How can a service firm right-size marketing expenses and yet strive to maximize revenue? This paper represents the first attempt to model these efficiency and effectiveness issues using a 49-unit Asia–Pacific hotel chain as illustration. We employ a triangular DEA model with total expenses (controlling for number of rooms) as the raw input, marketing expenses as intermediate output/input and re...

Previous studies have determined the potential location for sweetpotato flour processing and also examined the processing procedure necessary to produce marketable and profitably flour. This paper reports the second technical trial in which conversion rate and flour quality (i.e., whiteness and coarseness) were further investigated by selecting for sweetpotato roots with high dry matter content...

Today’s converging entertainment industry creates ‘transmedial’ brand worlds in which consumers are expected to become immersed. Integrated marketing campaigns connected to these worlds encourage various kinds of consumer productivity and invite consumers to partake in brand-building processes. Consumers, thus, are increasingly counted on to act as co-producers of contemporary entertainment. Wh...

One of the objectives of agricultural development in Botswana is the increase of agricultural productivity in both arable and livestock production in order to increase farm incomes and thus help to make agriculture a sustainable activity. This paper looks at the challenges that Botswana faces in meeting this objective while minimizing any land degradation that may accompany the process of incre...

Managers often hope to obtain long-term benefits with temporary marketing actions, especially for brands that are currently small. However, academic research implies their chances are slim: fewer than 5% of marketing actions generate permanent sales effects. Yet extant research has examined brands with similar characteristics, thus implicitly assuming that the brand itself carries no influence ...