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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the problems in the measurement of culture in consumer studies and offers suggestions for remedies.

Drawing on literature from related fields, the paper discusses some general issues in the measurement of culture and draws consumer researchers’ attention to the flaws in the common cultural measures in consumer research. Implications for future research are also provided.

The paper highlights two main shortcomings of commonly used culture instruments which are seldom taken into account by consumer researchers. Specifically, the commonly used culture dimensions in consumer studies do not have clear conceptual boundaries. Moreover, important differences between the different approaches to culture measuring (self- vs group-referenced and values vs practices) are always overlooked. The paper suggests that consumer research needs more focussed and refined measures and discusses which approach is better in which context.

This paper explores the issues of conceptual ambiguity and approach inconsistency in order to draw consumer researchers’ attention to the flaws in common measures of culture. Only when one measures what one expects to measure will the relationship that one observe between these cultural dimensions and consumer behavior be valid.

“U.S. industry is under seige. Our competitiveness is at stake and AT&T is not finished with cost reductions. It's a moving target. We'll continue to be very, very aggressive but not do something in the short run that will hurt us in the long run.”

The implementation of quality in health services should go beyond legal, regulatory and purely technical obligations in relation to carrying out health insurance practices. The purpose of this paper is to present a management model that intends to equip private health care companies in favor of quality development from the use of a model for forming a competitive strategy in the supplementary health sector companies.

In this approach the proposed model is grounded on guiding procedures for the process of strategy formulation, with a systemic structure that separates in analysis involving the internal and external environment to the organization to verify the strategy that best applies. It is based on prescriptive strategy – the five competitive forces and, with adaptive strategy, the competition arenas.

Through the proposed model the analytical mechanisms of political-legal environments surrounding companies in the sector can be described, identify organizations and their process performance, study them, and perform comparative analysis of information between them. All of this development seeks to ensure the formation of policies, to guide strategic action in health insurance.

This work strongly contributes to the foundation and strengthening of strategic knowledge and has quality aimed at the study of the private health care market, due to the high degree of regulatory requirements by the state to the businesses, the environment turns into a chain of complex information that migrates from the condition of just meeting legal requirements, to also satisfying the demands of a hypercompetitive market.

This paper aims to explore the construction of a valid and reliable measure for the competitiveness of cities that excludes the drivers of competitiveness from the index construction. Not incorporating these drivers in the index avoids the problem of assuming relative contributions (i.e. weights) of these drivers on competitiveness as a maintained hypothesis.

From the definition that competitiveness is the ability of a city to sustain prosperity, this study derives a model called the hedonic well-being index (HWI) in which prosperity is measured by using the consumption of goods and service including leisure. This study then uses secondary data sources to construct an exploratory HWI (assuming a Cobb Douglas functional form) and compare this index to three benchmarks, namely, income, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and the World Happiness Report (WHR) index. This study also review the component expenditure of the index across geographical locations.

The HWI is better predicted by the WHR index (a subjective well-being index) than by the GDP per capita (a measure of output), owing to the inclusion of leisure and household production absent in per capita GDP. This study explored and found regional variations in the distribution of the expenditure components in the HWI.

This paper demonstrates the feasibility of constructing an exploratory HWI to measure the competitiveness of cities using secondary data. The reliability of the index can be improved using primary data in future research. Separating the drivers from the definition of competitiveness allows testing of the contribution and interaction of these drivers on competitiveness.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the understanding of the consequent factors of new services development (NSD) in the literature owing to the impact on organizational competitiveness, especially in professional services, such as that investigated by health plan operators in the present study.

The sample (customer of family health plans) consisted of 255 valid cases. For the analysis of the data, multivariate statistical techniques were used through the modeling of structural equations.

The results found evidence of the significant relationships between the NSD considering the constructs, client orientation, reputation, professional competences and customer retention, as consequences of the NSD, which impact on the success of the new services launched by the health plan operator from the perception of the customer.

This implies that health plan operators need to develop new customer-oriented services by investing in new technologies and having more trained and qualified staff so that they can deliver superior services and, as a consequence, have a more profitable relationship with customers.

