This book offers a critical analysis of recent developments in the automotive industry of East-Central Europe (ECE). Economists, industry specialists and national governments have considered the rapid development of the automotive industry in ECE in the past twenty years an unqualified success. This rapid growth has been based on large inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Western Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea, and it significantly contributed to GDP growth, created thousands of new jobs, and completely transformed the previously existing automotive industry in the region. This volume offers an analysis that goes beyond uncritical celebratory accounts of this rapid growth. It is based on original, detailed firm-level research conducted by the author in Czechia and Slovakia between 2009 and 2015 that covered assembly firms and the networks of component suppliers. Theoretically and conceptually, the analysis will draw on the global production networks and global value chains perspectives. Drawing on the original empirical data and on additional available information, this volume concentrates on several important questions related to the development of the automotive industry in ECE in the 2000s:* The role of FDI in the rapid development of the automotive industry after 1990 and particularly in the 2000s.* The upgrading of the automotive industry in East-Central Europe through FDI* The position of ECE in the automotive industry research and development (R&D)* The effects of the 2008-2009 economic crisis in the automotive industry of ECE.* The role of state in the rapid development of the automotive industry in ECE in the 1990s and 2000s.* The effects of FDI on domestic firms in the form of linkages between foreign-owned and domestic firms and spillovers from foreign-owned to domestic firms.

A spirit of entrepreneurship encompassed the conception and birth of this volume because it addresses a new, and critically important, subject area. The marketing discipline has until recently largely ignored entrepreneurship and new ventures. The growing entrepreneurship field has also devoted little attention to marketing. This is the first scholarly book to discuss and conceptualize the interface between marketing and entrepreneurship and to provide numerous research opportunities on truly important issues. At a time when the marketing discipline is increasingly criticized for too little attention to important topics, this book offers a path for the researcher who wants to make a major impact. This is a pioneering book and it is hoped that it will one day be viewed as a classic contribution to marketing and to entrepreneurship thought. Although there is considerable new knowledge in this volume, the primary focus is on questions, issues and variables that should stimulate added creativity. For the scholar, the sifting and sorting will be fruitful. The contents of this volume will be of value to the reader in search of ideas, concepts and research directions pertaining to marketing in new and/or growing ventures. The authors are leading scholars in the marketing and management disciplines.

The book begins with a rich collection of five articles on the nature of entrepreneurship and its relationship to marketing. This may be the single best array of definitional perspectives ever written, in part because leading contributors to the debate have returned to the task. The second section focuses on market opportunity, but rather than only looking at market analysis and idea screening, there is also ground breaking work regarding entrepreneurial opportunity identification and opportunity recognition. Marketing strategy and each of the marketing mix areas are addressed in separate chapters with particular attention to the uniquenesses of marketing in new enterprises as compared to mature, larger firms. The final section of the book may be the most intriguing, with attention to entrepreneurship in international markets and lesser developed countries, as well as the role of new and smaller enterprises in job generation. The audiences for this book include marketing, management and entrepreneurship professors, PhD candidates, public policy makers, intellectually curious business owners and others.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The Trojan Horse traces the growth of commercial sponsorship in the public sphere since the 1960s, its growing importance for the arts since 1980 and its spread into areas such as education and health. The authors' central argument is that the image of sponsorship as corporate benevolence has served to routinize and legitimate the presence of commerce within the public sector. The central metaphor is of such sponsorship as a Trojan Horse helping to facilitate the hollowing out of the public sector by private agencies and private finance. The authors place the study in the context of the more general colonization of the state by private capital and the challenge posed to the dominance of neo-liberal economics by the recent global financial crisis. After considering the passage from patronage to sponsorship and outlining the context of the post-war public sector since 1945, it analyses sponsorship in relation to Thatcherism, enterprise culture and the restructuring of public provision during the 1980s. It goes on to examine the New Labour years, and the ways in which sponsorship has paved the way for the increased use of private-public partnerships and private finance initiatives within the public sector in the UK.

This ground-breaking book examines marketing's impact on economic development. Focused on the less developed and newly industrialized countries, Campbell and Reddy outline how marketing can and should be used as a primary tool by government, business, and private planners. Analysis of Japan's post-war economic development is used as a starting point for the book's development of a macro-behavioral model. The model, centered on marketing, includes the constructs of attitude, adaptation, and achievement orientation as the macro-behavioral keys of development. The model explains how those keys function best in an environment where government, business, and labor interact to facilitate development in a market economy.

After reviewing some definitional aspects of marketing and economic development, the book examines marketing's role in less developed countries. It examines the conditions in the former USSR and its satellites and shows how marketing could facilitate their vitally needed economic development. The model, based on Japan's development, is proposed. It is then shown how the model can explain the successful economic development of Setubal, Portugal. India is examined as an example of the countries which should apply the model to hasten economic development.

