Hon Kwong Lui

The Effect of Online Consumer Reviews on New Product Sales

This study examines the effect of online reviews on new product sales for consumer electronics and video games. Analyses of panel data of 332 new products from Amazon.com over nine months reveal that the valence of reviews and the volume of page views have a stronger effect on search products, whereas the volume of reviews is more important for experience products. The results also show that the volume of reviews has a significant effect on new product sales in the early period and such effect decreases over time. Moreover, the percentage of negative reviews has a greater effect than that of positive reviews, confirming the negativity bias. Thus, marketers need to consider the distinctive influences of various aspects of online reviews when launching new products and devising e-marketing strategies.

Machine Learning for Direct Marketing Response Models: Bayesian Networks with Evolutionary Programming

Machine learning methods are powerful tools for data mining with large noisy databases and give researchers the opportunity to gain new insights into consumer behavior and to improve the performance of marketing operations. To model consumer responses to direct marketing, this study proposes Bayesian networks learned by evolutionary programming. Using a large direct marketing data set, we tested the endogeneity bias in the recency, frequency, monetary value (RFM) variables using the control function approach; compared the results of Bayesian networks with those of neural networks, classification and regression tree (CART), and latent class regression; and applied a tenfold cross-validation. The results suggest that Bayesian networks have distinct advantages over the other methods in accuracy of prediction, transparency of procedures, interpretability of results, and explanatory insight. Our findings lend strong support to Bayesian networks as a robust tool for modeling consumer response and other marketing problems and for assisting management decision making.

Different responses to job insecurity of Chinese workers in joint ventures and state-owned enterprises

Job insecurity has become an important issue for western organizations in the last decade due to uncertain economic conditions, global competition, and the advancement of information technology. In this study, we integrate social exchange theory and rational choice theory to explain employees’ responses to job insecurity in the Chinese context. We distinguish short-term transactional exchange from long-term relational exchange, and argue that joint ventures (JVs) and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are characterized by different kinds of employee-organization exchange. An integrated theoretical framework is developed to explain why workers in these organizations respond differently to job insecurity. A total of 548 supervisor-subordinate dyads in a JV and a SOE in China are used to test the hypotheses derived from our framework. The results of hierarchical regression analysis indicate that the effects of job insecurity on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and job performance depend on both organizational types and employees’ trust in their organization.

Order of entry and performance of multinational corporations in an emerging market : a contingent resource perspective

Drawing on the resource-based view, this study examines the contingency effects of industry- and firm-level variables on the first-mover advantages and effective follower strategies in an emerging-market context. Using hierarchical regressions, the authors analyze a large data set of foreign investors in China. Contingency models that include the interactions of entry order with the moderating variables have better fit of the data than the main-effect models. Industry growth and competition, firm size, entry mode, resource commitment, and marketing intensity have significant moderating effects on first-mover advantages. After the authors correct for multicollinearity bias using ridge regression, it seems that pioneers still enjoy a small advantage in market share but not in profitability, indicating a trade-off between the two. Furthermore, followers may augment performance by increasing resource commitment and marketing intensity. These findings have significant implications for entry-order strategies and for improving foreign direct investment performance in foreign markets; they also suggest meaningful directions for further research.

MEN, MONEY, AND MEDALS: AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES

Population size and the level of income per capita are major determinants of the number of medals won by a country in the 1952-2004 Olympic Games. A parsimonious count (Poisson) model fits the data very well: the squared correlation between the predicted value of the number of medals won and the observed value is about 56%. There exist strong country-specific effects in Olympic medals results. While the USA and China tend to outperform other countries relative to their size and income, the Asian dragons tend to under-perform in the Games. Copyright 2008 The Authors Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Structural change and the narrowing gender gap in wages : theory and evidence from Hong Kong

Abstract This paper offers a theoretical and empirical analysis on the sources of the narrowing gender gap in wages. Based on some existing literature, the model posits that the narrowing gender gap may be related to womens changing comparative advantage and the gender gap is smaller in occupations in which physical labor is less intensively used. The model implies that when an economy transforms from a manufacturing-oriented economy to service-oriented economy, a womans productivity relative to a mans will generally increase so that the gender gap narrows. The implications of the theoretical analysis are then tested based on 1% random sub-samples of two population censuses. The empirical results support the predictions of the model.

