Developing and validating an overall international marketing performance scale

The purpose of this chapter is to develop and validate a scale of the overall international marketing performance. Based on a review of the existing literature, the scale constructed to measure international marketing performance used in this study included three factors; namely, finance, strategic and brand performance.

A total of 315 Australian firms involved in international marketing were surveyed. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were undertaken to validate the scale.

Findings support the conceptualization that the overall international marketing construct consists of three factors.

The present study contributes to the understanding of the measurement of the overall international marketing performance by empirically testing the dimensionality of this construct.

International comparisons of construction industry performance: further investigations

While there have been many attempts at comparisons of construction performance over the past 50 years, the results have generally been inconclusive and/or contradictory.

Such comparisons are of great interest to industry, governments and theorists alike but there is little agreement as to how they are best done. A variety of methodologies have been used, however, the lack of satisfactory outcomes has been due largely to one factor, the lack of a truly reliable method for comparing construction costs in different currencies

Exchange rates are recognised as being unsuitable, and while purchasing power parity (PPP) has a long history, the method still has many critics. In addition, the nature of the building industry and its products makes the establishment of reliable construction PPPs very difficult. Both the UN’s International Comparison Program (ICP) and the European Union gather data for the production of construction-specific PPP indices, but neither body publishes them, as there is too much doubt about their reliability.

New approaches are being developed and some are soon to be trialled. This paper looks at the problems, describes and discusses some new approaches, and assesses their potential.

Sweet talking to ethnic customers : a field experiment on the links between entrepreneurial business planning, cultural sensitivity and sales growth

The purpose of this study was to test whether calculated inclusion of cultural sensitivity in a selected entrepreneurial business planning (EBP) process could increase sales growth in a test market and to explore the implications of a positive answer for the theory and practice of entrepreneurial business planning. Execution of a pretest-posttest control group experimental design measured and compared the implemented effectiveness of a planned entrepreneurial initiative based on cultural sensitivity. Though small in scale and limited in focus, the initiative qualified as an example of entrepreneurial business planning (EBP) and could be used to apply, test and extend aspects of the developing theory in this field of entrepreneurship research. Since the initiative was planned to overcome a culturally-defined impediment to business growth, it also offered opportunity to explore the specific importance of cultural variables in the context of EBP.

A planned sales-promotion was offered to a control group (receiving information in English) and a treatment group (who received the information in the language of ethnic origin). The sixty subjects had been chosen at random from a population of route-trade retailers of defined ethnic origins (Greek, Lebanese and Chinese) and randomly assigned to control and treatment groups. Monthly sales averages of the promoted product were measured before and after treatment. A Chi Square test was used to evaluate the relative proportion of the control and treatment groups who accepted the promotional offer. A two sample t-test procedure and complementary non-parametric Mann-Whitney test were performed to compare the mean sales-performance change of the two groups. Analysis showed that there was a significant increase in mean sales when the planned entrepreneurial initiative was communicated in the relevant language of origin.

The experimental results have specific practical relevance to revitalising the deteriorating route-trade segment of the Australian confectionery market through increasing the sales growth of wholesalers who are prepared to act entrepreneurially and include cultural sensitivity as an element in planning and implementation. By introducing cultural sensitivity as a necessary extension of a plan’s communications role, the results also have general theoretical implications for the developing paradigm of entrepreneurial business planning.

Towards a digital representation of physical phenomena to assess comfort in future environments

This paper presents the concept and a test implementation of a digital representation of the physical world designed to assess comfort quality in
future environments. An integrated set of physical phenomena is modeled three-dimensionally to investigate the dynamic behavior of design objects
holistically.

The formulation supports the integration of computational simulation in the performance-based design process. It employs the principles of
geometrical and physical selfcontainedness to avoid that complex geometrical and physical circumstances have to be specified at design time. The concepts of congeneric cells and congeneric conjunctions are
introduced to simulate various physical phenomena simultaneously with a uniformly structured set of equations.

The concept, the prototype implementation and selected test cases are presented. Although it was not possible to implement all features and model parts completely, the research and the discussion of its achievements make valuable contributions towards more effective integration of computational simulation in the performance-based design process.

Internationalisation of SMEs : European comparative studies

We examine new research on the internationalisation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in 27 European countries. We find that, in both established market economies and in transition economies, SME international entrepreneurship is driven by internal resources and capabilities, membership in networks or clusters, favourable government policies, economy, competitive market conditions, and industry structure. We then develop a conceptual model and propositions of the drivers of European SME internationalisation. Our findings have important implications for managers in improving their firms' international market performance.

Kinomatics: a global study into cinema data

This paper describes a creative industries research project that has applied quantitative approaches commonly used in scientific research to the study of international cinema performance. Using film screening data collected over a two year period, this paper discusses analysis of a global dataset using Appadurai's "-scapes" framework. We have identified several of these "-scapes" that help us investigate film industry behaviour. Concentrating on Appadurai's "Technoscape" an investigation into the geographic spread and distribution of a new and emerging technology, High Frame Rate cinema, has been made. HFR films have screened around the world to mixed reviews. Geographic distribution of HFR technologies and change in this distribution has also been uneven.

Goal-efficacy framework : an examination of domestic and international accounting students' academic performance

This study considers the psychological influences on academic performance using a goal-efficacy framework. Data were gathered using a survey questionnaire (N = 375). The paper is motivated by a repeated high failure rate for a second-year core accounting unit and anecdotal evidence that international students perform poorly in comparison with domestic students. The results demonstrate the role of self-regulated learning strategy as a mediating variable for goal orientation and academic performance. While the analyses suggest no significant differences between domestic and international students with respect to the main psychological variables and academic performance, further analyses reveal that four specific factors of the main psychological variables are significantly different between domestic and international students. © 2013 AFAANZ.