Brings together the research of world-class commentators on China from across Europe to explore the policy aspects of the China-EU relationship. Aimed at practitioners, this book shows how to relate to China practically and understand its complexities for business purposes, including investment, social unrest, and China's five-year program.

In a fast moving world, businesses need to keep up with data analysis and pattern spotting to identify future opportunities. Anne Lise Kjaer presents a unique methodology for global trend spotting along with practical tools and approaches to help companies and organizations analyse market changes and determine the way ahead.

This is a guide to help brand strategists consider what people really want in order to enhance their lives, and think about the role of their brand in responding to these desires. It offers a new framework for understanding desire, based on some of the things that are really important to us: our family, friends and community; the desire to explore, learn and grow; how we experience the world through our senses; our appetite to live life to the full; and what we set out to achieve. Brand strategists are the link between a commercial proposition and the lives it means to touch. They can talk to the people the company wants to reach, and - more importantly - listen to them. A brand which both enhances people's lives, and nurtures the resources on which they depend, will prove more resilient, win trust and achieve better results.

This book addresses the challenges and subtleties behind marketing to women and confronts the idea that gender alone can be used as an indicator to target your market. Darroch provides practical insights into market segmentation and recommends a new approach that focuses on targeting human needs, not gender, in order to reach female customers.

This in-depth guide provides managers with a solid understanding of data and data trends, the opportunities that it can offer to businesses, and the dangers of these technologies. Written in an accessible style, Steven Finlay provides a contextual roadmap for developing solutions that deliver benefits to organizations.

Luisa Wolter examines the travel motivations and interests of natural park visitors to Mallorca with a special focus on sustainable tourism development. The data for the study were collected from tourists in the two natural parks s' Albufera and Llevant in the North of Mallorca. Based on the results of the analysis, natural area managers can develop new products and marketing strategies that address their very own visitors, contribute to the sustainable development of their region, and influence the visitors' views and behaviors by raising environmental awareness.

Edited by Francois Depelteau and Christopher Powell, this volume and its companion, Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues, addresses fundamental questions about what relational sociology is and how it works.

Peace does not offer such an obvious rationale for arming oneself as does war. In fact, war expresses an intention to attack which fuels preparation for it via arming oneself. Yet, there are reasons to arm for peace especially when war is modeled only as a potential outcome. Potential wars could be stylized into a winner-takes-all (-that-is-left) contest. The contest design formalizes strategic behavior of, for simplicity, two players such as nations or states. These players set out to make two decisions: First, they decide the degree of arming and then, observe the armaments. Second, they decide on whether or not to use force. Two different mutual deterrence-concepts lead to armed, peaceful equilibria with certainty. Yet another better established concept considers arming to serve a different purpose, namely, to reinforce bargaining power.

How Asian Women Lead provides a vastly different picture than Western-focused leadership literature, highlighting obstacles Asian women face reaching the top, and looking beneath the corporate surface to show cultural and family perspectives.

Die Autoren beleuchten die Bereiche Planung und Prognose von Absatzen, Kundenverhalten und Kundenpraferenzen nicht nur aus dem Blickwinkel statistischer Verfahren, sondern insbesondere auch unter den Aspekten der praktischen Anwendbarkeit im Alltag. Sie prasentieren den Lesern bewahrte Modelle im Bereich Business Forecasting, diskutieren die Vorteilhaftigkeit bestimmter Methoden und geben Einblicke in praktische Umsetzungsmoeglichkeiten bei erfolgreichen grossen und mittelstandischen Unternehmen. Adressierte Leser sind sowohl Manager und Berater in Industrie und Dienstleistung als auch Studierende mit den Schwerpunkten Marketing, Unternehmensplanung, Controlling, Kommunikation und Vertrieb.

