Customer engagement planning emerging from the “individualist-collectivist”-framework: an empirical examination in China and UK

Purpose – Today marketers operate in globalised markets, planning new ways to engage with domestic and foreign customers alike. While there is a greater need to understand these two customer groups, few studies examine the impact of customer engagement tactics on the two customer groups, focusing on their perceptual differences. Even less attention is given to customer engagement tactics in a cross-cultural framework. In this research, the authors investigate customers in China and UK, aiming to compare their perceptual differences on the impact of multiple customer engagement tactics. Design/methodology/approach – Using a quantitative approach with 286 usable responses from China and the UK obtained through a combination of person-administered survey and computer-based survey screening process, the authors test a series of hypotheses to distinguish across-cultural differences. Findings – Findings show that the collectivists (Chinese customers) perceive customer engagement tactics differently than the individualists (UK customers). The Chinese customers are more sensitive to price and reputation, whereas the UK customers respond more strongly to service, communication and customisation. Chinese customers’ concerns with extensive price and reputation comparisons may be explained by their awareness towards face (status), increased self-expression and equality. Practical implications – The findings challenge the conventional practice of using similar customer engagement tactics for a specific market place with little concern for multiple cultural backgrounds. The paper proposes strategies for marketers facing challenges in this globalised context. Originality/value – Several contributions have been made to the literatures. First, the study showed the effects of culture on the customers’ perceptual differences. Second, the study provided more information to clarify customers’ different reactions towards customer engagement tactics, highlighted by concerns towards face and status. Third, the study provided empirical evidence to support the use of multiple customer engagement tactics to the across cultural studies.

A review of growth for construction service companies in global markets

Throughout the developed world, professional services play an increasingly important part in an economy, with many countries showing a substantial positive trade balance for services. Yet, there has been relatively little research on construction services (CS) and, in particular, how well professional service companies (PSFs) perform in the international arena. The method for collecting services export information differs to the way in which goods and products exports data are gathered because of the intangible nature of services. Organisational growth of companies aims to share risks across different regions and sectors, however, the rapidly changing business environment challenges companies with the increasing foreign ownership and changes in procurement. The complexity of today’s international construction services organisations raises two questions: how the organisations can successfully manage growth and what are their motives for international trade. The research focuses on top UK consulting engineering companies to understand their organisational strategy, their export strategy, and drivers for overseas activities. The data will feed a model of professional services exports, which can help to inform the way services export data could be collected to better reflect the industry’s performance.

The use of non-hypothetical experimental markets for measuring the acceptance of genetically modified foods

The findings from a study measuring consumer acceptance of genetically modified (GM) foods are presented. The empirical data were collected in an experimental market, an approach used extensively in experimental economics for measuring the monetary value of goods. The approach has several advantages over standard approaches used in sensory and marketing research (e.g., surveys and focus groups) because of its non-hypothetical nature and the realism introduced by using real goods, real money, and market discipline. In each of three US locations, we elicited the monetary compensation consumers required to consume a GM food. Providing positive information about the benefits of GM food production, in some cases, reduced the level of monetary compensation demanded to consume the GM food. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Maximizing revenue in Grid markets using an economically enhanced resource manager

Traditional resource management has had as its main objective the optimization of throughput, based on parameters such as CPU, memory, and network bandwidth. With the appearance of Grid markets, new variables that determine economic expenditure, benefit and opportunity must be taken into account. The Self-organizing ICT Resource Management (SORMA) project aims at allowing resource owners and consumers to exploit market mechanisms to sell and buy resources across the Grid. SORMA's motivation is to achieve efficient resource utilization by maximizing revenue for resource providers and minimizing the cost of resource consumption within a market environment. An overriding factor in Grid markets is the need to ensure that the desired quality of service levels meet the expectations of market participants. This paper explains the proposed use of an economically enhanced resource manager (EERM) for resource provisioning based on economic models. In particular, this paper describes techniques used by the EERM to support revenue maximization across multiple service level agreements and provides an application scenario to demonstrate its usefulness and effectiveness. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Pricing inefficiencies in private real estate markets using total return swaps

Efficient markets should guarantee the existence of zero spreads for total return swaps. However, real estate markets have recorded values that are significantly different from zero in both directions. Possible explanations might suggest non-rational behaviour by inexperienced market players or unusual features of the underlying asset market. We find that institutional characteristics in the underlying market lead to market inefficiencies and, hence, to the creation of a rational trading window with upper and lower bounds within which transactions do not offer arbitrage opportunities. Given the existence of this rational trading window, we also argue that the observed spreads can substantially be explained by trading imbalances due to the limited liquidity of a newly formed market and/or to the effect of market sentiment, complementing explanations based on the lag between underlying market returns and index returns.