interfering with secondary markets we present a model to address in a unified manner four ways in which a monopolist can interfere with secondary markets in the model consumers have heterogeneous valuations for quality so that used good markets play an allocative role our results are the following 1 in contrast to swan s famous independence result a monopolist does not provide socially optimal durability 2 allowing the monopolist to rent does not restore socially optimal durability and increases the monopolist s market power in the used market however forcing the monopolist to sell the goods may be a bad policy because it would lead to either lower output or lower durability 3 the manufacturer benefits from a well functioning used good market despite the fact that used goods provide competition for new goods 4 the monopolist prefers to restrict consumers abilities to maintain the good

corporate social irresponsibility are consumers biases in attribution of blame helping companies in product harm crises involving hybrid products in recent years there have been several high profile recalls of hybrid products those where organizations in multiple countries take part in the design component sourcing manufacturing and marketing of a product if consumers perceive a global firm to be responsible for the recall then it will reduce their brand equity therefore global firms may respond in ethically questionable ways to justify themselves to important stakeholders and avoid blame understanding how stakeholders attribute blame for crises involving hybrid products is important to shed light on the unethical manner in which global firms might avoid blame in such situations the research reported here shows that in a hybrid product crisis consumers show a bias in favor of the brand company and against the manufacturing company this bias is more pronounced when the country of manufacture has an unfavorable image or when consumers lack familiarity with the recalled brand ambiguous recall announcements by companies that fail to provide a specific and clear reason for the product defect prompt consumers to assume that a manufacturing flaw caused the product defect as a result consumers reduce their attribution of blame for the brand company and thus its brand equity is maintained

are hazard models superior to traditional bankruptcy prediction approaches a comprehensive test abstract in recent years hazard models using both market and accounting information have become state of the art in predicting firm bankruptcies however a comprehensive test comparing their performance against the traditional accounting based approach or the contingent claims approach is missing in the literature using a complete database of uk main listed firms between 1979 and 2009 our receiver operating characteristics roc curve analysis shows that the hazard models are superior to the alternatives further our information content tests demonstrate that the hazard models subsume all bankruptcy related information in the taffler 1983 z score model as well as in bharath and shumway 2008 contingent claims based model finally using a mixed regime competitive loan market with different costs of misclassification the economic benefit of using the shumway 2001 hazard model is clear particularly when the performance is judged with return on risk weighted assets computed under basel iii

dynamic interaction between markets for leasing and selling automobiles we develop a model of dynamic interactions between price variations in leasing and selling markets for automobiles our framework assumes a differential game between multiple bertrand type competing firms which offer differentiated products to forward looking agents empirical analysis of our model using monthly us data from 2002 to 2011 shows that variations in selling cash market prices lead rapidly dissipating changes of leasing market prices in the opposite direction we discuss the practical implications of these results by augmenting a standard leasing valuation formula the additional terms represent the leased asset value changes that can be expected on the basis of past variations in automobile selling market prices

country of origin effects on product evaluations this article reviews the literature regarding the effect of country of origin on buyer evaluations of products the issue is important for countries especially resource poor developing countries that need to increase manufactured exports and for firms that source products in countries different from where sold marketing inferences are drawn and implications for future research are developed

reversing urban bias in african rice markets evidence from senegal summary urban bias constitutes an important institutional impediment to economic development in poor countries some african governments now recognize that they should invest in agricultural productivity in order to reverse urban bias but often forget the equally important objective of investing in quality tailored to consumers so as to reverse urban bias footprint on food markets we conduct framed field experiments in two major urban markets in senegal and find that the majority of urban consumers are willing to pay quality premiums for local rice suggesting that investment in post harvest rice quality is a priority in the reversal of urban bias 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

export industry policy and reputational comparative advantage abstract country of origin reputations are endogenized in this paper and it is shown that otherwise identical countries can be correctly perceived as differing in their percentage of high quality producers these self fulfilling reputations determine not only the average quality of a country s exports but also the type of products in which a country specializes hence the pattern of international trade can be determined by this reputational comparative advantage an inferior country of origin reputation leads to lower national welfare therefore several trade and industrial policies that can improve country of origin reputation are examined

assessing the impact of country of origin on product evaluations a new methodological perspective a new methodological approach for examining the impact of country of origin on product evaluations is proposed it takes the form of a multiattribute attitudinal model analyzed by means of a system

impacting practice through ib scholarship toy recalls and the product safety crisis ib research has made significant contributions in understanding mnes yet examples of scholarship that have had a demonstrable impact on practice and policy are rare this article presents research we conducted in the wake of the 2007 global product safety crisis as one such example we reflect on it to suggest that ib research can enhance its impact by focusing attention on issues that affect both mnes and societies and by using available data to arrive at even basic explanations and solutions to inform practice and prompt further academic research

durable goods monopolists durable goods monopolists face special problems because the sale of their products creates a secondhand market not controlled by the monopolist to the extent the monopolist is able to rent his product rather than sell it or to make binding promises about his future production such problems are ameliorated given the inability to do the above the monopolist is led to producing goods less durable than those produced by either competitive firms or monopolist returns a reverse averch johnson result that monopolist sellers may invest less in fixed costs including plant modernization and research and development than would the renters is shown it is also shown that even though sellers have less monopoly power than renters and nondurable goods monopolists it is possible that the seller will cause a greater deadweight loss than the other types of monopolies