On 1 August 2008 the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law entered into force, introducing a comprehensive framework for competition law to the Chinese market. One set of the new rules pertains to merger control. China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) was nominated as the authority responsible for enforcing merger control in China and has been actively doing so ever since. Recent years have established China as one of the most important merger filing jurisdictions for cross-border mergers alongside the EU and USA. This work evaluates the Chinese merger control law regime and MOFCOM's decision-making practice after more than five years of application. In particular, it assesses which policy goals (competition policy goals or industrial policy considerations) prevail in the written law and its application and provides suggestions for a further improvement of the law - with the aim to develop a transparent merger control regime that promotes long-term economic growth in China.

Medical Professionals: Conflicts and Quandaries in Medical Practice offers a fresh approach to understanding the role-related conflicts and quandaries that pervade contemporary medical practice. While a focus on professional conflicts is not new in the literature, what is missing is a volume that delves into medical professionals' own experience of the conflicts and quandaries they face, often as a result of inhabiting multiple roles. The volume explores the ways in which these conflicts and quandaries are exacerbated by broader societal forces, including changing scientific and technological paradigms, commercialization, and strengthened consumer movements, which simultaneously expand the scope of roles and responsibilities that medical professionals are expected to fulfill, and make it more difficult to do so. Several empirical chapters analyze data from qualitative interview studies with clinicians and other stakeholders. The studies highlight the burdens on clinicians who are expected to make informed and justified judgments and decisions in the midst of competing pressures; authors describe the methods that clinicians use to address the associated tensions within specific contexts. Two conceptual chapters follow and offer some innovative ways to think about the challenges facing medical professionals as they strive to make sense of the changing landscape within healthcare. The first reflects on the challenges to clinical practice in the midst of shifting and often competing definitions of disease and associated ideologies of care. The second reflects more broadly on the utility of value pluralism as a framework for conceptualizing and working through moral and professional quandaries. The book concludes with a chapter containing suggestions for how members of the medical profession might reframe their thinking about their roles, responsibilities, and decision-making in the midst of inevitable quandaries such as those presented here. This book will be of vital reading for academics, researchers, educators, postgraduate students, and interested health care practitioners and administrators.

Each consumer now has the power to be a journalist, reviewer, and whistle blower. The prevalence of social media has made it possible to alter a brand's reputation with a single viral post, or spark a political movement with a hashtag. This new landscape requires a strategic plasticity and careful consideration of how the public will react to an organization's actions. Participation in social media is mandatory for a brand's success in this highly competitive online era. Managing Public Relations and Brand Image through Social Media provides the latest research and theoretical framework necessary to find ease in the shifting public relations and reputation management worlds. It provides an overview of the tools and skills necessary to deftly sidestep public affronts and to effectively use online outlets to enhance an organization's visibility and reputation. This publication targets policy makers, website developers, students and educators of public relations, PR and advertising professionals, and organizations who wish to better understand the effects of social media.

"A pragmatic account that will ground your right brain sensibilities in tried, true, and new ways of bringing what you make to market." --Pamela Diamond, Director of Marketing & Communications, American Craft Council

• Pointers for getting started, selling, exhibiting at trade shows, pricing, and marketing to turn a hobby into a profitable business
• Updated for the digital age, with new sections on creating effective websites and blogs, marketing with social networks, selling online, and using smartphones and tablets for payments
• Previous editions sold more than 180,000 copies

Digital Sales Transformation is about selling in a digitally transformed world. It changes how you sell and engage with your customer. Defining a Digital Sales Transformation blueprint to guide sales organizations to respond to this disruption as they struggle to catch up to their more digitally advanced customers is this book's core theme. Digital Sales Transformation in a Customer First World will be your constant companion as your execute your Digital Sales Transformation strategy. At over 500 pages, it is packed with actionable knowledge as a blueprint for your journey. It guides you to define your Ideal Customer Profile, to Understand the Customer's Business, to Build, Elevate and Expand Relationships, and how to Create and Communicate Value. It includes a framework to build an effective Executive Sponsor Program, to execute Account Based Marketing, and describes the role of Artificial Intelligence in enterprise B2B sales. It sets out Strategy, Sales Execution, and Sales Management methods for Sales Process, Opportunity Management, Account Management and overall Sales Team Performance Management, and it describes the technology to use in each case.

Innopreneur: 101 Chronicles on How Circumstance, Preparation and Brilliance Advance Innovation is a collection of short and inspirational views from multinational executives, political leaders, renowned professors and in-the-trenches professionals on what it takes to become a successful innovator in daily life. Whether an experienced entrepreneur, a seasoned marketing or R&D manager, or one small person with a big idea and the know-how to bring it to market, you'll gain insight into what it takes to create something sustainable with long-term demand. What does it really take to deliver new products and services? These 101 articles will inform and inspire the reflection, action and reassessment at the heart of effective innovation.

