Valuing the influence of underlying attitudes and the demand for organic milk in Japan

Subjective perceptions about a product affect consumer choice. Accordingly, acquiring the underlying demand characteristics that consumers find desirable is vital for firms planning future marketing strategies. However, the extent to which product-specific perceptions affect consumer choice is poorly understood. New agricultural standards for organic livestock were introduced in Japan in November 2005 and are expected to influence the market significantly. Choice modeling (CM) is used to explore how consumers evaluate the latent demands and conventional attributes (or tangible values) of organic milk. The results suggest that latent demands, along with socioeconomic characteristics and conventional attributes, provide strong incentives for consumers to move from the purchase of conventional milk to organic milk. The analysis indicates that latent demands reflecting the safeness of organic milk, the better taste of organic milk, the image of environmental friendliness in the production process, and the image of the health and comfort of the cows are important factors that influence consumers' purchasing decisions. However, each specific factor has a corresponding conventional tangible attribute that needs to be targeted in marketing strategy.

The game of clones and the Australia tax : divergent views about copyright business models and the willingness of Australian consumers to infringe

It is often said that Australia is a world leader in rates of copyright infringement for entertainment goods. In 2012, the hit television show, Game of Thrones, was the most downloaded television show over bitorrent, and estimates suggest that Australians accounted for a plurality of nearly 10% of the 3-4 million downloads each week. The season finale of 2013 was downloaded over a million times within 24 hours of its release, and again Australians were the largest block of illicit downloaders over BitTorrent, despite our relatively small population. This trend has led the former US Ambassador to Australia to implore Australians to stop 'stealing' digital content, and rightsholders to push for increasing sanctions on copyright infringers. The Australian Government is looking to respond by requiring Internet Service Providers to issue warnings and potentially punish consumers who are alleged by industry groups to have infringed copyright. This is the logical next step in deterring infringement, given that the operators of infringing networks (like The Pirate Bay, for example) are out of regulatory reach. This steady ratcheting up of the strength of copyright, however, comes at a significant cost to user privacy and autonomy, and while the decentralisation of enforcement reduces costs, it also reduces the due process safeguards provided by the judicial process. This article presents qualitative evidence that substantiates a common intuition: one of the major reasons that Australians seek out illicit downloads of content like Game of Thrones in such numbers is that it is more difficult to access legitimately in Australia. The geographically segmented way in which copyright is exploited at an international level has given rise to a ‘tyranny of digital distance’, where Australians have less access to copyright goods than consumers in other countries. Compared to consumers in the US and the EU, Australians pay more for digital goods, have less choice in distribution channels, are exposed to substantial delays in access, and are sometimes denied access completely. In this article we focus our analysis on premium film and television offerings, like Game of Thrones, and through semi-structured interviews, explore how choices in distribution impact on the willingness of Australian consumers to seek out infringing copies of copyright material. Game of Thrones provides an excellent case study through which to frame this analysis: it is both one of the least legally accessible television offerings and one of the most downloaded through filesharing networks of recent times. Our analysis shows that at the same time as rightsholder groups, particularly in the film and television industries, are lobbying for stronger laws to counter illicit distribution, the business practices of their member organisations are counter-productively increasing incentives for consumers to infringe. The lack of accessibility and high prices of copyright goods in Australia leads to substantial economic waste. The unmet consumer demand means that Australian consumers are harmed by lower access to information and entertainment goods than consumers in other jurisdictions. The higher rates of infringement that fulfils some of this unmet demand increases enforcement costs for copyright owners and imposes burdens either on our judicial system or on private entities – like ISPs – who may be tasked with enforcing the rights of third parties. Most worryingly, the lack of convenient and cheap legitimate digital distribution channels risks undermining public support for copyright law. Our research shows that consumers blame rightsholders for failing to meet market demand, and this encourages a social norm that infringing copyright, while illegal, is not morally wrongful. The implications are as simple as they are profound: Australia should not take steps to increase the strength of copyright law at this time. The interests of the public and those of rightsholders align better when there is effective competition in distribution channels and consumers can legitimately get access to content. While foreign rightsholders are seeking enhanced protection for their interests, increasing enforcement is likely to increase their ability to engage in lucrative geographical price-discrimination, particularly for premium content. This is only likely to increase the degree to which Australian consumers feel that their interests are not being met and, consequently, to further undermine the legitimacy of copyright law. If consumers are to respect copyright law, increasing sanctions for infringement without enhancing access and competition in legitimate distribution channels could be dangerously counter-productive. We suggest that rightsholders’ best strategy for addressing infringement in Australia at this time is to ensure that Australians can access copyright goods in a timely, affordable, convenient, and fair lawful manner.

