Price and Store Image as Mitigating Factors in the Perception and Evaluation of Retailers\u27 Customer-Based Brand Equity

Developing, improving, and achieving sustainable advantage is becoming more challenging than ever before. This is due in part to the complexity and the rapidly changing marketing environment. No matter how strong brands are, it is getting harder to achieve and sustain brand equity. Increasingly, firms realize that branding is one of the most valuable intangible assets that firms have. This study aims to provide a better understanding of customer-based brand equity (CBBE) in the era of super brands. Consumers often base their buying decisions on impressions of price and store image. The objective of the study was to acquire an understanding of the effects of price and store image on customer-based brand equity, and the differences among perceptions of two major retailers, attributed to price and store image. In addition, this study explored differences in customer-based brand equity based on the characteristics of the retailer\u27s customers. Retailers are an important link between manufacturers, marketers and consumers. The specialty coffee industry is a significant and growing part of retailing in the U.S.; therefore, the study concentrated on Starbucks and McDonalds\u27 McCafe, the two leading coffee retailers in the U.S. In essence, the study aimed to provide a better understanding of how brand equity is affected. This research was a quantitative, non-experimental, exploratory-comparative study using survey research of subjects. Data were collected from 539 students at a regional U.S. university. These students are consumers, and ardent customers of retail coffee shops. Descriptive and inferential statistics including t-tests and three-way ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The results of this study imply that store image can add to brand equity, thus creating a sustainable competitive advantage for products and firms, while allowing them to charge premiums. Price usually is positively related to the perception of quality; the study found that price was not significantly related to customer-based-brand equity in every retail operation. Store image had the strongest association with brand equity followed by perception of price. This study showed that higher levels of education were associated with higher customer-based-brand equity, and gender had a weaker association to customer-based-brand equity. Results indicate that both store image and price might positively influence specialty coffee consumers buying behavior. These results present definite value to retailers. Overall, Starbucks displayed higher brand equity than McDonald\u27s McCafe, somewhat contradicting Interbrand\u27s ranking of global brands where McDonald\u27s, the brand, is ranked 6 and Starbucks, the brand, is ranked 96 among the top global brands (2012). This might be due to the fact that McDonald\u27s is an iconic American brand, occupying a central place in popular culture for over 70 years (Ritzer, 2008), while McDonald\u27s McCafe is a fairly new concept. Starbucks higher brand equity might indicate great brand challenges ahead for McDonald\u27s McCafe

PUBLISHING BOOK REVIEWS IN ACCOUNTING JOURNALS: A LOST ART?

In a profession dedicated to disseminating knowledge, accounting journals may be missing an opportunity to share knowledge. This article presents original research on dozens of top accounting journals and whether they publish book reviews, including benefits and drawbacks of reviewing and specific key elements to avoid and to include in reviews. The article considers the basic elements of a book review, describes the advantages of publishing book reviews, and provides ideas for how a book review can be published in accounting journals. Results indicate that accounting journals’ de-emphasis of book reviews might deprive academics of sharing and dissemination of knowledge that are an essential part of re-search and publication – especially in a postdigital world

Chinese Students in U.S. Universities: A Qualitative Study of Cross-Cultural Learning Experiences, Transition and Adaptation

Chinese students represent the largest single group among international students enrolled in the U.S, and globalization has played an important role in impacting Chinese students’ perceptions of what it means to study abroad. According to The Wall Street Journal, there are 85 percent more international students enrolled today in U.S. schools than ten years ago, adding more than 35 billion dollars to the nation’s economy in 2015 (Belkin & Purnell, 2017). This qualitative study adds to the limited research available regarding Chinese students’ cross-cultural transition and academic adaptation to American universities (Kusek, 2015; Yan & Berliner, 2009). Findings add a new perspective regarding the students’ perceptions and expectations in China compared to their true experiences in the U.S. universities. Results show that, despite significant barriers, Chinese students are eventually able to transition and adapt to the new surroundings. Implications of findings can help in the development of effective strategies and programs to facilitate these students’ transition and adaptation in U.S. higher education institutions

