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This study aims to find a strategy to make gift shops profitable and satisfy gift-givers, achieving a win-win situation. In particular, it attempts to integrate the position of gift-givers and marketers to develop a more suitable marketing strategy. When gift-givers go to gift shops to buy gifts, they often think about how to choose a gift. In this situation, the dependent variable of this study is perceived value. Operationally, the gift marketer factor is a type of sales promotion (scarcity and popularity appeal) that can be explained as social norms. It includes the types of givers (close and distant givers) that can be explained as personal norms and the types of gifts (conspicuous and inconspicuous gifts) which are personal norms. This study developed social norms from the gift marketer perspective and personal norms from the gift-giver perspective. Three experiments were conducted to test three hypotheses with 346, 388, and 327 participants, respectively, employing a two-factor ANCOVA. Empirical results show that popular appeal was normally more effective in reinforcing perceived value than scarcity appeal, whether conspicuous or inconspicuous gifts or close or distant givers. This finding implies that the effect on descriptive social norms (i.e. popularity appeal) is greater than injunctive social norms (i.e. scarcity appeal) in gift-giving. This study is the first to incorporate the marketer and gift-giver factors in developing a more effective gift marketing strategy and contributing to the literature on the focus theory of normative conduct (social norms and personal norms) on gift promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Byline: Tsai-Lien Yeh This paper analyses the market power of the Taiwan banking industry, by employing a dynamic economic error-correcting model. The main result is that banks are competitive and the degree of competition is stronger in the short run compared to the long run. Our empirical studies also show that the Taiwan banking industry increased market power after undertaking merger activities. Mergers can increase the size of banks, and large banks are more competitive. We also find that the dynamic Error Correction Model (ECM) analysis offers an appropriate method by which to study market power issues, while the static model, from the statistical perspective, seems inappropriate.

Byline: Tsai-lien Yeh Do mergers promote efficiency in the banking industry? A Data Envelopment Analysis in this study revealed that technical efficiency and productivity in Taiwanese banks increased more during the ex-post period (2003-2004) of the Merger Act than during the ex-ante periods (1999-2000). The empirical results of this study indicate that banks surviving mergers exhibited increased technical efficiency due to economies of scale, as proposed in earlier studies by Berger and Mester (1997). Further, productivity analysis documented a positive association between size of banks and productivity growth. Mergers can increase the size of banks, and large banks are better able to develop fee-based off-balance-sheet activities which can yield superior returns. Banks aggressively engaged in these outputs, they have higher productivity outputs.

Copyright of Service Industries Journal is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The issue of which factors influence the success or failure of crowdfunding projects is a critical topic, as it can bring founders sufficient financial support to realise their ideal innovation. We present a useful framework for two aspects of marketing (attraction-promotion and cognition-promotion) and four related factors to foster the success of reward-based crowdfunding ventures. We investigate this issue by analysing data collected from 323 funding projects from four crowdfunding platforms in Taiwan and Japan. We found that the cognition-promotion aspect obviously influenced funding success, because the factors it encompasses – signalling (including founder response, founder updates frequency and having a formal website) and kindness (including donation to other projects and rewarding sponsors) – are all significant in the logistic regression model. Regarding the attraction-promotion aspect, we found that the past experiences of the founder in terms of the attention factor do not influence funding success. Our study contributes to the literature on crowdfunding discussion platforms and engagement, and our empirical results provide a comprehensive message to the founders and sponsors of crowdfunding platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We constructed impulse purchase and cross-buying intention model using perceived usefulness, perceived playfulness, and perceived ease of use as main mediating factors and using task-relevant cues and mood-relevant cues as two independent variables. We collected 404 survey samples in accordance with the proportion of demographic statistics offered by the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute. We indicate a major relationship from mood-relevant cues through perceived playfulness to impulse purchase intention. Apparel companies should design their differential environmental cues toward the online website, which contributes to the experiential value with their customer. Additionally, great interface design can increase perceived playfulness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this study is to investigate the mechanism of customer relationship management to examine whether its attributes could affect relationship capital via trust-building mechanisms. We used quota sampling to survey 262 customers from Taiwan's top 10 insurance companies on the basis of customers and sales representative dyad samples. The empirical results show that social psychology–oriented trust-building mechanisms have the strongest positive effect on information sharing, mutual trust, and reciprocal commitment. Thus, sales representatives can enhance mutual disclosure with customers when customers perceive that the sales representatives are qualified and have a positive attachment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By utilizing a sample of 44 Taiwanese banks, this study analyses whether banks can mitigate agency costs, to increase firm performance through optimization of capital structure. The stochastic frontier approach is adopted to determine cost efficiency as the firm performance indicator, an approach that is capable of controlling outside environmental factors. Furthermore, this study uses two-stage least squares to estimate two simultaneous equations that are then used to examine the relationship between capital structure and firm performance. This study includes indicators of ownership structure. The main results are: first, optimal capital structure is selected by the manager to combat the agency problem and thus improve performance, yielding results consistent with agency theory; and second, reducing managerial share ownership will decrease agency cost and increase firm performance, a finding that is consistent with the Entrenchment Hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]