This textbook discusses central statistical concepts and their use in business and economics. To endure the hardship of abstract statistical thinking, business and economics students need to see interesting applications at an early stage. Accordingly, the book predominantly focuses on exercises, several of which draw on simple applications of non-linear theory. The main body presents central ideas in a simple, straightforward manner; the exposition is concise, without sacrificing rigor. The book bridges the gap between theory and applications, with most exercises formulated in an economic context. Its simplicity of style makes the book suitable for students at any level, and every chapter starts out with simple problems. Several exercises, however, are more challenging, as they are devoted to the discussion of non-trivial economic problems where statistics plays a central part.

This book examines India-China relations throughout history as well as in the context of current business cooperation and competition. It also explores geo-political and societal factors, such as religion or class models, that influence and shape bilateral relations, and provides thorough analyses and comparisons of networks between the two countries. This book will appeal to researchers and graduate students interested in India-China relations as well as Chinese and Indian business ties.

In Mastering Market Analytics, Robert Kozielski presents various measurement systems and marketing metrics, along with common mistakes made by organizations and managers in the process of measuring business activities, and illustrates how to avoid these mistakes. The new turbulent business environment has resulted in the decrease in effectiveness and efficiency of marketing activities, resulting in 50% of campaigns in social media remaining unnoticed by the public in 2016 alone. Response rates on emailing campaigns have dropped, one dollar invested in TV advertising generates only .32 cents of return, which all leaves the question of whether these activities are still effective in the contemporary world. What does effective marketing actually mean and which areas can be measured while assessing organizational effectiveness? Do sales and marketing benefit only the company or do they also generate value for customers? With over twenty years of experience in world markets, Kozielski takes lessons and case studies from Eastern Europe to delve into 76 indicators, divided into four groups: sales, distribution, marketing communication, and ecommerce and social media, exploring from both the strategic and operational points of view. Linking applicable descriptions of the metrics with systems of measurement for these marketing activities and results, Kozielski's work is of interest to marketing scholars and MBA students.

This book explores the differences between Western and non-Western cultures to provide a more comprehensive understanding of psychological contract and its consequences on employees' behavioral, attitudinal, and cognitive outcomes. Further, it discusses the culturally-relevant elements of HR practices that affect employee expectations, job satisfaction, commitment, and motivation based on their perceptions of the level of fulfilment of their psychological contract. Integrating both qualitative and quantitative methods, it is the first book to examine the current state of the South Asian workforce and will advance research on industrial relations, employee relationship management, and corporate management of South Asian employees around the world.

The second edition of Questionnaires: Design and Use has been greatly expanded from the original edition (1974), which has become a standard reference and training text for people using survey research techniques. It is a complete source of information on questionnaires for lay persons and professionals-an authoritative discussion of issues combining a review of previous writings with the authors' 15 years of professional experience with questionnaires. Covered are such topics as how to choose between mail surveys and interviews, designing a study using questionnaires, questionnaire format, how to write questions, discussion of response rates, and brief recommendations on analyzing data from questionnaires. A highlight of the book is the fully annotated bibliography containing 494 sources of important work related to survey research conducted over the past 50 years, with a table of contents organized by topic. Extensively illustrated, this book is a must for people in business, marketing, psychology, education, journalism, sociology, health care, government, and all other areas where questionnaires are used.

This book focuses on sustainability in fashion retail, which is fast becoming the pivot point of future fashion retail strategies. Chapters in the book provide theoretical and practical insight on how going green may positively influence the strategy of fashion retailers and marketers, who have to react to the changing society and customer needs. Structured in four main parts, and based on distinct research questions, readers will be able to dig deep into the individual levers for possible adaptions. It thus provides a solid understanding on how to integrate green aspects into any fashion retailers business model.

This book provides a systematic framework for effectively creating value through engineering in global business networks, and contributes to an increasingly important branch of engineering operations. By updating the traditional disciplines of engineering and operations management and addressing challenges and opportunities in building global network capabilities, this study offers a contemporary guide for developing effective industrial policies to enhance the global competitiveness of engineering sectors, which will be extremely useful to engineering companies and policy-makers. Themes discussed include main trends and driving forces, state-of-the-art knowledge in relevant subject areas, new technologies and leading practice. This timely book will help researchers, managers and students to gain an overall understanding of the pioneering research occurring in this field and it will enable companies to benefit from global engineering networks.