The Redistributive Effect of Public Housing in Hong Kong

Public housing programmes in Hong Kong affect half of the population directly and the other half indirectly. This paper assesses the redistributive effect of public rental housing on income distribution. It uses a subsidised-to-market rent ratio method and an imputed rent method to convert transfer-in-kind of public rental housing into equivalent monetary value. Empirical results show that the provision of public housing alleviates the income inequality problem. However, the amount of public expenditure required achieving the same improvements in Gini coefficient and other inequality measures is small relative to the actual public expenditure on housing. Policy-makers should thoroughly review the existing public housing programmes.

The returns to language ability in Hong Kong: before and after the handover

This article examines the economic returns to language ability of natives and Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong. Upon learning that the Peoples Republic of China would resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, local residents flocked to learn Putonghua. Until now, the general belief was that Putonghua would gain importance in the labour market and the ability to speak Putonghua would substantially raise their productivity and earnings. The empirical results in this article prove ironically otherwise. Speaking Putonghua has little very impact on native and immigrant workers’ earnings.

Decomposition of cross-country differences in consumer attitudes toward marketing

Purpose – Previous studies have found significant differences in consumer attitudes toward marketing between countries and attributed such variations to differences in the stage of consumerism development and cultural values. This study aims to test these competing hypotheses using econometric decomposition to identify the source of such cross‐country variations.Design/methodology/approach – Using survey data of consumer attitudes toward marketing from China and Canada, this study adopts econometric decomposition to examine the cross‐country difference in consumer attitudes toward marketing.Findings – The results show that Chinese consumers have more positive attitudes toward marketing than Canadians and the two countries differ significantly across all predictor variables. However, the results of decomposition suggest that consumerism, individualism and relativism do not have any significant effect on the country gap in consumer attitudes toward marketing, while idealism has a significant coefficient eff...

Book review : Hong Kong's housing policy : a case study in social justice

Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. From 1842 to 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony and China assumed sovereignty, under the “one country, two systems” principle, on 1 July 1997. It has a total area of 1104 km and a population of 6.92 million in 2007 (Information Services Department 2008). In Hong Kong, about half of the population lives in various forms of public housing and government expenditure on public housing accounted for 5.9% of the public expenditure in 2007–2008. The government sold over 450,000 subsidized sale flats to eligible households at discounted price under various subsidized home ownership schemes. Moreover, at the end of 2007, about 2 million people lived in public rental housing (Information Services Department 2008). Given the importance of housing policy in Hong Kong, it arouses the attention of officials, politicians and academic researchers. As pointed out in the book, there were a few studies among the huge literature on Hong Kong’s housing policy focusing on social justice. This book provides an interdisciplinary approach to examine housing policy in Hong Kong with emphasis on the philosophical discussion of social justices and its role in shaping public policy. The book can be broadly divided into two parts. The first part discusses the western and Chinese concepts of justice. Different theories of social justice, from ancient to contemporary concepts, are examined. The second part discusses the chronological development of justice in Hong Kong’s housing policy. It also provides a detailed discussion of the 28 interviews the author conducted in 2003. The interviewees were sub-divided into five groups in accordance with the stake they held in Hong Kong’s housing policy. The first half of the book reads like an introductory text on the philosophy of social justice. For those with no prior training in philosophy, this provides an important framework to follow the discussions in part two. Unfortunately, this part is not easy to follow. I find the various concepts of justice confusing and difficult to remember. For the benefits of those with no prior training in philosophy, a good summary of each major section should be added. A more detailed table of contents, and clearly labelled and numbered sub-sections would be useful. Chapter One also briefly describes the development of housing policy in Hong Kong from pre-1954 to 2002. Official statistics cited are only updated to 2001. For a book published in 2008, with a preface written in May 2008, readers would expect to find more current material. In fact, it takes no more than a few hours of desk research to include 2006 or 2007 data. Moreover, demographic changes, especially the diminishing household size and sources of population growth, should be examined in detail. A huge influx of immigrants from mainland China and their eligibility for public Housing, Theory and Society Vol. 29, No. 4, 435–439, 2012