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Framed within the theoretical domain of attribution theory, this study aims to investigate the antecedents of experienced regret following an entrepreneur’s business failure (defined as firm discontinuance, closure or bankruptcy) and the impact of regret on personal well-being.

The population of interest was business owners whose businesses had failed within the past five years. The data was collected from 319 failed entrepreneurs using an online survey. Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses presented in this study.

External attribution, including economic uncertainty and contract restrictions, was positively related to feelings of regret. Considering internal attribution, due diligence had a positive effect on regret whereas customer relationship development ability can reduce feelings of regret. Moreover, prevention-focused entrepreneurs were likely to experience higher levels of regret when engaging in extensive consideration in using information. Finally, regret had a detrimental effect on the entrepreneurs’ well-being.

The research provides fresh perspectives on experienced regret, a relatively unexplored emotion in the entrepreneurship literature. In the context of small business operations, the locus of attribution (associated with business failure) is the key influence on learning following failed business attempts.

This study extends current knowledge of regret in the context of entrepreneurial failure, which has a significant catalytic effect on employment and entrepreneurial mobility.

This research sheds light on how emotional responses are derived from an entrepreneur’s self-assessment of their performance and attribution of blame for failure.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the differential effect of reciprocal and negotiated social exchanges in establishing workplace relationship cohesion, providing a mediating influence between social constructed initiatives (i.e. internal socialization and support) and internal customers’ psychological connectedness.

Data were gathered via a national online survey of service employees in Australia, representing a diverse range of service industries (e.g. retail (food/non-food), health, financial, administrative support, real estate, household, insurance, education and training, etc.).

Reciprocal-exchange relationship quality fully mediates the relationship between internal socialization and psychological connectedness; and negotiated-exchange relationship quality partially mediates the relationship between internal support and psychological connectedness of internal customers.

While the findings reported herein support the salience of interpersonal relationship quality enhancing the internal performance of the organization, it is essential to consider how the findings link to externally perceived performance (i.e. from the customer’s perspective). Future research is guided by a framework that the authors propose as a result of the study’s findings to facilitate research in this under-researched area.

The development of sound socially relevant internal marketing strategies is vital to the long-term health and prosperity of the firm and its internal counterparts necessitating a move beyond transactional internal marketing, reflecting “pay for service” organizational thinking.

The examination of internal relationship cohesion and how this effects internal customers’ allegiance to their organizations addresses an important research gap and, thus, provides a significant contribution to both theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to expand on existing co-creation knowledge in order to accurately conceptualize, operationalize and contextualize the customer brand co-creation behavior concept from a customer perspective.

A quantitative approach is adopted in this study, using structural equation modeling to verify the co-creation of brand value for those customers who co-create.

A new four-dimensional co-creation behavior concept is supported, highlighting the role of development, feedback, advocacy and helping, in the co-creation of brand value. Furthermore, a range of customer-level and brand-level antecedents are empirically verified.

The research takes a customer-centric view of co-creation and in doing so provides new insight into the effect on the co-creator. Additionally, the research offers an improved level of specificity in the co-creation domain by conceptualizing, operationalizing and contextualizing customer co-creation in a comprehensive research study.

The findings offer new insight to brand managers, identifying avenues for increasing customer participation in co-creation programs and critically highlighting that co-creation behavior has positive effects on the co-creator’s perception of brand value.

The customer-centric approach offers an original perspective from which to explore co-creation, demonstrating the positive potential of co-creation in brand management strategies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements amongst adolescents under single and repeated viewing conditions.

This study explored visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements using the theoretical assumptions of the social psychology theory of social information processing by Wyer (2003). The authors conducted two experiments over a timeline of three months. In the first experiment, participants watched the 360-degree video advertisement once, and after one week, the same set of participants watched the same advertisement again. The theoretical assumptions in the comprehension unit were used to design the experiments and to explore visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements. The data were collected using surveys and interviews through an experimental research design approach. NVivo software was used to analyse the data.

This study found that while female participants were able to comprehend colours in the visuals better, male participants were better able to comprehend facial expressions presented in the visuals. Further, both female and male participants were able to comprehend locations within the advertisement visuals. It was found that participants understood the plot or the story of the advertisement better after the second viewing than after the first viewing.