Today, most firms employ online and offline distribution channels. Customers combine both channels for information search and purchase. However, researchers and practitioners are still lacking insight concerning the creation of additional customer value, in terms of a seamless purchase experience, by combining the online and offline channels. Also, it is unclear if these channel integration activities can actually help multichannel firms obtain a strategic advantage over their online pureplay competitors. Jochen Binder investigates how, why, and to what extent an integrated online channel increases customer value and leads to higher willingness to pay, customer loyalty and purchase intention in a firm's online and offline stores.

Rethinking the Future of Europe has brought together three contrasting collections of contributions: the incrementalist perspective concerning the step by step development of Europe, the more radical reform/restructuring approach to the future of Europe, and a view of Europe from the outside.

Innovation is the main engine of competitiveness. However, in a world in which everything goes faster, the inherent nature of the innovation process has changed. This book assesses both the theoretically and empirically intertwined relationship between innovation, clusters and multinational enterprises in today's economy.

To stay competitive, firms need to build great products but they also need to lend these products to the uses and misuses of their customers and learn extensively from them. This is the first book to explore the idea that allowing customers to adapt features in online products or services to suit their needs is the key to viral growth.

India is one of the major emerging economies of the world and has witnessed tremendous economic growth over the last decades. The reforms in the financial sector were introduced to infuse energy and vibrancy into the process of economic growth. The Indian stock market now has the largest number of listed companies in the world. The phenomenal growth of the Indian equity market and its growing importance in the economy is indicated by the extent of market capitalization and the increasing integration of the Indian economy with the global economy. Various schools of thought explain the behaviour of stock returns. The Efficient Market Theory is the most important theory of the School of Neoclassical Finance based on rational expectation and no-trade argument. The book investigates the growth and efficiency of the Indian stock market in the theoretical framework of the Efficiency Market Hypothesis (EMH). The main objective of the present study is to examine the returns behaviour in the Indian equity market in the changed market environment. A detailed and rigorous analysis, made with the help of the sophisticated time series econometric models, is one of the key elements of this volume. The analysis empirically tests the random walk hypothesis and focuses on issues like nonlinear dynamics, structural breaks and long memory. It uses new and disaggregated data on recent reforms and changes in the market microstructure. The data on various indices including sectoral indices help in measuring the relative efficiency of the market and understanding how liquidity and market capitalization affect the efficiency of the market.

The social web is defined as the social part of the Internet that enables (personally unknown) people to socially interact with each other in order to cherish friendships and make new acquaintances. The social web's current significance exceeds this initial focus, by also encompassing corporate and commercial activities. Nadine Chehimi examines to what extent the social web influences the information process of German hotel guests. In addition to the presentation of the social web's development and current state of use, general and tourist information processes as well as the German hotel market are described. With the help of a standardized guest survey, the author presents the exact role the social web currently plays in the tourist information search.

Why is it important to conduct research on the psychology of the Asian consumer? What research themes have already emerged? What are the relevant theories and practical applications based on this research? These are some of the questions and issues addressed in this unique book. With chapters written by experts in their field, The Psychology of the Asian Consumer highlights how consumer psychology can contribute to an understanding of Asian consumer behaviour and is especially timely in light of today's global economy and its focus on the Pacific Rim. Chapters are organised around the key concepts of theory and culture and include numerous case studies and practical applications. The book focuses on research summaries that provide readers with important, need-to-know information.

How have social media in emerging economies evolved differently from the rest of the world? According to studies and anecdotal evidence, innovations in the use of social media tools occur more frequently in emerging economies than they do in developed markets.The aim of this volume is to show that in emerging regions (such as China, India, and South America) where the participation of stakeholders in the circuit of social media is more active (i.e., greater frequency of contacts and creativity in the elaboration of contents), organizations not only are involved in a set of exchange relations with other social actors but are also embedded in a network of dynamic relationships. The authors utilize social network analysis to determine how entrepreneurs in emerging economies identify their most beneficial social contacts and use those contacts to leverage the resources needed for their enterprises, revealing new insights on the process of business creation and economic development in the networked age."

