Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Predicting The Effectiveness Of Anti-Speeding Tv Advertisements By Skin Conductance Response (Scr), Jennifer Thornton, John R. Rossiter

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the Hopkins and Fletcher (1994) ad-testing measure - which uses skin conductance response (SCR) to predict the effectiveness of sales messages for commercial products and services - would be similarly predictive for road safety ads. The predictive ability of SCR was tested on four pairs of anti-speeding ads using a behavioural dependent measure of speed choice. Overall, there was a weak correlation between SCR scores and speed choice scores (r = -.116, p < .10), and this was largely due to a strong correlation for one of the eight ads tested Further analysis showed that out of 16 possible comparisons of SCR scores and speed choice scores, by gender and ad, only two were found to be significantly correlated in the hypothesised direction. The Hopkins and Fletcher SCR ad-testing measure is not a dependable predictor of the effectiveness of antispeeding ads.

A Perspective On Food Policies Evolution And Poverty In The Indian Republic (1950-2001), E. J. Wilson, D. P. Chaudhri

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper analyses the rural food sector of the Indian Republic in an intertemporal growth context. A model is developed which includes the government's conflict between its poverty reducing attempts through public distribution of food, subsidized issue and support food prices and long term developmental goals. The ARDL cointegration procedure for mixed order dynamic processes identifies the major determinants of rural head count poverty for the period, 1953-2000.

The long run elasticity estimates clearly show the real consumer subsidised issue price and the real producer support price dominate the quantity effects of the per capita public distribution on rural head …

Usability Of Complex Systems In The Organisational Context, Wannapa Suratmethakul, Helen Hasan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper describes research into contextual factors that appear to influence the successful implementation of a complex system in an organisation. A grounded theory approach was used to collect and analyse data on the introduction, into a large educational institution, of a timetabling system that was already well established in another similar organisations. The results of the study show that the usability of a system which supports complex tasks can be critically determined by the organisational context but this can be overlooked with detrimental consequences.

Beyond "Commensense Segmentation" - A Systematics Of Segmentation Approaches In Tourism, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Market segmentation is an accepted tool in strategic marketing. It helps to understand and serve the needs of homogeneous consumer sub-populations. Two approaches are recognized: a priori and data-driven (a posteriori, Mazanec, 2000; post-hoc, Wedel & Kamakura, 1998) segmentation. In tourism there is a long history of a priori segmentation studies both in industry and academia. These lead to the identification of tourist groups derived from dividing the population according to prior knowledge (“commonsense segmentation”). However, due to the wide use of this approach, there is not much room for competitive advantage to be gained by using a priori segmentation. …

Improved Understanding Of Tourists’ Needs – Cross-Classification For Validation Of Data-Driven Segments, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Data-driven segmentation has become standard practice in strategic marketing. Typically, however, respondents are grouped only once, implicitly assuming deterministic nature of the segmentation methods applied. Once the segments are derived, background variables are used to test the significance of the difference between clusters indicating external validity of the market segments. High external validity implies a high level of trustworthiness of the solution and thus managerially useful market segments to choose from. However, single runs of explorative analysis remain only a weak basis for good long-term managerial decisions. In this study a different approach is suggested to improve the quality of …

Insights Into Sustainable Tourists In Austria: A Data-Based A Priori Segmentation Approach, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

An excellent market-driven way to successfully implement sustainable tourism in a destination is to find a segment of tourists or potential tourists interested in the unique natural beauty of the destination, willing to preserve it and who are also highly attractive in terms of high expenditures, long stays, high return rate, high recommendation rate etc. The first step in seeking these visitors is thorough investigation of sustainable market segments. So far, only a few studies have systematically searched for “eco-segments” or sustainable tourist groups and described them. This paper reviews the usefulness of such approaches, examines past studies investigating potential …

Transport, Simon Ville

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This chapter describes the process of transport growth and development in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, including its political, organisational and developmental impact. Transport systems (including communications) move people, goods and information. The large size and capital-intensive nature of transport operations caused unprecedented organisational challenges for companies. The identification of transport as a form of social overhead capital, supporting production across the economy, helps account for its broad-ranging impact on economic development. In this role transport contributed to the efficient allocation of resources over space, thereby promoting competition between producers, and providing information about alternative consumption possibilities to consumers.

