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This article aims to close some research gaps by differentiating between brand types and price tiers. Many consumers perceive high prices as signals of high quality, yet researchers tend to find only low average correlations between price and objective quality. Previous studies do not account for market shares and paid prices though.

A German consumer panel with more than 30,000 households reveals market shares and paid prices. Combining these data with product test ratings, the authors evaluate price-quality relationships with Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients and distinguish food from non-food products, national brands and private labels and three price tiers.

High price-quality correlations for national brands and non-food private labels indicate that a higher price signals greater product quality. For food private labels, negative correlation coefficients inhibit the use of price as a quality indicator. The price-quality relationship for food private labels implies strong competition among brand owners, based on the price and quality of their products.

This article investigates price-quality correlations by accounting for paid prices and product market shares; it also reveals differences across food and non-food products, national brands and private labels and different price tiers against the background of competition strategies. By addressing when consumers use price as a quality indicator, it outlines important managerial implications for manufacturers, retailers and consumers.

The reflections in this chapter explore the genesis of tourism geography in the Netherlands and Belgium marked by political and linguistic constraints, plus historical, political, and cultural factors, as well as the footprints of some pioneers. The dual language use of French and Dutch/Flemish has often been offered as an excuse for the low profile of the region’s universities in international knowledge networks. However, thanks to the involvement in thematic networks and a growing pressure for researchers to publish internationally in peer-reviewed journals, the research landscape in tourism has definitely changed. Geographical and spatial approaches to tourism have led to a colorful research landscape today.

This paper sets out to explain the poor nature of industrial relations in Meiji Japan (1868-1911), especially the puzzling lack of Neo-Confucianist values.

This paper combines two approaches. First, it draws on and scrutinizes the major literature. Second, it uses a case approach.

First, we find that a widely accepted assumption used in many management (and other) studies on Japan, namely, that Neo-Confucianism was institutionalized in Tokugawa Japan (1603-1867), is distorted. Second, we find that the poor nature of labor relations in Meiji Japan can be explained by and is the product of a multitude of factors, both indigenous and imported from abroad.

First, this paper provides a novel explanation for the poor nature of labor relations in Meiji Japan. Second, this paper corrects a widely held assumption on Japan that is frequently used in management studies.

This paper presents an interactionistic perspective that proposes three hypotheses: (1) Cultures have a life of their own: they change due to interactions in the cultural ecology; (2) Different modalities of a culture change at different paces and to different extents; (3) There appears to be an isomorphism between economic performance and cultural change. Should a cultural explanation of the Asian “growth” and “fall” be sought, it would be more meaningful to link economic performance to changes in Confucianism than to the static perception of that tradition. Managers should give more attention to the processes and impacts of cultural change in organizational behaviors in, especially, emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how users on social media view brands with a heritage. Consumers commonly post opinions and accounts of their experiences with brands on social media. Such consumer-generated content may or may not overlap with content desired by brand managers. Drawing from “The medium is the message” paradigm, this study text-mines user narratives on Twitter1 to shed light on the role of social media in shaping public images of brands with heritage through the lens of the stereotype content model.

The study uses a data set of almost 80,000 unique tweets on 12 brands across six categories, compares brands high versus low in heritage and combines dictionary-based content analysis with sentiment analysis.

The results indicate that both user-generated content and sentiment are significantly more positive for brands low rather than high in heritage. Regarding warmth, consumers use significantly more positive words on sociability and fewer negative words on morality for brands low rather than high in heritage. Regarding competence, tweets include more positive words on assertiveness and ability for low-heritage brands. Finally, overall sentiment is more positive for brands low rather than high in heritage.

Important from co-creation and integrated marketing communication perspectives, the findings provide brand managers with actionable insights on how to more effectively use social media.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the first to examine user-generated content in a brand heritage context. It demonstrates that heritage brands, with their longevity and strong links to the past, need to be aware of how contemporary social media can detract from their image.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a holistic picture of how and to what extent Cohen and Levinthal’s (1990) seminal article on absorptive capacity was used in knowledge management (KM) and intellectual capital (IC) research from 1990 to 2013.

