The strategy of global branding and brand equity

This book offers a way to predict which brand a buyer will purchase. It looks at brandperformance within a product category and tests it in different countries with verydifferent cultures. Following the Predictive Brand Choice (PBC) model, this book seeks to predict a consumer’s loyalty and choice. Results have shown that PBC can achieve a high level of predictive accuracy, in excess of 70% in mature markets. This accuracy holds even in the face of price competition from a less preferred brand.PBC uses a prospective predicting method which does not have to rely on a brand’spast performance or a customer’s purchase history for prediction. Choice data isgathered in the retail setting – at the point of sale. The Strategy of Global Brandingand Brand Equity presents survey data and quantitative analyses that prove themethod described to be practical, useful and implementable for both researchers and practitioners of commercial brand strategies.

Calculating student aspiration: Bourdieu, spatiality and the politics of recognition

This paper reports on a recent study of aspirations for higher education by secondary school students from disadvantaged backgrounds in regional Australia. At the same time, it goes in search of explanations that transcend a Bourdieuian account of aspirations as produced by and reproductive of cultural histories and dominance, given the apparent inadequacy of these accounts in redressing disadvantage. To this end the authors distinguish between historicising and spatialising aspirations, taking up Appadurai’s notion of navigational capacity as a way of advancing greater agency for disadvantaged groups. Data from the research inform the analysis, including the mediation of students’ desired futures by their perception of what is possible given their differentiated locations and access to resources. It is concluded that while this spatial turn in theorising aspiration has potential for changing the terms of recognition internal to disadvantaged communities, there remain structural limits on change ‘from below’.

Hayek the Schmittian: contextualising Cristi's account of Hayek's decisionism in the age of global wealth inequality

That capitalism, in all its variants, produces material inequality is beyond dispute.What is less clear, however, is not only whether Hayek’s ‘equality of opportunities’is immune to the inegalitarian trend, but also whether liberalism itself is the occultsource of this outcome. This paper delves into this by offering a post-nationalcontextualisation and partial critique of Renato Cristi’s 1984 and 1998scholarship on Hayek’s decisionism. The aim is to investigate the relationshipbetween liberal thought and wealth inequality in light of the global-order projectand crisis in democratic decision-making procedures. This will uncover a clearzone of interaction between Hayek’s notion of legal liberty and Schmitt’ssovereignty that was not spotted by Cristi and that will shed new light on thedehumanising and inegalitarian essence of the universalisation of liberalism andits notion of ‘civilised economy’.

The politics of memory in Harold Pinter's Ashes to Ashes

The present work proposes an investigation of the treatment given to memory in Pinter’s latest play, Ashes to Ashes, and of its function in the development of Pinter’s work. In order to do that, different aspects of the construction of meaning in the theatre are analysed, so that the specificity of its reception is determined. A survey of techniques used to present information, time and space in the theatre is made. The analytical drama, the history drama, and the theatre of the absurd are defined. After that, the evolution of the author’s work is analysed to determine what characterises Pinter’s work, while at the same time determining how his treatment of themes like menace, memory, and political oppression of the individual has evolved. Finally, a detailed survey of the apparently disconnected elements that are mentioned in Ashes to Ashes is made. The intertextual analysis allied to a study of the analytical form as used in this play enables the discovery of several layers of meaning. Through the connection established between the Holocaust and man’s fall followed by expulsion from Eden, Pinter examines the use of memory as a way of dealing with personal and collective responsibility and guilt. It is through the recovery of memory (also through writing) that the present can establish a critical and responsible relation with the past.

Voter turnout, inflation, and the politics of macroeconomic policy: an empirical essay

This thesis tests some hypotheses regarding the impact of voter turnout on inflation on the assumption that macroeconomic policies depend on voters’ and politicians’ preferences. The work’s empirical basis includes data from 111 nations from the developing world, covering the period from 1978 to 2000. Its main finding indicates that increases in voter turnout co-vary with higher inflation rates, all else held constant.