bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Influences of the spokes-character on brand equity antecedents
Authors: Chang En-Chi 
Published: May 2014

Purpose
– To draw attention to the importance of the spokes-character to marketing communications and a company's branding strategy, this exploratory study attempts to suggest a scale for measuring the spokes-character perception and to explore the relationships among the spokes-character perception and brand equity antecedents, i.e. brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality and brand loyalty, in the context of a retail brand. The purpose of this paper is to encourage the discussion about spokes-characters’ functions in marketing and branding, particularly in the Asian market.

Design/methodology/approach
– Data were collected through a survey among university students in Taiwan. The survey questionnaire was based on the literature on spokes-characters and on the available scales of consumer-based brand equity. Data were analyzed by using structural equation modeling.

Findings
– The results in this study show that the spokes-character perception is properly reflected by likability, relevance and expertise and likability is the most salient attribute. The spokes-character perception influences brand awareness/association and perceived quality, which in turn influence brand loyalty.

Research limitations/implications
– This study suggests that likability, relevance and expertise are proper constructs connoting the spokes-character perception and verifies the influence of the spokes-character, as a source of secondary association, on brand equity antecedents, i.e. brand awareness/association, perceived quality and brand loyalty. This study also finds that the spokes-character serves as a cue of perceived quality.

Practical implications
– The suggested scale provides marketers with an instrument for measuring consumers’ perception of a potential spokes-character. Besides, when the advertiser or the marketer designs a spokes-character, the character should not only be likable, but also be relevant and show expertise relating to the endorsed brand.

Originality/value
– This study hopes to encourage more discussions about the utilization of the spokes-character in the Asian market because the discussion about how the spokes-character works in this market is still scant. This study also provides empirical evidence for the influence of a secondary association, i.e. the spokes-character, on brand equity antecedents.
The Chinese wine market: a market segmentation study
Authors: Bo Liu Hong , McCarthy Breda , Chen Tingzhen , Guo Shu , Song Xuguang 
Published: May 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Chinese wine market can be meaningfully segmented and to explore marketing implications for the Australian wine sector.

Design/methodology/approach
– The research is descriptive in nature, using an online survey to collect quantitative data on wine consumer behaviour. A total of 407 responses were obtained. Data analysis included descriptive analysis (frequency distributions) and cluster analysis.

Findings
– The research identifies three clusters of wine consumers: “the extrinsic attribute-seeking customers”, “the intrinsic attribute-seeking customers” and “the alcohol level attribute-seeking customers”. These groups of consumers were categorised using a behavioural (benefit) segmentation base.

Research limitations/implications
– The use of an internet survey and convenience sample limits generalisation of the findings. The adoption of a behavioural basis in conducting the segmentation is a limitation. The use of more complex segmentation bases, such as psychographics, may yield a richer understanding of the Chinese wine consumer in future studies.

Practical implications
– The customer profiles provide Australian wine marketers with an insight into Chinese wine consumer behaviour. Brand positioning can be improved by ensuring that the brand emphasises certain product attributes which the segments value when choosing wine.

Originality/value
– Little previous research on market segmentation has been conducted in mainland China. For Australian wine marketers, this study provides a baseline study into market segmentation and may assist with targeting and brand positioning decisions.
Consumer susceptibility to credit card misuse and indebtedness
Authors: Awanis Sandra , Chi Cui Charles 
Published: May 2014

Purpose
– Prior research suggests that payment mechanisms are imbued with cues that affect purchase evaluation and future spending behavior. Credit cards are distinguished from other payment mechanisms as they elicit greater willingness to spend, prompt weaker recollections of past credit expenses and overvaluation of available funds – a phenomena the authors call as “credit card effect.” Little is known about the individuals’ differential exposure to the credit card effect. The purpose of this paper is to present a new concept and measure of susceptibility to the credit card misuse and indebtedness (SCCMI).

Design/methodology/approach
– The study focussed on young credit card users (aged 18-25) from Malaysia, Singapore, and the UK as they represent varying levels of credit card issuance and consumer protection regulations. The authors conducted confirmatory factor analysis and invariance tests to assess the validity, reliability and parsimony of the proposed scale in the three countries. Further, the authors examined the prediction power of SCCMI on consumer tendency to become a revolving credit card debtor.

