Rational Market Research Articles

The Model of Green Behavioural Intention Among Women Entrepreneur: A Quantitative Study

Today, business activities seem to have shifted towards green business with the inception of women entrepreneurs who are more environmentally conscious. This study aims to examine the behaviour construction of women entrepreneurs' intention towards green business in Indonesia. Using a quantitative approach, data were collected from 122 women entrepreneurs using simple random sampling, which were then processed by PLS-SEM. This study found that green behavioural intention among women entrepreneurs in Indonesia reflects their environmental concern with a strong solid vision to create the change. The argument that market rationality will mediate green business behaviour and predicted as a barrier factor to their intention of having business with environmental concerns was not proven. This study argues that women entrepreneurs with green business initiatives in Indonesia belong to the visionary champion type, an entrepreneur who takes themselves as agents of change. Increasing the number of women entrepreneurs with green business initiation in Indonesia will favour Indonesia's future economy and sustainability. The nurture of women's role in spreading knowledge allows them to create their market by educating the market with their green image and offering alternatives. The government needs to pay strict attention and formulate policies on encouraging women entrepreneurs in Indonesia, particularly those starting their business with environmental consciousness. Keywords: women entrepreneurs, green business, behavioural intention, sustainable development goals, Indonesia

Affordable social infrastructure vs public-private partnership

The article is devoted to the problems of sustainable development of social infrastructure and social services, which are beyond the effective demand of large cities, cannot develop according to market laws, and provide the necessary level of infrastructure fullness. Despite 45.9% of private companies in the social sectors, the vast majority of real estate objects continue to be owned by the state, forming the need to find economic mechanisms for the development of state social infrastructure, outside of limited budget opportunities. The possibility of attracting private investment in new construction and reconstruction without alienating the ownership right to it makes public-private partnership (PPP) and the economic mechanism based on it have no alternative. However, its practical application suffers from asociality, leading to the appearance of state-owned facilities where private investors conduct exclusively commercial activities. The apparent budget savings lead the state, judicial and supervisory authorities in such territories to a strategic failure, reducing the number of state facilities operating at state prices, ignoring the requests of the population for affordable social infrastructure, increasing social tension in society. This work is aimed at studying the irrational behavior of private investors, the stability of which is provided by the PPP mechanism, where the state determines the necessary level of the sociality of infrastructure objects that best corresponds to the existing stratification of residents of a certain territory through competitive procedures and essential conditions of the future project. It is necessary to continue research on improving federal legislation, whose social neutrality leads to conflicting expectations of the parties from PPP, adding sensitivity to a wide range of risks, repelling private investment and investors, limiting infrastructure development only to budget opportunities. The development of an economic mechanism that ensures finding a balance of accessibility and market rationality of social facilities is not an easy task, which has many solutions taking into account the characteristics of a particular territory and its population

Mothers’ baking blogs: negotiating sacrificial and postfeminist neoliberal motherhood in South Korea

ABSTRACT Blogging among young, tech-savvy mothers has been a popular media outlet for discussing domestic activities since the early 2000s in South Korea. In “mommy blogs,” young mothers negotiate ideal motherhood through the meanings of the sacrificial mother and postfeminist, neoliberal values. Using the frameworks of sacrifice and self-enterprise in a neoliberal sense, I argue that mothers commodify the home space for their neoliberal aspirations while hiding their individual desires behind sacrificial motherhood. Mothers’ baking blog economy, especially the system of power blogger, reveals a sacrificial production of healthy consumable commodities that promotes neoliberal aspirations of mothers to earn social capital. The analysis of power blogging also speaks to the paradox of postfeminist, neoliberal values rooted in sacrificial motherhood. An internalized market rationality is the driving force of mothers’ work, successfully hidden behind the idea of sacrifice. South Korean mommy bloggers resist the prevailing idea of the super mom while reappropriating the relationship between domestic responsibilities and work to suit the motherly duties of sacrifice. This neoliberal aspiration arises from a mother’s sense of individualism and the blurring of the private and public, which reinforces the Confucian patriarchal system.

International Higher Education and the Formation of Business Diasporas

ABSTRACT A contemporary definition of diaspora points to communities that are transnationally dispersed but remain connected to their place of origin. Accordingly, diaspora do not have an objective existence but are forged through a variety of means, involving multiple agencies and sites of formation. One of these sites is higher education. Based on interviews conducted with Indian and Chinese students in Australia, this paper suggests that recent policies and practices of internationalisation of higher education, shaped by market rationality, have steered international students in Business Studies towards particular forms of diaspora, aligned to a range of beliefs about the importance of their participation within the global economy and in particular their role in facilitating transnational regimes of business activities.

