Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the hotel growth model including hotel brand, culture and life cycle phases of the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the fastest growing tourism destination in the United States.

Culture reflecting consuming behaviour of low-context innovators and high-context imitators is measured by the price elasticity of demand (PED). Hotel brand reflecting guests’ hotel class is measured by the income elasticity of demand. Autoregressive distributed lag has been conducted on the Smith Travel Research data in 33 years (1989–2022) to determine the relationship among hotel brand, culture and life cycles.

Skilled labour is the key to make hotels grow. Therefore, increase room rates when hotels possess skilled professionals and decrease room rates when hotels have no skilled professionals. During the rejuvenation in Myrtle Beach (1999–2003), hoteliers increased room rates for innovators due to skilled professionals to increase revenue. Otherwise, a decrease in room rates due to lack of skilled professionals would lead to increase revenue.

(1) Although Myrtle Beach is one of the fastest growing tourism destinations in the US, it has a relatively small geographic area relative to the country. (2) Data cover over one tourist life cycle, so the time span is relatively short. Hoteliers can forecast the number of guests in different culture by changing room rates.

To optimize revenue, hoteliers can select skilled labour in professional design hotel brands which could make an increase in demand for leisure transient guests no matter what room rates increase after COVID-19 pandemic.

The study has considered the applied ethical processes regarding revenue management that would maximize both revenue and customer satisfaction when it set up an increase in room rates to compensate for professional hotel room design or it decreases room rates for low-income imitators in exploration and development.

This research highlights that (1) skilled design in the luxury hotel brand is the key for the hotel growth and (2) there is a steady state of the growth model in the destination life cycle.

A surge in demand for ethical products, including cruelty-free products, has been well documented in recent years, with direct ramifications for businesses. This trend towards ethical consumption seemed to be swiftly replicated in Eastern countries, especially in South Asian nations, as a result of westernisation. Based on the theory of planned behaviour and the concept of the attitude-behaviour gap, this study aims to investigate the impact of westernisation on the purchase intention of cruelty-free cosmetic products.

A positivist research paradigm was utilised in this study. Accordingly, an online self-administered questionnaire was shared among 242 consumers of cosmetic products in Sri Lanka in order to collect responses. The statistical techniques of correlation analysis, the Sobel test and moderator regression analysis have been utilised in this study.

It was found that there seems to be a positive impact of westernisation and the cruelty-free purchase intention of consumers. Moreover, consumer empowerment appears to mediate this relationship, while the attitude behaviour gap tends to further impact the relationship between consumer empowerment and the purchase intention of cruelty-free products.

This study seems to shed light upon the impact of westernisation on the purchase intention of consumers, especially from an ethical dimension and this study is likely to extend existing studies which have focussed on consumer empowerment, attitude-behaviour gap as well as the theory of planned behaviour, especially in the context of South Asia, where there seems to be a dearth of such investigations. Moreover, this study has attempted to contextualise the construct of “Westernisation” to the South Asian region in line with the tone set by an editorial article Dewasiri et al. (2021).

This study examines how the presence of labor unions affects a firm’s pay disparity between executives and employees and its financial statement comparability.

It uses firm-level labor union data in Korea and applies regression analyses to a sample of 1,776 firm-year observations from 2004 to 2008.

The authors find that unionized firms have a smaller pay disparity between executives and employees than non-unionized firms, suggesting that labor unions place pressure on the pay structure. Unionization also lowers financial statement comparability, which helps managers of unionized firms maintain information asymmetry. Further, this negative relationship between unionization and financial statement comparability is stronger in non-chaebol firms, implying that they are more motivated than chaebol firms to reduce their financial statement comparability in response to the presence of labor unions. In addition, the negative relationship between unionization and financial statement comparability is pronounced in profit-making firms, firms with less analyst following, firms with fewer foreign investors and firms in more competitive product markets.

The finding that firms adjust comparability in response to labor unions interests regulators and policymakers, who emphasize the role of comparability in providing usefulness to information users.

