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Compares the personal ethical ideologies of idealism and relativism of American marketers with their South African counterparts. The perceptions of ethical problems, ethical intentions, and coporate ethical values of the parties are also contrasted. The findings indicate that South Africans were more idealistic and less relativistic than their American counterparts. The hypotheses that there will be no differences between South African and American marketers in terms of their ethical perceptions and intentions were not supported. The results generally indicate that South African marketers are more likely to perceive ethical problems than American marketers. However, the survey results revealed that South African marketers tend to be less ethical in their intentions to resolve an ethical problem than their American counterparts. Corporate citizens of South African firms were found to have slightly higher corporate ethical values than their American counterparts, as hypothesized.

South African business organisations operate in an environment that is changing rapidly. One of the key drivers of this change is advances in information technology (IT). Accountants are educated at various tertiary institutions to prepare them to be competent as information and knowledge workers in the South African business environment. This article aims to determine the nature and demands of the South African business and the IT environment in which accountants must function. This analysis identifies the context within which IT skills are applied by accountants by investigating the South African business and IT environment to determine how educational institutions could ensure that the students they deliver possess the critical IT skills they need to be competent in the South African business environment.

Compares South Africa's dualistic economy of two economic subsystems — one is an industrialised system, the other a subsistence one. Discusses the four main population groups in the heterogeneous systems, Bantu, Whites, Coloureds and Asians, using tables to show these fully. Looks further at media and its growing availability to both White and African markets — this includes TV and radio as well as newspaper and magazines. Chronicles that, because the average African income per capita is low, owing to most Africans living in rural areas and non‐participation in a formal monetary economy, and because the average wage is also low, this does not preclude them in global terms from spending. Submits that even though Africans have low average income per capita their propensity to consume (willingness to buy) is high. Investigates African buyer behaviour and the influence the White man brought to bear following contact between the two races. Views the marketing mix and illustrates with the use of tables, different products and user profiles. Looks at promotion and its utmost importance to stimulate Africans to purchase products. Specifies the importance of distribution and price to Africans. Acknowledges that aggressive marketing to the African segment of South Africa may achieve large volume sales lowering costs — even prices may be brought within scope of households at last.

This paper aims to show that a generic bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) segmentation strategy does not represent a multi-country BoP consumer profile. A series of multinational entry failures has clearly shown that a one-size-fits-all strategy is inappropriate for emerging markets, especially in Africa.

The study analysed literature defining and profiling BoP consumers at both a global and local level using South Africa as a case study. Being Africa’s largest economy, South Africa was an ideal subject. The findings were then independently triangulated with seven experts for validation.

The results show that the South African BoP has eight characteristics that align with definitions in global BoP consumer literature. An additional five characteristics were identified that were not general BoP characteristics, and that applied specifically to South Africa.

The findings add to the growing evidence that BoP markets are complex and heterogeneous, and they make a case to consider each BoP market individually. As there is yet to be a model to define BoP market differences systematically, this study provides a foundation for new developments in BoP segmentation in Africa and in other emerging markets.

While there is evidence that BoP markets are complex and heterogeneous, there is yet to be a model to begin the process of defining these differences systematically to improve strategic direction for multinational companies and regional decision makers. This study, therefore, provides a foundation for new developments in this field of segmentation in Africa and in other emerging markets globally.

This study aims to investigate the impact of the macroeconomic environment on South African industrial sector returns.

Using standardized coefficients derived from time-series factor models, the authors quantify the impact of macroeconomic influences on industrial sector returns. The authors analyze the structure of the resultant residual correlation matrices to establish the level of factor omission and apply a factor analytic augmentation to arrive at a specification that is free of omitted common factors.

The authors find that global influences are the most important drivers of returns and that industrial sectors are highly integrated with the global economy. The authors show that specifications that comprise only macroeconomic factors and proxies for omitted factors in the form of residual market factors are likely to be underspecified. This study demonstrates that a factor analytic augmentation is an effective approach to ensuring an adequately specified model.

The findings have a number of implications that are of interest to investors, econometricians and researchers. While the study focusses on a single market, the South African stock market, as represented by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), it is a highly developed and globally integrated market. In terms of market capitalization, it exceeds the Madrid Stock Exchange, the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the BM&F Bovespa. Yet, a limited number of studies investigate the macroeconomic drivers of the South African stock market.

Investors should be aware that while the South African domestic environment, especially political risk, has an impact on returns, global influences are the greatest determinants of returns. No industrial sectors are insulated from global influences and this limits the potential for diversification. This study suggests an alternative set of macroeconomic factors that may be used in further analysis and asset pricing studies. From an econometric perspective, this study demonstrates the usefulness of a factor analytic augmentation as a solution to factor omission in models that use macroeconomic factors to proxy for systematic influences that describe asset prices.

