Organization’s High Performance Culture

Organization’s High Performance Culture

The article “High Performance Culture” is about how to develop a high performance culture. Every organization has their own culture which determines how people behaves and “how things are done around here”, (Drennan 1992) culture represents the organization’s norms, beliefs and values, etc. In the organization, everyone shares same values, beliefs and norms, and everyone’s behavior is guided by the culture. However, organizations do not just need good culture, they need high performance culture. High performance culture would provide organizations the greatest source of competitive advantage. The author believes “ high performance culture implies that the employees of the organization make extra effort to be productive, accept change, do not neglect details, do their best, are willing to try something new, develop their talents/ abilities, are proud of their abilities, enjoy their jobs, seek constant improvement and display confidence in management.” (Joshi, 2001)

People may wonder how to develop the high performance culture. The author believes if one organization’s beliefs, values and norms are developed, it has high performance culture.  However, beliefs, values and norms are not developed overnight, but need a period of time and lots of actions. Such as exploring the problems and needs of the organization first; then restructure the organization “to reduce hierarchy, reduce the emphasis on functional autonomy and have smaller units”; (Joshi, 2001) and developing a better and effective team to achieve higher productivity; also the restructured organization need to develop an open, honest and relevant communication environment which helps the organization to build trust among its members; also the restructured organization needs the fully support from the top management, such as training or human resource systems; and the most importantly, a new style of management would bring the restructured organization best strategies and more innovations. 

From the textbook, “learning and sharing are two essential processes of culture”, people in an organization will not stop learning and sharing the organization’s beliefs, values and norms. Culture is important to every single organization, with a good culture, organization will perform well. Meanwhile, it is important to develop a high performance culture which would encourage productive work behavior and higher job satisfaction.

Citied

Rama J. Joshi, “High Performance Culture”, Indian Journal of Industrial Relations , Vol. 37, No. 1, Developing a Culture of High Performance (Jul., 2001), pp. 18-30, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27767758

Drennon, D. (1992), Transforming Company Culture, McGraw Hill, London.

Relationship Quality Matters

Relationship Quality Matters

From article “Does Relationship Quality Matter in Consumer Ethical Decision Making? Evidence from China”, the authors believe that good quality relationship between retailer and consumer matters consumer’s ethical decision making. When consumer is not having a quality relationship with the seller, consumer is more likely to engage in unethical behavior which will damage business profit and market morale; meanwhile, if they have quality relationship, consumer tends to restrain from unethical behavior. 

Similar to product quality, “relationship quality reflect how much the consumer is satisfied” (Liu, Zeng and Su, 2009).  When the consumer is satisfied with the seller, consumer will tend to be loyal with the seller, thus, consumer and seller will interact and trust each other more than usual. “Generally, the more satisfied consumer feels with the seller, the more willing they are to establish long-term partnerships”, (Gladstein, 1984) and consumers are less likely to engage in unethical behavior; “Consumer ethical beliefs are the moral rules, principles, and standards that guide consumer ethical behavior”, (Muncy and Vitell, 1992) when consumers have lower level of ethical belief, they are more likely to conduct unethical behavior. 

Therefore, consumer conducts unethical behavior not only because of the low level of ethical belief, but also because of the business organization’s conduct, such as unfair price or poor quality product. Nobody wants to pay more. Consumer will resent the price when it is high and unjustified, and refuse to go back to the seller, even conducts unethical behavior.

Since this study is about the relationship between consumer and seller in China, other social factors should be conducted when consider the customer relationship, such as favors, unlike western context, Chinese care about favors, if you do them a favor today, they will do you two favors tomorrow. Marketer could develop closer relationship with consumer by doing some favors to minimize consumer unethical behavior.

When someone checks in a hotel, the attendant is rude and unfriendly, the customer is unsatisfied with the service, he may conduct unethical behavior such as take away the towel as souvenir when he leaves the hotel room, and he will never came back to the hotel due to poor service. To prevent the damages or losses from consumer unethical behaviors, marketer should do their best to build close relationship with the consumer.

Citied

Liu,Zhiqiang, Zeng, Fue and Su,Chenting. ‘Does Relationship Quality Matter in Consumer Ethical Decision Making? Evidence from China’, Journal of Business Ethics , Vol. 88, Supplement 3: Confucian/Chopsticks Marketing (2009), pp. 483-496

URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27749721

Gladstein, D. L.: 1984, 'Groups in Context: A Model of Task Group Effectiveness', Administrative Science Quarterly 29(4), 499-518.

Muncy, J. A. and S. J. Vitell: 1992, 'Consumer Ethics: An Investigation of the Ethical Beliefs of the Final Con sumer', Journal of Business Research 24(4), 297-311.

Gender Vs Brand Names

Gender Vs Brand Names

The article “Gender differences in new brand name response” is about that gender is associated with brand name response and the gender asymmetries appear to be more pronounced in product categories. To marketer, one of the most important decisions to make is to name a new product, and the name should be simple, meaningful and also memorable.

To examine whether gender differences exist in response to new brand names, the author has the research that begin with sound symbolism which directs linkage between sound the meaning, indicates that gender may be relevant. Fox example, if the brand name sounds more closely with femininity, women may be more favorable this brand than men. If the brand name of product contains front vowels that vowel sounds produced when the highest position of the tongue is toward the front of the mouth during pronunciation, the sound tends to be lighter, colder and prettier, and make the brand name femininely; similarly, if brand name contains back vowel, the sound tends to be stronger, the brand name is more masculinity; also females will demonstrate greater sensitivity than man to brand name vowels. However, no all products have gender differences, products such as SUV or beer that are positioned relatively less frequently along gender lines.

