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This paper provides a fuller characterization of the analytical upper bounds for American options than has been available to date. We establish properties required of analytical upper bounds without any direct reliance on the exercise boundary. A class of generalized European claims on the same underlying asset is then proposed as upper bounds. This set contains the existing closed form bounds of Margrabe, (1978) and Chen and Yeh (2002) as special cases and allows randomization of the maturity payoff. Owing to the European nature of the bounds, across-strike arbitrage conditions on option prices seem to carry over to the bounds. Among other things, European option spreads may be viewed as ratio positions on the early exercise option. To tighten the upper bound, we propose a quasi-bound that holds as an upper bound for most situations of interest and seems to offer considerable improvement over the currently available closed form bounds. As an approximation, the discounted value of Chen and Yeh's (2002) bound holds some promise. We also discuss implications for parametric and nonparametric empirical option pricing. Sample option quotes for the European (XEO) and the American (OEX) options on the S&P 100 Index appear well behaved with respect to the upper bound properties but the bid–ask spreads are too wide to permit a synthetic short position in the early exercise option.

While the role of relationship marketing to consumers’ overall satisfaction with schools has been discussed in the education management literature, empirical studies on the marketing mechanisms that underpin school-customer relationships are limited. The purpose of this paper is to establish the association between market orientation (MO) in the school context and key relationship marketing performance indicators.

MO and four relationship constructs (brand trust, affective commitment, attitudinal loyalty, and advocacy) were measured using existing and established scales from the education and behavioral literatures. A model reflecting causal ordering derived from the literature and an understanding of school-customer relationships was developed. Data were collected from 205 parents of school-aged children in the USA and analyzed using structural equation analysis.

Results show that a positive relationship between market-oriented behaviors of school organizations and three of the identified indicators of successful school relationship marketing (affective commitment, attitudinal loyalty, and advocacy) are mediated by brand trust.

The study contributes to an understanding of the theoretical relationship between market-oriented behaviors and relationship marketing for schools. The results suggest that, for school organizations, MO impacts important outcomes and thus may be vital to sustainability and growth.

While literature has examined market orientation, it is limited with respect to small businesses. More specifically, previous research has not considered empirically the relationship between small business market orientation and environmental uncertainty. Due to resource constraints, smaller businesses are especially vulnerable to environmental uncertainty. To address this, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between environmental uncertainty and small business market orientation.

Drawing from small business literature, the authors developed a research model advancing and testing hypotheses to address the research aim. An empirical study was conducted with 104 small grocery retailers from Brazil. A questionnaire was administered, divided into two sections relating to measurement of market orientation and the market turbulence and technological turbulence as dimensions of environmental uncertainty. ANOVA technique and a multinominal logistic regression model were employed to analyze the results.

The findings reinforce the view of market orientation as a dynamic construct which can explain the relationship between small businesses and environmental uncertainty. Small businesses with higher levels of market orientation emphasized responsiveness as a critical dimension in orienting to turbulent markets. The findings also show that aspects of technological turbulence, particularly pertaining to the opportunities for competitive advantage and new ideas for product supply related to higher levels of market orientation.

The paper's findings, addressing a knowledge gap in the small business literature, emphasize the importance of small businesses orienting themselves to the market, particularly in environments characterized by higher levels of market and technological turbulence.

Joint ventures (JVs) are known to create value for their parent firms, in part due to the mutually beneficial sharing of information that occurs at the JV level. Market orientation (MO) is a well-documented strategic orientation that has received little attention in the JV literature, despite considerable research suggesting that MO has a positive effect on performance. This study posits that the MO skills contributed to a new JV by parent firms are likely to play a central role in a shareholder's assessment of the potential for success of a newly announced JV, thereby triggering changes in market value for parent firms.

Computer-Assisted-Text-Analysis (CATA) is used to calculate MO heterogeneity from annual reports, and event-study methodology is used to assess parent firm performance. The authors rely on a US sample of 82 public JV parents involved in 41 new equally-weighted JV formation announcements.

The authors find that heterogeneity on MO's behavioral components (customer orientation, competitor orientation, and coordination) is negatively related to parent performance, while heterogeneity on MO's profitability component is positively related to parent performance. However, the effect of MO's long-term focus heterogeneity on parent performance was not supported.

The results suggest that the benefits of information sharing in partnerships may be of a nuanced nature when it comes to MO. Although heterogeneity in profitability inclination created value for parent firms announcing a new JV; heterogeneity in customer, competitor and coordination market orientations did not appear to be rewarded by shareholders.

