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Browsing by Author "Rayner, Gabrielle"
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Item Is China Reshaping the African Landscape?(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2014-04-11) Rayner, Gabrielle; Brown, Darrell EThe purpose of this research is to identify the ways in which China is reshaping the African landscape. The goal is to show how China has developed a strategy, to build close ties with countries in Africa to market their products. The focus of the research is to show how China has made a huge impact in Africa the past twenty years. Twenty years ago, China’s influence in Africa was scarce. Today, China’s strategy includes Africa and its vast resources. China’s growing industrial businesses in energy, petroleum, mineral deposits, and raw materials have them looking outside their country to fulfill their needs. Africa with its large quantity of natural resources has caught the attention of the Chinese government. The Chinese seek additional connections with the countries of Africa. China’s arrival as a global power, is seeking to transform the African continent. Several African countries have embraced the Chinese as a partner, which can help them with their infrastructure, economies, military, and foreign direct investments. African leaders have embraced China as a superpower on the continent. China is putting into place programs that will address these issues. China’s ideas are to introduce and reinforce its growing economic and political influence in Africa. Various authors on this subject have referred to China as the “Crouching tiger” and Africa as the “Hidden dragon.” Eventually, Africa will be a strong test to China and its influence abroad. The United States has mostly ignored the African continent. Would an established Chinese presence come back to haunt the United States in the future or is this also a wakeup call for the United States, to become more involved with the nations of Africa; or does China already have too much of a first-mover advantage?Item PRODUCT RECALL STRATEGIES: UNITED STATES VS. CHINA(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2012-04-13) Cross, LaKeisha; Rayner, Gabrielle; Flynn, Barbara B.; Feng, HuaA product recall is defined as an action by a manufacturer or distributor to remove a product from the market because it may possibly cause health problems or death (Zhao & Hu, 2011). Product recalls occur because of in-adequate inspection techniques, employees who are unfamiliar with the pro-cess, improper product design, etc. Companies can make decisions concern-ing their proactiveness/reactiveness (procedure) and compensation (out-come) toward the affected consumers when dealing with product harm cri-ses. Will there be national cultural differences in consumer responses to the-se decisions and in the proposed moderating effect of the degree of product hazard? Based on the above analysis, a quantitative analysis using ques-tionnaires was performed. The methodology was a controlled experiment, manipulating 2 levels of compensation (high vs. low), 2 recall strategies (proactive vs. reactive) and 2 levels of product hazard (high vs. low). A group of 200 undergraduate business students in the U.S. and Hong Kong were given surveys that assessed their purchase intention and other factors, based on the manipulated variables. Using t-test and one-way ANOVA anal-yses in SPSS 16.0, the results show that, when companies are proactive in their recall strategy, consumers care less about the outcome, no matter how severe the product hazard is, while, when companies use a passive recall strategy, consumers care more about the outcome. Although companies are not able to avoid recalls completely, it is important that they develop an ef-fective method to increase consumer repurchases and recover quickly when dealing with a product harm crisis. The results also demonstrate that both procedure and outcome have significant effect on consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral reactions. Further data is being collected to see if there is a sig-nificant difference between respondents in mainland China versus the U.S.