Re-balancing the excellence frameworks with individualistic logic

The analysis and assessment of business excellence are often associated with the discussion on the design and justification of the excellence measures and their dimensions. This paper re-visits the critical issues in assessing business excellence, and aims to explore the conceptual development on re-balancing the performance dimensions in view of a framework. Based on the synthesising of published literatures and case studies it reveals that all the published excellence frameworks are based on the commonality logic ; and it suggests re-balancing them with the individualistic logic . This concept has then been operationalised by constructing a new excellence framework named world-class diamond model. Based on the surveyed data and by using structural equation modelling the re-balanced diamond model is tested and analysed in order to secure its theoretical validity. With the re-balanced framework, it stresses the critical importance of the individualistic logic in achieving business excellence. It also argues that the managerial implication of the individualistic logic lies in the firm-specific and situation-sensitive practices of business excellence. The original contribution of the research is a conceptually re-balanced perspective of business excellence, suggesting a shift from commonality logic towards individualistic logic

Counterfeit versus original patronage: Do emotional brand attachment, brand involvement, and past experience matter?

To enhance brand performance and to protect original brands from the unprecedented upsurge of counterfeits, marketers are continuously looking for effective anti-counterfeiting methods. Developing and maintaining emotional brand attachment and brand involvement with consumers have become a strategic marketing endeavor of luxury brands. A significant question bearing both theoretical and practical implications, however, is whether emotional brand attachment or brand involvement is more apposite to warrant a luxury brand’s performance and to safeguard the original brand from counterfeits, which remains unanswered. To address this knowledge gap, a survey was conducted. On the basis of an empirical study, this paper reveals that emotional brand attachment is a more prominent influencer than brand involvement to escalate original brand patronage although the effect of brand involvement is also significant. However, while improved brand involvement pushes consumers to patronize counterfeits, higher emotional brand attachment does not result in increased counterfeit patronage. These effects do not vary as a function of previous experience of either originals or counterfeits. Findings of this research contribute to brand literature by presenting empirical evidence of distinct influence of emotional brand attachment over brand involvement, which represents significant practical implications in relation to strategic brand management and anti-counterfeiting strategies

A note on scalable frames

We study the problem of determining whether a given frame is scalable, and when it is, understanding the set of all possible scalings. We show that for most frames this is a relatively simple task in that the frame is either not scalable or is scalable in a unique way, and to find this scaling we just have to solve a linear system. We also provide some insight into the set of all scalings when there is not a unique scaling. In particular, we show that this set is a convex polytope whose vertices correspond to minimal scalings