determinants of corporate leasing policy the existing finance literature assumes the real operating cash flows from leasing or owning are invariant to the ownership of the asset and focuses on tax related incentives for corporate leasing policy our analysis suggests that taxes are important in identifying potential lessees and lessors but are less important in identifying the specific assets leased we provide a unified analysis of the various incentives affecting the lease versuspurchase decision we then show how these incentives explain the use of contractual provisions such as maintenance clauses deposits options to purchase the asset and metering when a firm buys an asset it obtains both the right to the services of that asset over the period it is owned plus the right to sell the asset at any future date with a lease the firm acquires only the right to the asset s services for a period specified in the contract the existing finance literature analyzing corporate leasing policy concentrates on the tax related incentives to lease or buy e g see miller and upton 19 myers et al 21 lewellen et al 13 franks and hodges 11 and brealey and young 4 we believe that taxes play an important role in explaining certain dimensions of leasing policy for example the choice between manufacturer and third party leasing however taxes provide only a limited explanation of why specific assets are leased rather than owned and for the choice of provisions in lease contracts in this paper we want to accomplish two things 1 to provide a unified analysis of the various incentives affecting the lease versus buy decision and 2 to employ that analysis to explain observed variation in corporate leasing policy in deriving testable hypotheses about the characteristics of lessees lessors the assets leased and provisions in lease contracts we extend the standard leaseversus buy analysis found in corporate finance textbooks e g brealey and myers

a cross national comparison of consumer research measures the impact of three factors that affect the psychometric rigor of cross national consumer research comparisons is measured in this study conclusions are also drawn about the interactions among these factors and the resultant deterioration in the psychometric quality of the data

product stereotypes strategy and performance satisfaction the case of chinese exporters does following a product strategy of price leadership result in superior performance satisfaction for chinese exporters does branding products and targeting less developed countries significantly improve chinese exporters satisfaction with export performance results indicate performance satisfaction decreased when chinese firms pursued price leadership product strategies while performance satisfaction increased when chinese exporters used a branding product strategy branding products and targeting other less developed countries with these brands significantly increased performance satisfaction over branding alone

empirical research in international marketing 1976 1982 this paper reviews empirical research in international marketing published during the period 1976 82 the review focuses on what has been researched and how the research has been conducted this research is evaluated a cooperative multidisciplinary empirical research program in international marketing is then proposed

the coase conjecture need not hold for durable good monopolies with depreciation abstract we consider the optimal sales policy for a monopoly seller of a durable good in a non stationary rational expectations equilibruim with replacement sales we show that coase s conjecture that the monopolist will sell the competitive stock as period length approaches zero may not hold under these assumptions

cultural industries in international business research progress and prospect cultural industries systems of organizations that produce and distribute cultural goods with substantive symbolic aesthetic or artistic value represent an important exciting and complex context that receives growing scholarly attention as the first review of management research on cultural industries this paper aims to provide a systematic synthesis of current research summarizing distinctive characteristics of cultural industries and highlighting research gaps we also illustrate how the unique nature dynamics and evolution of cultural industries provide opportunities to broaden international business theories in four research themes i e internationalization strategy cross border innovation social inclusion in the global economy and emerging market research

price discrimination via second hand markets consumers have heterogeneous tastes for new and used goods and second hand markets involve transactions costs a monopoly seller may gain or lose from the existence of a second hand market locally it may prefer lower transactions costs but globally it may prefer high transactions costs so it can strangle the used market the monopolist uses the second hand market as an indirect device to achieve a form of second degree price discrimination if the monopolist can control the quality of its product when used it may wish to deteriorate this quality to worthless or else to have it as good as new

foundations of dynamic monopoly and the coase conjecture subgame perfect equilibria are characterized for a market in which the seller quotes a price each period assume zero costs positive interest rate continuum of buyers and some technical conditions if buyers valuations are positive then equilibrium is unique buyers strategies are stationary and the price sequence is determinant along the equilibrium path but possibly randomized elsewhere otherwise a continuum of stationary equilibria can exist but at most one with analytic strategies coase s conjecture is verified for stationary strategies reducing the period length drives all prices to zero or the least valuation connections to bargaining models are described journal qf economic literature classification

country of origin effects for uni national and bi national products this study examines the effects of country of origin and brand name cues on consumer evaluations of uni national and bi national products and estimates the perceived values of such cues from personal interviews with a regional quota sample of household residents the study found the salience of country of origin in product evaluations under within subject experimental design finally managerial implications are discussed in regards to international branding and sourcing strategies

brand popularity country image and market share an empirical study this study examines how brand popularity in conjunction with other marketing variables influences market share directly as well as indirectly by interacting with country related intangible assets or simply country image the results of our empirical analysis show that a competitive analysis without the recognition of country image would be misleading we found that country specific intangible assets exist and that they significantly interact with marketing variables differently for u s and japanese brands in the subcompact car market in the usa brand popularity and advertising were found to be key factors for intangible assets for both the u s and the japanese brands brand popularity was the most significant factor for market share in both the short run and the long run japanese firms direct investment fdi in the target country directly influenced market share only in the short run several important implications for international marketing are presented

rivalry as synergy the japanese automobile companies export expansion the paper explores rivalry and synergy arguments to explain the export growth of japanese auto manufacturers previous literature on competitive behavior including porter s 1985 discussion of good versus bad competitors is used to develop a conceptual framework and empirical methodology to separate out alternative explanations for the japanese success data on japanese auto companies sales in six different export markets europe north america latin america asia the middle east and africa are examined for the period 1959 1987 the sales over the period are decomposed into three multiplicative components a generic market growth factor a synergy factor depicting the combined growth for the japanese cars and a rivalry factor representing competition within the japanese strategic group the data are used to estimate the magnitude of the growth elasticities for each of the three components

a meta analysis of country of origin effects this note reports a quantitative analysis of the country of origin coo effect based on fifty two articles or papers containing sixty nine independent studies and 1 520 effect sizes an analysis of fifteen study characteristics revealed that country of origin effects are only somewhat generalizable using omega squared as the measure of effect size verbal product descriptions produced larger coo effect sizes than did the presence of an actual product likewise single cue studies produced larger coo effect sizes than did multiple cue studies and larger samples produced effect sizes that on average were greater than those produced by smaller samples the size of an observed coo effect was a function of whether the dependent variables was a quality reliability perception or a purchase intention the average effect size of quality reliability perceptions was 30 whereas the average effect size for purchase intentions was 19 purchase intentions were most susceptible to methodological artifacts than were quality reliability perceptions study findings selectively confirm and refute common beliefs regarding the impact of a country of origin cue on product perceptions and purchase intentions