In this paper, 186 articles extracted from eight KM and IC journals were reviewed by conducting both content and text analyses. To facilitate research comparison, content analysis followed the method used by Roberts et al. (2012) and thus was based on categories, conceptualizations, levels of analysis and, additionally, temporal evolution of absorptive capacity from 1990 to 2013 was looked at. Text analysis was performed to identify major research themes developing the absorptive capacity construct.

Finding showed that absorptive capacity was largely underdeveloped in the KM and IC fields. KM, knowledge transfer and innovation were the top three research areas investigating absorptive capacity in the KM and IC fields.

This study had limitations related to time frame, covering a period from April 1990 to November 2013, and accessibility of articles due to specific restrictions in journal subscriptions.

This paper is a first attempt to review absorptive capacity in KM and IC research. It represented a primary reference for those interested to research absorptive capacity in the KM and IC fields.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of activity-based working (ABW), an office design and management system that has emerged in the past 20 years. It investigates its manifest and underlying agendas with a view to determining its degree of cost management focus and scientific management foundations.

The paper uses historical and website analysis methodologies for investigating historical office management philosophies and practices, as well as contemporary office design and management philosophies and related ABW practices and discourse. These are examined through the theoretical lenses of governmentality and impression management theories.

Despite a rhetoric of staff empowerment, ABW’s dominant agenda is overhead cost reduction and operating cost management. This reflects scientific management principles of early twentieth-century office design and management. Cost efficiencies and productivity emerge as key ABW output foci. While ABW adopters and advocates present ABW as a desirable staff satisfaction and operations facilitator, the cost agenda nonetheless commands centre stage.

Accounting research into the office and its processes is much needed. This has been largely neglected in favour of line management and factory floor costing and accountability systems. In a world dominated by service industries, the office as a centre of organisational and economic activity merits researchers’ greater attention.

Contemporary office design and functioning developments merit greater recourse to and acknowledgement of their historic roots. Then, practitioners can better design and implement systems that build on past knowledge and learnings. While such innovations as ABW may carry potential for improved organisational performance, care is needed with respect to their balancing of agendas and suitability for their institutional and cultural environments.

Organisational work has become a dominant part of social life in most economies today. Such innovations as ABW must be considered in terms of the societal culture into which they are introduced: how they reflect and adapt to that culture and what impacts they may also have on the culture itself. This includes dimensions such as organisational and self-control, as well as personal and organisational accountability.

This study presents itself as one of the very few refereed research studies of ABW currently available in the accounting, management or property research literatures. It also represents one of the very few studies of the office in the accounting research literature internationally.

Since the COVID-19 occurred, large-scale social restriction (Pembatasan Sosial Berskala Besar-PSBB) has taken place, and that has led family members to carry out their activities at home. This condition impacts both directly and indirectly the intention of house purchase, as a result of lifestyle changes during the pandemic. A house now serves as a residence, office, as well as school. This study aims to determine the influences of physical attributes, neighborhood preferences, financial concerns, financial risk preferences, health risk preferences, and COVID anxiety towards house purchase intention.

This associative study was carried out from February to May 2021 in the residents of Surabaya aged 20–34 years old as prospective first-home buyers, with relatives at risk of contracting COVID-19 (belong in the susceptible group or live with a family member who is prone to the COVID-19 virus, including having a comorbidity, elderly (= 60 years old), having a low immune system or autoimmune disease, obese). Data were gathered using online questionnaires from which 226 respondents were acquired. Data were analyzed using the PLS-SEM 3.0 technique.

The results showed that physical attributes, neighborhood preferences, financial concerns, financial risk preferences, and COVID anxiety significantly influence house purchase intention. Furthermore, neighborhood preferences, financial risk preferences, and COVID anxiety as moderating variables also significantly influence house purchase intention.

This study was carried out in Surabaya as the second-largest city after Jakarta with the highest COVID-19 mortality rate, which is useful for exploring the lifestyle changes and property demand as a result of the pandemic; Developers gain a business opportunity by offering properties that are multifunction and health-oriented.

The COVID-19 pandemic becomes a trigger for a change in the property market that needs to be studied further.