The performance of diversified emerging market equity funds

We investigate the performance of globally diversified emerging market equity funds during the first decade of the twenty-first century. A vast majority of these funds do not outperform the market benchmark even before transaction costs. The systematic risk of most of the funds is similar to that of the market benchmark portfolio, which may suggest that they aim to offer diversification benefits rather than seeking superior risk-adjusted returns through active management. We do not find any evidence of market timing ability amongst these funds. Finally, whilst we detect persistence in performance, this result is driven mainly by the poorly performing funds.

Automotive modal lock-in: The role of path dependence and large socio-economic regimes in market failure

This paper addresses less recognised factors which influence the diffusion of a particular technology. While an innovation’s attributes and performance are paramount, many fail because of external factors which favour an alternative. This paper, with theoretic input from diffusion, lock-in and path-dependency, presents a qualitative study of external factors that influenced the evolution of transportation in USA. This historical account reveals how one technology and its emergent systems become dominant while other choices are overridden by socio-political, economic and technological interests which include not just the manufacturing and service industries associated with the automobile but also government and market stakeholders. Termed here as a large socio-economic regime (LSER),its power in ensuring lock-in and continued path-dependency is shown to pass through three stages, weakening eventually as awareness improves. The study extends to transport trends in China, Korea, Indonesia and Malaysia and they all show the dominant role of an LSER. As transportation policy is increasingly accountable to address both demand and environmental concerns and innovators search for solutions, this paper presents important knowledge for innovators, marketers and policy makers for commercial and societal reasons, especially when negative externalities associated with an incumbent transportation technology may lead to market failure.

Analysis and improvement of a construction permit approval process: A teaching case for developing business process development capabilities, targeting developing nations

With the increasing competitiveness in global markets, many developing nations are striving to constantly improve their services in search for the next competitive edge. As a result, the demand and need for Business Process Management (BPM) in these regions is seeing a rapid rise. Yet there exists a lack of professional expertise and knowledge to cater to that need. Therefore, the development of well-structured BPM training/ education programs has become an urgent requirement for these industries. Furthermore, the lack of textbooks or other self-educating material, that go beyond the basics of BPM, further ratifies the need for case based teaching and related cases that enable the next generation of professionals in these countries. Teaching cases create an authentic learning environment where complexities and challenges of the ‘real world’ can be presented in a narrative, enabling students to evolve crucial skills such as problem analysis, problem solving, creativity within constraints as well as the application of appropriate tools (BPMN) and techniques (including best practices and benchmarking) within richer and real scenarios. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive teaching case demonstrating the means to tackle any developing nation’s legacy government process undermined by inefficiency and ineffectiveness. The paper also includes thorough teaching notes The article is presented in three main parts: (i) Introduction - that provides a brief background setting the context of this paper, (ii) The Teaching Case, and (iii) Teaching notes.

Demand for ecolabeled seafood in the Japanese market: A conjoint analysis of the impact of information and interaction with other labels

The use of seafood ecolabels is expanding in the world marketplace, but so are labels indicating other product attributes, such as country of origin and wild vs. farmed. The interactive effects of these labels and attributes in evaluating consumers' preferences for ecolabeled seafood are relatively unexplored. In this paper we investigate (1) the direct and interactive effects of seafood ecolabels with other common fish labels, and (2) how consumers' perceptions about the state of marine stocks and the valuation of ecolabels may be affected by different information. We find moderate interactive effects between ecolabels and country of origin labels, whereas the valuation for seafood ecolabels is fairly high. In terms of information, we find that consumers' perceptions about fish stock levels changed (negatively) after receiving information on declining stock levels, and more sensationalized information led to increased change. However, valuation for a seafood ecolabel increases only when the information was perceived positively (credible/interesting); whereas exaggerated information (which was also perceived less credible) had insignificant effects on WTP.