location costs product quality and implicit franchise contracts abstract in the literature on international trade only little attention has been given to informational asymmetries between firms and consumers with respect to product quality the few economic models that analyze the question of how asymmetric information about product quality might affect trade flows treat product quality as exogeneous in contrast our model takes product quality as an endogeneous variable i e firms can choose the quality they wish to produce in this case location costs can signal product quality under certain conditions and thereby affect international trade flows more specifically intra industry trade in vertically differentiated experience goods can be determined by information asymmetries about product quality

alternative bankruptcy prediction models using option pricing theory abstract we examine the empirical properties of the theoretical black scholes merton bsm bankruptcy model we evaluate the predictive ability of various existing modifications of the bsm model and extend prior studies by estimating volatility directly from market observable returns on firm value we show that parsimonious models using our direct market observable volatility estimate perform better than alternative more sophisticated models our findings suggest the adoption of simpler modelling approaches relying on market data when implementing the bsm model

trust across borders we make the case for fresh approaches to examine the role of trust in international collaborations based on the idea that not only do the levels of trust differ across international borders but also both the nature of trust and the institutional and cultural support for trust can vary across different national contexts collaboration partners from different countries are therefore likely to bring either symmetric or asymmetric conceptions of trust to the business relationship we develop a model and propositions linking symmetry and asymmetry in the institutional and cultural support for trust in international collaborations with the degree of partner interdependence and identify implications for governance and trust building investments we conclude with some suggestions for research that incorporates trust asymmetries between partners

consumers preferences for fresh broccolis interactive effects between country of origin and organic labels while international trade in organic products has grown significantly understanding consumers preferences for imported organic foods has remained limited this research examines the impact of country of origin labeling on us consumers choices of organic foods results show that consumer valuation of domestically produced organic broccoli was significantly higher than that of imported organic broccoli adding information about usda organic certification standards rules for imported products mildly increases consumer valuation of imported organic broccoli in some cases these findings suggest that providing such information may have a positive impact on consumer willingness to purchase imported organic products

understanding the role of trade ins in durable goods markets theory and evidence the act of trading in a used car as partial payment for a new car resonates with practically all consumers such transactions are prevalent in many other durable goods markets ranging from golf clubs to ct scanners what roles do trade ins play in these markets what motivates the seller to set up a channel to facilitate trade ins intuitively accepting a trade in would appear to stimulate demand for the producer s product but facilitating the resale of these used goods that substitute for new goods might also increase cannibalization although such transactions involve billions of dollars we know relatively little about this practice from the extant research literature this paper develops an analytical model that incorporates key features of real world durable goods markets i coexistence of new and used goods markets ii consumer heterogeneity with respect to quality sensitivity iii firms that anticipate the cannibalization problem arising from the coexistence of new and used goods and iv lemon problems in resale markets whereby sellers of used goods are better informed than buyers about the quality of their particular item in our analysis a trade in policy amounts to an intervention by the firm in the used goods market which reduces inefficiencies arising from the lemon problem it motivates owners to purchase new goods and reduces their proclivity to hold on to purchased goods because of the low price the latter would fetch in a lemon market we also show that trade in programs are more valuable for less reliable products as well as for products that deteriorate more slowly our analysis shows that producers in durable goods markets should consider trade in programs as a matter of routine despite cannibalization concerns arising from a more active resale market a producer s profits will inevitably rise from introducing trade ins given pervasive lemon problems we test the key predictions of the model about price and volume of trade by assembling a data set of transactions of u s automobile consumers and find broad support for our model

country of origin and choice of food imports an in depth study of european distribution channel gatekeepers country of origin preferences of distribution channel gatekeepers when sourcing food imports were investigated using in depth interviews in five european markets channel member perceptions of product country image related more to specific issues of confidence and trust in integrity of production certification and regulatory systems than to country image stereotypes this study integrates these trust determining factors with price perceived value constructs in order to build a comprehensive model applicable to food channel gatekeepers

predicting banking crises with artificial neural networks the role of nonlinearity and heterogeneity studies of the early warning systems ewss for banking crises usually rely on linear classifiers estimated with international datasets i construct an ews based on an artificial neural network ann model and i also account for regional heterogeneity in order to improve the generalization ability of ews models all of the banking crises in my test set are then predictable at a 24 month horizon using information from earlier crises for some countries estimation with a regional dataset significantly improves the predictions the ann outperforms the usual logit regression assessed by the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve

the impact of journals and authors on international business research a citational analysis of jibs articles in this paper we use citational analysis to examine the influence of individuals and disciplines on international business research we collected citational data over the ten year period 1984 to 1993 from every issue of the journal of international business studies we found that management economics marketing and finance disciplines have had significant influence on international business research and identified researchers such as dunning porter vernon casson rugman and hofstede as having made significant contributions to international business research

reputation in bargaining and durable goods monopoly this paper analyzes durable goods monopoly in an infinite horizon discrete time game we prove that as the time interval between successive offers approaches zero all seller payoffs between zero and static monopoly profits are supported by subgame perfect equilibria this reverses a well known conjecture of coase alternatively one can interpret the model as a sequential bargaining game with one sided incomplete information in which an uninformed seller makes all the offers our folk theorem for seller payoffs equally applies to the set of sequential equilibria of this bargaining game

concurrent renting and selling in a durable goods monopoly under threat of entry this article analyzes the choice of contract sales or rental of a durable goods monopolist facing a threat of future entry although in the absence of such a threat a monopolist would prefer to rent his entire output we show that the threat of entry alters that preference there is an optimal preentry contract mix involving both rental and sales if both firms behave as cournot duopolists after entry the optimal choice of preentry contracts enables the erstwhile monopolist to gain the same profits as he would if he behaved as a von stackelberg leader