The two main contributions from this study are as follows: from a theoretical perspective, the application of a social psychology theory for the advertising sector enables us to gather more insights about the social cognition stages of a human mindset such as information retrieval, judgement, decision making, goal stimulation and short- and long-term memory. In doing so, this study not only explored adolescents' visual comprehension memory of 360-degree video advertisements, but it also contributed to the theory of social information processing by Wyer (2003) by exploring consumer visual comprehension memory. From a practical perspective, the findings of this study provide a solid foundation for future advertising firms or agencies, marketers, and salespeople on how to design effective advertisements using 360-degree video versions in a way that appeals to consumer visual memory.

This paper can be considered as amongst the first studies which combine social psychology with advertising to investigate visual comprehension memory for 360-degree video advertisements amongst adolescents.

Drawing on an outside-in marketing perspective, this paper aims to outline the development, implementation, evaluation and reflection of a real-world entrepreneurship education (EE) intervention with cognitive, affective and ultimately behavioural objectives.

A specific and uniform EE program specifically targeted to current “would be” entrepreneurs who were investigating the franchising business model was developed, focusing on the behavioural outcomes. The effectiveness of the EE intervention was evaluated using a quasi-experimental research design, which involved franchisees who had not participated in the EE intervention (control group) and franchisees who had participated in the EE intervention (experimental group). The administration of the national on-line survey yielded a total of 520 responses (194 in the experimental group and 326 in the control group).

The planning process in the pre-intervention stage included situation analysis, objective setting and decisions in relation to the communication strategy, i.e. content and mode. The effectiveness of the EE intervention was evaluated in the post-intervention stage. The findings indicate that EE intervention resulted in participants’ positive cognitive, affective and behavioural outcomes such as performance and relationship management. Finally, following a reflection process, additional elements covering topics related to work-life balance were incorporated into the module pertaining to an individual’s suitability to become a franchisee.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework that represents an outside-in EE approach whereby problems, audiences, objectives and communication strategies (content and method) are strategically intertwined to produce relevant, measurable and diagnostic behavioural outcomes. The EE intervention can also improve the B2B relationship between actors in a business network.

This paper focuses on exploring the relationship between Australian university websites and international student enrolments. Few studies have investigated this relationship and, as such, this research addresses some of the existing knowledge gaps.

A mono-method qualitative methodology was adopted for this study. Primary data collection was through the website content of selected Australian universities. Six Australian universities were selected; three universities with positive international student enrolments and three universities with negative international student enrolments. The website content of the selected six universities was analysed using the dimensions of the ICTRT framework (Li and Wang, 2011) to evaluate website effectiveness. The study results were based on two analysis levels, an overall thematic analysis (level 1) and an ICTRT framework-based analysis (level 2). The thematic analysis, based on the major themes and concepts, was conducted using Leximancer 4.5.

Two major findings emerged. First, the websites of universities with positive international student enrolments tend to be more people focused whereas websites from universities with negative international student enrolments tend to be technology or system focused. Second, websites from universities with positive international student enrolments tend to be more visionary or forward focused whereas websites from universities with negative international student enrolments tend to be more backward focused. Additionally, the study findings indicate some important website marketing strategies for Australian universities with negative international student enrolments.

This study used ICTRT framework to evaluate the websites of Australian universities. Li and Wang (2011) proposed this framework for evaluating websites. Hotel, travel agency and destination marketing organisation websites have been assessed using the ICTRT framework (Li and Wang, 2011; Pai et al., 2014; Sun et al., 2017). This model has not previously been used, however, to evaluate tertiary education websites. This study is among the first to examine the university websites using a theoretical framework employed in destination marketing organisations which is a major theoretical contribution.

The major findings indicate that the website attributes, which are future focused and people oriented, are necessary for university websites with negative international student enrolments. Similar to university websites with positive international student enrolments, university websites with negative international student enrolments should also provide more contact details of staff members, should be more people oriented and should provide information focused on future students rather than past and current students. These practical implications are useful for administrative bodies in Australian universities for increasing international student enrolments.

