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This chapter presents an investigation into the theory of labour market segmentation and income inequality in the Ghanaian mining sector. Mining activity especially gold mining has been a significant component of exports as well as employment and income earning in the three major mining regions of Ghana. While income growth is an economic benefit, the high incomes associated with the mining sector may lead to greater income inequality. This chapter provides an analysis of mining activity and income inequality in the Western, Eastern, and Ashanti regions of Ghana. The application of labour market segmentation and the Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality) for personal income are found to be significantly associated with the type and levels of mining employment. However, this observation is not linear as income inequality initially increases with mining activity before decreasing at medium to high levels of mining employment, thus following a Kuznets curve pattern. Segregating datasets for indigenous and expatriate staff reveals very different patterns of income inequality. It poignantly increases with indigenous and/or local community personnel relative to expatriate technical personnel at high levels of mining employment; income inequality is lower among the local community residents relative to nationals from other regions and/or from neighbouring countries. This means segmented labour markets (SLM) within the mining industry are likely to be a problem as they result in increased income inequality among locales relative to foreign expatriates.

This study attempts to identify and explicate the unique segmentation of the increasingly growing virtual reality (VR) user market based on the user experience. Consequently, it collects five hundred forty-five online survey questionnaires through the Prolific platform and deploys cluster analysis to identify mutually exclusive groups of VR users. The research variable, user experience, contains 16 indicators explained by four dimensions. As a result, this study is able to unveil three mutually exclusive markets which are labeled as (1) beginner, (2) aficionado, and (3) utilitarian. The unique features of these three groups are further compared based on their VR tour behaviors. In the conclusion section, it offers managerial implications for devising novel marketing strategies.

It is a great honor to be selected as a marketing legend, and 117 of my refereed journal articles are published in nine volumes by Sage India as part of the Legend series. In this chapter, I discuss my preparation for an academic career and the trajectory my research has followed. I reflect on my research contributions to marketing by selectively summarizing the key contributions in each of the nine volumes and draw out some lessons and principles I have learned in the process.

This chapter compiles and summarizes the various strategies in the literature about emerging markets (EMs). Moreover, competitive strategies, market entry strategies in the international market, developing marketing strategy, and Porter's competitive strategies are also presented and discussed. Competitive strategies, market entry strategies, developing marketing strategy, and Porter's competitive strategies don't directly deal with EMs but they are deemed to be helpful and relevant to the research problem in the study of the transformation of strategic alliances in Eastern and Central Europe. The reason for compiling the various strategies is because one can clearly understand from the literature that researchers do agree in the value of a strategy, but there is no shared view among researchers of what a strategy is, what its benefits are, and how it should be developed, implemented, and evaluated. At the end of the book, the authors have tried to assess how and to what extent those strategies are applicable and helpful for a firm operating in EMs.

In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the challenge of economic recovery is now more pressing than ever after the impact of COVID-19. The cultural and creative industries (CCI) are one of the sectors that can contribute to a long-term strategy of inclusive and sustainable growth. Nevertheless, the pandemic has created new challenges for CCI, and it has also intensified those faced by the sector before the health crisis, highlighting its fragile foundations. These challenges can be grouped into four areas: employment, digitalization and new business models, access to finance, and a narrative for the sector.

A survey conducted by MERCOSUR Cultural, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) showed this reality and gave guidelines for future initiatives and policies to be implemented to take advantage of these sectors in the long-term strategy of economic recovery. The CCIs are made up of many sectors, different from one another. Intersectoral and interministerial work is essential for the CCIs. And also, a single approach won't work across sectors and countries.

In this chapter, the performance of Swiss mountain ropeway companies in the period from 2011 to 2016 have been analyzed. The sample includes 194 observations from 43 companies, covering about 90% of the market. In order to explain the levels of cash-flow returns, the degree of self-financing and revenue growth for ropeway companies, firm-specific characteristics, meteorological data, infrastructure information and market-specific factors were taken into account. The results, which are based on a general method of moments estimates, reveal that a high equity ratio and consistent capital expenditures are important for performance. Also, the market environment, including such factors as exchange rates and brand recognition of ski areas in Europe and Asia, are important for firm performance. Overall, the Swiss market is a unique country for this type of analysis, given either that the required data on mountain ropeway companies in other countries are unavailable or that a few rather large companies dominate the market.

Discussions about transferring human resource practices across national borders inevitably raise the question as to whether practices in different countries will converge on a common model or whether they will be characterized by continued divergence. The convergence hypothesis is a product of the landmark study by Kerr, Dunlop, Harbison, and Myers (1960), who sought to understand the forces shaping national industrial relations systems by analyzing the experiences of national economies at various stages of industrialization. They predicted a convergence of practices as industrial societies adopted plural market economies in which major actors shared beliefs about the nature of industrialism, the efficacy of the market economy, and the need for mechanisms to reconcile the interests of employers, the public, and workers.