a theory of dynamic oligopoly ii price competition kinked demand curves and edgeworth cycles we provide game theoretic foundations for the classic kinked demand curve equilibrium and edgeworth cycle we analyze a model in which firms take turns choosing prices the model is intended to capture the idea of reactions based on short run commitment in a markov perfect equilibrium mpe a firm s move in any period depends only on the other firm s current price there are multiple mpe s consisting of both kinked demand curve equilibria and edgeworth cycles in any mpe profit is bounded away from the bertrand equilibrium level we show that a kinked demand curve at the monopoly price is the unique symmetric renegotiation proof equilibrium when there is little discounting we then endogenize the timing by allowing firms to move at any time subject to short run commitments we find that firms end up alternating thus vindicating the ad hoc timing assumption of our simpler model we also discuss how the model can be enriched to provide explanations for excess capacity and market sharing keiiwords tacit collusion markov perfect equilibrium kinked demand curve edgeworth cycle excess capacity market sharing endogenous timing

intertemporal price discrimination in frictionless durable goods monopolies i show that small differences in quality and production costs between durables and non durables in a product line allow a durable goods monopolist to intertemporally price discriminate even with continuous trading in particular a monopolist would want to both sell and rent out a durable to achieve price discrimination this incentive to price discriminate simultaneously creates inefficient delay in the sale of the durable good a finite trading period and long run efficiency of the market the coase conjecture fails because the non durable good acts as an outside option that guarantees a minimum profit in the market for durables

matching product catgeory and country image perceptions a framework for managing country of origin effects the study of country of origin coo effects examines how consumers perceive products emanating from a particular country this study examines coo in terms of the fit between countries and product categories a framework is suggested which matches the importance of product category dimensions with the perceived image of the country of origin along the same dimensions such matches or mismatches can be either favorable or unfavorable managers can use product country match information to assess consumers purchase intentions and assist them in managing their product s coo data collected from consumers in ireland mexico and the united states demonstrate the product country match framework and its strategic implications

customer evaluation of products in a global market marketing scholars interest in the influence of source countries on product evaluations has intensified during the past twenty five years as this research tradition has evolved the literature has gradually gained more depth and sophistication nevertheless research in this area lacks a common conceptual framework furthermore research priorities with regard to the role of this area of inquiry within the broader field of consumer behavior marketing and general business decisions have not been made clear this article rationalizes the buying decision processes within the context of source country influences and offers a conceptual framework for further development in addition it links country level considerations to firm level decisionmaking thus providing a foundation for meaningful managerial decisions

a longitudinal study comparing perceptions of u s and japanese consumer products in a third neutral country finland 1975 to 1985 while substantial research has been done on the competitive struggle between u s and japanese consumer products few studies have examined the u s japan rivalry from a neutral third country perspective this study covering a ten year period 1975 1985 of data collection examines changes in finnish perceptions of u s and japanese consumer products and marketing efforts results indicate that while finnish consumer perceptions of u s products and marketing efforts have improved over time the corresponding perceptions of the japanese alternative have improved substantially more similarly in areas where u s competitors had initial advantages the study results indicate that by 1985 japanese firms were able to overcome such advantages and were perceived as superior in all categories

country of origin effects in developed and emerging markets exploring the contrasting roles of materialism and value consciousness despite growing evidence about differences in the attitudes and behaviors of consumers in emerging and developed markets there is little research on the differences in country of origin coo effects on their evaluation behavioral intentions bis and actual purchase of imported products this paper introduces a new conceptual framework incorporating consumer ethnocentrism cet materialism mat and value consciousness vc to hypothesize several differences in the influence of coo effects on consumers from developed and emerging markets a web based study with 1752 consumers in four countries representing two developed markets the uk and the usa and two emerging markets china and india shows significant differences in the moderating influence of cet mat and vc on the effects of coo on the evaluations and bis for a fictitious passenger car brand and on the actual choice of car brands owned by them the findings highlight the importance of looking beyond cet at other relevant psychographic variables to understand the differences in motivations underlying consumer perceptions and behavior towards imported products

beyond country image favorability how brand positioning via country personality stereotypes enhances brand evaluations across four lab experiments and a field study we find that brands are evaluated more favorably when the brand is positioned in a manner that is congruent with the brand s home country personality stereotype than when brand positioning is incongruent results demonstrate that cultural authenticity mediates this effect we also uncover a moderating effect whereby brands are viewed more favorably when brand positioning and country personality stereotypes are incongruent rather than congruent under conditions of consumer animosity toward the firm s home country this study is the first to demonstrate how international firms can leverage country of origin personality stereotypes as a brand building advantage

authenticity is contagious brand essence and the original source of production it is well established that differences in manufacturing location can affect consumer preferences through lay inferences about production quality in this article the authors take a different approach to this topic by demonstrating how beliefs in contagion the notion that objects may acquire a special aura or essence from their past influence perceptions of authenticity for everyday consumer products and brands specifically they find that due to a belief in contagion products from a company s original manufacturing location are viewed as containing the essence of the brand in turn this belief in transferred essence leads consumers to view products from the original factory as more authentic and valuable than identical products made elsewhere the authors further reveal that consumers who are higher in sensitivity to contagion are more likely to exhibit this effect and that activating the concept of contagion enhances preferences for products made in the brand s original factory the authors clos

export and reverse investment strategic implications for newly industrialized countries multinational companies in a newly industrialized countries face a dilemma of whether and when they should engage in u s manufacturing this study investigates consumer evaluations of product quality and purchase intent of two electronic products currently imported into the u s from a company in a newly industrialized country and one electronic product currently not manufactured by the same company the results suggest that reverse investment in the u s may be a viable strategic alternative for companies in newly industrialized country traditionally engaged only in export activities if they pay careful attention to price and retail distribution in the u s