This book focuses on three core knowledge requirements for effective and thorough data analysis for solving business problems. These are a foundational understanding of: 1. statistical, econometric, and machine learning techniques; 2. data handling capabilities; 3. at least one programming language. Practical in orientation, the volume offers illustrative case studies throughout and examples using Python in the context of Jupyter notebooks. Covered topics include demand measurement and forecasting, predictive modeling, pricing analytics, customer satisfaction assessment, market and advertising research, and new product development and research. This volume will be useful to business data analysts, data scientists, and market research professionals, as well as aspiring practitioners in business data analytics. It can also be used in colleges and universities offering courses and certifications in business data analytics, data science, and market research.

Sustainable entrepreneurship focuses on how the environment is embedded within business practices. This book examines collaboration strategies and initiatives for sustainable entrepreneurs with a wide variety of partners, and demonstrates how they can be used to increase overall performance and achieve global competitiveness. Based on the latest empirical evidence from emerging economies, the book's respective chapters address sustainability issues in connection with knowledge creation and learning, outsourcing, and the roles of universities, consultants, and the public sector.

Lucas' top-selling and award-winning Customer Service 8e has been revised to reflect the demands of customer service today. Chapters are divided into three parts, focused on key aspects of customer service: 1) The Profession 2) Skills for Success, and 3) Building and Maintaining Relationships, and Retaining Customers. Throughout the text, readers discover tips for implementing proven customer service strategies, case scenarios, and activities to help apply concepts to real-world situations. Customer Service 8e addresses many market changes such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, working in remote teams and greater focus on customers with disabilities with featuring several companies such as Amazon, Target, American Express and Chipotle. Students will practice putting concepts into action through our integration digital learning platform, Connect. Connect provides revised case analyses that challenge students to apply what they've learned to real-world scenarios featuring companies such as Zappos, Ben & Jerry's, and Southwest Airlines. Additionally, Connect has role-playing application-based activities to help students demonstrate understanding of the key elements that will make customer interactions more successful and revised Language Toolkits geared toward helping students develop an understanding of key terms.

The book introduces the concept of 'smart technologies', especially 'Internet of Things' (IoT), and elaborates upon various constituent technologies, their evolution and their applications to various challenging problems in society. It then presents research papers and case studies based upon inception, application and implementation of IoT-based smart technologies for various application areas from some of the most technologically conservative domains like agriculture and farming to the most advanced areas such as automobiles, financial transactions and industrial applications. The book contents is thus applicable not only to academic researcher, but also to interested readers from industries and corporates, and those involved in policy making. Excerpt from the Foreword (read the complete text on Springerlink): "This book contains besides the two introductory chapters, written by the project leaders from Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, and TU Clausthal (TUC), Germany, the different areas of research work done within the INGPAR (Indo-German Partnership in Advanced Research, founded by DAAD in Germany and UGC in India) project so far by the Indian and German young researchers. It offers new perspectives and documents important progress in smart technologies. I can say without reservation that this book and, more specifically, the method it espouses will change fundamental ideas for cutting-edge innovation and disruption in the smart technology area." - Prof. Dr. Thomas Hanschke, President, TU Clausthal, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany

Designed to meet the needs of both the public relations education and public relations practitioner communities, this comprehensive text explores the types of research most used in public relations practice. The first introductory-level volume to treat the subject in depth, "Public Relations Research" provides a theoretical framework for reader application, defines the knowledge necessary for public relations research, elaborates upon informal and formal research methods, and describes the techniques involved and provides models for subsequent use.

Following an introductory chapter that redefines the nature and role of public relations research, the book is divided into two major sections. The first deals with informal research methods and covers research foundations, environmental monitoring, informal research, secondary research, and the use of computers in research. In Part Two the authors describe formal research methods, addressing issues such as intermediate research considerations, the use of survey questionnaires, data and content analysis, reporting survey results, and quasi-quantitative procedures. Ideal as an undergraduate and graduate level text in public relations, this volume will also be an indispensable guide to research practice for entry-and-junior-level public relations specialists.

This book explores how contemporary organisations are abandoning conventional tactics in order to survive and grow in an incessantly shifting business landscape, analysing fundamental aspects of management, marketing and strategy from an interdisciplinary perspective. Focusing on the paradigms of neuro-marketing, innovative change management, motivational creativity, and customer data management, to name a few, the authors provide practical learning outcomes which reflect how organisations are seeking to adopt innovative means to innovative ends, targeting capacity building in multiple ways. Ultimately, this edited collection implicitly defines an organisational philosophy that incorporates functionality, but also embraces business notions pertaining to wider contextual transformations and environmental developments. Theoretical and practical contributions highlight the importance of multidisciplinary research to practical business success, making this book an invaluable read to both scholars and business executives.

