Search results

Place identity refers to the combination of physical setting, social interactions, emotions and associated meanings. This research paper aims to broaden knowledge about boutique concepts and to examine the role of advertisement types suited to generate a heightened sense of place for customers. The design and delivery of tangible and intangible components of the boutique service experience are investigated to better understand business-relevant customer outcomes.

An introductory qualitative study explores the key features and managerial relevance of the boutique appeal as a means to communicate personalization and a sense of place. Interviews with managers of a boutique catering service are conducted and thematically analyzed. A quantitative follow-up study examines the effect of the boutique appeal on hotel image, purchase intention and willingness to pay.

A boutique hotel appeal is more attractive to customers (compared to traditional luxury appeals) when it is advertised using visually engaging virtual tours because it augments customers’ sensation of place identity. The mediating psychological mechanism, place identity, represents the essential emotional component evoked by boutique concepts and its positive effect on managerially relevant customer outcomes.

This paper provides insight for the design and management of boutique concepts to better shape and predict consumer responses in various luxury hospitality industries. The process by which customers identify with the location where the service is provided, socialize with staff and attach meaning to these settings evokes a sense of place identity, a critical resource in the process of value co-creation.

LibQUAL is a service‐quality assessment instrument developed by the Association of Research Libraries in partnership with Texas A&M University Library and has been used in numerous institutions. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a Spanish version of the scale in terms of its structure, reliability, and validity.

Data were collected among students at a well‐known Mexican university. A total of 374 completed questionnaires were used in the analyses. Library service quality was measured using 22 items taken directly from the 2004 version of the LibQUAL scale. The back‐translation method was used to translate the original English version of LibQUAL into Spanish. Data were analysed using SPSS 16.0 and EQS 6.1 in the exploratory and confirmatory stages, respectively.

The study findings show that the Spanish version of the LibQUAL instrument actually consists of four dimensions: “affect of service”; “information access”; “personal control”; and “library as place”. The results support the reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and nomological validity of the proposed Spanish version of the scale.

This is the first study to empirically evaluate and find support for the convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity of a Spanish version of the LibQUAL scale.

The purpose of this study is to understand and explain the process by which child consumers form relationships with brands. Specifically, the authors attempt to understand how child consumers conceptualize brands, why and how they decide to engage in relationships with brands and why they decide to breakup with brands though sometimes reconcile with them.

A mixed methodology was followed in this research. On the basis of an ethnographic approach, ten in-depth interviews were conducted among 8-12-year-old girls. Subsequently, a survey was completed by 122 children (boys and girls) to quantitatively examine the hypotheses formulated after the qualitative phase.

Findings from both the qualitative and quantitative studies highlight and confirm that children conceptualize brands according to visual branding components, signs and promotional activities. Furthermore, children make moral evaluations of brand behaviors and judge them as “good” or “bad”. More importantly, the authors propose two typologies: one for the reasons children decide to engage in a positive relationship and another for why children engage in a negative relationship with a brand. Additionally, the authors found that children report having an active or passive relationship role according to the characteristics of the brand relationship. Moreover, despite their young age, children report having broken up relationships with several brands; the reasons are categorized into positive and negative breakups. Finally, the authors found that positive breakups lead to more probable brand relationship reconciliation than negative breakups.

Despite a vast body of literature in the child consumer behavior field, there is scarce research regarding brand relationship phenomena. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical research conducted with child consumers, addressing brand relationship formation, dissolution and reconciliation.

China is undergoing a radical change as the forces of industrialization and modernization transform its society. Money is taking on an increasingly important role, particularly among young Chinese, as the Western ideals of individualism and hedonism thrive. The goal of this research is to understand attitudes towards money in China and how these attitudes affect elements of consumer behavior such as materialism and vanity.

The paper uses a well‐accepted scale (with several dimensions) to explore attitudes towards money. Research questions examine how the dimensions of attitudes towards money affect materialism and achievement vanity. The sample comprises 127 young Chinese consumers. Statistical results based on confirmatory factor analysis as well as path analysis are reported.

The findings clearly show that attitudes towards money in China are not monolithic; instead there are variations among young Chinese. Materialism is affected by the power‐prestige and anxiety dimensions, but unaffected by the distrust dimension of money attitudes. Achievement vanity is affected by the power‐prestige dimension of money attitudes.

Future research could examine other developing countries and other generational consumer segments. Another future research topic is to develop a comprehensive model of money attitudes, materialism, vanity, compulsive buying, and their possible antecedents or moderators.

These findings offer insight into the mindset of young Chinese. Beliefs that money permits one to attain not only status and possessions, but also power and control over others are contributing to increased materialism and expressions of vanity among young Chinese. For marketers, the results imply that positioning products based on the possession of money and the use of this money to indulge hedonism may resonate well with young Chinese consumers. However, some of the relationships we found may cause concern to ethicists and consumer watchdogs because of the associated problems of compulsive buying and other problems which are prevalent in consumer societies.

