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The case, while acknowledging the difficulty of managing a family business in view of the accompanying human issues, emphasizes that sound business practices and procedures, and clarity with regard to the goal, remain the key; a firm is a complex, interconnected system and management needs a systems viewpoint; and technology can only support underlying business processes if there is clarity with respect to these.

SomPack had survived low-cost Asian competition starting the mid-1990s, a revolt by some extended family to try and bring it down with the help of a competitor, the Turkish banking crisis of 2001, and the global economic crisis of 2008 all the while watching its suppliers, competitors and customers collapse. A focus on cost-cutting and internal discipline by the successor, who had been promoted to CEO in 2004, had exacerbated internal discontent somewhat and had led to issues with production planning, but everyone understood that times were tough. Several large customers who had left were asked to return because the alternatives had been worse. By 2012, SomPack was considering expansion into new products in collaboration with its international partners. Then one day, in July 2013, it suddenly collapsed. Could the entire approach have been wrong? What should management have done instead?

Undergraduate, graduate business management.

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CSS 7: Management Science.

The authors examine whether Turkish fund managers employ liquidity timing along with market return timing, and if additional economic and market factors could affect their timing abilities, to help explain the contradictory results in literature vis-a-vis market timing ability.

The authors apply panel data analyses, with interaction terms and incorporating structural breaks, to monthly data for 96 out of 131 Turkish variable mutual funds which have available data for the sample period of 2011–2018. The authors employ the Amihud (2002) illiquidity measure to study market liquidity timing ability along with how additional economic and market factors affect this ability.

The authors find liquidity timing to be the performance enhancing method employed by Turkish variable fund managers in conjunction with market timing and that evidence for market timing may depend on whether structural breaks, that may be present in returns, are incorporated in the analysis. The authors also find that economic, technology and market-related factors affect timing abilities of fund managers.

Conclusions are for Turkey, for the sample period studied, and for the control factors selected based on literature.

It is important to understand the role of market liquidity in making investment decisions and the paper contributes toward an understanding of how managers design their timing strategies in order to enhance portfolio performance, as well as the impact of additional factors on their ability to time market returns and liquidity. This is also important for evaluating fund managers' performance in terms of contribution to portfolio value.

To the authors knowledge this is the first study on Turkish markets to employ liquidity timing in the context of panel data analyses using interaction terms, as well as structural breaks, to distinguish the extent of liquidity timing from return timing, while incorporating the effect of additional factors on timing ability.

The purpose of this research is to investigate post‐acquisition differences in share and operating performance, and in risk characteristics, for acquirers who pay cash versus those who employ stock, as well as for acquirers who merge with targets as opposed to those who directly approach target shareholders to tender their shares.

The paper uses event study methodologies, incorporating recent methodological advancements, to determine the effect of the acquisition by various classes of US acquirers during 1975 to 1996, on the variables of interest, by comparing these to a benchmark of similar firms who did not acquire any targets.

Mergers, especially in conjunction with cash payments, are risk increasing transactions. Equity risk increases for cash mergers over three years following acquisitions. Mergers experience a post‐acquisition increase in the intrinsic business risk, a decline in the degree of operating leverage and a small deterioration in the operating performance. Tender offers experience, no post‐acquisition changes in risk and performance metrics. The paper finds no evidence of post‐acquisition abnormal returns.

The results pertaining to market efficiency and the various hypotheses for method of payment and mode of acquisition contribute to academic research, where methodological issues have been identified as the sources of the conflicting results in prior studies. Differences due to mode of acquisition and method of payment would be of interest to investors and corporate managers as well.

This study is set out to assess the country of origin effect on Turkish consumption practices in order to provide a richer context for its formation process.

The research is exploratory and interpretative in nature. It follows a qualitative design with in-depth analysis of consumption experiences by utilizing semi-structured interviews.

The research shows that country of origin effect is product specific, and when it exists, it has an essential effect on product evaluations. It reveals that the country of origin effect is intrinsically constituted with the individual perceptions of and attitudes toward brands, countries, and past experiences, and it is extrinsically constituted with socially created perceptions by media, marketplace myths, and popularity.

This research investigated country of origin effect in a specific context of a developing country with a qualitative methodology. Unlike the existing literature, this study analyzes consumers’ actual purchase decisions in different product categories. Country of origin effect is found to be formed by individual and societal factors.

With the expansion of dining out, visiting ethnic restaurants is becoming one of dominant trends worldwide. Given the fact that ethnic restaurants involve a number of peculiar elements that are not present when visiting regular “local” restaurants, the purpose of this paper is to identify the key determinants of choosing a particular ethnic-themed restaurant, as well as factors that have an impact on an ethnic restaurant’s perceived image.

Research was done by conducting two separate studies. The first study identified factors that were generally the most significant to respondents when making a choice of an ethnic restaurant in which to dine. For the second study, a new sample of respondents – consisting of those who had just visited such an establishment – was used in order to determine which factors have the most significant impact on creating an image of ethnic restaurants. The research was therefore directed toward those restaurants where the customers can experience a unique atmosphere and ambiance that are synonymous within a given culture.

The results obtained from the first study show that quality of food and price are the two most significant factors that determine which restaurant will be visited. On the other hand, the interior and exterior ranked as the two least important factors. In addition, the second study revealed that following the visit, the strongest impact on the restaurant’s image was its interior. Following interior, service quality surfaced as the most important antecedent of perceived image, while the impacts of price and exterior were weaker, but still statistically significant.

The study itself was done in two stages. In the first stage the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) model was used for ranking factors significant for choosing an ethnic restaurant, while in the second stage, structural equation modeling (SEM) model was used to identify triggers of perceived image after a visit to an ethnic restaurant. Future research should utilize both models to determine antecedents of the variables used. Apart from this, it is recommended to employ new variables that further explore the uniqueness of the ethnic restaurants.

One of the main contributions of this work is related to combining of the AHP and SEM models, with the objective of completing a comparative results analysis, identifying in the process the positive aspects of both models and building a foundation for their coordination in terms of future use. This is significant, given that only a few prior studies have used such synergy.

This study presents a comparative analysis of water quality data in an urban micro watershed to study the magnitude of impacts on the water quality parameters over the last decade. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the degree of deterioration using the water quality index.

Rapid urban growth without proper land use and occupation planning results in the overload of urban water resources. Therefore, a literature review was conducted on the research subject published in the dissertation databases of the Engineering Faculty of Ilha Solteira, which resulted in the selection of two dissertations on water quality in the Ipê Stream, Ilha Solteira – SP, Brazil. The results will be evaluated according to the Brazilian laws and regulations in force.

This study shows that pollution and degradation in the stream intensified during the study period, with the most impacted areas within the urban perimeter.

The increasing impacts underscore the need for efficient measures such as implementation of retention reservoirs, elimination of clandestine sewage connections and restoration of riparian forests.

This study highlights the need to monitor the water quality of streams in order to establish preventive and mitigating measures to avert the growing environmental impacts and to ensure quality water for future generations.