The People s Republic of China s tax policies and international obligations are as multifaceted and dynamic as they are complex, developing closely with the nation s rise to the world s fastest-growing major economy. Today, after decades of reform and the entry into the World Trade Organization, China has developed regulatory systems that enable it to provide stable administration, including a tax structure. China s main tax reform can be attributed to the enactment of the Enterprise Income Tax Law, which came into effect on January 1, 2008. Chinese tax regulations include direct taxes, indirect taxes, other taxes, and custom duties and from a collection point of view, China s tax administration adopts a very devolved system, with revenue collected and shared between different levels of government in accordance with contracts between the different levels of the tax administration system. With respect to international treaties, China has established a network of bilateral tax treaties and regional free trade agreements. This publication describes in detail China s complex tax system and policies, as well as major bilateral treaties in which China has entered into using country-by-country analysis.

Lorenzo Riccardi is Tax Advisor and Certified Public Accountant specialized in international taxation. He is based in Shanghai, where he focuses on business and tax law, assisting foreign investments in East Asia. He is an auditor and an advisor for several corporate groups and he is partner and Head of Tax of the consulting firm GWA, specializing in emerging markets.

This study argues that the defining feature of contemporary advertising is the interconnectedness between consumer participation and calculative media platforms. It critically investigates how audience participation unfolds in an algorithmic media infrastructure in which brands develop media devices to codify, process and modulate human capacities and actions. With the shift from a broadcast to an interactive media system, advertisers have reinvented themselves as the strategic interface between computational media systems and the lived experience and living bodies of consumers. Where once advertising relied predominantly on symbolic appeals to affect consumers, it now centres on the use of computational devices that codify, monitor, analyse and control their behaviours. Advertisers have worked to stimulate and harness consumer participation for several generations. Consumers undertook the productive work of making brands a part of their cultural identities and practices. With the emergence of a computational mode of advertising consumer participation extends beyond the expressive activity of creating and circulating meaning. It now involves making the lived experience and the living body available to the experimental capacities of media platforms and devices. In this mode of advertising brands become techno-cultural processes that integrate calculative and cultural functions. Brand Machines, Sensory Media and Calculative Culture conceptualises and theorises these significant changes in advertising. It takes consumer participation and its interconnectedness with calculative media platforms as the fundamental aspect of contemporary advertising and critically investigates how advertising, consumer participation and technology are interrelated in creating and facilitating lived experiences that create value for brands.

Despite the fact that the globalization process tends to reinforce existing inequality structures and generate new areas of inequality on multiple levels, systematic analyses on this very important field remain scarce. Hence, this book approaches the complex question of inequality not only from different regional perspectives, covering Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin and Northern America, but also from different disciplinary perspectives, namely cultural anthropology, economics, ethnology, geography, international relations, sociology, and political sciences. The contributions are subdivided into three essential fields of research: Part I analyzes the socio-economic dimension of global exclusion, highlighting in particular the impacts of internationalization and globalization processes on national social structures against the background of theoretical concepts of social inequality. Part II addresses the political dimension of global inequalities. Since the decline of the Soviet Union new regional powers like Brazil, China, India and South Africa have emerged, creating power shifts in international relations that are the primary focus of the second part. Lastly, Part III examines the structural and transnational dimension of inequality patterns, which can be concretized in the rise of globalized national elites and the emergence of multinational networks that transcend the geographical and imaginative borders of nation states.

This proceedings volume examines transformation in marketing to better understand current and future standing of the marketing field. From whether there is a need for transformation in our field; what methodological transformations are necessary; historical looks at how the field has transformed and continues to transform; how learning institutes are transforming and how marketing theory, practice, consumption practices and people are transforming as the world continues to change. It is by understanding these changes and transformations that marketers have a better knowledge of the discipline. Featuring the full proceedings from the 2017 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) World Marketing Congress (WMC) held in Christchurch, New Zealand, this book contains research from scholars and practitioners from around the globe analyzing the need and drivers of transformation in marketing. Founded in 1971, the Academy of Marketing Science is an international organization dedicated to promoting timely explorations of phenomena related to the science of marketing in theory, research, and practice. Among its services to members and the community at large, the Academy offers conferences, congresses, and symposia that attract delegates from around the world. Presentations from these events are published in this Proceedings series, which offers a comprehensive archive of volumes reflecting the evolution of the field. Volumes deliver cutting-edge research and insights, complementing the Academy's flagship journals, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) and AMS Review. Volumes are edited by leading scholars and practitioners across a wide range of subject areas in marketing science.