Can publicly visible pro-environmental initiatives improve the organic environmental image of destinations?

Destination image formation theory postulates that the way tourists perceive a destination – the destination’s image – affects tourists’ destination choice. Organic destination image – which develops naturally, without an active effort by anyone to shape destination image – is more powerful than destination image induced through marketing because tourists are sceptical about the information conveyed to them through marketing communication channels. Theory predicts that destinations cannot control organic image. We challenge this assumption by hypothesizing that visible environmental initiatives at the destination are positively associated with the organic destination image of being environmentally sustainable. Results indicate that destinations may indeed be able to proactively and deliberately manage their organic image. Tourists who notice pro-environmental initiatives at the destination and pay attention to them perceive the destination as more environmentally friendly and sustainable when they depart. With organic image being a key driver of destination choice, implementation of pro-environmental initiatives becomes a rational marketing investment. This is particularly important given the increasing environmental concern of consumers. The invaluable side effect of redirecting “green marketing dollars” towards “green action dollars” is the improved environmental performance of the destination, which contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Authoritarian liberalism between market capitalism and democracy: critical and neoliberal perspectives

Being related to the concept of democracy, liberalism is nevertheless not identical with it; moreover, in its contemporary form, liberalism is rather opposed to democracy. It is unlikely that anyone would argue that neoliberalism and Reaganomics introduced by M. Thatcher and R. Reagan contained a democratic rather than authoritarian message, while the essence of Thatcherism was characterized by many analysts as authoritarian populism. The synthesis of authoritarianism and liberalism seems irrelevant due to the historical dominance of the discourse of political rather than economic liberalism. Throughout the twentieth century, liberalism developed as the main antithesis to authoritarianism and totalitarianism and therefore accentuated its fundamental disagreement with any form of collectivist ideology and communitarianism. During the acute ideological battles of the Cold War, liberalism was associated with democracy and opposed to authoritarian socialism. Influenced by the ideas of J. Rawls and J. Habermas, political liberalism was thought of as a synonym for democracy even from egalitarian and progressive positions in the context of actually existing liberal democracy. Speaking about the long-term relationship between economic liberalism and democracy and analyzing growing overregulation of political processes in the current eurocrisis, it is necessary to recall the concept of authoritarian liberalism, first proposed by H. Heller in 1932. Heller’s concept of authoritarian liberalism emphasizes the connection between authoritarianism of “the strong state” (C. Schmitt) and economic liberalism of market rationality. The paper substantiates that in critical and transformational periods the actualization of authoritarian liberalism corresponds to the fundamental tension between market capitalism and representative democracy.

Gender in global trade: Transforming or reproducing trade orthodoxy?

In contrast to fields such as development, peace and security, and corporate governance, questions of gender equality have only recently begun entering into trade policymaking. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of initiatives aimed at leveraging trade for gender equality and addressing the adverse impacts of trade on women and other vulnerable populations. In this article, we assess whether the new gender and trade agenda marks a transformative moment in global trade governance or reproduces the trade orthodoxy, thereby perpetuating existing inequalities. We build upon critical trade and feminist IPE literatures to develop an analytical framework to examine whether gender and trade initiatives reproduce or disrupt the orthodoxy. Its four key markers are: market rationality, technocracy, legalization, and abstraction. We find that while most gender and trade initiatives that we study reproduce and further entrench the trade orthodoxy, there are openings that could lead towards a more transformative trade politics. Future research should examine the policy processes that produced these openings and investigate if and how they could be transferred into policy instruments that lead to real changes to how the world trades.

Recentralization of Tokyo: Contradiction and Political Struggle for Regional Policy in Japan

Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, has always been a center of national economic growth, and hence a focal point of political struggle between local and national government. There exist two kinds of political forces; the former desires strong concentration of economic activities in Tokyo based on market rationality and economic efficiency, and the latter counters the former claiming more decentralization based on the balanced national economic structure. This paper reviews the development of urban and regional policy in Japan over the last 20 years and examines how such political forces have played out. After the decade‐long sluggish economic performance and the challenge of inter‐urban competition by Asian mega‐cities, Tokyo Metropolitan Government formulated an aggressive promotional policy under the leadership of the then Governor Ishihara. He tactically created a political consensus to give locational favor to the central part of Tokyo at the expense of other regions. It was partially challenged by the election of the then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who insisted the need to revitalize the regions that were economically lagging. Despite his words, however, the centralization of Tokyo continued. This paper argues that the regional revitalization policy under the Abe administration was political rhetoric rather than reality, and Japan's economic fortune may still depend on the performance of Tokyo in the global economy under the neoliberal policy orientation.