Integrating Communities Of Practice In Technology Development Projects, Karin Garrety, P L. Robertson, R. Badham

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Technology development projects usually benefit when knowledge and expertise are drawn from a variety of sources, including potential users. Orchestrating the involvement of people from disparate groups is a crucial task for project managers. It requires finding a balance between differentiation, when teams work in isolation, and integration, when groups come together to exchange knowledge. This article argues that a “community of practice” perspective can help project managers to achieve this balance, by drawing attention to the assumptions, interests, skills, and formal and tacit knowledge of the different groups involved. Successful integration can be achieved by ensuring that the developing …

User-Centred Design And The Normative Politics Of Technology, Karin Garrety, R Badham

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

A long tradition of discourse and practice claims that technology designers need to take note of the characteristics and aspirations of potential users in design. Practitioners in the field of user-centred design (UCD) have developed methods to facilitate this process. These methods represent interesting vehicles for the pursuit of normative politics of technology. In this article, we use a case study of the introduction and use of UCD methods in Australia to explore the politics of getting the methods to work in practice. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour and Marc Berg, we argue that UCD methods are tools …

Hourly Wages Of Full-Time And Part-Time Employees In Australia, Joan R. Rodgers

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This study investigates some aspects of part-time and full-time employment in Australia. The main objective is to analyze whether part-time workers receive lower hourly wages than full-time workers who have similar levels of human capital and perform similar jobs. The study is based on unit-record data from Wave I of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The results indicate that unadjusted part-time wage penalties of 21 per cent for men and seven per cent for women can be explained by selection into full-time or part-time employment and controls for human capital and type of job. There …

Improved Understanding Of Tourists’ Needs – Cross-Classification For Validation Of Data-Driven Segments, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Data-driven segmentation has become standard practice in strategic marketing. Typically, however, respondents are grouped only once, implicitly assuming deterministic nature of the segmentation methods applied. Once the segments are derived, background variables are used to test the significance of the difference between clusters indicating external validity of the market segments. High external validity implies a high level of trustworthiness of the solution and thus managerially useful market segments to choose from. However, single runs of explorative analysis remain only a weak basis for good long-term managerial decisions. In this study a different approach is suggested to improve the quality of …

Some International Benchmarks For Evaluating Australian Health And Medical Research, Samuel Garrett-Jones, Brian Wixted, Tim Turpin

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Recent experience in Australia has seen the requirement by the federal Department of Finance and Administration to conduct output pricing reviews of government agencies including research organisations. Health and medical research, while generally regarded as an important ‘public good’, is now pressed by the same demands as other research fields to account for public investments in terms of value of outcomes and value for investment. This paper reports on current trends towards international benchmarking of health and medical research performance. Comparative data from overseas show unique aspects of the Australian health and medical research funding system. The paper suggests possible …

Corporate And State Mining Legitimated: Transferring Future Economic Benefits Or Passing The Buck?, Mary A. Kaidonis, Natalie P. Stoianoff

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The responsibility for pollution resulting from mining, according to the OECD's Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) rests with the owners of the mining entity. This principle relies on a number of legislative instruments and often a mix of command and control mechanisms are advocated.

Segmenting Markets By Bagged Clustering, Sara Dolnicar, Friedrich Leisch

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

We introduce bagged clustering as a new approach in the field of post hoc market segmentation research and illustrate the managerial advantages over both hierarchical and partitioning algorithms, especially with large binary data sets. The most important improvements are enhanced stability and interpretability of segments based on binary data. One of the main goals of the procedure is to complement more traditional techniques as an exploratory segment analysis tool. The merits of the approach are illustrated using a tourism marketing application.

Geographical Or Behavioural Segmentation? The Pros And Cons For Destination Marketing, Sara Dolnicar, Friedrich Leisch

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Market segmentation is a widely applied concept in destination management. Although the general trend in tourism marketing research has constantly been developing toward data-driven (a posteriori, post-hoc) approaches, national tourism organisations (NTOs) still mostly use the commonsense (a priori) approach of geographical segmentation. This paper compares the advantages and drawbacks of both methods and illustrates some of them using a real empirical example.

