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There has been a widespread move in England’s city centres to a business crime reduction partnership (BCRP) model that welcomes businesses from all commercial sectors and that operate during day time and night time trading hours, and that seeks to tackle a broad range of crimes and associated behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to consider whether this new holistic approach offers benefits that narrower models do not.

This study draws upon data from a multi-year examination of the Gloucester City Safe BCRP, including quantitative analysis of 4,523 offences recorded by the partnership and qualitative analysis of 149 interviews with its members.

In Gloucester there was a small minority of offenders who commit offences against more than one type of business, who offend during both the day time and night time trading hours and who commit more than one type of offence. There is value, therefore, in partnerships bringing together businesses from different commercial sectors and that operate in the day and night time economies to coordinate their efforts to tackle such activity.

Sharing information among partnership members via e-mail and secure web-based platforms helps raise awareness concerning offenders and the offences that they commit which in turn can be used to prevent offences from occurring.

This inclusive holistic BCRP model can lead to an increased sense of community cohesion for its members arising from the collective effort of multiple types of businesses.

The authors are not aware of other studies that have considered these issues.

This paper aims to examine the effects of purchase environment, product type and need for touch (NFT) on cognitive response, affective response and overall product evaluation in the USA and India.

Two experiments were conducted in two different consumer markets. In Study 1, participants evaluated haptic and non-haptic products and gave responses on cognitive response, affective response and overall product evaluation measures in the US market. In Study 2, the authors replicate Study 1 in a culturally different market of India and extend Study 1 by examining the moderating role of instrumental and autotelic dimensions of NFT on the effect of purchase environment on cognitive and affective responses.

Research findings suggest that cognitive and affective responses are the underlying mechanism between the purchase environment and overall response only for haptic product among Indian consumers. In contrast, affective response is the underlying mechanism explaining this relationship among US consumers. Furthermore, the instrumental dimension of NFT moderates the impact of purchase environment on cognitive but the autotelic NFT moderates the effect of purchase environment on affective response only for the haptic product but not for the non-haptic product.

The study uses a relatively homogenous sample in the Indian market in contrast to the US market.

Results advance the understanding of the importance of haptic information processing in consumer decision-making across different purchase environments, product types and NFT using psychological distance (proximity) as a theoretical underpinning. With non-haptic shopping environments (i.e. online and mobile) growing rapidly, the results have critical implications for development of marketing strategies in Asian and US markets.

Empirical research examining the underlying mechanism by which purchase environment influences overall evaluation for haptic product is scarce. Additionally, understanding of the differential roles of instrumental and autotelic dimensions of NFT on cognitive and affective responses is very limited. This research fills this void and provides an understanding of the specific environment in evaluating haptic and non-haptic products in two distinct markets.

This study aims to understand the role of technology in relationship maintenance among romantic partners.

It takes a qualitative, inductive approach and collected data from in-depth interviews with 20 individuals who are married or in cohabiting relationships.

This study supports the extension of relationship maintenance typology derived from face-to-face relationship studies to technology-mediated communication, but highlights how technology use transforms the implementation of maintenance behaviors. Technology helps couples coordinate tasks and keep in touch with friends and families. Although technology-mediated communication cannot replace face-to-face interactions in relationship talk and sharing in-depth feelings, it plays an important role in redefining the ways in which couples interact positively, maintain mutual understanding, and secure the future of the relationship. Moreover, this study identifies a new maintenance behavior, communication coordination. These maintenance behaviors reflect a tension between maintaining connectivity and managing the boundary between work and home and between the public and private spheres.

This study builds on previous work on technology use and relationship maintenance, but takes a different qualitative, inductive approach to address the limitations in the survey research dominant in the literature. It helps us understand the advantages and challenges in maintaining relationships in the digital age and also explores the factors that influence the patterns of technology use in relationship maintenance.

This exploratory study, a Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Western Ontario in 2013, examines the materially embedded relations of power between library users and staff in public libraries and how building design regulates spatial behavior according to organizational objectives. It considers three public library buildings as organization spaces (Dale & Burrell, 2008) and determines the extent to which their spatial organizations reproduce the relations of power between the library and its public that originated with the modern public library building type ca. 1900. Adopting a multicase study design, I conducted site visits to three, purposefully selected public library buildings of similar size but various ages. Site visits included: blueprint analysis; organizational document analysis; in-depth, semi-structured interviews with library users and library staff; cognitive mapping exercises; observations; and photography.

