Editorial

Citation

Phau, I. (2006), "Editorial", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 18 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/apjml.2006.00818baa.001

Editorial

Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics (APJML) has made a major impact in the Australia and New Zealand Marketing Association Conference (ANZMAC) 2005 held during the first week of December in Perth, Western Australia. Emerald had a booth promoting the key marketing titles, and at the same time officially launching APJML. One of the highlights included the Meet the Editor session, which generated a lot of interest amongst the delegates. It has certainly raised the profile and visibility of the journal. APJML was also the proud sponsor of the Marketing in Asia Track which had attracted more than 20 papers in which 12 were accepted for presentation in the conference. A prize was awarded by APJML to the best paper for the track.

This current issue opens with the award winning paper of the track. This extended version of the conference paper focuses on the effects of consumer ethnocentrism on perceptions of product quality, price, perceived value and product choice for consumers in less developed countries. This bridges a significant gap in the current country of origin literature. Through a conjoint analysis, Indonesian consumers seem to depict contrasting results as compared to past research. It is very encouraging especially for the policy makers to find that Indonesian consumers are more receptive to Buy Local promotional campaigns and messages than previously thought. Past research reports such phenomenon to be mainly reflective of developed countries and not less developed countries such as Indonesia. Another extension to current body of knowledge on country of origin is the focus on service products. This paper shows evidence that the country of origin effect for services may be more important than for tangible goods.

The second paper in this issue investigates the impacts of export promotion programs on firm export performance through a structural equation model. Data collected from a mail survey from 233 firms in Bangladesh representing three major export oriented industries namely garment, leather products, and specialised textiles were analysed to test a series of hypotheses. The findings reflect firm support for the internationalisation process theory which suggests that gradual knowledge acquisition by export firms will lead to higher commitment to export thereby in the process resulting in higher international operations. More importantly, the paper provides a discussion of a number of valuable lessons for managers and policy makers. For instance, managers of exporting firms should maintain a positive attitude towards the export market environment by consistently building their knowledge and commitment to exporting for better success in their international operations. Policy makers should also design export promotion policies based on a strong understanding of the needs of export managers to enhance the success of these endeavours.

The third paper investigates the degree to which customer service management affects perceived business performance measures in banks and finance companies in Malaysia. It is extremely timely for research to focus on evaluating how far the Malaysian banking industry has evolved since the consolidation exercise in 1999. Fifty-four domestic banks then merged to form ten domestic anchor banks. With the intense competition, the challenge is for each to enhance the quality of customer service to ensure high customer retention rate to maintain success and survival in the cut throat industry. The premise of the paper is to investigate such effects. The results of the study indicates some key success factors such as market research, customer satisfaction, customer assessment and handling of customer to successful implementation of customer service management. The intricacies of the findings of the structural model will provide some useful strategic and managerial implications especially to bankers and financial advisers.

The final two papers in this issue evaluate how different facets of dyadic exchanges are manifested in Chinese communities. The first of these two papers looks at the Chinese students expectations of service quality of foreign universities. Three traits are apparent in the findings. First, Chinese students rely on Past experiences, advertising and word of mouth as important information sources that influence their pre-purchase expectations of service quality. Second, these sources of information are most likely to also influence the students desired service quality expectations (overall expectations). Third, the majority of those who held positive predicted and desired expectations towards the universities were influenced more by explicit service promises than the implicit ones. These findings will help overseas universities shape and design their marketing communication campaigns to effectively target such potential Chinese students.

Word of mouth (WOM) as an information source is also investigated in the final paper of this issue. Specially, the paper focuses on how WOM is communicated across American and Chinese discussion boards. The findings suggest that the behaviour of consumers on a US based site, eBay, is very different from that of consumers using EachNet, a comparable Chinese language site. The analysis uncovers both quantitative and qualitative differences in the content of the two sites. An important finding is the strong correlation between the number of brand mentions and the market share of the leading brands in the Chinese sample while it is not reflective in the American sample. This inconsistency may pose some ramifications for global brands which have conspicuously surfaced in the content analysis of the two discussion boards. The paper also speculates some of the reasons behind the disparity and suggests relevant implications for marketers and brand managers.

It can be seen that this issue looks at a myriad of interesting topics of currency, reflecting the changing landscape of the markets in the Asia Pacific. I am confident that the papers will stimulate and inspire some interesting thoughts and certainly I look forward to any forthcoming feedback. Once again, many thanks to the Editorial Advisory Board and the Ad-hoc Reviewers for graciously spending time reviewing the manuscripts. Your continued support is much appreciated.

Ian PhauCurtin University of Technology