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The direct marketing retailers have traditionally provided mail order and call center channels. In the emergence of Internet channel, the direct marketing retailers have reported a large increase in the use of Internet channel, and some have encouraged the customers to use the Internet channel more than other channels due to potential cost savings for the firm. However, over a decade of Internet usage, the traditional Call Center channel has not disappeared in the direct marketing industry. This study is motivated by this observation and incorporates the variables that capture the benefits of using different channels in the multi-channel choice model.

We apply the proposed model to a transactional database from a direct marketing retailer that operates multiple channels. Our empirical result shows that the multi-channel choice model that incorporates the channel benefits has stronger channel share prediction power than the model without. It further shows that consumers are more likely to choose the Internet channel when the consumer has low perceived risk and high experience and familiarity with the purchase, but they are more likely to choose the Call Center when the consumers have high perceived risk and low experience and familiarity.

Database marketers often select households for individual marketing contacts using information on past purchase behavior. One of the most common methods, known as RFM variables approach, ranks households according to three criteria: the recency of the latest purchase event, the long-run frequency of purchases, and the cumulative dollar expenditure. We argue that RFM variables approach is an indirect measure of the latent purchase propensity of the customer. In addition, the use of RFM information in targeting households creates major statistical problems (selection bias and RFM endogeneity) that complicate the calibration of forecasting models. Using a latent trait approach to capture a household's propensity to purchase a product, we construct a methodology that not only measures directly the latent propensity value of the customer, but also avoids the statistical limitations of the RFM variables approach. The result is a general household response forecasting and scoring approach that can be used on any database of customer transactions. We apply our methodology to a database from a charitable organization and show that the forecasting accuracy of the new methodology improves upon the traditional RFM variables approach.

To provide an employee perspective on ambassadorship in the context of corporate communication, the purpose of this paper is to explore how employees relate to and experience ambassadorship.

The study has a qualitative approach, and the empirical material consists of semi-structured interviews with, and focus groups of, employees of seven organizations in both the public and private sectors. The paper draws on a contemporary understanding of identity where identity is perceived as an ongoing reflexive process in which employees negotiate and construct of their selves through relating to role expectations and interacting with others. Therefore, ambassadorship is understood as a social-identity, or persona, that is referenced by employees in their identity work.

The findings indicate that employees embrace this persona as they imagine that external stakeholders, colleagues and managers expect it of them. However, the ambassador persona also gives rise to identity-tensions both during work and off work.

The paper contributes a novel way to understand ambassadorship as well as highlighting some of the more problematic aspects of it and furthering the understanding of the concept.

The findings highlight that ambassadorship can have problematic consequences that needs to be addressed. They suggest that the employee perspective should be taken into consideration in internal communication education and training.

The paper contributes a novel employee perspective on ambassadorship.

There is limited insight concerning a firm’s remedy choice after a product recall. This study aims to propose that failure severity and brand equity are key antecedents of remedy choice and provides empirical evidence for a non-linear relationship between pre-recall brand equity and the firm’s remedy offer that is moderated by severity.

This study uses field data for 159 product recalls from 60 brands between January 2008 to February 2020 to estimate a probit model of the effects of failure severity, pre-recall brand equity and remedy choice.

Firms with higher and lower pre-recall brand equity are less likely to offer full (vs partial) remedy compared to medium level pre-recall brand equity firms. Failure severity moderates this relationship positively, i.e. firms with low and high brand equity are more sensitive to failure severity and then select full instead of partial remedy.

This research reconciles contradictory arguments and research results about failure severity as an antecedent of remedy choice by introducing brand equity as another key variable. Future research could examine the psychological process of managerial decision-making through experiments.

This study increases the awareness of the importance of remedy choice during product-harm crises and can help firms and regulators to better understand managerial decision-making mechanisms (and fallacies) during a product-harm crisis.

This study theoretically and empirically advances the limited literature on managerial decision-making in response to product recalls.

This study aims to assess the effect of director board and audit committee attributes and ownership structure on firm performance. In general, resource dependency and agency theories have underlined the superior performance of firms equipped with stronger Corporate Governance (CG) versus those of deficient governance. Concurrently, the study delineated the provisions of ownership structure provision, specifically foreign ownership and institutional ownerships, thus describing the component denoting the structural significance in explicating firm performance.

The current study implemented an empirical approach involving the construction of extensive CG measures thus, subjected to 81 non-financial firms listed on the Amman Stock Exchange spanning the period of 2014–2018.

The current study identified the positive and significant relationship between the board of directors and audit committee characteristics with the firm performance measures tested, namely, return on equity (ROE) and Tobin’s Q. In terms of ownership structure, both foreign and institutional ownerships yielded a significant and positive relationship with ROE. Meanwhile, Tobin’s Q led to an insignificant and negative relationship between both ownership types and firm performance measures.

The analytical outcomes substantiate the possibility of enhanced performance shown by growing global firms because of the implementation of CG mechanisms, specifically because of the practices resulting in minimised agency costs.

The current study offers novel evidence detailing the impact of CG effectiveness towards performance and its implementation in emerging markets following the minimal amount of scholarly efforts on the topic. It is a timely contribution towards the current understanding of the relationship linking governance and performance for the purpose of ensuring the adoption and imposition of a strong corporate governance code by the government.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether air pollution has significant impact on corporate cash holdings and financial leverage.

The data of 199 firms listed on Istanbul Stock Exchange during the period 2009–2020 is analyzed by using pooled ordinary least squares and two-step system generalized method of moments models.

The results indicate that firms in regions with high air pollution tend to increase cash level. In addition, the positive effect of air pollution on cash level is stronger and more significant for environmentally sensitive firms and firms with low operational and distress risk. The results also show insignificant effect of air pollution on financial leverage.

Firms in regions with high air pollution should conduct proactive environmental protection procedures and enhance their eco-efficiency instead of holding excess cash that could negatively affect financial performance. In this context, policymakers should provide financial facilities to firms located in regions with high air pollution and that have low ability to finance environmental investments. On the other hand, the environmental laws and regulations introduced by regulatory authorities can enhance the economic development and firm performance by decreasing the adverse influences of air pollution on corporate financial policies.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this research is one of few that examines the impact of air pollution on corporate cash holdings and financial leverage in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to use content analysis to review the extensive supply chain literature to summarize its past and current trends, and uncover existing gaps and opportunities for future global supply chain research.

Since the study uses content analysis, several dimensions of the literature were analyzed: research purpose, year of publication, journal name, methodology, theory building or verification, country of study, sample industry, global or non-global issues, and article classification.

From a methodological point, the literature mostly consists of empirical and descriptive studies with few exploratory articles. The review shows that global supply chains area relatively “immature” or “new phenomenon” research topic that is gaining interest from practitioners and academics.

It is hoped that by critically examining the extant literature, the authors can clearly identify the challenges and state of global supply chain research to provide supply chain researchers with a precise summary of the literature and directions for future studies.

This study also allows managers to recognize the methodologies and tools that can be used to enhance their supply chains. It is believed that various strategies could be adopted to create a robust global supply chain. In this respect, different industry sectors may require different global strategies and different global practices.

The findings show that there is a shortage of empirical studies on global supply chain strategies and outcomes, and most research focusses on supply chain practices and customer or supplier relationships.