Importance of branding for property developers in Malaysia.

This paper aims to study the brand consciousness of property purchasers in Malaysia. This study is based on a survey of purchasers in Klang Valley on the brand awareness and the brand personality traits of property developers. 5000 questionnaires were distributed and finally 214 were used for this study. The results show that property purchasers are brand conscious in relation to the property developers and they ranked developers based on the brand personality. Property purchasers look at trend, professionalism and investment as the top 3 priorities in the property brand. The conclusion is that all property firms, designers, real estate agents and stakeholders who/that are involved in property development are to ensure that their products are designed with brand consciousness in mind. The findings in this paper suggest that property designers should pay attention to trend in the property development, property marketers should be professional in dealing with purchasers and the developers should ensure good locations for property investments

Importance of branding property developers in Malaysia

This paper aims to study the brand consciousness of property purchasers in Malaysia. This study is based on a survey of purchasers in Klang Valley on the brand awareness and the brand personality traits of property developers. 5000 questionnaires were distributed and finally 214 were used for this study. The results show that property purchasers are brand conscious in relation to the property developers and they ranked developers based on the brand personality. Property purchasers look at trend, professionalism and investment as the top 3 priorities in the property brand. The conclusion is that all property firms, designers, real estate agents and stakeholders who?that are involved in property development are to ensure that their products are designed with brand consciousness in mind. The findings in this paper suggest that property designers should pay attention to trend in the property development, property marketers should be professional in dealing with purchasers and the developers should ensure good locations for property investments

Reciprocal fit concept in mission statement research

There is a stalemate in mission-performance research. While past studies focus on strategic alignment, recent studies attempt to move the mission-performance research forward using the reciprocal fit concept. This concept provides explanatory power in predicting performance of the firm. However, there is a lack of research into the reciprocal fit concept. The concept needs further clarification. This study aims to elucidate the concept of reciprocal fit by: (1) investigating the theoretical underpinning of the fit concepts; (2) identifying the conditions of reciprocal fit; and (3) find empirical evidence supporting this reciprocal fit. The originality of this study is in the knowledge contribution of the reciprocal fit concept and the integration of resource-based view and reciprocal determination theory as the underpinning theories supporting the concept

Mission statement effectiveness: Investigating managers’ sensemaking role

Purpose – This study highlights the instrumental role of the mission statement as a tool used by managers to shape value congruence to achieve enhanced employee performance levels. Design/methodology/approach – A variance-based structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data obtained from a sample of 123 managers working in private organisations in Malaysia. Findings – The management sensemaking approach is useful in mission statement research. Managers’ involvement in clarifying the mission statement to various firm stakeholders, especially employees, is the strongest predictor of value congruency between employees and the firm, leading to improved levels of employee behavioural performance. Managers can influence value congruency through two processes: (1) guiding and shaping employees’ values and (2) adapting the mission statement’s contents. Research limitations/implications – Future studies can consider the impact of managerial role modelling on employees’ value alignment with the firm in longitudinal studies. Other aspects of alignment offer further research opportunities, for example, HR policy alignment and alignment of marketing and operation strategies with the mission statement. Practical implications – Managers should move beyond treating the mission statement as a management tool. Instead, it is a firm philosophy that reflects managers’ words and deeds and exemplifies their philosophical ideals. Originality/value – Despite three decades of research into the relationship between the mission statement and performance, the results have been mixed. Therefore, this study adopts a sensemaking approach to research the mission-performance relationship underpinned by the resource-based view (RBV) theory

Derivedness index for estimating degree of phenotypic evolution of embryos: a study of comparative transcriptomic analyses of chordates and echinoderms

Species retaining ancestral features, such as species called living fossils, are often regarded as less derived than their sister groups, but such discussions are usually based on qualitative enumeration of conserved traits. This approach creates a major barrier, especially when quantifying the degree of phenotypic evolution or degree of derivedness, since it focuses only on commonly shared traits, and newly acquired or lost traits are often overlooked. To provide a potential solution to this problem, especially for inter-species comparison of gene expression profiles, we propose a new method named "derivedness index" to quantify the degree of derivedness. In contrast to the conservation-based approach, which deals with expressions of commonly shared genes among species being compared, the derivedness index also considers those that were potentially lost or duplicated during evolution. By applying our method, we found that the gene expression profiles of penta-radial phases in echinoderm tended to be more highly derived than those of the bilateral phase. However, our results suggest that echinoderms may not have experienced much larger modifications to their developmental systems than chordates, at least at the transcriptomic level. In vertebrates, we found that the mid-embryonic and organogenesis stages were generally less derived than the earlier or later stages, indicating that the conserved phylotypic period is also less derived. We also found genes that potentially explain less derivedness, such as Hox genes. Finally, we highlight technical concerns that may influence the measured transcriptomic derivedness, such as read depth and library preparation protocols, for further improvement of our method through future studies. We anticipate that this index will serve as a quantitative guide in the search for constrained developmental phases or processes.Published versio

Explaining cross-cultural service interactions in tourism with Shenkar’s Cultural Friction

In this paper, we commence a new dialogue on cross-cultural research in tourism. Using Shenkar’s (2001) metaphor of cultural friction as the analytical framework, we examine crosscultural service interactions between guests and service-providers in a luxury hotel. Cultural friction departs from, and extends, the notion of ‘cultural distance’, as it recognises asymmetry in social-economic conditions and considers the goals and the influence of control and power between the interacting parties. We use the Critical Incident Technique and Narrative Inquiry as the data collection technique and analytical approach respectively. The findings reveal that guests and service-providers use a number of strategies to exert power and gain control during their interactions, including subjective essentialism and stereotyping, to achieve their goals. The implications for tourism and hospitality management include providing cross-cultural sensitivity training to service-providers, ensuring a cultural-diverse employee composition, and to foster cross-cultural understanding amongst employees. We further suggest to develop strategies to facilitate effective cross-cultural service interactions based on evidence about cultural norms, expectations and behaviours from specific cultural groups. Further research is recommended to connect specific interactions between the interacting parties to examine whether the various strategies used leads to effective cross-cultural communication

Flying to Quality: Cultural Influences on Online Reviews

Customers increasingly consult opinions expressed online before making their final decisions. However, inherent factors such as culture may moderate the criteria and the weights individuals use to form their expectations and evaluations. Therefore, not all opinions expressed online match customers’ personal preferences, neither can firms use this information to deduce general conclusions. Our study explores this issue in the context of airline services using Hofstede’s framework as a theoretical anchor. We gauge the effect of each dimension as well as that of cultural distance between the passenger and the airline on the overall satisfaction with the flight as well as specific service factors. Using topic modeling, we also capture the effect of culture on review text and identify factors that are not captured by conventional rating scales. Our results provide significant insights for airline managers about service factors that affect more passengers from specific cultures leading to higher satisfaction/dissatisfaction