The contribution lies in providing insight into a large and well-developed yet understudied financial market, the South African stock market. This study considers a much broader set of macroeconomic factors than prior studies. A methodological contribution is made by estimating and interpreting standardized coefficients to discriminate between the impact of domestically and internationally driven factors. This study shows that should coefficients not be standardized, inferences relating to the relative importance of factors will differ. Finally, the authors unify an approach of using pre-specified factors with a factor analytic approach to address factor omission and to ensure a valid and readily interpretable specification.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a background into the challenges and developments faced by marketers in South Africa as well as those wanting to enter the South African market.

The paper presents the viewpoints of the authors based on their knowledge of happenings within the marketing field in South Africa.

Marketers in South Africa face both challenges and developments from the macro and market environment. These challenges and developments include the diverse nature of the South African consumer, competition, infrastructure issues, government legislation and bureaucracy.

South African marketers need to adapt their marketing strategies to accommodate the developments in the market. Furthermore, marketing strategies need to be adapted to meet the new challenges in South Africa markets in terms of the diversity of consumers in order to be successful.

The originality and value of this paper lies in the fact that it highlights the challenges and developments that marketers in South Africa face. In many cases, marketers are marketing their products and services as they did two decades ago, without realising the need to change their marketing strategy in order to target consumers as highlighted in this paper.

The vast global unit trust/mutual fund industry was worth more than $16 trillion by the end of June 2005. Over time, investors’ interests seem to have shifted from individual shares to share funds. The unit trust industry in South Africa is no exception. Over the 40‐year period from its inception in 1965 to 2005, the industry has grown from only one fund to 567 different funds, worth more than R345 billion. This study highlights some of the most important changes that have occurred in the South African unit trust industry over the last 40 years. These shifts are compared to changes that the USA mutual fund industry has experienced in the 60 years of its existence. An attempt is then made to answer the question whether South African investors are better off with these changes or not.

Despite today’s globalised business world, there is a dearth of knowledge on the influence of consumer ethnocentrism on the purchasing behaviour of consumers in developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer ethnocentrism, its antecedents and consequences in a developing country (South Africa) and makes recommendations to firms wishing to do business in South Africa.

The study was conducted among a national sample of South African respondents using a structured questionnaire. The study is unique in that two samples were used, a sample of white and a sample of black respondents. By using two ethnically diverse samples, it was possible to investigate whether there are similarities and/or differences in terms of consumer ethnocentrism, its antecedents and consequences among two major ethnic groups in South Africa.

The findings suggest that the antecedents of cultural openness, patriotism, individualism and a history of oppression influence consumer ethnocentrism among both black and white South Africans. It was further established that the antecedent nationalism exerts an influence on consumer ethnocentrism among white South African consumers, but not among black South African consumers.

The results of the study are of value for South African firms as well as those further afield, when developing marketing strategies for the diverse consumer market in South Africa.

This study adds to the existing body of knowledge on consumer ethnocentrism in an emerging market, and more specifically, among different ethnic groups in the same country.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine return and volatility spillovers between oil and the stock markets of Nigeria and South Africa.

The authors make use of an innovative new methodology of capturing spillovers, which is different from what many existing studies use. The authors employ the measures of return spillovers and volatility spillovers of Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012), referred to as spillover indexes. The spillover index facilitates an assessment of the net contribution of one market in the information transmission mechanism of another market.

The empirical results show bi-directional, but weak interdependence between the South African and Nigerian stock markets returns and oil market returns. The results for volatility spillovers show independence of volatilities between Nigeria stock markets and oil markets, while weak bi-directional spillovers were found between South African equity volatilities and oil volatilities. The time-varying total spillover plots for returns and volatilities are broadly similar and show a trend that has been observed in other studies: an increasing trend during the non-crisis period, a burst in the crisis year, a maintained higher level of transmission afterwards.

Existing studies examining spillovers between oil and stock markets have largely ignored Sub-Saharan African markets. A common feature of existing studies is that they have been conducted for two groups of countries: either European and US markets; or Gulf Cooperation Council markets Thus, this study fills this gap in the literature by examining return and volatility spillovers between oil and the stock markets of Nigeria and South Africa.

The paper evaluates the cross-transmission of returns and volatility shocks between Nigeria and South Africa stock markets to infer the extent of interdependence between the two markets. The paper also makes inference to optimal portfolio weights of holding assets in the two markets.

The paper uses an asymmetric vector autoregressive-exogenous generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (VAR-X GARCH) model to assess the extent of returns and volatility spillovers between Nigeria and South Africa.

The results of the empirical analysis show evidence of shock spillovers from the South African stock market to the Nigerian stock market. Moreover, based on the dynamic Sharpe ratio and portfolio weight optimisation, the results indicate the possibility of portfolio diversification when holding simultaneous positions in the two stock markets.

The results imply the possibility of economic profit for investors who take positions in the two stock markets. The lack of synchronisation of stock markets in the two largest economies in Africa is in contrast with the situations in other regions where stock markets returns of large economies often co-move.

The paper is the first to use the asymmetric VAR-X GARCH model to assess the cross-transmission of shocks between stock markets.