Long-standing traditions of long-distance collaboration and networking make scholars a good test case for differentiating hype and reality in distributed, networked organizations. Our study of Canadian scholars in the GRAND research networks finds that they function more as connected individuals and less as members of a single bounded work group, often meeting their needs by tapping into diversified, loosely knit networks. Their internet use interpenetrates with in-person contact: the more they use one, the more they use the other. Despite digital networking, local proximity is important for collaboration and seniority for inter-team and interdisciplinary boundary spanning.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the marketing results of video blogging (vlogging). In particular, the authors are interested in understanding which video bloggers (vloggers) can better help marketers develop their brand image, which vlog viewers tend to evaluate vlogger-endorsed brands more positively, and how these effects occur.

A questionnaire survey was conducted with a convenience sample online. A total of 401 valid responses were collected. Regression analyses and bootstrapping were used to test the hypotheses.

The authors found that vloggers’ physical and social attractiveness and the audience’s viewing motives (entertainment motive and relationship-building motive) and behavior (time spent on the media) increased the audience’s evaluations of the brands endorsed by the vloggers (perceived brand quality, brand affect and brand preference). The authors also found that these relationships were mediated by the parasocial interaction (PSI) between the vloggers and the audience.

The findings of this study suggest that marketers can develop relationships with consumers and enhance their brand evaluations via vloggers. This strategy is more effective when brand managers use more attractive vloggers and target viewers who spend a lot of time on vlogs seeking entertainment or hoping to build relationships.

This study contributes to the literature by showing that vlogging can affect brand evaluations through the development of PSI between vloggers and viewers. The authors extended the focus of vlog marketing research from consumers’ watching and sharing behaviors and their perception of vloggers to brand evaluations, from vloggers’ characteristics to viewers’ characteristics and from the Western to the Eastern context.

In the last decade, the scope of consumer research has been expanded beyond choice and decision‐making to include various behaviour parameters like the meanings of possession and materialism but that should be studied in the background of cultural differences. Consumer behaviour has been found to be affected by regional differences that come out of various geographic, topological and cultural factors including values, motives and lifestyle. These give rise to distinct subcultures and can be an important determinant of both consumption and non‐consumption behaviours. India being highly diversified, the differences in geographic subculture are hypothesised to be significant. Accordingly this present study extends the current literature and explores the interaction among cultural adherence, materialism, preacquisition dream propensity and pre‐purchase “wish list” all of which are hypothesised to be actually reflecting the influence of regional differences. The degree of materialism was found to be significantly correlated with the intensity of cultural adherence. Regional differences and cultural adherence, as a whole, was also found to be significantly related to materialism and prepurchase dreaming propensity. An interesting perspective was revealed from the content analysis of wish list. Implications of the findings for the study of materialism are also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on how corporate social responsibility (CSR) (i.e. responsibility to customers, employees and society) influences customer behavioural loyalty in the hotel industry. The mediating effects of brand image and customer trust on the relationship between CSR and customer behavioural loyalty are also considered.

In total, 298 valid responses to questionnaire surveys were collected from a convenience sample in China in 2017. A structural equation model was used to test the hypotheses.

Hotel customer behavioural loyalty can be enhanced by CSR performance. Performance in each of the three CSR domains positively impacted customer behavioural loyalty to different degrees. The impact of CSR on the customer had the strongest influence on Chinese customers’ behavioural loyalty among the three CSR domains of customer, employee and society. Brand image and customer trust were found to be mediators of the relationship between CSR performance and customer behavioural loyalty.

The current research contributes to the literature by demonstrating that CSR activities are not all equally effective. Results reveal that the society dimension of CSR had the strongest impact on Chinese customers’ brand image of hotels among the three CSR dimensions investigated. In terms of Chinese hotel customers’ trust, the CSR–customer dimension plays the most effective role. The findings also support the notion that Chinese consumers are beginning to use CSR information to evaluate hotels.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying knowledge structure and evolution of industrial-buying research published between 1965 and 2015.

Bibliometric analysis is performed on 357 relevant papers (using principal component analysis and natural language processing, using VantagePoint® tools, used to generate bubble maps, auto-correlation maps and Aduna cluster maps), demonstrating how various factors involved in industrial buying have evolved, their degree of correlation with each other and the interrelationships of multiple factors concerning their co-occurrences.

The systematic mapping of industrial-buying research would illustrate the development of the significant factors in industrial-buying research. This paper provides both a global perspective on the leading countries and journals in the field and a robust roadmap for further investigation in this field.

This paper is limited to the data considered for analysis and may, therefore, overlook or underestimate some work that has not been captured while filtering databases related to industrial buying.

This paper facilitates near-future projection and trend analysis in industrial-buying research.

The methodology used is unique to the field of business-to-business marketing.