This book is a manifesto for responsible marketing. Taking a critical look at marketing practices of the last 50 years, it explains why they have led to an ethical stalemate and sometimes even a business impasse. Exposed to such practices, consumers have grown tired of meaningless offers coupled with the destruction of value as prices are driven down. As a result, today's marketing professionals find themselves in the firing line of a combat focused on greater social responsibility and environmental sustainability. Thanks to new ways of understanding consumers and branding, this book suggests how such a challenge can be met. Through the presentation of experiences, studies and concrete cases, the reader gains a tangible, fresh perspective on marketing: a new global, responsible, creative and collaborative model that helps respect sustainable consumption. Implicative Marketing presents a paradigm shift, one that will be of considerable interest not just to academics and their students, but also to marketing practitioners.

Practice theories of our equipped and situated tacit construction of participatory narrative meaning are evident in multiple disciplines from architectural to communication study, consumer, marketing and media research, organisational, psychological and social insight. Their hermeneutic focus is on customarily little reflected upon, recurrent but required, practices of embodied, habituated knowing how-from choosing 'flaw-free' fruit in a market to celebrating Chinese New Year Reunion Dining, caring for patients to social media 'voice'. In ready-to-hand practices, we attend to the purpose and not to the process, to the goal rather than its generating. Yet familiar practices both presume and put in place fundamental understanding. Listening to Asian and Western consumers reflecting-not only subsequent to but also within practices-this book considers activity emplacing core perceptions from a liminal moment in a massive mall to health psychology research. Institutions configure practices-in-practices cohering or conflicting within their material horizons and space accessible to social analysis. Practices theory construes routine as minimally self-monitored, nonetheless considering it as being embodied narrative. In research output, such generic 'storied' activity is seen as (in)formed, shaped from a shifting hierarchy of 'horizons' or perspectives-from habituated to reflective-rather than a single seamless unfolding. Taking a communication practices route disentangles and avoids conflating tacit and transformative construction of identities in qualitative research. Practices research crosses discipline. Ubiquitous media use by managers and visitors throughout a shopping mall responds to investigating not only with digital tracking expertise but also from an interpretive marketing viewpoint. Visiting a practice perspective's hermeneutic underwriting, spatio-temporal metaphorical concepts become available and appropriate to the analysis of communication as a process across disciplines. In repeated practices, 'horizons of understanding' are solidified. Emphasising our understanding of a material environment as 'equipment', practices theory enables correlation of use and demographic variable in quantitative study extending interpretive behavioural and haptic qualitative research. Consumption, Psychology and Practice Theories: A Hermeneutic Perspective addresses academics and researchers in communication studies, marketing, psychology and social theory, as well as university methodology courses, recognising philosophy guides a discipline's investigative insight.

Contemporary consumer society is increasingly saturated by digital technology, and the devices that deliver this are increasingly transforming consumption patterns. Social media, smartphones, mobile apps and digital retailing merge with traditional consumption spheres, supported by digital devices which further encourage consumers to communicate and influence other consumers to consume. Through a wide range of empirical studies which analyse the impact of digital devices, this volume explores the digitization of consumption and shows how consumer culture and consumption practices are fundamentally intertwined and mediated by digital devices. Exploring the development of new consumer cultures, leading international scholars from sociology, marketing and ethnology examine the effects on practices of consumption and marketing, through topics including big data, digital traces, streaming services, wearables, and social media's impact on ethical consumption. Digitalizing Consumption makes an important contribution to practice-based approaches to consumption, particularly the use of market devices in consumers' everyday consumer life, and will be of interest to scholars of marketing, cultural studies, consumer research, organization and management.

This book discusses several product development strategies and tools employed by organizations around the world to implement frugal innovations. Over the past decade, frugal innovations have caught the attention of countless management scholars. This book comes at the right time for academics and practitioners alike, as it explores how the concept of frugal innovation has evolved over the past several years and is shifting its focus from merely featuring 'cost' driven innovations to being more 'resourceful' and 'sustainable' at its core. Furthermore, in light of the ongoing digital revolution and emergence of new business models such as sharing economy and circular economy, the book highlights recent and upcoming trends and their impacts on frugal innovation strategies.

