strategic choices of organizations have to be carefully examined in order to
understand the convergence and divergence of their HRM practices.
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Book Review:
The Fortune at the Bottom of Pyramid by C.K.Prahalad
Publisher: Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt. Ltd. [Pages 401. Price Rs. 550.00]
Reviewed by: Bangar Sonali and Vispute Jayashree
Vishwakarma Institute of Management, Pune, INDIA
“The forgotten man at the bottom of Pyramid”- Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The true meaning and use of this concept was explained by great late management
thinker Prof C.K Prahalad in his book – “The fortune of the bottom of pyramid.”
It analyzes how poor can be targeted as consumers by various organizations for societal
improvement and profitable business. Utilizing Bottom of Pyramid (BOP) by creative
and innovative ways can create various opportunities, awareness among poor, provide
jobs to them and commercial success to the MNC’s thus fighting poverty. Public
Private Partnership, various schemes, NGO’s participation subsidiaries, global
support deregulation developed by Government are insufficient work done for them
and indeed there is a great need to do something more. C.K. Prahalad in his book
explains how available resources can be best used for profit maximization. He said
that the poor should not be considered as a community which is underserved but an
active, potentially high group or global growth and can lead in development of trade
and prosperity as they constitute a large number of chunks. This has been explained
by various examples taken in book like Aarvind Eye Care, Unilever etc. C. K. Prahalad
elaborates that a great market can be developed with millions of entrepreneurs at
grass root level at BOP. The earning capacity of them is very less that is more
than $ 2 per day. A better approach like partnering with multinationals by innovative
ways provides a new growth to BOP thus increasing core business and CSR. The book
is divided in three different parts explaining various aspects of BOP. The first
part deals with developing framework for active engagement of private sector for
win-win situation. The second deals with 8 different examples showing actual process,
implementing and reaping benefits in various sectors while last section details
the research work done by management students.
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