De-risking development of medium density housing to improve housing affordability and boost supply

Housing price inflation is a national concern given the serious decline in the number of low and middle income households able to purchase housing. In addition housing supply lags well behind demand. In Melbourne, urban consolidation policies explicitly seek intensification to promote housing supply but planning regulation is often criticised for being a significant cost driver for medium density housing. It is assumed that easing supply constraints will improve affordability. We suggest that laissez-faire planning exacerbates affordability issues because this approach fails to address the basic economic problem: the current inability of the market to efficiently match supply and demand in order to progress an orderly and de-risked development process. The role of “exchange” one of the four housing market sub-systems identified by Burke (2012) has until recently generally been ignored but our examination reveals significant economic transaction costs that manifest as development risks that impact on affordability. Fortunately these can be mitigated, but only if there is a more consumer driven supply response.

Introduction to "Business innovation and disruption in the music industry"

Similar to most other creative industries, the evolution of the music industry is heavily shaped by media technologies. This was equally true in 1999, when the global recorded music industry had experienced two decades of continuous growth largely driven by the rapid transition from vinyl records to Compact Discs. The transition encouraged avid music listeners to purchase much of their music collections all over again in order to listen to their favourite music with ‘digital sound’. As a consequence of this successful product innovation, recorded music sales (unit measure) more than doubled between the early 1980s and the end of the 1990s. It was with this backdrop that the first peer-to-peer file sharing service was developed and released to the mainstream music market in 1999 by the college student Shawn Fanning. The service was named Napster and it marks the beginning of an era that is now a classic example of how an innovation is able to disrupt an entire industry and make large swathes of existing industry competences obsolete. File sharing services such as Napster, followed by a range of similar services in its path, reduced physical unit sales in the music industry to levels that had not been seen since the 1970s. The severe impact of the internet on physical sales shocked many music industry executives who spent much of the 2000s vigorously trying to reverse the decline and make the disruptive technologies go away. At the end, they learned that their efforts were to no avail and the impact on the music industry proved to be transformative, irreversible and, to many music industry professionals, also devastating. Thousands of people lost their livelihood, large and small music companies have folded or been forced into mergers or acquisitions. But as always during periods of disruption, the past 15 years have also been very innovative, spurring a plethora of new music business models. These new business models have mainly emerged outside the music industry and the innovators have been often been required to be both persuasive and persistent in order to get acceptance from the risk-averse and cash-poor music industry establishment. Apple was one such change agent that in 2003 was the first company to open up a functioning and legal market for online music. iTunes Music Store was the first online retail outlet that was able to offer the music catalogues from all the major music companies; it used an entirely novel pricing model, and it allowed consumers to de-bundle the music album and only buy the songs that they actually liked. Songs had previously been bundled by physical necessity as discs or cassettes, but with iTunes Music Store, the institutionalized album bundle slowly started to fall apart. The consequences had an immediate impact on music retailing and within just a few years, many brick and mortar record stores were forced out of business in markets across the world. The transformation also had disruptive consequences beyond music retailing and redefined music companies’ organizational structures, work processes and routines, as well as professional roles. iTunes Music Store in one sense was a disruptive innovation, but it was at the same time relatively incremental, since the major labels’ positions and power structures remained largely unscathed. The rights holders still controlled their intellectual properties and the structures that guided the royalties paid per song that was sold were predictable, transparent and in line with established music industry practices.

