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Self‐concept, despite its marketing relevance, has been overshadowed by other psychological concepts. The self‐concept is, however, significant and relevant to the study of consumer behavior because many purchases made by consumers are directly influenced by the image an individual has of himself. A fundamental question involves the process of the formation of the self‐concept. Several distinct qualities exist within the self‐concept, and once the self‐concept is established, these have a bearing upon the individual's behavior and his relationship with his objective, subjective, social, and ideal self. For marketers, an understanding of the self‐concept and self‐image can provide the means for developing more effective marketing programs. Consistency and congruence also play an important part in establishing the relationship between the self‐concept, the individual's image, and final purchase behavior. Other factors also play a part in the process and, in some situations, misunderstandings about their importance can result in less than effective marketing efforts. Careful research and analysis of the relevant factors affecting the self‐concept and their effect on purchase behavior can make for more effective market strategic planning. This article examines the various issues related to the marketing applicability of the self‐concept and discusses its implications in terms of research and market strategic planning.

This article examines the strategic, legal, and research implications of trademark decisions in an international context. The focus of the investigation is on the strengths and limitations of each branding strategy (e.g., brandless product, private brand, multiple brands for a single market and multiple markets etc.). The legal dimension of international branding, a topic usually ignored in the marketing literature in spite of its significance, is also covered.

Asia, as a market, offers a great deal of opportunity for those who are willing to understand its cultural characteristics and marketing systems. This article investigates the use of media and the practice of marketing in Asia. Some marketing guidelines are offered and their managerial implications are discussed.

American business curricula, theories, textbooks, and teaching methods have been widely disseminated and copied all over the world. This wholesale acceptance has violated a scientific principle that requires a systematic evaluation and replication to establish the external validity of the theories and concepts in question. This paper discusses the degree of universality of the marketing discipline, concepts, and strategies. In particular, there is a critical examination of the advertising principles commonly found in marketing and advertising textbooks. Based on the validity (or the lack of it) of these principles and assumptions, advertising and research implications are offered.

The study was conducted with the aim of discovering the factors which maximally discriminate between those employees who intend to leave the organization and those who intend to stay with the organization. The primary motive was to find those factors which are strong predictors of intention to stay, so that employees who intend quitting are identified in advance, and remedial measures are taken to retain them, especially if they are key performers.

A questionnaire covering several aspects relating to employee retention was designed and distributed amongst a sample of 100 employees chosen through incidental sampling. Data thus collected was subjected to factor analysis, which yielded seven factors: Goal Clarity, Autonomy, Employee Engagement, Affective Commitment, Organizational Culture, Compensation and Benefits, and Normative Commitment. Discriminant analysis was done on these factors to identify the best predictors of employees' intention to leave or stay, by creating a discriminant function.

Results showed that Affective Commitment, Normative Commitment and Goal Clarity were the best predictors of employees' intention to stay or leave the organization.

Increasing employee turnover rates have necessitated the formulation and implementation of a robust retention strategy to effectively reduce employee turnover. By building a decision rule and a cut‐off score to classify an employee into one of the two groups – “intend to leave” or “intend to stay” – an organization would be able to invest its resources in the right employees.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Explained pay dispersion theory (Shaw, Gupta, & Delery, 2002) contends that the consequences of pay dispersion depend on two critical contingencies: (1) the presence of legitimate or normatively acceptable dispersion-creating practices, and the (2) identifiability of individual contributions. In this chapter, the first 20 years of empirical evidence and theoretical offshoots of this theory are reviewed. Other recent studies on the outcomes of horizontal and vertical pay dispersion are also evaluated. The review concludes with an evaluative summary of the literature and the identification of several potential fruitful areas for future research.

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