Findings
– Results show that the SCCMI scale is valid, reliable and parsimonious across the multi-country context. The paper provided additional validity support through known-group comparison among various payers of credit card bills.

Research limitations/implications
– The convenience sampling used for the study is the main limitation. The findings bear important implications for more socially responsible marketing practice and better public policies in credit carder regulation for protecting young credit card users.

Practical implications
– The new concept and measurement scale can be used for identifying the vulnerable individuals in credit card use, assisting consumer knowledge training, improving policies for credit card regulation, and helping credit card providers in socially responsible marketing practice.

Social implications
– The cross-country validity of the SCCMI scale provides a unique contribution for monitoring and auditing consumer vulnerability in credit card misuse in Asian and European market conditions.

Originality/value
– SCCMI offers an original concept that is distinct from previous research in that SCCMI focusses solely on the state of likelihood to commit credit card abuse rather than the behavioral manifestations of credit card misuse. SCCMI provides a new tool for marketers and public policy makers for ethically responsible credit card marketing and regulation to protect youths’ benefits.
Integration policies in Europe – a web-based search for consensus
Authors: Franz Josef Öttl Ulrich , Pichler Bernhard , Schultze-Naumburg Jonas , Wadispointner Sabine 
Published: May 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of the present paper is to describe a web-based consensus-finding procedure, resulting in an agreement among the group of participants representing global stakeholders regarding the interdisciplinary topic in a university master's seminar on “Global Studies”. The result of the collectively elaborated solution pertains to the forward-looking and jointly agreed topic of migration policies.

Design/methodology/approach
– The core part of the web-based negotiation game “Surfing Global Change” utilised here is a controversial group discussion. A subsequent step creates an agreement among discussants. The group of participants, in this case co-authors of this paper, developed a final agreement on possible future political adaptations and guidelines to improve current standards in the global management of refugee and migration issues.

Findings
– The findings offer several political possibilities for European and African states including structural recommendations as well as cooperative development policies.

Social implications
– The result is a catalogue of tentative recommendations to improve international policies relating to current migration problems, here focused on migration between Africa and Europe.

Originality/value
– Considering the creativity of the entire procedural structure combined with an ordered scientific methodology, the outcome could promise an interdisciplinary result. Effects of group dynamics, cooperation, scientific research and diplomacy are integrated into consensus building.
On the structure of the present-day convergence
Authors: Korotayev Andrey , Zinkina Julia 
Published: May 2014

Purpose
– A substantial number of researchers have investigated the global economic dynamics of this time to disprove unconditional convergence and refute its very idea, stating the phenomenon of conditional convergence instead. However, most respective papers limit their investigation period with the early or mid-2000s. In the authors’ opinion, some of the global trends which revealed themselves particularly clearly in the second half of the 2000s call for a revision of the convergence issue. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach
– Several methodologies for measuring the global convergence/divergence trends exist in the economic literature. This paper seeks to contribute to the existing literature on unconditional β-convergence of the per capita incomes at the global level.

Findings
– In the recent years, the gap between high-income and middle-income countries is decreasing especially rapidly. The gap between high-income and low-income countries, meanwhile, is decreasing at a much slower pace. At the same time, the gap between middle-income and low-income countries is actually widening. Indeed, in the early 1980s GDP per capita in the low-income countries was on average three times lower than in the middle-income countries, and this gap was totally overshadowed by the more than ten-time abyss between the middle-income and the high-income countries. Now, however, the GDP per capita in low-income countries lags behind the middle-income ones by more than five times, which is largely the same as the gap (rapidly contracting in the recent years) between the high-income and the middle-income countries. This clearly suggests that the configuration of the world system has experienced a very significant transformation in the recent 30 years.

Research limitations/implications
– The research concentrates upon the dynamics of the gap in per capita income between the high-income, the middle-income, and the low-income countries.