Variograms of the Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature Fluctuations: Confirmation of Deviations from Statistical Isotropy

The Standard Inflationary model predicts an isotropic distribution of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature fluctuations. Detection of deviations from statistical isotropy would call for a revision of the physics of the early universe. This paper introduces the variogram as a powerful tool to detect and characterize deviations from statistical isotropy in Cosmic Microwave Background maps. Application to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data clearly shows differences between the northern and the southern hemispheres. The sill and range of the northern hemisphere's variogram are lower than those of the southern hemisphere. Moreover the variogram for the northern hemisphere lies outside the 99% c.l. for scales above ten degrees. Differences between the northern and southern hemispheres in the functional dependence of the variogram with the scale can be used as a validation bench mark for proposed anisotropic cosmological models.Comment: submitted to MNRA

Generalizing Agarwal's method for the interpretation of recovery tests under non-ideal conditions

Pumping tests are performed during aquifer characterization to gain conceptual understanding about the system through diagnostic plots and to estimate hydraulic properties. Recovery tests consist of measuring head response in observation and/or pumping wells after pumping termination. They are especially useful when the pumping rate cannot be accurately controlled. They have been traditionally interpreted using Theis' recovery method, which yields robust estimates of effective transmissivity but does not provide information about the conceptual model. Agarwal proposed a method that has become standard in the oil industry, to obtain both early and late time reservoir responses to pumping from recovery data. However, the validity of the method has only been tested to a limited extent. In this work, we analyze Agarwal's method in terms of both drawdowns and log derivatives for non-ideal conditions: leaky aquifer, presence of boundaries, and one-dimensional flow. Our results show that Agarwal's method provides excellent recovery plots (i.e., the drawdown curve that would be obtained during pumping) and parameter estimates for nearly all aquifer conditions, provided that a constant pumping rate is used and the log derivative at the end of pumping is constant, which is too limiting for groundwater hydrology practice, where observation wells are usually monitored. We generalize Agarwal's method by (1) deriving an improved equivalent time for time-dependent pumping rate and (2) proposing to recover drawdown curves by extrapolating the pumping phase drawdowns. These yield excellent diagnostic plots, thus facilitating the conceptual model analysis for a broad range of conditions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Heat as a tracer for understanding transport processes in fractured media: Theory and field assessment from multiscale thermal push-pull tracer tests

International audienceThe characterization and modeling of heat transfer in fractured media is particularly challenging as the existence of fractures at multiple scales induces highly localized flow patterns. From a theoretical and numerical analysis of heat transfer in simple conceptual models of fractured media, we show that flow channeling has a significant effect on the scaling of heat recovery in both space and time. The late time tailing of heat recovery under channeled flow is shown to diverge from the TðtÞ / t 21:5 behavior expected for the classical parallel plate model and follow the scaling TðtÞ / 1=tðlog tÞ 2 for a simple channel modeled as a tube. This scaling, which differs significantly from known scalings in mobile-immobile systems, is of purely geometrical origin: late time heat transfer from the matrix to a channel corresponds dimensionally to a radial diffusion process, while heat transfer from the matrix to a plate may be considered as a one-dimensional process. This phenomenon is also manifested on the spatial scaling of heat recovery as flow channeling affects the decay of the thermal breakthrough peak amplitude and the increase of the peak time with scale. These findings are supported by the results of a field experimental campaign performed on the fractured rock site of Ploemeur. The scaling of heat recovery in time and space, measured from thermal breakthrough curves measured through a series of push-pull tests at different scales, shows a clear signature of flow channeling. The whole data set can thus be successfully represented by a multichannel model parametrized by the mean channel density and aperture. These findings, which bring new insights on the effect of flow channeling on heat transfer in fractured rocks, show how heat recovery in geothermal tests may be controlled by fracture geometry. In addition, this highlights the interest of thermal push-pull tests as a complement to solute tracers tests to infer fracture aperture and geometry