The concept of value has been at the heart of marketing thought and practice. Marketers strive to develop a unique value proposition to satisfy the needs of customers in order to create a differentiated offering to targeted customers, be they end consumers or business users. It is the unique value delivered by products and services that defines firm's competitive market positioning. Recent advances in marketing theory have enhanced the interpretation of value in terms of its types, manifestations and determinants. Value in marketing is delivered to customers, stakeholders, shareholders, ecosystems and society. While the literature has been unanimously emphasizing the economic interpretation of value, measured in money terms, marketing has been at the forefront of critical thinking bringing to the fore new meanings and interpretations of value that have unlocked the psychological, emotional, social and ecological value of products and services to customers. It is the marketing thought that has extended the understanding of value-in-use and has indisputably positioned value in context. Marketing has developed the notion of value delivered by intangible assets that can create much greater value than the tangible product and/or service. Marketing has unravelled the multi-layered nature of value to the customer and thus augmented the meanings and interpretations, as well as the analytical and practical potential of this notion. Consequently, we see the need to revisit the concept of value in marketing in order to address its complexity. This book sets to provide an insight in the concept of value in marketing in its contemporary interpretation and level of development. The aim is to offer an overview of debates and developments in our understanding of value in marketing that can raise the awareness of the scholarly and business communities of its pivotal importance for businesses and consumers. Value in Marketing presents reflections and analysis of value in marketing by consecutive generations of scholars who have made theoretical contribution to the contemporary understanding of the concept, its interpretations, dimensions and importance. The chapters address various issues including: customer value development, implications, and trajectories; intra-variable and inter-variable perspectives of value; the importance of the value concept in the international marketing context; value developed in networks that is intrinsically associated with knowledge creation in the internationalization, meanings and interpretations of value in diverse contexts that help us develop further the dimensions of the concept. We trust the book will be of interest to researchers, scholars and students in the fields of marketing management and international business, and to people who wish to have a better understand what marketing really brings to consumers.

This book critically examines the evolution of marketing scholarship over generations from Marketing 1.0 to 4.0. It argues that most firms look to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace by driving tactical moves, inculcating small cost-effective changes in marketing approaches. Often, strategic choices of companies lean towards developing competitive differentiations that enable consumers to realize the value of money, causing loyalty shifts in the competitive marketplace. The book focuses on the consumer as the pivot of marketing and argues that the consumer serves as a bidirectional channel during pre-and post-purchase period. It explains how consumer affections sentimentally and emotionally help in growing the brands and companies over generations. This book significantly contributes to the existing literature and serves as a learning post and a think tank for students, researchers, and business managers.

This book explores the influence of the modes of knowledge transfer and environmental dynamism on the relationship between strategic actions and the sustainable balanced scorecard measurement of performance. Special emphasis is placed on emerging multinational enterprises in Kenya, a country that is rapidly becoming one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. The chapters address the best strategy for sustainable performance, the integral modes of knowledge transfer on strategy for sustainable performance and the achievement of sustainable performance in dynamic business environments. Providing innovative research on 25 diverse MNEs in Kenya, this book can be used by managers, investors, consultants, researchers and postgraduate students to understand the strategic mechanisms used by these emerging enterprises.

This edited volume brings together research on symbiotic themes of entrepreneurship, resource planning, and regional development and their impact on global-local business imperatives. Discussions in this volume critically analyze the convergence of entrepreneurship, innovation, technology, business practices, public policies, political ideologies, and consumer values for improving the global-local business paradigm to support regional development. This book also delves into contemporary entrepreneurship models, converging business strategies towards entrepreneurial and industrial alliance in manufacturing, services, and marketing organizations. It contemplates the development of new business models and hybrid entrepreneurial perspectives to match the changing priorities of regional economic development in developing countries. This volume offers scholars new entrepreneurial visions and business perspectives of industries in emerging markets, while presenting a more integrated view to enable companies to innovate for long-term profitability and sustainability.

This book comprehensively investigates the challenges to Myanmar's access to the global market. Myanmar is a late entrant in the global trade and investment scenario after years of isolation. However, it has large untapped potentials for trade and investment in minerals, agro and forest based industries, other labour intensive industries, services like tourism, IT, etc. Different chapters of the book explore the implication of democratic transition of Myanmar, the progress of Myanmar's industry and infrastructure, its international linkages and feasible options for integrating more in regional economic groups and also analyses how far Myanmar could exploit the global value chain. Although a number of reports have discussed sector specific prospects of Myanmar, this book is an authoritative work on these aspects for policy planners, academicians, researchers as well as potential investors.

Social values are central to people's lives, guiding behaviors, and judgments, and defining who we are. This book advances understanding of consumer social values and their roles in the global marketplace by refining and directing existing knowledge of consumer behaviors. With a diverse set of contributors from different parts of the world, this engaging collection provides a unique examination of social values through cross-cultural research. It incorporates input from researchers with varying academic backgrounds from marketing to psychology and philosophy, and also focuses on a range of methodological approaches including surveys, ethnography, interviews, semantic analysis, and neuroscience. The book introduces innovative concepts and provides comprehensive coverage of several specialized areas, to offer an important contribution to values research and discussion. Key topics include values and choice; means-end chains; relations among goals; motives; religion and personality; value measurement and values related to specific services and industries. Consumer Social Values is an essential resource for scholars, students, and practitioners of consumer psychology and marketing communications.