Originality/value
– This paper's originality/value lies in drawing attention to the specific changes in the structure of global convergence/divergence patterns and their implications for the low-income countries.
Global world: a problem of governance
Authors: Nikolayevich Chumakov Alexander 
Published: May 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to include the following items: to show the absolute necessity of managing the international community, to explore the fundamental possibility of managing the global world, to prove or disprove such a possibility, to determine the real background of global governance in modern conditions and to show the methods of transition toward global governance.

Design/methodology/approach
– The main methodological principles used in writing the paper are: the principle of the integrity of the world; the understanding of globalization as an objective historical process; the principle of historical sequence of the considered event; the principle of priority of the general over the particular, as well as of the global over the regional and the local.

Findings
– As a result of the proposed research, it is shown that the global world needs to be managed. Prerequisites for the management of the global world are identified, among which the most important are morality and rights. It is shown that for management of the global world there should not only be global government, but also other branches of government, such as a World Parliament and a judicial system based on global law.

Research limitations/implications
– A clear distinction between the management and regulation of social relations is made. The need to further explore the concepts of international law and global right is stated.

Practical implications
– National sovereignty increasingly must give place to global governance structures.

Social implications
– The need to build a global civil society is evident.

Originality/value
– The absolute necessity and possibility of regulating the world community are shown. New approaches to solving this problem are proposed. They are based on existing assumptions in the field of executive and legislative power and also involve the creation of new structures, primarily in the area of the judiciary.
Discrete element method simulation and experimental validation of particle damper system
Authors: Lu Zheng , Lu Xilin , Jiang Huanjun , F. Masri Sami 
Published: May 2014

Purpose
– The particle damper is an efficient vibration control device and is widely used in engineering projects; however, the performance of such a system is very complicated and highly nonlinear. The purpose of this paper is to accurately simulate the particle damper system properly, and help to understand the underlying physical mechanics.

Design/methodology/approach
– A high-fidelity simulation process is well established to account for all significant interactions among the particles and with the host structure system, including sliding friction, gravitational forces, and oblique impacts, based on the modified discrete element method. In this process, a suitable particle damper system is modeled, reaction forces between particle aggregates and the primary structure are incorporated, a reasonable contact force model and time step are determined, and an efficient contact detection algorithm is adopted.

Findings
– The numerical results are further validated by both special computational tests and shaking table tests, with good agreements to the experimental results. The method is shown to be effective and accurate to simulate the particle damper system.

Originality/value
– The approaches described in this paper provide an efficient numerical way to investigate complex particle damper systems.
Moderating influence of internal resources on cluster externalities
Authors: Diez-Vial Isabel , Fernández-Olmos Marta 
Published: May 2014

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to assess the benefits to firms arising from their geographical concentration; paying particular attention to the impact of specialized employees, information and knowledge spillovers and a collective reputation.Design/methodology/approach– The authors have taken into account two main approaches: a cluster one, where location may increase firms’ competitiveness; and the resource-based view, where internal resources are the key for firms’ success. Empirical evidence has been gathered from the Ham cluster in Spain combining secondary and primary data. The authors undertook a Tobit regression model since the dependent variable is limited.Findings– The authors observe that firms with human resources tend to benefit more from cluster externalities. On contrary, R&D and advertising investments induce firms to isolate themselves from crowded areas and prevent any local leakage.Research limitations/implications– It would be interesting to better understand the role that human resources play; undertake a longitudinal analysis; and take into account the resources of other proximate firms.Practical implications– Local advantages depends the maturity of the industry by reducing the attractiveness of cluster locations through greater competition in the input and final markets; while internal resources may improve a firm's ability to absorb these externalities, they may also create leakage that benefits neighbouring firms.Originality/value– It combines two approaches evaluating the moderating influence of internal resources on local externalities. It also offers new empirical evidence from a low-tech industry.
Private property and collective action: co-operation instead of competition
Authors: Paranque Bernard 
Published: May 2014