Exploring aged care business models : A typological study

Australian providers of aged care are facing a rapidly ageing population and growth in demand for services. Beyond a sheer increase in consumers and major regulatory changes from Federal Government, many customers are becoming progressively discontented with a medically dominated model of care provision. This period of turbulence presents an opportunity for new entrants and forward-thinking organisations to disrupt the market by designing a more compelling value offering. Under this line of inquiry, the researchers conducted a qualitative content analysis study of over 37 Australian aged care organisations, clustering providers into six business model typologies. The study revealed that providers of aged care are becoming increasingly aware of emerging customer needs, and, in addressing these needs, are seeking to establish innovative models of care provision. This paper therefore presents a future model of care, along with implications for practice and policy.

Across the Oceans : Development of Overseas Business Information Transmission, 1815-1875

Earlier studies have shown that the speed of information transmission developed radically during the 19th century. The fast development was mainly due to the change from sailing ships and horse-driven coaches to steamers and railways, as well as the telegraph. Speed of information transmission has normally been measured by calculating the duration between writing and receiving a letter, or between an important event and the time when the news was published elsewhere. As overseas mail was generally carried by ships, the history of communications and maritime history are closely related. This study also brings a postal historical aspect to the academic discussion. Additionally, there is another new aspect included. In business enterprises, information flows generally consisted of multiple transactions. Although fast one-way information was often crucial, e.g. news of a changing market situation, at least equally important was that there was a possibility to react rapidly. To examine the development of business information transmission, the duration of mail transport has been measured by a systematic and commensurable method, using consecutive information circles per year as the principal tool for measurement. The study covers a period of six decades, several of the world's most important trade routes and different mail-carrying systems operated by merchant ships, sailing packets and several nations' steamship services. The main sources have been the sailing data of mail-carrying ships and correspondence of several merchant houses in England. As the world's main trade routes had their specific historical backgrounds with different businesses, interests and needs, the systems for information transmission did not develop similarly or simultaneously. It was a process lasting several decades, initiated by the idea of organizing sailings in a regular line system. The evolution proceeded generally as follows: originally there was a more or less irregular system, then a regular system and finally a more frequent regular system of mail services. The trend was from sail to steam, but both these means of communication improved following the same scheme. Faster sailings alone did not radically improve the number of consecutive information circles per year, if the communication was not frequent enough. Neither did improved frequency advance the information circulation if the trip was very long or if the sailings were overlapping instead of complementing each other. The speed of information transmission could be improved by speeding up the voyage itself (technological improvements, minimizing the waiting time at ports of call, etc.) but especially by organizing sailings so that the recipients had the possibility to reply to arriving mails without unnecessary delay. It took two to three decades before the mail-carrying shipping companies were able to organize their sailings in an optimal way. Strategic shortcuts over isthmuses (e.g. Panama, Suez) together with the cooperation between steamships and railways enabled the most effective improvements in global communications before the introduction of the telegraph.

Managing flexible work arrangements in small not-for-profit firms: The influence of organisational size, financial constraints and workforce characteristics

Small, not-for-profit organisations fulfil a need in the economy that is typically not satisfied by for-profit firms. They also operate in ways that are distinct from larger organisations. While such firms employ a substantial proportion of the workforce, research addressing human resource management (HRM) practices in these settings is limited. This article used data collected from five small not-for-profit firms in Australia to examine the way one significant HRM practice – the provision and utilisation of flexible work arrangements – operates in the sector. Drawing on research from several scholarly fields, the article firstly develops a framework comprising three tensions in not-for-profits that have implications for HRM. These tensions are: (1) contradictions between an informal approach to HRM vs. a formal regulatory system; (2) employee values that favour social justice vs. external market forces; and (3) a commitment to service vs. external financial expectations. The article then empirically examines how these tensions are managed in relation to the specific case of flexible work arrangements. The study reveals that tensions around providing and accessing flexible work arrangements are managed in three ways: discretion, leadership style and distancing. These findings more broadly inform the way HRM is operationalised in this under-examined sector.