The new services may result in greater organizational performance and greater competitiveness for health service providers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the market structure and level of competition in health and wellness food products by type, category, prime positioning and distribution networks in India.

The study is conducted using secondary data from Euromonitor International. Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) has been calculated for analyzing the market trends in terms of type, category and prime positioning and market competition has been analyzed using Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). Analysis of variance has been used for analyzing the statistical difference in market competition.

Consumer purchase behavior for food is significantly changing across the world and consumers are becoming increasingly conscious of the health enhancing properties of food. With growing incidences of problems like obesity, diabetes, coronary heart diseases and foodborne diseases, consumers are becoming aware of the role of food in ensuring health and well-being. There have been significant structural changes in the health and wellness food market compositions and India has huge market potential for health and wellness food products with a market size of Rs. 435 billion in 2013 and growing at a significantly high annual growth rate of about 13.8 percent during 2002-2013. HHI results clearly indicate that there is significant competition in the health and wellness food market with average HHI of 0.19. However, the structure of market competition shows a varied trend across the types, categories, prime-positioning and distribution channels of health and wellness food products.

Results of the study provide a better understanding of temporal as well as intra-category changes in market size of health and wellness food products and the competitiveness of the health and wellness food market, providing valuable insights to the companies involved in producing and marketing of health and wellness food products in India.

Health and wellness food market is an emerging area for the marketer and there are limited analysis on market structure and competition.

The purpose of this article is to present a conceptual model that posits the strategic relationships between information technology, clinic operations and physicians and the subsequent outcomes to patients, physicians and clinics which can lead to competitive advantages in the healthcare environment.

This paper is based on a review of the literature and proposes a conceptual model of the strategic relationships essential for success. The scope of the paper is based on the legal, economic and political triggers impacting the strategic relationship between electronic medical records, clinic interoperability and physicians as owners/users.

The paper presents the formation of a conceptual model which identifies the strategic alignment between clinics, physicians and information technology, more specifically, electronic medical records.

This paper is limited in that it is not an empirical investigation but a conceptual model of future research endeavours. Future research endeavours should seek empirical findings related to the relationships proposed in the model.

Physicians, clinics and patients should be aware of the impact electronic medical records have on the health environment as well as the potential competitiveness due to health consumerism enabled by electronic medical records.

Electronic medical records, personal health records and electronic health records are infiltrating society; subsequently health consumers should determine how this technology may impact their healthcare.

The value of this paper is to provide a conceptual model as a basis for future empirical research and awareness of changes in the competitiveness of the healthcare environment.

Competitiveness is an individual difference variable that incorporates factors generally associated with the desire to excel in comparison to others and the enjoyment of competition. There is still much debate on whether it is helpful or harmful, which may stem from the scattered ways in which it is studied. Thereby, this study aims to properly synthesize the literature concerning the prevailing correlates, underlying theory and frequent applications of competitiveness and to set forth an outline of domains in need of further research and exploration.

The authors do so by using two methods of analysis on a representative sample of 546 peer-reviewed publications.

The authors find that competitiveness research has and will continue to grow expeditiously, but its complexity and cloudiness have not yet been attenuated.

The study uncovers opportunities for pertinent future research on competitiveness to grow more productively and collaboratively by highlighting salient works and identifying the fragmentations that have led the literature into a state of disarray.

Using the Occupational Stress Indicator, the results from this study provided a comparative overview of Australian and UK hospital workers’ perceived responses to organizational sources of pressure, use of coping strategies plus outcomes of job satisfaction, mental and physical ill health. The broad picture that emerged was that the Australian hospital workers appeared to have a more favourable working environment as their organization presented fewer sources of pressure. Despite lower levels of contributory pressure, it was apparent that Australian hospital workers perceived similar long‐term outcomes to organizational sources of pressure as the UK hospital worker sample. The Australian hospital workers reported significantly higher perceived physical ill health, and second, similar levels of mental ill health and job satisfaction when compared to the UK hospital workers. In addition, the Australian hospital workers reported increased use of coping strategies. The discussion takes into consideration the context and time frame of the two operating environments.