This publication sheds light on how Japan-based German firms dealt with the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred in March 2011. To gather data, a questionnaire was developed and sent out in April 2012 to 244 German subsidiaries based in the Kanto area, mainly in Tokyo, with replies received from the top managers of 84 firms. In addition, the author conducted follow-up interviews with top managers of 14 of those firms in Tokyo to illuminate interesting aspects of the responses given in the questionnaires. It is shown that the overall impact on the performance of German firms was comparatively low. Those firms have now returned to normal operation and face relatively few disaster-related problems. However, firms with higher autonomy more frequently moved their offices either to the Kansai area, including Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto, or at least temporarily closed down. In retrospect, the interviews made clear that relocating or suspending operations was a costly mistake. In contrast to transaction cost theory, which states that subsidiaries should be given high autonomy in such cases of emergency, it would have been better for the headquarters offices to have communicated more intensively with the management of their subsidiaries. "

The Challenge for Japanese Multinationals is about strategic issues of modern management from the view of global business practice. In the 2010 issue of Fortune Magazine's top 500 Multi-National Corporations, the USA ranked number one with 139 companies. This was followed with 71 companies in Japan and 149 in the EU. With the maturing of the domestic market, Japanese MNCs - not only in manufacturing industries but in non-manufacturing industries as well, will continue to globalize, with overseas expansion accelerating in emerging countries such as BRICs.

This book provides a road-map to successful implementation of strategic outsourcing programmes, providing down-to-earth approaches to outsourcing decision making and programme management, based on a grass-roots understanding. A practitioner-focused book for business leaders and managers providing a holistic view of strategic outsourcing, covering the three essential pillars of success: risks, rewards and relationships. The author shows how business leaders can transform organisational business models, structures and mind-sets, taking the reader on a journey through the book's fifteen chapters, helping the reader truly grasp: the drivers for change as a result of globalisation and convergence and their impact on organisational strategies; how outsourcing can transform the various processes and functions of an organisation; the impact outsourcing is having on various industry vertical sectors; the eight foundations of successful strategic outsourcing programmes, which when combined with strategic decision-making knowledge, guarantees that organisations embarking on the strategic outsourcing journey, derive the transformational benefits they seek.

Enacting Globalization consists of a rich set of papers with a variety of disciplinary perspectives, focusing on Globalization and its portrayal through International Integration as manifested by its myriad flows such as people, trade, capital and knowledge flows.

This book is about the history of product variety in the US automotive industry from the black Ford-T to hot-rodders and easy-riders up to latest trends. It focuses on the dual structure of automotive industry in the United States: on one hand, relatively few and large companies producing cars that apparently achieve a degree of market power through product differentiation, and on the other hand, a relatively small niche market with distinct and smaller producers offering specialty equipment to enhance the performance, appearance, and handling of vehicles. The book presents novel results from an in-depth study with implications for both economic theory and the management of product variety.

This study examines the relationship between multinationality and the performance of Japanese manufacturing companies during the period 1999 2008 by using geographic segment information. Despite the enormous interest in and importance given to multinationality from the academic and business worlds, prior findings about the multinationality performance relationship are conflicting and inconsistent. The overall results of the present study show that multinationality has a positive impact both on accounting performance and on market-based performance. In additional tests, Japanese electric and electronic equipment companies reliance on the Asian market was found to have a negative impact on profitability and no significant impact on firm value, whereas reliance on other foreign markets such as the Americas and the EU had a positive impact on profitability and firm value. The multinationality performance relationship cannot be generalized and varies among geographic regions. This book contributes to both the multinationality performance literature and the geographic segment reporting literature by offering empirical evidence about Japanese manufacturing companies and comparing them with prior findings about American companies. "

The Social Effects of FDI on Multinational Companies and Domestic Firms compares and contrasts wages, working conditions and industrial relations processes in multinational and domestic companies. This book is an effort to map the social effects of FDI in a number of EU member states, in relation to the prevailing patterns of internationalization.