aaronjob329
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1 year ago summary I embarked on a new journey more than a decade ago. I was given an opportunity to teach in the Graduate School of Business of San Beda. When I asked what course will I handle, I almost fell off my chair and I could not believe it. Management Ethics and Corporate Leadership course was assigned to me. There were mix of emotions. I told myself that handling the course will not be easy. I even joked upon myself that it will be difficult for me to handle an ethics course because I strongly believe that we need to practice what we preach. The journey began. I discovered new insights. There were challenges I saw as I was preparing to handle the course. Certain questions entered in my mind. How can I make the course interesting and relevant? How can I spice up the discussions for the course to have different flavors? The corporate scandals were still fresh during those times. The Enron and World.com stories occupied much space in the headlines. Graduate schools in the United States emphasized ethics in their MBA programs. There was an introspection how they have shaped business leaders There was a battlecry among top-notch universities to reevaluate their programs so as to develop technically competent leaders with a heart. . Ethics found its way in the mainstream of courses in the graduate school programs. I discovered during that time that graduate schools of business have emphasized honing the functional ability of students. The graduate schools envisioned to their graduates equipped with the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities to face leadership challenges. With Enron and World.com, the graduate schools might have missed an important item in developing leaders. Their programs must have forgotten to shape the character of the leaders. Every trimester, I emphasize the importance of the two Cs. I believe this is very important. There are two Cs we want employees to possess. First C is competency while the second C is character. The most ideal situation is for your people to be competent and has the character. Competence, in a very simple term (although the field of Human Resource Management might have a technical definition of competency), is having people who possess and demonstrate the knowledge and skills needed in order for them to perform their duties and responsibilities effectively and efficiently. On the other hand, employees are expected to be trustworthy and loyal (not only in terms of the number of years of service) to the organization. We want people who place the organization’s interest over and above their personal interest. There will be instances where employees might lack one of the Cs. However, if we are to choose between character and competence, which one will you choose? We opt for character. Competency can be learned and developed. Character is built within the person. There are interventions that can be done to improve competency. Building character can be a more enormous task. It will be difficult to implement interventions if the problem is on a person’s character especially if the issue is trust. This is one of my early realizations in handling Ethics. The foundation of ethics is all about building character. The topic of ethics can be built in all core and functional courses. We might have the hired most technically-competent person in the world. However, all of these can be useless if the person does not have the character. What good will it have if the organization has the most competent person in the world but has the habit of tampering receipts when reimbursing expenses? Isn’t that a good food for thought? Is that unethical
davekristianuyau
please summarize the below: This study set out to determine which of Uniqlo’s branding aspects contribute to building its brand loyalty among customers. The fndings of the study showed very distinctly that the signifcant aspects were merchandise, value-for-money, feelings, self-image congruence, and uncontrolled communications. The beta values in the analysis indicated that feelings had the strongest impact on brand loyalty followed by self-image congruence, merchandise, value-for-money, and fnally uncontrolled communications. In contrast, Grace and O’Cass (2005) found that servicescapes of all the brand dimensions had the strongest contribution to a customers’ experience or usage of the brand. Nevertheless from the fndings of their study, Grace and O’Cass (2005) acknowledged that branding dimensions experienced at the time of consumption such as core service, feelings, and value-for-money were signifcant and salient dimensions that make up customers’ interaction with the brand, just as how this study confrmed the importance of merchandise (the core aspect), value-for-money, and feelings in customers’ experience with the brand. Similarly, Krystallis and Chrysochou (2014) found in their study of the airline service that core service, value-for-money, feelings, and self-image congruence were the most important brand components that form consumers’ perception of their chosen brand. The importance of feelings in consumer decision making and its efect on consumption experiences and consumer reactions have long since been acknowledged by scholars (Babin & Babin, 2001). Compared to cold cognition which involves logical and rational thinking in product evaluations, hot cognition which involves emotional infuence on decision making seem to exert a stronger impact or brand loyalty (Kunda, 1990; Roiser & Sahakian, 2013). This could explain the reason of the relationship between feelings and brand loyalty being comparatively more intense than other branding aspects in this study. To the customers, Uniqlo ofers a unique shopping experience that delights them; making them happy and pleased to the extent that they are more than willing to revisit and repurchase from Uniqlo. Next to feelings, self-image congruence accounts for the second highest impact on brand loyalty. Keller states that user imagery whereby consumers’ perception of the type of person who uses the product or service is a crucial element in building consumers’ resonance with the particular brand of the product or service. From this study, it is evident that customers of Uniqlo could relate very much to Uniqlo’s brand personality (identity) – basic, timeless yet stylish. As classic research has proven, the more similarity consumers can see between a brand’s user image and the characteristics of their own actual or ideal self, the more preference they will develop for the brand (Belk, 1985; O’Cass & Lim, 2001; Quester, Dzever, & Chetty, 2000; Sirgy, 1986). Subsequently merchandise had the third most impact on customers’ loyalty towards Uniqlo. Given that Uniqlo is in the business of selling apparel and accessories, naturally consumers’ evaluation of aspects relating to its merchandise such as its product quality, variety, and suitability play a determining role in whether they will revisit, repurchase, or recommend the brand to others. As consumers become savvier, they tend to demand more value for the money that they pay to obtain a product or service. Ideally, benefts obtained should exceed the amount of money that they spend on their purchases. The consumers surveyed defnitely felt that Uniqlo’s merchandise and service provided value-for-money to the extent that they are willing to continuously repatronise the stores. Millennials tend to view a company’s controlled communications such as its paid advertising with caution. In some instances, they are unlikely to respond to advertisements or other marketing type at all (Hawkins & Mothersbaugh, 2014). This may well explain why the impact of controlled communications on brand loyalty was not found to be signifcant. However, they respond more favourably to other forms of communications such as the publicity generated by third parties like journalists’ review articles and bloggers’ reviews as well as word-of-mouth recommendations because these uncontrolled communications are regarded as more authentic and trustworthy. Millennials, who made up the majority of respondents in this study have certainly shown a strong preference for uncontrolled communications which has been proven to contribute to their loyalty towards Uniqlo. With regard to the inverse relationship found between brand name and brand loyalty, it can be explained by the fact that consumers may grow to become disinterested in a particular brand should it settle to become very predictable through time, subsequently this could lead them to seek out other clothing brands as well. Krystallis and Chrysochou (2014) who found that the insignifcance of the brand name in shaping the brand evidence construct could be attributed to inconsistency of service delivered to the customers which consequentially heightens customers’ perceived risk associated with the brand name.