Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between bilateral country reputation and export volume to the country in which that reputation is held.

The unique bilateral data set consists of 861 country pairs. Country reputation measures are from a global survey, in which respondents in 20 countries rate the reputation for products and people of 50 other countries. This data set is then analyzed against actual export data for each country-pair using the well-established structural gravity model of international trade.

The authors find that each improvement in a world ranking of a country’s reputation for products (in a target country) is associated with a 2 percent increase in exports to that particular country; the effect is equivalent to the importing country decreasing a tariff by as much as 2.9 percent. Furthermore, the authors find that different aspects of country reputation – for its products and its people – attenuate distinct forms of uncertainty, and thereby stimulate export volume in distinct ways.

This study shows that the relationship between country reputation and export volume is a substantive and empirically valid topic of study. For public policy makers looking to stimulate exports to a specific country, improving their respective country’s reputation in that country appears to be a viable alternative to other levers (e.g. trade negotiations, free trade agreements). For business leaders at international companies, the findings suggest that companies may consider country reputation as a factor when choosing to which countries they wish to expand.

The notion that country reputation can contribute to aggregate export volume has intuitive appeal. Yet, aside from research on country-of-origin effects which has concentrated on the individual consumer level, the notion of country reputation contributing to aggregate effects has so far been based mostly on conjecture and anecdotal evidence. This is the only study to the authors’ knowledge that empirically tests this relationship using a bilateral measure of reputation as a determinant of export volume within one of the most successful empirical frameworks, the structural gravity model of international trade. The findings suggest that for many countries, their reputation may contribute to billions of dollars in export volume.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between national cultural values and retail structure.

The authors use a panel data set of 67 countries over the period 1999-2012.

The results demonstrate that national cultural values, measured with the World Values Survey’s traditional/secular-rational and survival/self-expression dimensions, affect retail structure.

While marketing scholars have examined the relationship between demographic and competitive factors and retail structure, there has been a substantial body of anecdotal evidence showing that national culture can also drive retail structure development. In order to enhance the understanding of the relationship between national culture and retail structure, the authors empirically examine the impact of national cultural values on retail structure.

This study is the first one to empirically examine the impact of national culture on retail structure. The authors thus help advance retail structure research the primary focus of which has been on investigating the impact of demographic and competitive factors on retail structure. This study is especially relevant to international retail managers who coordinate retail operations in multiple countries around the world. These managers need insight into the impact of national cultural values on retail structure in order to devise effective retail strategies for each host market.

The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative view of marketing that Donald F. Dixon spent much of his distinguished career developing – a paradigm that we refer to as the Dixonian systems perspective of marketing. It is a paradigm that presents marketing as a phenomenon that reaches far beyond the micro/managerial marketing mix paradigm.

Analysis and interpretation of Donald F. Dixon's and colleagues' scholarly work to distill the essence of Dixon's view of marketing, which we refer to as the Dixonian systems perspective of marketing.

The Dixon's systems perspective of marketing offers a framework for the analysis of macromarketing issues that is not provided by the conventional marketing mix micro/managerial paradigm.

The paper provides a concise overview of the macro/systems ideas and concepts of marketing contained in Donald F. Dixon's and his colleagues' extensive writings that to date has not been available from any other source.

Purpose: In this chapter, I explore the current activist disability landscape in Bulgaria, focusing on its apparent insusceptibility to change. My objective is to examine the interplay between the conflicting parties, focusing on the factors that conditioned their successes and failures.

Methods/Approach: Relying mainly on directed content analysis, I analyzed website publications, online discussions, official statements released during the protests, as well as 18 interviews of mothers of children of disabilities and the data from five focus groups.

Findings: On the local disability scene, we discern two types of collective action – phantom disability activism and toxic grassroots mobilization. The first one held strongly to the traditionally construed notion of disability as confined in the need-based system and defined solely as medical condition. The second one – although very important for putting on the agenda issues as personal assistance and demedicalization – embraced deeply disturbing and toxic activist rhetoric, giving rise of an “abled-disabled” citizen thus reinforcing neoliberal images of human worth and failure.

Implication/Value: This chapter offers a closer look at the different meanings and implications of success, failure, and enabling or halting political renewal with regard to disability. On an empirical level, it adds more to the existing knowledge about the opportunities for, the role, the outcomes, and the specific features of alliance building in a context as Bulgaria, which presents us with specific combination of socialist legacies, post-socialist ways of abandoning disabled people, and, at best, short-term and transient embodiments of the “Nothing about us without us” tenet.