Will your questionnaire work as well as it needs to by today's standards? Use this new edition of the bestselling guide to make sure it does. Good data is central to information-based decision making. Increasing access to online survey software is allowing more organizations to benefit from contact with their customers, employees and the public. However, the challenges facing the questionnaire writer remain and the greater volume of surveys and demands on potential respondents' time is making the task even harder. Your questionnaire needs to work better than ever to keep their attention. Questionnaire Design provides comprehensive and practical guidelines to plan, structure and compose questionnaires across all industries and purposes, ensuring valuable data insights are captured with accuracy and efficiency. You can't write a good questionnaire unless you know exactly what you are trying to achieve. This updated fifth edition recognizes this fundamental challenge, with advice for gaining the clarity needed to plan and focus your questionnaire. It continues to provide guidance for those using interviewer administered surveys, but now reflects the primacy of online and the challenges that brings. With pressure on everyone's time, this revised edition makes it even easier to navigate to the key points with new bullet-pointed takeaways at the end of each chapter.

This book examines modern consumption, focusing on concepts of autonomy and rationality. In recent years, conventional ideas of 'free will' have come under attack in the context of consumer choice and similarly, postmodernists have sabotaged the very notion of consumer rationality. O'Shaughnessy and O'Shaughnessy adopt a moderating perspective, reviewing and critiquing these attacks in order to work towards a more nuanced view of the consumer: neither entirely autonomous nor perfectly rational. While the first part of this book concentrates on assailing critiques of 'free-will', the second part takes issue with the postmodernist emphasis on the non-rational. The authors situate these critiques in the context of key academic debate, examining the logic and empirical bases for their claims thus leading to a deeper understanding of 'bounded' rationality and the potential of the adaptive unconscious to affect consumer choice.

This book provides essential insights into Chinese consumer behaviors in the growing and dynamic fashion market. With increasing consumer purchasing power, readily accessible global brands, heavy application of digital technology and social media, as well as growing awareness of environmental issues, the Chinese fashion industry faces great opportunities and challenges at the same time. The contributing authors provide observations and address issues related to middle class fashion consumption, sustainable apparel consumption, technology application in fashion retailing, and the select traditional and new industry segments in the context of China's recent and massive economic boom. As such, the book offers an invaluable reference guide for all academics and practitioners interested in the Chinese fashion market.

This book is an honor to the many important contributions of Herbert Krugman, past president of APA, The Division of Consumer Psychology and The Association for Public Opinions Research. This reader contains his selected works in Consumer Behavior and Advertising which combine insights from Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology and Survey Methodology. William Wells, University of Minnesota, has provided the foreword and section overviews for the book which will help it appeal to all academics and students of consumer research.

An unusually understandable survey of the forces or perception and feeling that determine the purchases we make; the roles played by fashion, fads, and status; and the psychological needs that they fulfill. The book discusses how children become consumers and how they change as they age. Research based throughout, it shows how ads use classical conditioning, harnessing psychological motivation to create image and sell products.

Taste is a core concept for the social sciences and an orienting notion in everyday practice. It is of equal relevance to academics and laypeople alike. Theorizations of taste are frequently multi- disciplinary, bringing an opportunity to cross-fertilize ideas and concepts. At the same time, a reader, challenged by the diverse body and dispersed nature of theories on taste, needs guidance navigating the literature and framing areas of interest. Until now, those interested in an academic perspective on the concept have had to traverse a wide range of literature. This is the first book that assembles a range of writings on taste from across disciplines to provide the reader with a sense of the emerging and expanding boundaries of this field of study. Taste, Consumption and Markets offers a comprehensive and up-to-date review of taste, with an emphasis on how taste shapes boundaries, subcultures, and global culture, complemented by an introduction that provides a scaffold for the reader and a concluding section that reflects on the past, present, and future of research on taste. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest to students at an advanced level, academics, and reflective practitioners. It addresses the topics with regard to the sociology of taste and consumption and will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of consumer studies, consumption ethics, sociological perspectives on consumption, and cultural studies.

The twenty-first century has brought with it an inundation of information with which business has to grapple. For those who have to make sense of information on a day-to-day basis, a new set of information skills and competencies, a new set of habits are required to handle the new world of multi-source data.

In this book help is at hand. It is full of practical guidance on how to effectively process and action modern marketing and business information to maximum competitive advantage. The authors provide a step-by-step practical approach to the holistic analysis of information and data, complete with tools and checklists.

For 'knowledge workers' who have to make sense of new sources of business information for effective marketing decision-making, this book provides:

• the 'craft skills' to scan, gut and action information
• the tools to effectively apply qualitative and quantitative marketing information to the decision-making process