Micro credit appears to be an important policy tool in transition of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Even though there are some drawbacks in using it, overall effects seem to be positive.

Abstract In the 1990s, the global marketplace is characterized by the speed and ease with which services cross over national boundaries. As a result, service industries in many countries around the world have become extremely important in the development and socioeconomic well-being of these countries. The purpose of this paper is to understand the internationalization process of services firms. It is concluded that international operations of services firms are driven by a similar set of variables used by manufacturing firms, but the intensity and direction of some key relationships require modification and adaptation.

Abstract The authors hypothesized that television viewership influences materialism and dissatisfaction with standard of living, which in turn contributes to feelings of dissatisfaction with life. They collected data from five countries to examine the issue in a variety of cultural and media environments. The countries and types of samples were: United States (consumer panel and college students), Canada (urban households), Australia (urban households), Turkey (urban households), and China (urban households). The results were generally consistent with the hypotheses. However, most of the support came from the U.S. samples. Two possible explanations may account for the findings. One is that the effect of television viewership on life satisfaction is a unique phenomenon that is applicable only to the United States. Given the disparity of viewership levels between the U.S. and other countries, that explanation has some face validity. The other is that the effects were less evident in non-U.S. samples because...

Abstract A large part of prior research about international performance involves a process of identifying the factors associated with enhanced performance. Such research addresses the relationship between past international strategy and performance. Stages-of-internationalization models, however, suggest that performance at a given stage has implications for the future behavior of exporting firms. Success at an early stage may move firms to more advanced stages. Conversely, failure at an internationalization stage may move firms to less advanced stages or to cease exporting altogether. The purpose of this inquiry is to draw upon for the first time, in a services marketing context, the customer satisfaction literature so as to examine the relationships between export performance, disconfirmation of prior expectations, satisfaction with export performance, the importance of exporting to the attainment of future firm goals, and future export intentions. Thus, it serves to further our understanding of the res...

Globalization of markets and competition has created unlimited opportunities for marketers of services internationally. Service providers, with a wide range of products ranging from professional services to services embedded with tangible goods, have responded to these opportunities. In view of the limited empirical knowledge of service marketers internationally, this article reports on a study of actual experience in serving international customers. In particular, it proposes a classification framework of services as a means of differentiating various marketing practices. The empirical results confirm, for the first time, the usefulness of this classification framework in generating new insights into both strategic and operational activities of international service marketers. Implications for future research and management are also offered.

To date, service industries have been generally dominated by an operations orientation that treats each industry as a different market segment. This mindset often manifests itself in managerial attitudes that assume, for example, that the marketing of legal services has nothing in common with engineering services, health care, or management consulting. If, however, it can be shown that these services do share particular market-relevant characteristics, then a useful cross-fertilization of managerial and strategic insights may be achieved.