Ethnic Demographics and
Retail Shopping Behaviour in Latvia

Brent McKenzie, PhD
College of Management & Economics, University of Guelph, Ontario

ABSTRACT
The retail sector in transitional markets such as Latvia represents the fastest growing retail market in the European Union (Baltic Business News, 2007) but countries such as Latvia also possess a retail consumer base that is ethnically divided. One of the legacies of the Soviet Union is the approximately 25 million ethnic Russians that live in the former non-Russian Republics of the Soviet Union. Ethnic Russians, and by extension, ethnic Russian consumers, represent a non-trivial market within these newly independent states. Although the ethnic Russian minority literature embodies a large field of inquiry, no known studies have examined this phenomenon in terms of empirical international consumer research. This study presents the findings of consumer shopping surveys, divided along ethnic lines, Latvian and Russian, in the capital city of Riga, in the former Soviet Republic of Latvia. The research findings indicate that there are both similarities and differences in shopping behaviour when analyzed along ethnic lines. The survey findings were based upon actual consumer shopping experiences at the two major hypermarkets operating in Riga, Maxima and Rimi. The findings indicate that ethnic consumers reactions to service quality drivers and responses to service delivery, provides meaningful insight for store planning (both physical location, and in-store), sales training (cultural understandings) differ, and that store policy development (product returns and exchanges, stated versus implied guarantees) must adapt to these differences.

The Role of Price as a Determining Factor in Grocery Retail Store Patronage

Professor Ogenyi Omar
University of Hertfordshire, U.K.

Kareem O. Abisoye
Breyer State University, London Centre U.K.

ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to examine the role price as a determining factor in consumer patronage of grocery retail stores in the United Kingdom. A cross-section of grocery consumers (n = 250) constitutes the sample for the study. Grocery stores were grouped and stores were selected for the study on the basis of the variety of grocery stores offers the consumers. A mail survey was used to investigate price perceptions and store choice across three different retail formats. Respondents were grouped into high and low groups for each of the price cue factors. The groups were compared using analysis of variance (ANOVA) for each price construct at each level of the dependent variable for store choice. Findings suggest that price cues affect consumer store choice. Price awareness positively impact patronage of retail stores that implement low cost strategies, while status sensitivity and price/quality plan tend to positively impact patronage of retail stores that implement higher price strategies. As the UK grocery market becomes saturated consumers tend to take advantage of price competition. This is particularly important when communicating store pricing policy to the target consumers.

Supply Chain Implications of Customer-Centric Merchandising Strategy
Rahul Tyagi
Associate Partner, IBM

ABSTRACT
With retailers looking to adopt a customer-centric strategy to succeed in the hyper-competitive environment, it is vital to understand the impact of such a strategy on a retailer’s business functions. While the impact on merchandising is well understood in terms of sharper assortment and improved presentation, the impact on supply chain needs to be studied in detail. This would ensure the alignment of customer-centricity with the organization’s overall direction and growth of revenues and profitability while increasing customer satisfaction levels.

Perception of Home Loan Borrowers: A Demographic Study

Ms. Tarika Singh
Prestige Institute of Management, Gwalior

Ms. Seema Mehta
Prestige Institute of Management, Gwalior

Mr. Nishchaya Vaswani
Prestige Institute of Management, Gwalior

Mr. Piyush Mangal
Prestige Institute of Management, Gwalior

ABSTRACT
Owning one’s own home is one of the defining elements of the Indian dream. But, only a few years ago, this part of the dream seemed to be fading away. After 50 years of continuous progress, homeownership has become achievable, and the Nation’s home-ownership rate has risen. Making homeownership more attainable has become the goal of banking and non Banking Financial Institutions. A prerequisite for consumers to make good decisions is to have all the relevant information about the decision at hand. Decisions are taken on the basis of the perception individual has. Addressing this issue, the purpose of this study is to investigate what perception consumers have when they search for information, particularly when looking for a home loan. The study has made an attempt to find out the underlying factors of perception of Home Loan borrowers. Also the study has compared the difference in the perception among different age and income groups. The insights gained from this analysis will guide individuals to more effective ways to help consumers choose a home loan, and, will also act as a guide for Home loan providers to know on what basis perception is formed.

