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This article aims to help bankers and managers of financial institutions to understand the importance of customer service. It shows that poor customer service is a cancer and that service quality is now more important than the “4Ps” of the marketing mix. Four steps of a customer service strategy are outlined: establish commitment to the key components of customer service; identify relative importance of service components to customers; identify market segments by service requirements; design customer service policies.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

This article discusses the reasons and discourses adopted by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (Hong Kong SAR Government), with Mr Tung Chee Hwa as the Chief Executive, in preparing young people to become more mature and responsible. In the Hong Kong context this means they should be willing to fulfil community obligations and opt for consultation rather than confrontation should individual or community rights be sought. Confucianism, named after Confucius (551‐479 BCE), has been and still is a vast and complicated system of philosophies, morals, rituals, and ideas, which for well over 2,000 years has informed and inspired the thinking and practice of countless people in Chinese societies and Asian countries in all important areas, including the economy and the polity (Tu, 1998a; Berthrong & Berthrong, 2000; Yao, 2002). Put simply, the goal of Confucian life is to create a peaceful world, with its ethical emphasis placed on the cultivation of the self and the promotion of harmonious and respectful relations with other people in different spheres of human activities.

This article presents the results of a survey of 202 male Taiwanese consumers. In this study, consumer judgements of two technological products varying in their level of complexity made in highly, moderately, and newly industrialised countries were obtained in a multi‐attribute context. The results show that the country‐of‐origin image of moderately and newly industrialised countries was less negative for technologically simpler products (i.e. a television) than they were for technologically complex products (i.e. a computer). It appears that the negative image of moderately and newly industrialised countries can be attenuated by making Taiwanese consumers more familiar with products made in these countries and/or by providing them with other product‐related information such as brand name and warranty. Newly industrialised countries were perceived more negatively as countries of design than as countries of assembly, especially in the context of making technologically complex products. The image of foreign countries as producers of consumer goods was positively correlated with education. The more familiar consumers were with the products of a country, the more favourable was their evaluation of that country. Consumer involvement with purchasing a technologically complex product such as a computer was positively associated with the appreciation of products made in moderately industrialised countries. Managerial and research implications are derived from these results.

Given the in creasing globalisation of economies, a growing number of marketing firms are expecting more of their profits to be derived from international sales. However, failure to account for or understand the effects of differences in consumers' cultural values on decision‐making will hinder a marketer's efforts to expand internationally. Using samples of Middle‐eastern and US consumers, the study found cultural values and consumer ethical beliefs to be significantly different between the two groups. In addition, these cultural values explained a significant part of the variation in consumer ethical beliefs in both cultures.

We conducted a pilot study to compare the emotions experienced by Dutch and Chinese students during a face‐to‐face negotiation role play. Emotions play an important role in negotiations because they influence the behaviour and judgments of negotiators. The Data Printer case developed by Greenhalgh was used to examine the patterns of feelings that emerge during negotiations. One hundred and four participants (62 Chinese and 42 Dutch post graduate students) role‐played two different characters who were confronted with a payment dispute regarding the servicing of a defective printer. The results of the MANOVA and of the Factorial Analysis demonstrates that culture as a carrier of social values and norms did influence the emotional reactions of the people socialised in different cultural contexts. The paper concludes that in order to facilitate conflict resolution and interpersonal communication amongst protagonists in mono as well as in inter‐cultural negotiation context individuals should learn to manage their emotions constructively.

Structural factors during Chinese and Japanese immigration and settlement processes required families to adapt in ways that altered traditional gender behaviors. This study examines how two factors – spousal immigration order and family economic structure – affected the gendered division of labor and how gender roles consequently were reconstructed for first and second generation Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans. These issues are investigated through secondary data analysis of 21 in‐depth interviews with daughters of Chinese and Japanese immigrants on the West Coast.

Considers the quality of service between internal partners within a company looking at how this can influence performance and quality. Looks at the different ways of defining the internal customer and suggests that measurement is most effective when complex procedures are broken down. States that internal marketing is a critical issue facing marketing professions, human resources and other executives. Argues that if poor service is provided between employees it is unlikely that good service will ultimately be provided to the external customer. Invites further research in this area.

This article compares consumer decision‐making styles between Singaporeans and Australians. Utilising Hofstede’s framework, the paper argues that cultural dimensions influence consumer decision making styles. It is essential that managers understand cross‐cultural consumer decision‐making styles to make strategic decisions or effectively handle members of these nationalities. Marked differences were found between the two populations for: brand consciousness, innovativeness and overchoice confusion. The results suggest that some consumer decision‐making styles differ due to consumers’ cultural values. Managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.

“The world needs science, science needs women” is the message given by UNESCO in the program for the development of women in science” (UNESCO, 2017). In Vietnam, women’s participation and achievements in scientific research is considered a great and important resource for industrialization and modernization. Even so, are there gender differences in scientific achievement in the social science research institutes in Vietnam? What factors influence the scientific achievement of female social researchers? The answers will be based on data from a 2017 survey with a sample of 756 researchers, of which 77.6% were female. The survey was conducted by the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, a leading, ministry-level national center for the social sciences in Vietnam. This chapter analyzed the scientific achievements of researchers through their position as principal investigators of research projects and their publications, and factors that may impact this. Bivariate and multivariate analyses of factors that may affect the scientific achievement of researchers found that gender differences in academic achievement in the social sciences in Vietnam was still prevalent. Female researchers’ scientific achievements were lower than those of their male counterparts. The contribution to science of Vietnamese female researchers was limited by many different factors; the most important were the academic rank of the researchers and gender stereotype that considered housework the responsibility of women.