breaking free of a stereotype should a domestic brand pretend to be a foreign one consumers in many emerging markets exhibit a pronounced preference for western and global brands while domestic brands are often associated with a cheap but low quality image frustrated with the negative country of origin coo stereotype imposed on them many domestic brands from emerging markets follow a variety of approaches to disguise their coo and pretend to be foreign this paper studies the strategic aspects of this phenomenon we consider an experience good market where consumers learn about each brand s quality using its coo as a prior each firm can invest in product quality or coo dissociation the former generates better quality signals while the latter simply masks the firm s coo identity the analysis reveals a few main insights sharing a reputation leads to a common good problem where firms free ride on each other s quality investments as a high quality firm dissociates itself from the stereotype it ceases to contribute to the coo image but also prevents its low quality peers from free riding on it this incurs a negative direct effect but a positive strategic effect on the group image consequently a country s coo image may actually improve when more high quality brands shun their identities and pretend to be foreign in equilibrium coo image improves monotonically as firms become more efficient in providing quality however the prevalence of coo dissociation may first increase then decrease we discuss the implications of these results for emerging market brands as well as policy makers

effects of consumer preferences for foreign sourced products when deciding on overseas production locations the manager must take into account not only resource and cost benefits but the effect that country of origin may have on consumer evaluations an experiment conducted by a telephone survey procedure examined country of origin perceptions of twelve countries and eight products using both perceived quality and choice measures as hypothesized preferences were found to be more product specific for industrialized than less developed countries in addition hypotheses that performance risk and brand moderate the effects of country were upheld under most conditions

transforming disadvantages into advantages developing country mnes in the least developed countries we analyze the advantages and disadvantages of developing country multinational enterprises mnes in comparison with developed country mnes developing country mnes tend to be less competitive than their developed country counterparts partly because they suffer the disadvantage of operating in home countries with underdeveloped institutions we argue that this disadvantage can become an advantage when both types of mne operate in countries with difficult governance conditions because developing country mnes are used to operating in such conditions the empirical analysis shows that although developing country mnes rarely appear among the largest mnes in the world they are more prevalent among the largest foreign firms in the least developed countries ldcs especially in ldcs with poorer regulatory quality and lower control of corruption

the relationship between default prediction and lending profits integrating roc analysis and loan pricing abstract in evaluating credit risk models it is common to use metrics such as power curves and their associated statistics however power curves are not necessarily easily linked intuitively to common lending practices bankers often request a specific rule for defining a cut off above which credit will be granted and below which it will be denied in this paper we provide some quantitative insight into how such cut offs can be developed this framework accommodates real world complications e g relationship clients we show that the simple cut off approach can be extended to a more complete pricing approach that is more flexible and more profitable we demonstrate that in general more powerful models are more profitable than weaker ones and we provide a simulation example we also report results of another study that conservatively concludes a mid sized bank might generate additional profits on the order of about 4 8 million per year after adopting a moderately more powerful model

depreciation erodes the coase conjecture if a durable good monopolist produces at constant marginal costs and the good depreciates there exists a family of strong markov perfect equilibrium smpe one member of this family entails instantaneous production of the level of stock produced in a competitive equilibrium this is consistent with the coase conjecture other smpe in the family entail steady state production at a stock level lower than in the competitive equilibrium there may be a jump to these steady states or they may be approached asymptotically monopoly profits are positive in these equilibria and the coase conjecture fails

causes of the difficulties in internationalization we study the causes of the difficulties faced by firms when they internationalize in search of new markets we build on the resource based theory to argue that the difficulties in internationalization can be separated into three main sets based on their relationship to advantage loss of advantage provided by resources transferred abroad creation of a disadvantage by resources transferred abroad and lack of complementary resources required to operate abroad in each set we further distinguish difficulties that are specific to a firm from those that are common to a set of firms we argue that only a few of the resulting types of difficulties of internationalization are exclusive to the cross border expansion and propose solutions that address the root cause of each type

brand origin recognition accuracy its antecedents and consumers cognitive limitations an ever growing literature has reported consumer bias toward national origins of products and has explored factors that moderate such bias researchers have assumed if only tacitly that consumers are knowledgeable of brand origins and that this knowledge is a significant influence that drives judgments of product quality brand attitudes and choice behavior in the marketplace using categorization theory and attribute diagnosticity as the theoretical foundation our research reveals that consumers actually have only modest knowledge of the national origins of brands and that american consumers proficiency at recognizing foreign brand origins is predicted by variables such as socioeconomic status past international travel foreign language skills and gender in the second of two studies we determined that brand origin recognition is based largely on consumers associations of brand names with languages that suggest country origins these studies ultimately lead us to conclude that past research has inflated the influence that country of origin information has on consumers product judgments and behavior and its importance in managerial and public policy decisions

country image and consumer based brand equity relationships and implications for international marketing this paper examines the relationships between consumers country level and product level images of a country and the equity they associate with a brand from that country using canonical correlation analysis results from mallintercept surveys conducted in an australian state capital city indicated that the consumer based equity of a brand was significantly associated with both the macro and micro images of the country of origin of the brand the relationship between these two sets of constructs was found to be positive as well as product category specific furthermore each consumer based brand equity dimension contributed differently to the relationship according to the product category while the contribution of both country image dimensions macro and micro was also product category specific results also showed that cars as a product category are more sensitive to country image than televisions these findings have direct and important implications for international marketers

a theory of finitely durable goods monopoly with used goods market and transaction costs we construct a dynamic game to model a monopoly of finitely durable goods the solution concept is markov perfect equilibria with general equilibria embedded in every time period our model is flexible enough to simultaneously explain or accommodate many commonly observed phenomena or stylized facts such as concurrent leasing and selling active secondary markets for used goods heterogeneous consumers endogenous consumption patterns depreciation an infinite time horizon and nontrivial transaction costs within our model consumers have incentives to segment themselves into various consumption classes according to their willingness to pay and nontrivial transaction costs to sell used goods put strong constraints on consumers consumption sequences in time as a direct consequence of the finite durability the market power of the monopolist remains intact leasing manifests itself as a facilitator of price discrimination by debundling the durable good into new and used portions that are naturally bundled together under outright sales the concurrent leasing and selling reflects the degree of the comparative advantage the monopolist has over consumers in disposing used goods this comparative advantage which is partially exploited by the monopolist and partially shared by the consumers provides a sufficient mechanism to gain pareto improvement on the market

