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The Japanese typically demand much higher levels and quality of service than expected elsewhere in the world. Extensive after‐sales support, service, and personal attention are required to obtain and keep the Japanese customer. This paper examines the following questions and their ramifications for Marketers: what are the service requirements in Japan ? How did they evolve? What do they cost the Japanese customer in time and money? What does the future hold for service in Japan?

In recent years companies have realized the importance of targeting their products and advertising efforts toward minority and ethnic groups. Globally, regional cultures have become more pronounced as waves of new immigration have begun to change the landscape for marketers. This paper examines the growing impact of immigrants in Europe and offers an American example of how to penetrate these emerging market segments. Of all the ethnic groups in the USA, Hispanic‐Americans are the fastest growing segment and the largest ethnic minority group. In Europe new immigrant groups are beginning to impact the economic, social and political scene. One area in which more research is needed is the effect of ethnic target marketing on both acculturated and un‐acculturated minorities. Today, it is essential that marketers divide their markets by country of origin and by level of acculturation.

Although trade shows are a major portion of the marketing mix in the industrial marketplace, second only to personal selling and above advertising, very little has been researched on their function in industrial marketing. This paper reports the results of an extensive business survey of trade show usage, presents results, compares results to previous studies, provides analyses of the results, and recommendations to businesses to increase efficiency of trade show performance. Study indicates that few companies engage regularly and extensively in international trade shows, although most see the need. Also reports that the evidence suggests that some international companies generate as much as 70 per cent of their annual sales at trade fairs.

Much current Japanese popular discussion centres around the sudden death, at an early age, of Japan′s hard‐working white‐collar workers: karoshi – death from overwork – or Salaryman′s Sudden Death Syndrome. Officially it does not exist as the Government and big business are hesitant to legitimatize the phenomenon because of the response which, both local and international, it would evoke. Nonetheless, it is a common phenomenon. Describes karoshi, defines the extent of the phenomenon, and analyses its future impact on Japan and the world.

Before 1500 Britain was not considered a major European power. Three hundred years later Britain led the way for the Industrial Revolution and held sway economically and militarily during the nineteenth century. The twentieth century saw the United Kingdom lose her empire, her military leadership and, most of all, her capacity to lead the world in technological innovations. What were the circumstances which first thrust England into world leadership and then led her into technological decline? Examines the rise and fall in a sociocultural context and attempts to generalize the results into a modern context to understand better the innovation phenomenon.

Japan′s consumers are said to be the most meticulous and demanding consumers in the world – expecting only the best in quality and service from the merchant. However true this may be, how protected are these consumers by their own government? In an irony of place and time, the world′s toughest consumers are probably the world′s least protected. Examines consumer protection laws and entitlements in Japan, how the disfranchisement of the Japanese consumer evolved, and projects future directions for the Japanese consumer movement.

Within the last two decades, the Japanese economic machine has developed into the leading economy in the world on a per capita income basis and second only to the USA in GNP. Contends that Japan has virtually conquered the US consumer electronics, semiconductor, and machine tool markets and, except for quotas, would have done the same for the automotive segment. Various explanations are offered for Japan’s success and some say it is because of the Japanese ability to listen to and serve their customers by delivering quality merchandise at a low price, while others point to Japanese companies’ ability to innovate. Asks how truly innovative are the Japanese. In what ways do they struggle and prosper innovatively? Examines the notion of “innovation” and how it is accomplished in Japan; explores the positives and negatives of their innovative patterns; and discusses implications for the US and international competition.

Much current Japanese popular discussion centres on the sudden death, at an early age, of Japan′s hard‐working, white‐collar workers: Karoshi (death from overwork) – Salaryman′s Sudden Death Syndrome. Officially, it does not exist, as the government and big business are hesitant to acknowledge the phenomenon in light of the growing need to become more productive. The current recessionary pressure and growing shortage of labour in Japan has exposed this social phenomenon. Describes karoshi, defines the extent of the phenomenon, explores changes that are occurring in Japan′s workforce and analyses the impact on Japan.

This chapter opens up a question central to the mission of the business in society field as it has evolved since the formation of division in the Academy of Management (AOM): What are the (future) distinctive competencies of business in society scholarship? We first empirically demonstrate that core topics to the business in society field, as represented by the Social Issues in Management (SIM) Division of the AOM, are now disseminated broadly throughout the management academy, represented by AOM. We call this dissemination the popularity paradox, because it demonstrates that SIM is not well connected with other divisions, that is, sub-disciplines of management despite that they are now regularly dealing with its core questions. Given that SIM’s (and business in society’s) traditional foci are now widely dispersed, the authors argue that it is time for business in society scholars, with SIM as proxy, to begin tackling new core issues that put growing civilizational threats around sustainability and the consequent need for system change and transformation front and center. In a sense, the authors argue that business in society scholars need to return to their roots of seriously questioning the roles and functions of businesses in society through a critical lens that asks and seeks to answer – today’s emerging new and tough questions, though the questions now emphasize the sustainability of human civilization as we know it.

We live in organizations addicted to problematic narratives. My purpose is to develop intelligent action understandings of how to care for organizations addicted to problematic elevator pitch narratives and one-sided stories by mapping quantum storytelling “Tamara-Land” forces ignored beneath and between them both (Boje, 1995). Tamara-land is the everyday activity of people in organizations chasing stories spatially distributed in different rooms, hallways, buildings that are temporally simultaneous, with materialities that are agential to the telling. For example, in this conference, the immersive theater into Tamara-Land is done in Steel Case open office spaces, as audience decides which actors to follow as they exit each scene. You cannot chase them all, and cannot be everywhere at once in this spacetimemattering. Quantum storytelling does not search for simple word or text messaging tag lines to explain open offices. Quantum storytelling uncovers deep behavior patterns of the spacetimemattering. “Quantum storytelling includes nondiscursive and behavioral aspects embodied in the storyteller’s life, in their living story behavioral-performative agentiality” (Boje, 1995, p. 114) and in nonhuman’s materialism featured in Karen Barad’s (2007) and Anete Strand’s material storytelling work. Quantum storytelling of Tamara-Land mapping at macro scale traces the interplay of people, planet, and profit (aka Triple Bottom Line, 3BL) but does not reduce it to imagined profitability metrics. I will critique 3BL for not proposing any method to measure people and planet first and by default reducing all dimensions to just bottom line profit measures. The consequence is that a runaway, maximizing fractal, known in socioeconomic work as the Taylor–Fayol–Weber rationality or “TFW virus” (Worley, Zardet, Bonnet, & Savall, 2015, pp. 23–24; Savall& Peron, 2015), attains functional structuralism (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012). In quantum storytelling fractal work, it’s “TFW fractal” profiteering that is destroying both planet and people, at an ever-accelerating rate (Boje & Henderson, 2014; Boje, 2015; Henderson & Boje, 2015). My contribution is to propose a different fractal pattern, the Mandelbrot fractal that actually sets limits on runaway fractal appetite. Both the 3BL and the VA techno-digital fractal narrative spiral more and more materials, energy, and people into the risk of an addictive TFW virus pattern, without limit.