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to reconsider commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly as it relates to the impact of the firm shareholder governance model on the shape of society.Design/methodology/approach– The author contrasts an exchange value standpoint with a use value perspective to explicate current conditions under which neither the state nor the market prevail in organizing economic activity (i.e. the co-operative form of governance and community-created brand value).Findings– This paper offers mechanisms and recommendations regarding the formalized conditions for collective action and definitions of common guiding principles to facilitate new expressions of the principles of co-ordination. Such behaviour will allow for the development of common resources the purpose being a re-appropriation of the world.Originality/value– This consideration is motivated by the scale and scope of the modern global crisis which combines financial, economic, social and cultural dimensions to produce world disenchantment. Dismissing the alternative of individuals simply forsaking engagement with society as it stands, it becomes necessary to revisit at this historical moment, the ideals on which modern societies are built, including the philosophy of freedom for all. This utopian concept has produced an ideology limited by capitalist notions of private property, motivating this inquiry.
Designing school contexts for success: paternalism or libertarianism?
Authors: P. Bailes Lauren , K. Hoy Wayne 
Published: May 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to develop, illustrate, and apply the concept of choice architecture to schools.

Design/methodology/approach
– The analysis is a synthesis of concepts from the social science research that nudge people toward positive actions.

Findings
– A dozen concepts are identified, defined, and illustrated as a set of principles and guidelines that are elaborated to guide school leaders in the science and art of choice architecture.

Practical implications
– The principles of choice architecture are demonstrated to be of practical utility for school leaders in designing educational contexts for school achievement.

Originality/value
– A mental toolbox of concepts and principles that are highlighted for use by school leaders to benefit students and teachers.
Towards sustainable capitalism in the development of higher education business school curricula and management
Authors: Beusch Peter 
Published: May 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to account for, and conceptualize, the internal and external forces that influence higher education business schools as they strive to integrate sustainability issues into their curricula in the effort to achieve a more sustainable (yet capitalist) world.

Design/methodology/approach
– A case study approach is used for the research, which is grounded in the relevant literature, to investigate sustainable development issues in the context of a Swedish business school (university level). The empirical data consists of a review of internal documents plus e-mail surveys and interviews and discussion seminars with university teachers/researchers and key administrators.

Findings
– Two tentative models are presented that map the various internal and external forces behind business schools’ curriculum change. One important finding describes how supply and demand influences business schools and recruiters of business students.

Research limitations/implications
– Because this research is based on a single case study, the analysis and the mapping in the paper are somewhat limited in their general applicability. However, the research context of the business school permits drawing conclusions that may apply to a broad class of colleges or departments in higher education. In addition, because the research is supported by significant ideas from the literature, general inferences may be drawn about business school curricula.

Originality/value
– The two tentative models provide a holistic framework that adds to the understanding of the composition and interrelationship of influential forces on business schools when major changes in curricula and their management are contemplated.
Examining CO2ereduction within the German logistics sector
Authors: Tacken Jens , Sanchez Rodrigues Vasco , Mason Robert 
Published: May 2014

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the measures outlined in frameworks for guiding CO2eemissions reduction in road freight transport in the academic literature are actually being realised at a practical level.Design/methodology/approach– A qualitative evaluation is carried out of the transport-related CO2emeasurement and reduction initiatives in the German logistics sector through ten case study logistics service providers. For each, senior managers are interviewed with the findings synthesised through content-analysis. The initiatives are evaluated against an accepted leading framework model used to categorise CO2eemissions reduction initiatives.Findings– The investigated firms, although at different evolutionary stages, understand that logistics and ecology do not, for the most part, contradict each other and both need to be considered in their companies’ long-term planning. The framework used to categorise CO2eemissions reduction initiatives in logistics provision is largely confirmed, but also refined.Research limitations/implications– The research reaffirms and refines frameworks developed to encourage and assess green logistics practice, in a specific country's (Germany) logistics industry.Practical implications– The analysis shows strong evidence that the options identified in theory are also valid for the German logistics service provider companies that were investigated. Most of the participating companies apply many of the operational options to reduce the environmental impact, although no one company is pursuing all the possible initiatives.Originality/value– There is a lack of empirical studies which assess the application of green logistics initiatives identified in academic literature to practice. This paper contributes to filling this gap.