This study is among the first to examine the university websites using a theoretical framework used in destination marketing organizations which is a major theoretical contribution. For example, this study has provided an illustrative example of how a research model of destination marketing organizations will be used in the universities or higher education context.

As the importance of brands is realised, so too is the importance of research in this area. However, to date, a number of branding models have been developed that lack empirical testing, are derived from the perspective of brand practitioners, and pay little attention to the branding of services. This study seeks consumer‐based information via qualitative methods regarding brand dimensions that hold meaning to consumers for both branded products and branded services. The results indicate a number of key dimensions to be such as core product/service, experience with brand, image of user, important to consumers for both goods and services. Dimensions such as feelings, and self‐image congruence, were found to be important only in terms of branded products, while word‐of‐mouth, servicescape, and employees, held importance with respect to branded services. The results provide a platform upon which future research can be built.

The purpose of this paper is to present an integrative systems model of knowledge management (KM) across the franchisor-franchisee-customer triad. The conceptual development of this paper focuses on the areas of knowledge development, knowledge transfer and knowledge use within the context of dyadic monitoring, and key relational outcomes (partner congruence, relationship quality, perceived conflict, opportunism), and performance results (franchisor, franchisee and customer welfare).

This paper critically reviews the relevant literatures in order to address three conceptual goals exemplified by the following research questions. How does knowledge development and organizational learning effectively facilitate knowledge transfer and knowledge usage in franchise systems? What role does monitoring play in the relationship between the knowledge management processes and the welfare of franchisors and franchisees? How does the process of knowledge management (development, synthesis, transfer, usage) influence franchisor, franchisee and customer welfare?

An extensive review of the literature results in ten key research propositions being offered and these are graphically presented in the conceptual model in Figure 1. This model represents a multi-level perspective of KM which provides a solid platform for future empirical studies and further academic discussion.

This paper makes two key contributions. First, through adopting an integrative KM perspective it draws attention to many (as yet) unanswered questions concerning the franchise relationship. Second, it re-positions KM research beyond consideration at a singular (firm, employee, supplier or customer) level by focusing on intra-firm and firm-customer linkages in the value creation process.

This chapter reports how accounting professionals and students perceive the proficiency of their communication skills. We find that professionals perceive themselves as having higher interpersonal skills, writing skills, and speaking skills than do students. Despite decades of accounting curricula’s focus on communication skills, there remains a perception gap between students and professionals on the importance of these skills. Professionals not only perceive that they have stronger communication skills, but they also consider these skills as more important for career success than do students. Furthermore, we find that, even after controlling for the difference in perceived communication skill levels, this perception gap continues to exist between accounting professionals and students.

The purpose of this paper is to present the first known empirically‐tested model of Employee Based Brand Equity (EBBE). In doing so, it seeks to provide insight into how organisations can not only effectively manage the internal brand building‐process but also, more importantly, appreciate the subsequent employee effects and organisational benefits.

Data were collected via an online survey of 371 employees who work in service organisations, sourced from a market research database list.

Strong support was found for nine out of the ten hypothesised relationships, thus providing strong validation for the proposed model.

The employment of surveys can present data collection problems stemming from such things as lack of willingness to participate on behalf of the respondent, loss of validity when using structured questionnaires, and inherent challenges of wording questions properly. However, in acknowledging these limitations, actions, such as the utilisation of a national database of “opt in” survey participants coupled with the good reliability results and the methodical four‐stage survey design process undertaken, it is suggested that every effort was made to negate the limitations.

Knowledge is gained from empirically validating a model of EBBE: it further enriches the application of traditional brand management techniques; provides a framework for brand communication training; increases organisational understanding of how to engender positive employee actions; and increases the accountability of such an internal investment by identifying measurable organisational benefits that accrue as a result of such efforts.

The paper makes three important contributions: expanding the existing brand equity literature to incorporate a third yet equally relevant perspective, that being the employee; the adoption of a multi‐disciplined approach to addressing a marketing issue and, in doing so, extending beyond the connectionist cognitive psychology view of brand equity to incorporate a contextual/organisation cultural element; and reflecting the perceptions of employees, who are currently under‐represented in the internal brand management literature.