modelling hierarchical consumer preferences an application to global food markets in the literature considerable attention has been devoted to the relationship between consumer preference and a product s country of origin papadopoulos 1993 and it is well established that the latter has an influence on quality perceptions bilkey and nes 1982 whilst empirical studies have tended to concentrate on manufactured goods there is evidence that food products exhibit strong countryof origin characteristics bonnet and simioni 2001 scarpa et al 2001 van der lans et al 2001 and furthermore that consumers typically favour domestic food varieties over foreign substitutes quagrainie et al 1998 unterschultz et al 1998 with international trade in food expanding rapidly in global markets and consumers facing an unprecedented level of variety product country images are assuming greater significance skaggs et al 1996 more importantly policy initiatives to promote regional foods and product awareness within europe peri and gaeta 1999 coupled with the growing antiglobalization sentiments of some sections of society are likely to have implications for international trade by reinforcing consumer preference for domestically produced varieties and strengthening any preference barrier effect much of the recent literature on quantitative analysis of international trade is set in the context of general equilibrium accordingly against a background of continuing liberalization of world markets and with further reforms anticipated under wto world trade organization negotiations a method of modelling endogenous hierarchical ranked consumer preferences is reported based on region of origin within a computable general equilibrium cge framework this extends the treatment of endogenous product differentiation in cge models and adds an extra dimension to the exogenous region of origin approach maintained under the commonly adopted armington assumption the first part of the paper reports technical implementation of patriotic preference in imperfectly competitive food markets this is then followed by an empirical illustration in which the impact on trade flows is isolated

a social institutional approach to identifying generation cohorts in china with a comparison with american consumers identifying distinctive target segments is a fundamental challenge faced by international marketers this paper describes an approach to understanding consumer market structures in an important international market china and to segmenting chinese consumers by integrating insights from generational cohort and social institutional theories we conduct two empirical studies to verify how china s recent momentous ideological events could give rise to and affect the life experiences of different generation cohorts in the country the results of study 1 support the conceptual framework and establish three distinct cohorts in china red guards modern realists and global materialists study 2 builds on the findings of study 1 it links cohort differences to differences in consumer values materialism and choice behaviors foreign vs local brands and then compares them with parallel consumers in the united states this paper outlines and tests an approach to segmentation that can help international firms identify distinct segments in and design effective marketing strategies for china

durable goods leasing in the presence of exporting used products to an international secondary market abstract with the rapid growth of global trade used durable goods from wealthy countries increasingly find their way into the secondary market of less wealthy countries exporting used products to a physically separate market not only removes cannibalization for new products at home but also fetches additional revenue in this paper we investigate the implications of exporting used products to international secondary markets in the durable goods industry we find that such a practice may significantly stimulate new product lease on the home market an effect in which the market attractiveness and product quality are mutually reinforcing we discover that removing cannibalization pressure is more of a priority than generating additional revenue while exporting used products if the export is carried out by an agent who exports used products bought from oem original equipment manufacturer we observe the disadvantage of double marginalization in a channel structure which slows down export and causes quantity distortion and also reduces the effectiveness of government stimulus however if the agent and oem set export price based supply and demand equilibrium this reduces the quantity distortion one special characteristic of used products trade across borders is the involvement of governments on both sides of the border the government measures include penalties imposed on aging durable goods and trade barriers we find that legislation of penalizing used products on the domestic market can stimulate export but it does not have an intended effect of stimulating new products produced at home the channel structure worsens the problem

reputational comparative advantage and multinational enterprise 1 introduction when cultivating a new export market or attempting to expand its share of an existing market an exporter is likely to find that it has been preceded by its reputation minus a readily identifiable brand name quality reputation may solely reflect the country of origin for example when consumers are presented with a large amount of complex product information they may use the country of origin as a heuristic in forming product impressions without considering other product attributes 1 in this article i show that this heuristic decision making process can affect a firm s quality decision and can therefore become self fulfilling hence any bias that consumers have may be well founded however it is only correct because firms respond rationally to it colombia s garment industry provides an interesting example of a self fulfilling unfavorable quality reputation in international trade as described by morawetz 1981 a single colombian garment firm took a contract for 50 000 men s suits that was beyond its capability the poor quality result so tarnished the american importer s name that other high quality importers become wary of colombian sewn garments with the payoff to high quality production reduced colombian garment firms then concentrated on low quality markets and the newly found unfavorable reputation was justified in the model constructed here consumers see only a noisy signal of the product s quality at the time of purchase therefore their posterior beliefs are based on this noisy signal and the country of origin reputations as will be made clear higher quality firms benefit more from an increase in their country s reputation so that a better reputation generates an increase in the percentage of high quality firms in this way the reputation becomes self fulfilling and ex ante identical countries can be correctly perceived as differing in their percentage of high quality producers i next introduce an economy with two sectors one sector produces more complex goods where high quality is not easily verified and is more essential to the product s performance these may be technology intensive products or they may consist of the design and marketing of the goods produced in the other sector in particular high quality production costs and the consumer s value for high quality goods is greater in this sector i show that this sector becomes more profitable as the country of origin reputation increases hence if one country s equilibrium reputation is low and the other country s equilibrium reputation is high then the pattern of specialization and international trade can be determined solely by reputational comparative advantage 2 finally i show that reputational comparative advantage can overshadow a small technological comparative disadvantage in determining the pattern of international trade given this pattern of trade and specialization based on reputational comparative advantage a high reputation firm may expend resources to establish a multinational enterprise mne in the low reputation country for example many mne products require the differing specializations of both the high and low reputation countries although differing in motivation this result accords well with more traditional models of vertical mne 3 however this impetus for mne as well as its more traditional counterparts does not explain why the mne would choose foreign direct investment fdi over a less costly licensing arrangement 4 the quality uncertainty in this model along with the difference in equilibrium reputations allows us to address this question in particular appropriable reputational rents are generated by fdi when the high reputation parent firm procures and internalizes production with a low reputation host firm this fdi breaks the low reputation equilibrium of the host firm and generates reputational rents

