The Brand Effect: A Case Study in Taiwan Second-Hand Smartfhone Market

Since the smartphone market is an oligopoly market structure, consumer purchase intention is usually driven by brand preference. This research analyses the customer-to-customer market of second-hand smartphones, pointing out how the brand factor affects the consumers’ purchasing behaviour. It is found that the recovery value and life cycle of Apple smartphones are higher and longer than those of other brands. Moreover, the recovery value of other brand smartphones is significantly driven by the debut date of the Apple smartphones, implicitly forming a consumption cycle. In addition, through machine learning models, the predictability for the recovery value is able to reach 93.55%.

Financial performance assessment of branded and non-branded hotel companies. Analysis of the Portuguese case

Purpose Portugal has been experiencing a continuous growth in tourism activity, with hospitality industry as one of the main tourism sectors. Therefore, the assessment of hotel companies’ performance is very important to assist decision processes. The purpose of this paper is to assess the financial performance (FP) of 570 hotel companies operating hotel units in Portugal in 2017. To explore the question of brand affiliation, a comparison was made between hotel companies with similar stars rating and market orientation. In addition, this paper intends to fill a gap in literature studying the Portuguese reality on the subject of brand affiliation. Design/methodology/approach The present study uses a methodology based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess the overall performance for each company, which further decomposed into the within-group performance and the technological gap. The performance of the hotel company is assessed through the aggregation of multiple financial indicators using the composite indicator (CI) derived from the DEA model. A bivariate analysis based on the Tobit regression to test the robustness of brand effect on FP of hotel companies (HC) was also included. Findings The empirical results show that branded companies, on average, have significantly better overall FP than non-branded companies. On the one hand, the brand effect tends to improve the within-group FP of HCs and the brand presents a statistically significant positive effect on the FP. On the other hand, the best practices are observed in both branded and non-branded companies. Practical implications The results of this study illustrate that, globally, the better FP of the branded companies is because of their individual relative companies’ performance and a better model of operation given by the brand effect. Brand affiliation will generally allow for a better FP and essentially a better profitability for invested equity, a higher return on sales and a higher value added per employee. Originality/value The study provides important theoretical and practical contributions that can assist the strategic decision of the HCs in choosing to operate independently or to adopt brand affiliation. Also, it is innovative because the FP of branded and non-branded HCs is measured not using a set of individual financial ratios but through a single CI that aggregates those financial ratios, using a DEA model.

Analysis on Forestry Economic Growth Index Based on Internet Big Data

The development of economic forestry industry is an important support in the process of rural revitalization strategy and precise poverty alleviation, as well as enrichment of the people. As the market of economic forestry products is close to a perfectly competitive market, brand effect is crucial under homogeneous competition, and economic forestry product enterprises and other business entities need to win and maintain sustainable competitive advantages through brand management. Currently, in the field of economic forest, products such as Chinese wolfberry, jujube, blueberry, fungus, walnut, tephrosia, hazelnut, and chestnut and forest foods and product brands with certain market recognition have emerged, but for most small- and medium-sized economic forest product enterprises, forest product brand cultivation and construction are still in the initial stage. Under the rapid development of the Internet, different types of Internet platforms, which provide new tools and possibilities for branding, the way of corporate brand marketing, and customer management services, have also undergone significant changes. In the market with serious homogenization and increasingly fierce competition, how to establish brand-consumer connection through the Internet platform, strengthen the intensity of consumer participation and connection to the brand, give play to the brand effect, and enhance the brand value in the long term, so as to obtain a new way to win a sustainable competitive advantage, has become an important proposition for all kinds of enterprises, including economic forest product enterprises. Combining the competitive characteristics of economic forestry products and the development of the Internet, the model of brand value enhancement of economic forestry products based on virtual brand communities is constructed. The model takes the experience value obtained by consumers in the virtual brand community as the antecedent and studies the path relationship from experience value, community identity, brand fit, and consumer brand value creation to brand value in four dimensions, utilitarian experience value, emotional experience value, social experience value, and learning experience value, and takes community integration and community support feeling as the moderating variables.

Product differentiation and brand building: a hedonic analysis of yogurt price in China

The Chinese yogurt market has seen strong growth in recent years. To meet consumers’ diverse demand, yogurt manufacturers have invested substantially in product and brand strategies – they not only introduce new attributes to yogurt, but also create sub-brands with distinct product positioning. However, little is known regarding the effectiveness of these strategies. We fill this research gap by estimating the price premiums associated with main yogurt attributes and brands using a hedonic analysis framework. Our main findings are that plain flavored yogurt and yogurt with sugar are associated with negative price premiums while having fat, having probiotics, ambient and being designed for kids are associated with positive price premiums. Moreover, sub-brand effect plays an important role in consumer’s valuation of yogurt due to their distinct product positioning, and sub-brands that position themselves as natural, ambient, European-style, traditional style, fruits and grains, and for children have high price premium.

The Strategy of Innovative Development of Cross-Border E-Commerce Platforms in Vietnam

Over the past few years, Vietnam has been on the path of developing Cross Border Electronic Commerce (CBEC). E-business platform enterprise growth is scalabling transactions. CBEC’s economic effects are observed under four aspects as (1) Resource aggregate effect: cost effi-ciency, trading between producers and consumers is realized by E-business platforms; (2) Net-work effect: the positive correlation of platforms’ product or services with the quantity of con-sumers in increasing; (3) Innovation effect: startup costs for innovation (promotions, business models, new-coming products and services) have been recovered with E-business platforms. (4) The value of brand effect.

The Perception of Employee Effect and Brand in Industry and Services

Employee brand effect is a process that values the management of human resources in organizations and contributes to a real and concrete diagnosis of the relational environment inside organizations by promoting internal marketing in people management. This process results from the increase of actions in the domain of interpersonal relationships, which result from the informality of social exchanges in the organization. The present study covered 30 Portuguese organizations from the center region of Portugal in the services and industry areas that responded to a questionnaire survey measuring the process. The results show that in the industry sector there is a greater variation in the employee branding process through mentoring and helping relationships and also a greater variation in the organizational integration domain through the dynamics of interpersonal relationships, which consequently leads to the perception that employee branding effect is more positive in industry employees.