Using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to Rank Countries on their Readiness for E-Tail

Soumitra Sharma
Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University

ABSTRACT
E-Tail, or Internet based retailing, has emerged as an innovative channel for retailers to reach target consumers in the comfort of their homes. E-Tailing has exhibited an upward trend across the world in recent years, though it’s more prevalent in certain regions such as Europe and North America. With varying levels of Internet penetration, telecom infrastructure, the business and legal environment, e-tailing is at varying stages of maturity in countries across the globe. In order to objectively compare the actual preparedness of various countries to exploit their potential for e-tail, an analytical model was built using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). This model returns a numeric value, coined as the e-Tail Readiness Index. A set of countries were subsequently ranked on the basis of this index. As expected, while the more developed countries of Europe and North America occupied the top slots, the emerging economies of Eastern Europe and Latin America occupied the middle slots. Surprisingly, India and China figured right at the bottom of the heap

Affiliate Marketing as a Paradigm of the 21st Century: An Assessment of its Impact in the Developing World

Geoffrey Tumwesigye
Breyer State University, USA

Charles Nkansah-Asamoah
Breyer State University, USA

ABSTRACT
Affiliate marketing concept as a new paradigm of the 21st century has captured the imagination of businesses world over, Thousands of businesses world wide have devoted a great amount of resources to this new invention in order to sign up as many affiliates as possible, and those with successful affiliate marketing programs boast about the successes so far made. Since the emergence of internet marketing in the second half of the 1990’s, businesses have established hundreds –if not thousands of affiliate marketing websites that are continually feeding them with potential customers hour by hour, day by day. This concept has also given rise to a new brand of entrepreneur initiatives in form of business connections where referral websites have become extremely adept at attracting high quality commercial traffic with significant turnovers. While business has, and continues to boom in this case scenario, it appears to be greatly so in the developed western markets where as the developing world is yet to sense the light in this opportunity tunnel. How this business marketing concept is developed and adopted , and whether the developing south is yet to catch up and share its part of the cake is the issue this paper sets out to examine.

Human Resource Planning in Organisations

Dina Yawa Apedoe-Dzidza
Breyer State University, USA

Rita Dzigbordi Haligah
Breyer State University, USA

Dominic Kwaku Danso Mensah
Breyer State University, USA

ABSTRACT
This study examines if Human Resource Planning (HRP) is used effectively in organisations to achieve organisational goals. The aims and objectives are to explore HRP as useful in achieving organising goal and improving business performance and as important in forecasting on employees, the origins of and Conceptual frameworks for HRP. It discusses key perspectives of HRP, approaches to forecasting future HR demands and its internal and external supply. The purpose of HRP and its importance to organisations are explored. It argues the need for futuristic, scientific HRP, driven by increased technology and globalization of the economy, suggesting factors relevant for consideration by way of recommendations and conclusion.

The Incorporation of Real Estate into the Corporate Strategy: The Ghanaian Experience (Part 2)

Charles K. Nkansah-Asamoah
Breyer State University, USA

Geoffrey Tumwesigye
Breyer State University, USA

ABSTRACT
Any business enterprise ceteris paribus is in it to make profits and minimise losses, save a charity. Hence, the activities and the management of the people are directed towards an end, towards meeting certain goals (Mullin, 1999). However the organisation’s real estate decisions would be plausible if such are geared towards supporting the overall business objectives of the organisation in question. In that regard, objectives could be realised if conscious effort is made to understand how real estate strategy supports corporate strategy and the sub-strategies for component elements of the organisation, then subsequently, how specific real estate operating decisions support the real estate strategy. It is, therefore, imperative that an organisation ensures that its corporate business goals consciously align with its real estate, construction and facilities programme. It is then that the above goals would be realised.

A Conceptual Model of Brand Extensions in the Hospitality Industry

JungKook Lee, PhD
College of Business, Northern Michigan University

Alastair M. Morrison, PhD
Hospitality and Tourism Management, College of Consumer and Family Sciences,
Purdue University

Soo Cheong (Shawn) Jang, PhD
Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management,
Purdue University

ABSTRACT
Incumbent traditional brands have an initial advantage over new entrants to a market. With traditional brands, marketers have spent many dollars and many years to establish brand awareness and build equity. Building and managing strong brands is considered to be one of the key drivers of success in the hospitality industry. A brand extension strategy is followed when a company uses an established brand name to introduce a new product. This practice has been widely used by a variety of firms to introduce new products. This study reviews the application and trends of brand extension in the hotel industry and contributes to research and theory on brand extensions by developing a model of the process by which a transfer occurs based on the brand extension model of Aaker and Keller (1990) in the hotel industry.