partitioning country of origin effects consumer evaluations of a hybrid product recent cases in strategic alliances observed in the u s automobile and numerous other consumer product industries point up an important area of research that has not received enough attention in the literature complex products involving multiple country affiliations have become much more common

adverse selection in durable goods markets we present a dynamic model of adverse selection to examine the interactions between new and used goods markets we find that the used market never shuts down the volume of trade can be large and distortions are lower than previously thought new cars prices can be higher under adverse selection than in its absence an extension to several brands that differ in reliability leads to testable predictions of the effects of adverse selection unreliable brands have steeper price declines and lower volumes of trade we contrast these predictions with those of a model where brands physically depreciate at different rates

multinational production effect on brand value direct foreign investment in manufacturing abroad has a number of consequences for the firm one aspect particularly salient when the company s image is tied to its home country is the impact of the dfi upon customer perceptions of the brand the present study shows how changes in perceptions can be assessed prior to the investment decision and how the brand value consequences of a particular location can be estimated the proposed method is illustrated using data from a japanese company s entry into the u s

durable goods monopoly with discrete demand we analyze a dynamic game between consumers and the sole seller of a durable good unlike previous analyses we assume that there exists a finite collection of buyers rather than a continuum none of the main conclusions of the literature on durable goods monopoly survives this change in assumption coase s conjecture that a durable goods monopolist cannot earn supracompetitive profits in the continuous time limit bulow s proposition that renting a durable is always more profitable than selling it and stokey s proposition that precommitting to a time path of prices is always optimal are all false when the set of buyers is finite thus the assumption of a continuum of consumers so innocuous and useful a simplification in other contexts has proved misleading in the context of durable goods monopoly

us versus them or us versus everyone delineating consumer aversion to foreign goods this paper presents evidence that international animosity and consumer ethnocentrism are distinct constructs that play different roles depending on the set of products available to consumers results show that animosity toward a foreign nation is related to choices between foreign goods while consumer ethnocentrism is related to choices between domestic and foreign goods further the study finds animosity effects even though anger levels are generally low thus extending the boundaries of the animosity model of foreign purchase the study focuses on u s consumer views of japan and japanese products implications for decisions concerning global versus local branding strategies are discussed

a cross cultural study of made in concepts cross cultural studies of the perceptions of countries of origin by industrial users have been few but they are important because of their managerial implications for multinational firms this study uses data obtained from american and french directors of purchasing of major industrial firms concerning their perceptions of 5 major made in concepts after the data were corrected for response bias results show both how the respondents perceive the made in concepts and the differences between the american and french perceptions

durable good monopolies with rational expectations and replacement sales a monopoly producer of a durable good is examined under the previously uninvoked assumption that the good depreciates and hence that replacement sales must occur if a fixed stock of the good is to be maintained we find two ways in which the no depreciation result that the monopoly will always at least eventually produce a stock equal to that produced by a competitive market may not hold if the length of the trading period is nonzero the limiting stock produced by the firm will be lower than the competitive stock to ensure the profitability of future replacement sales if the firm is able to constrain its production capacity it may choose a constraint that always binds in the sense that it will be impossible for the firm to achieve a stock equal to the competitive stock

consumer animosity in the global value chain the effect of international production shifts on willingness to purchase hybrid products the escalation of international offshoring and outsourcing in recent years has resulted in a proliferation of hybrid products for the typical multinational enterprise with multiple country affiliations for branding design manufacture assembly and parts sourcing however little has been written regarding the impact of consumer animosity on such hybrid activities or the role of universal values in a hybrid production animosity model in this paper we extend the consumer animosity literature to a firm s global integration activities for hybrid products we posit that consumers willingness to purchase wtp a complex hybrid product is negatively affected by partial production shifts to an animosity evoking country and that self reported animosity toward the country predicts lower wtp above and beyond consumer ethnocentrism and perceived product quality in addition we hypothesize a negative relationship between conservation values and wtp hybrid foreign products and a positive relationship between openness values and wtp hybrid foreign products a study of 319 us consumers revealed consistent support for these hypotheses with the exception of the conservation values wtp relationship practical implications and future research directions are discussed

international product positioning one of the cornerstones of a firm s marketing strategy in any market is the development of an appropriate product positioning plan this paper argues that may of the same considerations that go into the positioning strategy in the home country are directly relevant for international markets there is an added elements of complexity in that the country of origin of the imported product will often be a salient factor in the buyer evaluation process the effect of country stereotype will be to shift the position of the product in the perceptual space and alter the overall evaluation of its merits the competitive strength of the product will thus be affected by country biases the paper shows how these factors can be dealt with in the management of the international product positioning task

economic benefit of powerful credit scoring abstract we study the economic benefits from using credit scoring models we contribute to the literature by relating the discriminatory power of a credit scoring model to the optimal credit decision given the receiver operating characteristic roc curve we derive a the profit maximizing cutoff and b the pricing curve using these two concepts and a mixture thereof we study a stylized loan market model with banks differing in the quality of their credit scoring model even for small quality differences the variation in profitability among lenders is large and economically significant we end our analysis by quantifying the impact on profits when information leaks from a competitor s scoring model into the market

cross national laws and differences in market response international differences in general and cultural differences in particular exert profound influence on what people buy in modeling market response highly visible international differences in purchase behavior seem to lead to an assumption by management scientists that there are large parallel international differences in market response to such things as price and advertising in an interpretive review of market response models we do find international differences in response parameters but we also find that parameter differences due to cross national factors tend to be smaller than differences related to technical characteristics of the model or to product market specifics we suggest two new intermediate categories of generalizability between the extremes of everything is the same and everything is different we also argue that one promising approach to international generalization is through appropriate statistical adjustment of parameters from existing models

