June Francis

The Impact of Firms' Export Orientation on the Export Performance of High-Tech Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

The authors provide empirical support for the importance of a proactive export orientation in driving export success in the uncertain high-tech environment. Regression analysis demonstrates that proactive and conservative export strategies and motivations produce opposite effects on multiple measures of export performance for these small and medium-sized Canadian high-tech firms in the information technology and telecommunications sector.

The Impact of Linguistic Differences on International Brand Name Standardization: A Comparison of English and Chinese Brand Names of Fortune-500 Companies

The authors investigate the brand name standardization/adaptation strategies used by consumer goods Fortune-500 companies in China and Hong Kong. The authors compare English brand names with Chinese brand names on several dimensions. The vast majority of firms localize their brand names, and transliteration of the brand name is the strategy used most often. Firms also appear to be successful in avoiding unfortunate brand name mistakes and add features to the brand names, such as cultural symbols, additional product benefits, and more positive connotations, when localizing the brand name for the Chinese market.

The Effect of Cultural Differences, Source Expertise, and Argument Strength on Persuasion

ABSTRACT The predictions derived from the Elaboration Likelihood Model and Hofstedes culture model are tested with 76 Canadian and 185 Thai undergraduate students in a 2 (cultures) 3 (source expertise levels) 2 (argument strength levels) factorial between-subjects quasi-experiment. Three dimensions of culture-power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism-collectivism-are predicted to affect the weight of source expertise and argument strength in persuasion. As expected, source expertise has a greater impact on persuasion in the Thai culture (high power distance, high uncertainty avoidance, and collectiv-ist) than in the Canadian culture (low power distance, low uncertainty avoidance, individualist), whereas argument strength has more influence in the Canadian than in the Thai culture.

Collateral damage: the ‘War on Drugs’, and the Latin America and Caribbean region: policy recommendations for the Obama administration

The Obama administration has an historic opportunity to reform the US ‘War on Drugs’ (WOD) policies in the strategically important Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. This paper examines the impact of the WOD policies and concludes they have seriously exacerbated crime and corruption rates in LAC. The result is weakened governance structures and economic capacities in LAC. The WOD has emphasized supply curtailment in source and transit countries, rather than demand reduction in the US This offshoring of attacks on drug organizations has resulted in the acceleration of violence and corruption as drug traffickers develop new strategies to maintain their profits. The LAC region has the highest murder rate in the world, even higher than regions with armed conflict. We recommend that the US abandon drug prohibition. Decriminalization would allow governments to control the trans-shipment, production and distribution of these drugs. This would immediately allow resources devoted to law enforcement activities to be redirected to assist addicts and to provide financial support to strategically important neighboring LAC states. Controlling the marketplace would also provide the US and LAC with new sources of taxes. We also recommend that LAC governments act together to overcome their small sizes or weak institutional capacities by deepening cooperation as between MERCOSUR and CARICOM. This would enable joint initiatives such as policing of territorial water, thus reducing the need for US incursions into the region. Finally, any solution in the region must be supported by the creation of economic opportunities, both intra-regionally and through fairer access to the US markets, particularly for agricultural goods.

Appropriation of Community Knowledge Towards an Understanding of the Potential Harm and Benefits

In Base of the Pyramid (BoP) and subsistence marketplaces literature, a general consensus prevails that the process of creating solutions for the poor is most successful when marketers gain a local perspective. This paper highlights that, as companies seek this local perspective within impoverished communities, they can appropriate community knowledge. Drawing on research in the area of community knowledge, an area of growing importance that is all but missing from the marketing literature, this paper explicates key features of community knowledge. Appropriation of community knowledge can have potential benefits to communities, but also can cause social harm, including undermining financial, economic, and cultural safety, in the BoP community. The papers proposes a framework, bridging ethical and legal approaches, that guides marketers to consider consent, cognitive justice, capacity, and community impact in order to mitigate harm and generate social benefits.

The Impact of Export Orientation on the Export Performance of High-Tech SMEs

This study provides empirical support for the importance of a Proactive marketing orientation in driving export success in the uncertain high-tech environment. A survey of small and medium size Canadian high-tech firms demonstrated that Proactive and Conservative export strategies and motivations produced opposite effects on export intensity. Proactiveness involves foreign demand motivations for exporting; foreign market focused marketing research and sales generating approaches. Conservativeness involves secondary research approaches, more passive sales generating strategies and export motivation based on non-foreign market factors such as government incentives.

What Triggers Pro-Environmental Behavior Cross-Culturally? An Empirical Investigation in Five Nations

Environmental damage is a problem of global scope. Pro-environmental consumer behavior, however, varies across countries and cultures (Deng et al. 2006). An empirical investigation in five countries answers the question how collective cultural values interfere with personal pro-environmental values and attitudes. The findings emphasize the importance of ecocentric values in individualistic societies and anthropocentric values in collectivistic societies.