So far, no study has examined whether money attitudes drive materialism and achievement vanity, especially among younger consumers in developing countries such as China.

Young consumers globally are susceptible to becoming compulsive shoppers. Having negative consequences and considering that compulsive shopping may originate from past family life experiences, this study aims to use human capital life-course and positive-activity theories to suggest a socio-psychological pathway for prevention. It also examined the mediating influence of happiness and money attitude.

University students in South Africa (N = 171) and in Germany (N = 202) were surveyed. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test relationships and multi-group analysis (MGA) assessed cross-cultural differences.

Emotional family resources received during childhood positively impacted happiness at young adulthood, which was found to be a positive driver of budget money attitude. Budget money attitude in turn limited compulsive shopping for German young consumers but not for South Africans. Cross-cultural differences are also observed in mediating effects of happiness and budget money attitude.

This study is based on self-reported data from university students; this might limit the generalisability of findings.

A positive relationship between happiness and desirable money attitude was confirmed. This study additionally contributes by showing that for South African and German young consumers, adequate childhood emotional family resources is a happiness’ driver. This thus exposes the multiplier effects of simple acts of showing love and attention to children and how these family emotional resources can progressively limit dysfunctional consumer behaviour in the future.

Unlike complex psychotherapeutical and psychopharmacological treatments of compulsive buying that are being suggested, this study borrows from family, consumer and economic–psychological disciplines to suggest simple preventive measures.

The research aims to explore the relationship between money attitudes and pay satisfaction for individuals in low paid jobs.

The methodology developed a questionnaire that contained three key measures, including money attitudes, pay satisfaction and income level. The sample for this study consisted of blue‐collar workers from industries and occupations identified as low paid by The National Minimum Wage Commission in the UK. The questionnaire was distributed in East London and South East England through employment exchanges and community organisations.

Individual differences in money attitudes was found to be a significant variable in explaining pay satisfaction of people in low pay. The evidence proposes a case for money attitudes to be incorporated in the traditional models of pay satisfaction as it provides for the idiosyncrasies in individual differences.

A major limitation of this study was that it only captured certain low paid occupations, and also that it was based in the UK. This must be the most important direction for future research.

The findings have managerial important implications in designing pay and reward structures for people in low pay.

One of the major contributions of this study is that it is an early example of an empirical study, hopefully to be followed by more on money attitudes and the satisfaction of low pay.

On September 11th, 1973, started the darkest stage in the recent history of Chile. The military and the police, at the command of General Augusto Pinochet, executed the most atrocious acts against the human dignity that the country had witnessed. The martial and technocratic leaders of the dictatorship ripped apart and redesigned the institutions of the country at their will, through to the elimination of the opposition and the systematic violation of human rights, which reached any person or group. Just a few days after the coup d’état that brought Pinochet to power, the Cardinal and Archbishop of Santiago, Raúl Silva Henríquez, and a group of churches declared themselves against the devastating violence that was gripping the country. Immediately, the religious spaces took up the lead in the defense of the most vulnerable, the persecuted, marginalized, and poor. The major effort focused on the Vicariate of Solidarity, an organization of the Catholic Church in Chile that was tasked with the promotion and defense of human rights, which offered legal and social assistance to the victims and their families. The Vicariate quickly positioned itself as a leader in search of justice against the backdrop of repression, censorship, lack of representative institutions, and prohibition of popular movements. The purpose of the present chapter is to analyze the work of the Vicariate of Solidarity and its leading role in the fight against human rights violations, strengthening social reorganization, reconciliation, and the return to democracy in Chile.

In Mexico, only 19.3 per cent of industrial water is treated (Green-Peace, 2014, pp. 3-4), whereas municipal treatment levels are approximately 50 per cent (CONAGUA, 2014a). This paper aims to focus on how the wastewater treatment plant policy, from a circular economy perspective, is affected by the governance context at the Presa Guadalupe sub-basin. Circular economy can contribute to water innovations that help in improving water quality. However, such benefits are not easily achieved. This case provides an example of the complexity and challenges that the implementation of a circular economy model can face.

Data are collected via semi-structured in-depth interviews with the stakeholders that are members of the Presa Guadalupe Commission. The contextual interaction theory (CIT) is the theoretical basis for this analysis (Boer de and Bressers, 2011; Bressers, 2009).

The findings show that the wastewater treatment plant policy plays an important role in a circular economy model. Some incentives towards a circular economy model are already in place; however, the hurdles of a top-down implementation perspective, low availability of resources, prioritisation of short-term results, lack of enforcement of the “polluter pays” principle and a linear model of water systems need to be overcome. If Mexico wants to move towards a circular economy model and if the government wants to enforce sustainable development principles, wastewater treatment is a challenge that must be addressed.

There are few studies in the circular economy literature that have analysed its implementation under a governance arrangement perspective.