monopoly production and pricing of finitely durable goods with strategic consumers fluctuating willingness to pay abstract demand volatility and production lead time oblige manufacturers of made to stock goods to use economic forecasts in deciding on production quantities manufacturers of finitely durable goods face an additional complication in making production decisions they must consider not only the uncertainty in demand for new goods but also how the future sales will be affected by the older goods that will become available via a secondhand market using a model of an infinite horizon sequential game between a monopolistic producer of durable goods and strategic consumers we investigate how demand volatility affects producers production and pricing decisions we formulate the problem of a monopolist durable goods producer as a discrete time markov decision process and prove certain structural properties of the sales and production policy these structural properties facilitate an efficient computational algorithm which we use in running numerical experiments to explicate the producer s strategy and to conduct equilibrium comparative statics analysis we show that a simple myopic policy is optimal when each period s demand is independent and identically distributed i i d when demand is correlated across periods the producer s optimal production and sales policy is not myopic and in some states when the economy is poor the producer withholds some of the new goods inventory our numerical results suggest that in equilibrium the producer who is dealing with myopic rather than with forward looking consumers is more likely to sell some of these held back goods later as vintage goods

the intergovernmental network of world trade igo connectedness governance and embeddedness membership in certain intergovernmental organizations igos such as the world trade organization has long been argued to stimulate trade yet evidence linking igos to trade is mixed the authors argue that identifying the influence of igos requires attention not only to the institutions igos enact but also to the network through which they enact them this approach allows them to demonstrate that trade between two countries increases by an average of 58 with every doubling of the strength of igo connection between the countries they also contribute to debates regarding the mechanisms through which structural relationships influence economic behavior by showing that substantial trade benefits occur not only through economic igos but also through igos that were formed for social and cultural purposes and that connections through igos that are organizationally strong have more impact than those through minimalist igos

eliminating the market for secondhand goods an alternative explanation for leasing there are a number of prominent specific instances in which a durable goods manufacturer with significant market power employed a lease only policy i united shoe in the market for shoe machinery ii ibm in the market for computers and iii xerox in the market for copiers the obvious question that arises is why would such a firm prefer leasing over selling in this article i argue that one role of the lease only policy was to eliminate the market for secondhand goods the article formally demonstrates the argument discusses the relationship between this article and earlier literature on secondhand markets and discusses the implications for antitrust policy

is leasing greener than selling based on the proposition that leasing is environmentally superior to selling some firms have adopted a leasing strategy and others promote their existing leasing programs as environmentally superior to green their image the argument is that because a leasing firm retains ownership of the off lease units it has an incentive to remarket them or invest in designing a more durable product resulting in a lower volume of new production and disposal however leasing might be environmentally inferior because of the direct control the firm has over the off lease products which may prompt the firm to remove them from the market to avoid cannibalizing the demand for new products motivated by these issues we adopt a life cycle environmental impact perspective and analytically investigate if leasing can be both more profitable and have a lower total environmental impact we find that leasing can be environmentally worse despite remarketing all off lease products and greener than selling despite the mid life removal of off lease products our analysis also provides insights for environmental groups and entities that use different approaches to improve the environmental performance of business practices we show that imposing disposal fees or encouraging remanufacturing under some conditions can actually lead to higher environmental impact we also identify when educating consumers to be more environmentally conscious can improve the relative environmental performance of leasing this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing

nigerian consumer attitudes toward foreign and domestic products the nigerian consumer obsession with foreign made goods has had a detrimental effect on the domestic manufacturing industry this paper uses conjoint analysis to investigate the importance of a product s country of manufacture relative to other attributes in the nigerian consumer choice it was found that the country of manufacture is significantly more important than price and other product attributes in consumer preference nigerian consumers have a negative image of the made in nigeria label rating it lower than labels from more economically developed countries additional analyses indicate that the superior reliability and technological advancement of foreign products are the most important correlates of the nigerian consumer s likelihood to purchase foreign products implications for foreign marketers domestic governments and domestic manufacturers are discussed

negative country of origin effects the case of the new russia with the political and economic changes in eastern europe there is an increasing need to market successfully products from these countries in the industrialized world this paper explores the extent to which the risk attitudes political convictions and country of origin associations of individuals affect the buying decision of a product from a controversial source country on a theoretical level it is investigated where in the decision making process political convictions and country of origin effects emerge most forcefully hypotheses are tested empirically against survey data on farmers evaluations of tractors from several countries including the russian made belarus the data analysis involves the specification of a recursive system encompassing the steps the buyer goes through from product evaluation to purchase the effects of political convictions risk attitudes and the country of origin connection are evaluated at each stage in the process implications are derived for potential strategies on the part of russian manufacturers

attitudes towards foreign products and international price competition in this paper we analyse price competition between firms established in different countries when demand is sensitive to national biases the intensity of this bias varies across consumers in this context trade arises because of the dispersion of consumers perception of the foreign good when consumer attitudes are diverse enough one firm concentrates on consumers with an intensive bias leaving room for the other which will serve consumers with a low bias next an increase in import tariff will unambiguously lead to a general increase in price since in equilibrium the domestic firm will decide to increase margins finally we identify conditions under which buy domestic campaigns increase local welfare and output attitudes envers les produits etrangers et concurrence internationale par les prix dans ce memoire les auteurs analysent la concurrence par les prix entre firmes etablies dans divers pays quand la demande est sensible a certaines preferences de caractere national l intensite de ce biais varie selon les consommateurs dans ce contexte le commerce international est possible parce que il y a une certaine dispersion de la perception du produit etranger par les consommateurs locaux quand les attitudes des consommateurs varient beaucoup une firme se concentre sur les consommateurs qui ont un biais important laissant assez d espace a l autre firme pour qu elle puisse servir les consommateurs qui ont un biais plus faible un accroissement du niveau des droits de douane entraine inevitablement un accroissement general du niveau de prix puisque en equilibre la firme locale va decider d augmenter ses marges on identifie les conditions qui vont faire que les campagnes d achat chez soi vont accroitre les niveaux de bien etre et de production dans l economie locale