Towards More Thorough Data-Driven Segmentation In Tourism - A Tracking Framework For Exploring Segment Development, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Market segmentation has become a standard concept in tourism marketing. A priori and a posteriori (data-driven, post-hoc) segmentation approaches enjoy high popularity among both practitioners and researchers. In order to optimise the market segmentation strategy it is not only necessary to identify relevant market segments, describe them, evaluate the match between corporate or destination strengths and segment needs but to understand how segments develop over time. This knowledge is typically accounted for when a priori segments are used. In the case of a posteriori segments, however, such trend tracking is neglected. In this paper a simple tracking framework is presented …

Tracking Data-Driven Market Segments, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Market segmentation has become a standard concept in tourism marketing. A priori and a posteriori (data-driven) segmentation approaches enjoy high popularity among both practitioners and researchers. In order to optimize the market segmentation strategy it is not only necessary to identify relevant market segments, describe them, evaluate the match between corporate or destination strengths and segment needs but also, to determine how segments develop over time. This knowledge is typically accounted for when a priori segments are used. In the case of a posteriori segments, however, such trend tracking is neglected. In this paper a tracking framework is presented that …

Minimizing Total Setup Cost For A Metal Casting Company, Xue-Ming Yuan, Hsien Hui Khoo, Trevor A. Spedding, Ian Bainbridge, David Taplin

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The optimizing sequence of production for a set of customer orders - in order to minimize machine set-up time and costs - is one of the typical problems found in many manufacturing systems. In this paper, we develop a simulation model to capture a practical system of a metal casting company in Queensland, Australia, and optimize the production sequence for a set of customer orders. The method addressed in the paper can be applied to other optimization problems in manufacturing industry.

The Causal Ordering Of Key Cross-Functional Relationship Dimensions: A Replication Study Using The Marketing/R&D Relationship, Elias Kyriazis, Graham Massey

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

How do working relationships between functional managers develop, and how are they maintained? Does interpersonal trust drive communication, or is communication the building block of interpersonal trust? Massey and Dawes (2002) examined the causal ordering of three key behavioural constructs - communication behaviours, interpersonal trust, and interpersonal conflict in cross-functional relationships between Marketing Managers and Sales Managers. By using three competing models they found evidence that CFRs are built on a foundation of effective communication, specifically, bidirectional communication. This current paper is a replication of their study in the context of the Marketing/R&D relationship during 184 Australian new product development …

A Unified Open Systems Model For Explaining Organisational Change, Doy Sundarasaradula, H. Hasan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper presents an approach to developing a unified conceptual model to describe and explain change in organisations, viewed as complex systems. The authors propose a model that brings together the traditional open systems model (based on principles of homeostasis, steady state, and cybernetics) and the dissipative systems model (based on thermodynamic non-equilibrium principles) to explain distinctively different phases of change. Gradual and incremental change can be explained by using the traditional open systems model, whereas dramatic and discontinuous change can be explained by the adoption of the dissipative systems model. These two phases of change occur naturally, depending on …

Interactions Among China-Related Stocks: Evidence From A Causality Test With A New Procedure, Gary Gang Tian, Guang Hua Wan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The purpose of this study is to investigate a causal relationship among five different indices of shares issued by Chinese firms, A-, B- and H-shares listed in China and Hong Kong. This paper re-examines the interactions among these China-related stocks using daily time series data by constructing a vector autoregresion (VAR) model. A new Granger no-causality testing procedure developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) was applied to test the causality link among these five stock indices. The results emerging from our research indicate that there are "closed" relations within A-share (as well as within B-share) between Shanghai and Shenzhen markets …

Delivering The Right Tourist Service To The Right People - A Comparison Of Segmentation Approaches, Sara Dolnicar, Friedrich Leisch

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Market segmentation has developed to become a generally accepted and widely applied concept in strategic marketing. However, the gap between academic research aiming at increased sophistication of the methodology and managerial use has steadily increased. This paper takes the perspective of a destination manager and compares two segmentation approaches. One typically used in destination management (a priori geographical segmentation) and another one that is common in academic literature (a posteriori behavioural segmentation). The comparison emphasizes managerial usefulness (implying maximization of match between the tourists’ vacation needs and the destinations’ offer) and is illustrated with an empirical guest survey data set …

Applying City Perception Analysis (Cpa) For Destination Positioning Decisions, Sara Dolnicar, K. Grabler

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Typically, the image of a destination is studied by questioning a sample of tourists about their perceptions using a list of attributes and then condensing the data into average values for each individual destination. The city perception analysis (CPA) presented in this article, which is based on the perceptions-based market segmentation concept (PBMS, Dolnicar, Grabler & Mazanec, 1999; Mazanec & Strasser, 2000; Buchta, Dolnicar, & Reutterer, 2000), approaches the positioning task from a completely different perspective. The fundamental assumption is that different consumers harbor different perceptions of various destinations in their minds. Therefore, averaging the perceptions and ignoring inter-individual differences …