Studies on micro explosive driven blast wave propagation in confined domains using NONEL tubes

Explosive driven micro blast waves are generated in the laboratory using NONEL tubes. The explosive mixture coated to the inner walls of the plastic Nonel tube comprises of HMX and Aluminum ( 18mg/m). The detonation is triggered electrically to generate micro blast waves from the open end of the tube. Flow visualization and over pressure measurements have been carried out to understand the propagation dynamics of these micro-blast waves in both confined and unconfined domains. The classical cubic root law used for large scale blast correlation appears to hold good even for these micro-blasts generated in the laboratory.

Dancing into the second phase of creative industries

As we enter the second phase of creative industries there is a shift away from the early 1990s ideology of the arts as a creative content provider for the wealth generating ‘knowledge’ economy to an expanded rhetoric encompassing ‘cultural capital’ and its symbolic value. A renewed focus on culture is examined through a regional scan of creative industries in which social engineering of the arts occurs through policy imperatives driven by ‘profit oriented conceptualisations of culture’ (Hornidge 2011, p. 263) In the push for artists to become ‘culturpreneurs’ a trend has emerged where demand for ‘embedded creatives’ (Cunningham 2013) sees an exodus from arts-based employment through use of transferable skills into areas outside the arts. For those that stay, within the performing arts in particular, employment remains project-based, sporadic, underpaid, self-initiated and often self-financed, requiring adaptive career paths. Artist entrepreneurs must balance creation and performance of their art with increasing amounts of time spent on branding, compliance, fundraising and the logistical and commercial requirements of operating in a CI paradigm. The artists’ key challenge thus becomes one of aligning core creative and aesthetic values with market and business considerations. There is also the perceived threat posed by the ‘prosumer’ phenomenon (Bruns 2008), in which digital on-line products are created and produced by those formerly seen as consumers of art or audiences for art. Despite negative aspects to this scenario, a recent study (Steiner & Schneider 2013) reveals that artists are happier and more satisfied than other workers within and outside the creative industries. A lively hybridisation of creative practice is occurring through mobile and interactive technologies with dynamic connections to social media. Continued growth in arts festivals attracts participation in international and transdisciplinary collaborations, whilst cross-sectoral partnerships provide artists with opportunities beyond a socio-cultural setting into business, health, science and education. This is occurring alongside a renewed engagement with place through the rise of cultural precincts in ‘creative cities’ (Florida 2008, Landry 2000), providing revitalised spaces for artists to gather and work. Finally, a reconsideration of the specialist attributes and transferable skills that artists bring to the creative industries suggests ways to dance through both the challenges and opportunities occasioned by the current complexities of arts’ practices.

Empirical Studies on Labor Market Matching (summary section only)

This thesis analyzes how matching takes place at the Finnish labor market from three different angles. The Finnish labor market has undergone severe structural changes following the economic crisis in the early 1990s. The labor market has had problems adjusting from these changes and hence a high and persistent unemployment has followed. In this thesis I analyze if matching problems, and in particular if changes in matching, can explain some of this persistence. The thesis consists of three essays. In the first essay Finnish Evidence of Changes in the Labor Market Matching Process the matching process at the Finnish labor market is analyzed. The key finding is that the matching process has changed thoroughly between the booming 1980s and the post-crisis period. The importance of the number of unemployed, and in particular long-term unemployed, for the matching process has vanished. More unemployed do not increase matching as theory predicts but rather the opposite. In the second essay, The Aggregate Matching Function and Directed Search -Finnish Evidence, stock-flow matching as a potential micro foundation of the aggregate matching function is studied. In the essay I show that newly unemployed match mainly with the stock of vacancies while longer term unemployed match with the inflow of vacancies. When aggregating I still find evidence of the traditional aggregate matching function. This could explain the huge support the aggregate matching function has received despite its odd randomness assumption. The third essay, How do Registered Job Seekers really match? -Finnish occupational level Evidence, studies matching for nine occupational groups and finds that very different matching problems exist for different occupations. In this essay also misspecification stemming from non-corresponding variables is dealt with through the introduction of a completely new set of variables. The new outflow measure used is vacancies filled with registered job seekers and it is matched by the supply side measure registered job seekers.