The findings add to the existing literature on the effect of labor unions on firms' pay structures and accounting choices.

The primacy of commerce in livelihood security cannot be overstated. However, in a rural context defined by involuntary socio-ecological displacement, commerce can assume a sociologically distinct character, with far-reaching implications. Based on first-hand encounters with victims of the devastating 2014 flood in Tokwe-Mukorsi, Zimbabwe, this paper analyses how the processes of “recreating” village markets in the resettlement site of Chingwizi impacted the victims’ experiences of resource provisioning and livelihood security.

Qualitative data were collected through 10 in-depth interviews, 10 key informant interviews and two focus group discussions, five years into the flood victims’ resettlement in Chingwizi. The data analysis focused on the dynamics around the recreation of village markets, and the consequences of this on the household economic standing of the resettled flood victims.

The paper reveals how the formation of village markets in Chingwizi was influenced not primarily by the ethno-commercial and ethno-economic impulses reminiscent of life in their ancestral home but mostly by new, disruptive dynamics and challenges unique to the resettlement site. The paper elucidates the constellation of factors that, together, exacerbated the flood victims’ overall socio-economic dislocation and disadvantage.

The study provides a systematic understanding of the dynamics of ethno-commerce, particularly on the evolution of village market activities and livelihoods, among Zimbabwe’s Chingwizi community over a period of five years into their resettlement. It brings to the fore, the often ignored, but significant nuances that 'village market' formation and livelihoods recreation takes in a resettlement context.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2023-0682

Urban communities can be faced with many destructive events that can disrupt the daily functioning of activities and livelihood of people living in the communities. In this regard, during the last couple of years, many governments have put a lot of efforts into building resilient urban communities. Essentially, a resilient urban community has the capacity to anticipate future disasters, prepare for and recover timely from adverse effects of disasters and unexpected circumstances. Considering this, it is therefore important for the need to continuously review the existing urban community resilience indicators, in order to identify emerging ones to enable comprehensive evaluation of urban communities in the future against unexpected events. This study therefore aims to conduct a systematic review to develop and critically analyse the emerging and leading urban community resilience indicators.

Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRSIMA) protocol, 53 journal articles were selected using Scopus. The selected papers were subjected to thorough content analysis.

From the review, 45 urban community resilience indicators were identified. These indicators were grouped into eight broad categories namely, Socio-demographic, Economic, Institutional Resilience, Infrastructure and Housing Resilience, Collaboration, Community Capital, Risk Data Accumulation and Geographical and Spatial characteristics of community. Further, the results indicated that the U.S had the highest number of publications, followed by Australia, China, New Zealand and Taiwan. In fact, very few studies emanated from developing economies.

The outputs of this study will inform policymakers, practitioners and researchers on the new and emerging indicators that should be considered when evaluating the resilience level of urban communities. The findings will also serve as a theoretical foundation for further detailed empirical investigation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of market-based approach to provision of housing to low-income households in urban Malawi.

This study was conducted in Blantyre, Malawi, between 2019 and 2022 and used both quantitative (household survey) and qualitative (in-depth interviews and document study) methods of data collection. Interviews were conducted with key players and investors in the housing sector. Household survey data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, which allowed the generation of descriptive housing valuables, whereas qualitative data were analyzed through content analysis.

This paper demonstrates that, rather than ameliorating the housing problems facing low-income households, the market approach to provision of housing in Malawi has worsened the housing situation in the country. This is so because the market approach to the provision of housing in Malawi is not only enforcing the logic of capitalistic accumulation in the housing sector but also supporting mechanisms of exclusion based on economic stratification within the community.

Completeness of data over time as there is no market data bank available in the country.

The findings from this study suggest that some degree of state intervention in addressing the housing problem in Malawi is required.

The study findings suggest that a market approach to the provision of housing can increase social inequality as low-income households face challenges in accessing housing.

There is a paucity of research on the effects of the market approach on the provision of affordable housing to low-income households in Malawi. This paper assesses this important policy gap and provides significant policy directions.