On anomaly detection for transactive energy systems with competitive market

In this paper, two approaches are proposed for transactive energy systems with competitive market in order to detect anomalies that occur in the process of information exchange during market interactions. The first approach fully exploits the property of monotonicity associated with the supply or demand curves of rational market participants. It only relies on the data that are normally exchanged through market interaction and does not require any extra information. Therefore, it can be easily adopted by existing system implementation. When the gradients of the supply (or demand) curves have positive lower (or negative upper) bounds, a second approach can be further developed for more accurate anomaly detection if the knowledge of these bounds become available. For both approaches, the impacts of power flow constraints are also taken into account. The detailed simulation studies illustrate the performance and effectiveness of the proposed approaches in detecting anomalies caused by cyberattacks.

Forms of organization of production activity of enterprises in terms of probabilistic nature of demand

Purpose. To develop models describing forms of organization of production activity in terms of probabilistic nature of demand and determine their being effected by strategies of marketing interaction with the product consumers. Methodology. The theoretical models were based on classic models of mass service, methods of sales planning, and studies on rational strategies of marketing interaction of a consumer of limited-demand products, the need in which is of probabilistic nature. Such parameters as maximum (peak) involved production capacity and maximum warehouse capacity required in terms of predicted production volumes are taken as the criterion of effect of a strategy of the manufacturer-consumer marketing interaction. Findings. Certain dependences have been obtained making it possible to calculate the maximum (peak) involved production capacity depending on the predicted production volume, warehouse capacity, and organization of production activity of an enterprise. It has been shown that the organization of marketing interaction between a manufacturer and a consumer of limited-demand products, the need in which is of probabilistic nature, on the basis of marketing partnership strategy helps reduce considerably the peak loads of production facilities and warehouse capacity, which is necessary to maintain production activity of an enterprise. Originality. On the basis of a mass service theory, a form of organization of production activity of an enterprise is substantiated that manufactures goods of differentiated need and limited demand of probabilistic nature. It has been proved that a current marketing strategy of interaction between a manufacturer and consumer of such a product influences considerably the organization of production activity of an enterprise-manufacturer. A form of organization of production activity of an enterprise has been substantiated; in terms of organization of interaction with a consumer on the basis of marketing partnership relations, it helps reduce significantly the peak loads of production facilities and the involved warehouse capacity to store ready-made products. Practical value. The obtained results can be applied to plan the forms of organization of production activity of an enterprise that manufactures limited-demand products, the need in which is of differentiated nature, and to substantiate rational marketing interaction with a consumer of such kind of product.

Freedom under Paramountcy: Đa gi năng Traders as Active Moral Agents in Late-socialist Vietnam

Building on fieldwork between 2012–2019 in a northern Vietnamese village, this article documents the striking ways villagers have dealt with an enduring concern of those who inhabit the complex moral world of post-/ late-socialism: how to handle choices that involve thinking and acting like neoliberal subjects. I focus on a relatively undocumented livelihood strategy villagers call đa gi năng, a term with striking moral connotations that means “keeping multiple livelihood strategies and never putting all eggs in one basket.” This strategy is inspired by a locally specific reference point: the well-being of the family, perceived in Xuan as both the achievement of substantial material improvements for the family and the protection of its hard-won security against unpredictable state policies. It is this reference point that grants villagers remarkable moral freedom, both to actively pursue substantial material comfort for the family by means of rational market calculations and independent decisions without being troubled by moral frameworks that treat neoliberalism as problematic, and to evade with explicit moral confidence the state’s push to fully embrace neoliberal spirits and commit everything to a single profitable yet risky enterprise. I argue that the well-being of the family is the paramount moral value in Xuan. While the existing scholarship has focused mostly on how paramount values facilitate cultural reproduction of a Durkheimian kind, this article shows that the family as the paramount value can grant freedom. Although subjects are confined within the moral domain the paramount value creates, it is within that confined space that they can find the freedom to choose the kind of self they wish to be.

ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ МАРКЕТИНГОВИХ ІНСТРУМЕНТІВ ВІРТУАЛЬНОЇ ТА ДОПОВНЕНОЇ РЕАЛЬНОСТІ ДЛЯ МОДИФІКАЦІЇ ПОВЕДІНКИ СПОЖИВАЧІВ

The article forms the theoretical foundations of the use of marketing tools of virtual and augmented reality to modify consumer behavior. The mechanism of consumer buying behavior, which consists of five stages: awareness of the need, search for information about the product or service, evaluation of options, namely: comparative characteristics of goods, the final decision to purchase, based on all previous stages, feedback on a purchase, that is, the consumer determines his attitude to the purchase and the factors of influence, namely: psychological, personal, socio-cultural, marketing, situational. It is determined that the motives of the purpose and needs of the consumer are constantly changing. Two definitions are proposed: virtual reality (VR) is a computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment with which an individual can truly interact using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves equipped with sensors, and augmented reality (AR) is a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image of a real-world image, thus providing an augmented view. The results of AR/VR involvement were analyzed on the example of «OKKO», «Gucci», «LOWE’S», «SK Telecom», «Burger King». Virtual (VR) and augmented (AR) realities have been proven to be of great importance and value to the brand that uses them, as evidenced by increased sales («OKKO», «Burger King»); awareness, PR publications, awards («LOWE’S», «Burger King»); audience enthusiasm through new channels («Gucci», «LOWE’S»); innovation among competitors («Gucci»); new experiences for users and emotional intimacy; the versatility of tools for online and offline events that are not affected by the pandemic. A pilot study was conducted, which interviewed 202 respondents aged 19 to 28, who were asked 7 questions about possible areas of application of AR/VR technologies. It is established that the implementation of virtual and augmented reality tools has significant potential, is a benchmark for rational marketing decisions, and helps to increase loyalty and increase consumer confidence.

PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTIONS TO THE CONSUMPTION EXPERIENCE OF ONLINE SHOPPERS WITH E-COMMERCE

Due to the recognition of information technology and internet technology and in-depth applications, e-commerce is proceeding at an exceptional rate. Currently, the relatively rapid development of e-commerce activities is online sales, online promotions and online services. Globalization of e-commerce as a business development has provided many opportunities. To satisfy the e-commerce environment is related to consumer, consumer loyalty, and thus ebusiness performance. Therefore, in order to gain more profits from many companies, it is necessary to carefully investigate the behavior of consumers in the electronic business environment in order to understand the factors affecting the consumption environment as the e-commerce rapidly increases. Therefore, through the basis of network marketing for the composition characteristics of the index system to evaluate customer satisfaction, then countermeasures, and theoretical effective and rational marketing strategies based on customer satisfaction for development, e-commerce improves business performance and improves Let's promote healthy development. At present, the network of scholars at home and abroad on consumer psychology, motivation and behavior has more exposure, but there are not many ways to improve customer satisfaction surveys for e-commerce environments and e-commerce. This article analyses the impact of environmental factors on customer satisfaction in e-commerce networks.

A Lacanian understanding of urban development plans under the neoliberal discourse

Urban development and land release policies in the city fringes are criticised because they often fail to achieve their objectives such as providing affordable housing for low to moderate-income groups as well as provision of infrastructure and transportation. From a Marxian point of view, urban development plans fail because of the inherent contradictions of capital, and consequently, maximisation of surplus-value becomes the main objectives of land supply policies. In this paper, I draw on the Lacanian concept of drive and use the homology between Marxian surplus-value and Lacanian surplus-enjoyment to explain how the market rationality of neoliberalism (late-capitalism) deflects the desired objectives of urban development plans (UDPs); that is, the desire to provide affordable housing and urban services and infrastructure instead facilitates speculative activities on land in the suburban areas of a metropolis, such as Perth, Western Australia. In particular, the paper focuses on the neoliberal intuitional and financial dimensions of UDPs. In conclusion, I suggest how planners may deal with the pressure of the lack in the hegemonic discourse of neoliberalism in order to avoid the stuckness of the logic of drive materialised in the operation of planning institutions.

Neoliberal discourses in Spanish for business: An ethnographic classroom study

Abstract Beginning in the 1970s, education has responded to the rise of neoliberalism across macro-, meso-, and micro-level contexts through shifts in practice and structure. Meanwhile, language learning is often promoted as an instrument in job attainment and transnational business communication. For example, in language education, courses in language for specific purposes, whose ubiquity continues to increase, often reflect the market rationality embedded in contemporary education and support an instrumental orientation to language learning. This ethnographic study investigates the neoliberal discourses taken up by students and the instructor in a university-level Spanish for Business classroom. Drawing on triangulated data from classroom observations, field notes, informal interviews with students and the instructor, and a semi-formal interview with a focal student participant, the findings suggest that competition, compliance, and individualism were among the ideological discourses of the classroom. However, while societal and institutional discourses of neoliberalism were often interpellated, they were also resisted. Implications for praxis are also discussed.