Profiling The One- And Two-Star Hotel Guest For Targeted Segmentation Action: A Descriptive Investigation Of Risk Perceptions, Expectations, Disappointments And Information Processing Tendencies, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Identifying the target segment is the basis of developing efficient market segmentation strategies and efficient market segmentation is vital in an industry that is becoming increasingly competitive, as in the case of international tourism. In Austria, hotels in higher star grading categories have addressed this need through systematic market research designed to identify the needs of their consumers. Not so the hotels in the one- and two-star category: these typically do not segment the market and tend to assume that increasing their star grading will lead to increased market demand instead of investigating the specific needs of tourists who very …

Why Customers Stay? Reasons And Consequences Of Inertia In Financial Services, Venkata K. Yanamandram, L. White

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This research investigates inertia in a financial services context, with particular focus on the reasons for consumers’ dissatisfaction and inert behaviour, and studies the customers’ complaining behaviours and past and future inertia. The study utilised a two part methodology, including both qualitative and quantitative research. Twenty indepth interviews provided the preliminary data required for developing a questionnaire which was subsequently completed by 410 respondents. Determinants of dissatisfaction included the number and size of account fees, whilst determinants of inertia were the perception of similarity between financial institutions and the complexity, costs and time inherent in switching. Factors differentiating future inertia …

No Risk, No Fun: The Role Of Perceived Risk In Adventure Tourism, Tracey Dickson, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

There is a long tradition in tourism research to investigate the issue of perceived risk. The reason lies in the tourism industry’s aim to reduce the risk perceptions among tourist in order to increase sales. Perceived risk is thus seen as a hurdle to attracting tourists and the managerial aim is to reduce it. At the same time there is a sub-sector of tourism industry, adventure tourism that seems to work in precisely the opposite way: perceived risk is something attractive to the potential consumers, something they are actively searching for. The aim of this paper is to investigate past …

The Symptomatic Nature Of Past Destination Choice Among Surf Tourists, Sara Dolnicar, M. Fluker

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Surfing has developed to become a major industry, both within the leisure and the tourism sector. While surfers themselves can be viewed as a homogeneous segment characterised by their common interest for the sport, there clearly exists a wide variety of surfers with very different demographic characteristics, lifestyles or even motives for surfing. The aims of this paper are (1) to review past attempts to profile the surfer segment in general and to determine existence and describe the nature of surfer segments, and (2) to suggest a novel approach of segmenting the surfer market, by analysing the pattern of past …

Risk Perceptions, Expectations, Disappointments And Information Processing Tendencies Of One- And Two Star Hotel Guests – Is There A Market For Low Star Hotel Categories In Austria?, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Identifying the target segment is the basis of developing efficient market segmentation strategies and efficient market segmentation is vital in an industry that is becoming increasingly competitive, as in the case of international tourism. In Austria, hotels in higher star grading categories have addressed this need through systematic market research designed to identify the needs of their consumers. Not so the hotels in the one- and two-star category: these typically do not segment the market and tend to assume that increasing their star grading will lead to increased market demand instead of investigating the specific needs of tourists who very …

A Comparison Of The Weighted Average Cost Of Capital For Multinational Corporations: The Case Of The Automobile Industry Versus The Soft Drink Industry, C. B. Mcgowan, A. Tessema, H. W. Collier

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The object of this paper is to determine to what extent the cost of capital differs across comparisons in different countries. In this paper, wecompare and contract the cost of capital for five countries in the soft drink industry and seven companies in the automobile industry. We find that the weighted average cost of capital for the four largest companies in the soft drink industry are similar and the weighted cost of capital for seven companies in the automobile industry are less similar. Since the companies in this study are all large, multinational companies in a single industry, numerous confounding …

Innovation Heterogeneity And Schumpeterian Growth Models, Eduardo Pol, P. Carroll

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Innovation heterogeneity refers to two empirical facts: economic sectors vary according to sources and rates of innovation, and innovations vary in terms of the magnitude of their economic impact. The central focus of this paper is the problem of scale effects in the Schumpeterian growth models. Although these models make endogenous the production of innovations, they assume not only an oversimplified pattern of sectoral innovation but also that major innovations are virtually indistinguishable from minor innovations. The main claim of the a er is that without a theoretical framework revolving around both the existence of realistic sectoral patterns of innovation …