To ensure the author’s theory is on the right track, the author did some studies on 199 undergraduate students from a mid-Atlantic college, and these study results indicates that “females chose the brand name with front vowels more frequently than males, 61.7% versus 52.0%”, and “males chose the brand name with back vowels more frequently than females, 48.0% versus 38.3%”. (Klink, 2009)

            Overall, gender matter s when creating new brand names, and marketer should engage in gender targeting if they have not segmented the products on gender yet. For example, “Coffee might provide such an opportunity as it has received relatively little female gender targeting compared to other beverages such as health drinks, tea, and bottled water” (Fuhrman). Therefore, to target the female markets, the marketer should launch a new brand coffee with front vowels.

            Successful marketers would use their knowledge about male-female preferences to meet the consuming needs of both groups. When one product is designed for female, the marketer would use front vowels brand name to attract female consumers, and use back vowels brand name to attract male consumers.

Citied:

Richard R. Klink, “Gender Differences in New Brand Name Response”, Marketing Letters , Vol. 20, No. 3 (Sep., 2009), pp. 313-326, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27744268

Fuhrman, E. (2005). Genderly speaking. Beverage industry, 96(10), 36-40.

Household’s Shopping Behaviors

Household’s Shopping Behaviors

The article “A Model of Household Grocery Shopping Behavior” is about consumers’ shopping behavior that households “seek to minimize the travel cost associated with shopping and the cost of holding goods in inventory”. (Bawa and Ghosh, 1999) The authors believe that the shopping trip to the grocery store is one of the most basic elements of consumer behavior. When quick shoppers made large number of trips and spend small amounts per trip, the regular shoppers made less frequent but higher expenditure trips.

From the authors’ shopping model, one household’s shopping costs include cost of good, the household’s demand for goods and the prices related to those goods; travel cost, transportation cost that travel to the store and the opportunity cost of time spent in shopping; also inventory cost reflects “the opportunity costs of tying up capital in inventory and allocating physical storage space to it”. (Bawa and Ghosh, 1999) Each household has different shopping costs that are depended on household demand. Meanwhile, the household demand and strip frequency is decided by the household size, household income, employment status and other factors. When household size is big, the shopper need to buy larger quantities of products and large amounts of trips due to their higher level of consumption, when the families size increases, the shopping trip and expenditure per trip will increase too; higher income household may see time as high value and unwilling to spend time on shopping trips, this group household would have less amount of trips, but they have grea ter expenditure at each trip; household with full time job would also have less amount of trips due to their busy works, but they would also have much greater expenditure than the household without full time job at each trip.

From the conclusion, the authors indicate that “household characteristics influence shopping behavior by affecting both number of trips and expenditure” (Bawa and Ghosh, 1999). Overall, not only the household characteristics, but also the store and market characteristics might affect consumers’ shopping behaviors.

Different types of households have different shopping behaviors, family type of household, such as married with children, would have more shopping trips and greater expenditure at each trip than the nonfamily type of household due to the size of household.

           

         

Citied:

Kapil Bawa and Avijit Ghosh, “A Model of Household Grocery Shopping Behavior”, Marketing Letters , Vol. 10, No. 2 (May, 1999), pp. 149-160, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40216529

Consumer’s Trust in E-Commerce World

Consumer’s Trust in E-Commerce World

                From the article “The Role of Consumer’s Trust in Online-Shopping”, author Sonja Grabner-Kraeuter believes that consumer’s trust is the foundation of the E-Commerce business world. Without the trust, the new business model will not grow such successful.

            Lacking of trust is the barrier that keeps the shoppers away from the online retailers. Meanwhile, consumers do not trust most online retailers enough to engage in relationship. Online shopping is easy, clicks and done, but without enough faith with the online retailer, online shopping could be risky to shoppers. “Buying on the internet presents numerous risks for consumers over and above the transaction process itself being perceived as risky”. (Einwiller and Will, 2001)

            Consumers face uncertainty and complexity of transactions while they shop online, to help themselves reduce the uncertainty and complexity, consumers apply trust into it, trust could “reduces information complexity and lowers the perceived risk of a transaction”. (Grabner-Kraeuter, 2002) If buying actions are under certainty and no risk environment, trust would not be needed. Unfortunately, most online shopping environments are uncertainty and risky, when consumers exchange their personal information via the Internet would bring several risks such as security problems in information, someone may use the consumer’s information for illegal purposes.  

                Internet retailers can use different policies to gain the trusts from consumers, such as the information policies to “reduce information asymmetries between seller and buyers by applying various communicative measures such as advertising”; (Grabner-Kraeuter, 2002) also guarantee policies such as taking back guarantee and warranties. To customers, guarantee policies would be more effective for building the trust between consumer and retailer in E-Commerce business world.

            Today, more and more consumers are shopping online, however, still millions consumers are refusing to shop online due to the fears of being ripped off, or concerns about personal information security. No matter now or future, “trust will remain the decisive factor for success or failure of e-business”, (Grabner-Kraeuter, 2002) to gain more trusts from consumers, Internet companies should improve and maintain well their security of personal information system, and  also have good customer policies. 

Citied:

Sonja Grabner-Kraeuter, “The Role of Consumers' Trust in Online-Shopping”, Journal of Business Ethics , Vol. 39, No. 1/2, Four Teenth Annual Conference of the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN) (Aug., 2002), pp. 43-50, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25074817.

Einwiller, S. and M. Will: 2001, 'The Role of Reputation to Engender Trust in Electronic Markets', in Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Corporate Reputation, Identity, and Competitiveness, May 2001, Paris, URL: http://www.communicationsmgt.org/neta cademy/publications.nsf/all_pk/1869, last access: 18 Feb. 2002.