You can't always get what you want! Desired and undesired impacts of a new career development policy

ABSTRACT Market rationality, neoliberal approaches and ever-increasing productivity objectives are widespread in higher education discourse and practice. Academic employment has become more uncertain as scholars are more commonly employed on non-tenured, fixed-term contracts. Research shows the resulting detrimental impact on staff well-being and health, which has led some universities to engage in policy initiatives aimed to counter the unwanted effects. Departing from an institutional logic perspective, this contribution investigates the new career policy for contractual scientific staff of a Flemish university. Effective since 2019, it mandates the switch to contracts of indefinite duration and supplementary pension rights for specific contractual scientific staff categories. An in-depth analysis of its implementation unveils its potential (un)intended ramifications – e.g., the perpetuation of employees’ job uncertainty, avoidance strategies, increasing detrimental pressures on research managers, tensions among research groups’ members, and changes in the recruitment process criteria.

INEFFICIENT BUBBLES AND EFFICIENT DRAWDOWNS IN FINANCIAL MARKETS

At odds with the common “rational expectations” framework for bubbles, economists like Hyman Minsky, Charles Kindleberger and Robert Shiller have documented that irrational behavior, ambiguous information or certain limits to arbitrage are essential drivers for bubble phenomena and financial crises. Following this understanding that asset price bubbles are generated by market failures, we present a framework for explosive semimartingales that is based on the antagonistic combination of (i) an excessive, unstable pre-crash process and (ii) a drawdown starting at some random time. This unifying framework allows one to accommodate and compare many discrete and continuous time bubble models in the literature that feature such market inefficiencies. Moreover, it significantly extends the range of feasible asset price processes during times of financial speculation and frenzy and provides a strong theoretical background for future model design in financial and risk management problem settings. This conception of bubbles also allows us to elucidate the status of rational expectation bubbles, which, by design, suffer from the paradox that a rational market should not allow for misvaluation. While the discrete time case has been extensively discussed in the literature and is most criticized for its failure to comply with rational expectations equilibria, we argue that this carries over to the finite time “strict local martingale”-approach to bubbles.

Strategic Decisions in Takeover Auctions: Recent Developments

We review recent research into how firms navigate four complex decisions in corporate takeovers: ( a) deal initiation, ( b) pre-offer toehold acquisition, ( c) the initial (public) offer price, and ( d) the payment method. We focus the evidence on public targets and the theory on first-price or English (ascending-price) auctions with two competing bidders and a single (pivotal) seller. The evidence shows that nearly half of bids are initiated by the target (not a bidder). Notwithstanding the large offer premiums, only a small fraction of bidders acquire a target toehold prior to bidding. The first bid rarely attracts rival bidders, suggesting effective competition deterrence. Bid jumps are high, as predicted when bidding costs are large. Pre-bid stock price run-ups reflect rational market deal anticipation and are understood as such by the deal negotiators. Bidders select stock payment when concerned with adverse selection on the target side of the deal.

Governing Poverty: Compulsory Income Management and Crime in Australia

Welfare reforms have swept across most liberal-democratic nations over recent decades, carried by a deep neoliberal faith in market rationality and an intensive focus on the individual as a key site of disciplinary intervention. These reforms have been accompanied by discourses within which welfare, deviance and crime are interwoven tightly. Australia’s Income Management (IM) policies, which “quarantine” a portion of welfare income as a means of behavioral conditionality, provide an example of welfare policy that has been promoted as a way of reducing crime. In this article, we interrogate these claims. We find little support for the policy logic linking IM and crime, and we demonstrate that there is no clear evidence that IM has reduced crime. Instead, we argue that the overwhelming focus of IM on poor and racialized subjects serves to socially construct crime as a metaphor for justifying the harmful “double punitive regulation” of the state. This sees the state’s left hand (i.e., social functions, including workfare) and right hand (i.e., punitive functions, including prisonfare) work together to turn poor (and mainly Indigenous) populations into marketized subjects, while punishing those who resist, through a range of governing techniques.

Do fund flows moderate persistence? Evidence from a global study

We investigate whether fund flows eliminate future abnormal performance and persistence as in Berk and Green (2004. “Mutual Fund Flows and Performance in Rational Markets.” Journal of Political Economy 112: 1269–1295) using a sample of open-end domestic equity mutual funds from 32 countries. We show that flows have only a small moderating effect on persistence even in the United States, where fund industry conditions most closely resemble the Berk and Green assumptions. In fact, we find that most countries do not have decreasing returns to scale in fund management and, as a result, flows have limited impact on mutual fund performance persistence.