Despite newer approaches to designing public library buildings, the use of newer information technologies, and the emergence of newer paradigms of library service delivery (e.g., the user-centered model), findings strongly suggest that the library as an organization still relies on many of the same socio-spatial models of control as it did one century ago when public library design first became standardized. The three public libraries examined show spatial organizations that were designed primarily with the librarian, library materials, and library operations in mind far more than the library user or the user’s many needs. This not only calls into question the public library’s progressiveness over the last century but also hints at its ability to survive in the new century.

‘WORK STUDY specialists of Europe—from both the Six and the Seven— are getting together in London this year regardless of what happens to other meetings,’ said Mr. R. M. Currie, C.B.E., President of the European Work Study Federation, in a statement on the forthcoming Congress of the Federation which is to take place at Church House, Westminster, from May 20 to 23.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

The use of students as subjects in academic research is widespread. A systematic review of research‐oriented journals ranging from the behavioural sciences to pure sciences shows that a great deal of research involves student subjects. In business and management oriented research these students tend to be largely male and undergraduate. As three eminent marketing academics remarked somewhat cynically some years ago, “What we know about consumer behaviour may be too closely tied to the sociopsychological and behavioural profile of the college sophomore” (Cunningham, Anderson and Murphy, 1974). Marketing has been an area particularly prone to student‐based research, with an audit of the first 30 issues of the Journal of Marketing Research revealing that over half of the consumer behaviour experiments (48 of 81) used students as subjects (Enis, Cox and Stafford, 1972). Casual perusal of a wide variety of present day journals in other areas, such as accounting and finance, management information systems, work study, and human resources management points to the increase of this practice. This paper reviews briefly the extensive literature on the question of student surrogacy and presents a bibliographic summary of studies accepting the use of, and those rejecting, student surrogation. It also offers a decision model for consideration by researchers contemplating using students in their endeavours.

The purpose of this paper is to create a managerial framework for selecting the most effective bank advertisement appeal for different financial services. Financial services were classified based on the FCB grid: high/low involvement and think/feel decision.

The data were collected from 62 banks with content analysis based on 1,514 unique print advertisements, published between 2006 and 2014 in national newspapers in Romania and Hungary. The ads were coded, based on Pollay’s appeals, and then a cluster analysis was performed to identify appeal and financial service clusters.

The results revealed ten bank-specific appeals which can be used for advertising four different banking services categories. All type of savings and loans for B2B are advertised with quality appeals (safety, productivity); current account and card, personal/home loans are advertised with financial value appeals (convenient, cheap); corporate branding with emotional appeals (affiliation, distinctive, enjoyment); and services with mixed appeals.

The study could be extended for different target market, creative strategy, other media and more countries.

The paper provides guidelines on how the FCB grid could be extended for bank services to recommend specific appeals for each category.

The financial service literature proposes guidelines regarding bank advertisements. However, the recommended advertisement appeals were not linked to different bank services. This paper creates a comprehensive managerial framework in order to match the bank’s specific appeals with different bank services.

This study aims to investigate two public private partnership (PPP) road projects in Nigeria for exploring factors that can motivate end-user stakeholders for contributing towards sustaining a PPP project in the long-term.

Using a case study methodology approach, this study adopts two-way data collection strategies via in-depth interviews with PPP experts and end-user stakeholders in Nigeria host communities and a questionnaire survey to relevant stakeholders.

The study identifies an eight-factor structure indicating critical success factors for ensuring end-user stakeholders support PPP projects on a long-term basis in their host communities.

Results of the study have huge implications for policymakers and project companies by encouraging the early integration of far-sighted measures that will promote long-term support and sustainability for PPP projects amongst the end-user stakeholders.

This cross‐national study seeks to examine the service quality dimensions and advertising appeals conveyed in services advertisements in the USA and Korea.

Using Hofstede's cultural dimensions as a basis for distinguishing cultures, this study explores the role of culture in services advertising strategy. Content analysis was used to examine services advertising in the USA and Korea.

The results of a content analysis of over 400 magazine advertisements suggest that advertisers may be able to standardize services advertising in magazines by type of advertising appeal and on specific service quality dimensions.

As the service sector continues to grow, future research is needed to compare services advertising for different types of services and in other media. Experimental studies that explicitly examine what types of cues are effective with Korean consumers are needed.

Implications for advertisers attempting to reach Korean consumers suggest that, in magazine advertising, rational appeals tend to be considerably more common than emotional appeals. Cues related to reliability and assurance also are used very frequently, suggesting that they may be well received by Korean consumers and thus that they should be used by many services advertisers. However, advertisers must consider the significance of what an Asian factor means for advertising strategy.

This study contributes to the literature and provides insights to services providers and advertisers by comparing which advertising appeals and dimensions of service quality are conveyed in services advertising in Korea and the USA and by comparing the advertising strategies with cultural dimensions.