Marketing has long rested on the use of market segmentation. While birth age has been a useful way to create groups, it describes segments but in itself does not help to understand segment motivations. Environmental events experienced during one's coming-of-age years, however, create values that remain relatively unchanged throughout one's life. Such values provide a common bond for those in that age group, or cohort. Segmenting by 'coming-ofage' age provides a richer segmentation approach than birth age. This approach, known to work in America, is used in this paper to create generational cohorts in Russia and in Brazil.
Purpose -The purpose of this article is to evaluate current techniques in capital budget decision making in Canada, including real options, and to integrate the results with similar previous studies. Design/methodology/approach -A mail survey was conducted, which included 88 large firms in Canada.Findings -Trends towards sophisticated techniques have continued; however, even in large firms, 17 percent did not use discounted cash flow (DCF). Of those which did, the majority favoured net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR). Overall between one in ten to one in three were not correctly applying certain aspects of DCF. Only 8 percent used real options. Research limitations/implications -One limitation is that the survey does not indicate why managers continue using less advanced capital budgeting decision techniques. A second is that choice of population may bias results to large firms in Canada. Practical implications -The main area for management focus is real options. Other areas for improvement are administrative procedures, using the weighted average cost of capital (WACC), adjusting the WACC for different projects or divisions, employing target or market values for weights, and not including interest expenses in project cash flows. A small proportion of managers also need to start using DCF. Originality/value -The evaluation shows there still remains a theory-practice gap in the detailed elements of DCF capital budgeting decision techniques, and in real options. Further, it is valuable to take stock of a concept that has been developed over a number of years. What this paper offers is a fine-grained analysis of investment decision making, a synthesis and integration of several studies on DCF where new comparisons are made, advice to managers and thus opportunities to improve investment decision making.
Chand Perry lecturer at the Queensland institute of Technology, Brisbane, Australia; Rooss macarthur is an insurance broker in Sydeny Australia;Geoffery Meredith is profesor, univeristy of New England Armidnale, New sourth wales, Bert cunningotn lecture sat Grifth university, Brisbane, Austrlaia. The paper describes research into need for achievement and tlocil of control among highely successful "super-enterprise", or other small business owner-manger and the general population. Ranking for need for achievement, internal locus of contorl and chlance of contorl are expected, but result for poeeful other locus of control are unexpected. the relationship between need for achievement and locus of control is discussed.
Regional economic or regional enterprise development has been subject to intense research by economists, planners, enterprise specialists and policy specialists for decades. The paper examines various models for regional economic or regional enterprise development and focuses on small towns and communities as an essential component of development. The paper reviews the role of entrepreneurs in enterprise strategies linked to towns and communities and the origins of entrepreneurs and strategies that might be adopted at the regional level to provide support for the entrepreneurial event. The results of a field study of over three hundred Australian regional development centres small enterprise clients, the strategies of those centres impact on entrepreneurs, reveal that the proposed objectives were not achieved and the strategies were in retrospect questionable. The paper concludes with recommended strategies for practitioners and policy makers dedicated to regional development and recognising the role of entrepreneurs in that process.
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