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The unethical behavior of businesses toward their customers is thought to contribute to a loss of trust and confidence in the integrity of American corporations. Distrust between the two parties in the marketplace inhibits business transactions. The business ethics index (BEI) was established to formally and continuously measure the consumer sentiments of the ethical behavior of American businesses. This paper aims to measure the effect of political affiliation on consumers’ ethical perceptions of businesses.

The BEI was originally developed as an indicator of consumers’ sentiments toward the ethicality of business practices. The current research uses the BEI once again to evaluate consumers’ perceptions of business ethics in the era of President Donald Trump and his administration. The BEI was therefore extended with the question: “Do you believe that because of the new president Donald Trump, businesses will behave: ‘more ethically’, ‘about the same’ or ‘more unethically’?”.

Data from 1,008 telephone interviews in the USA were used to calculate a BEI of 114.5, indicating an overall positive consumer sentiment toward the ethical behavior of business. Respondents’ political affiliation was found to significantly affect their perception of the ethical behavior of businesses.

This is an initial step in studying the connection between governmental policies and business ethics perception.

The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer perceptions across various countries, and uses content analysis in order to compare individual countries’ perceptions of ethicality over three business domains: price, product and service.

The data encompasses measurements from 18 countries including the USA and countries in Eastern and Western Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the gross national income purchasing power parity were explored to explain the differences in focus between countries.

The results indicate that Mexico and Argentina place a higher focus on price, while Russia, China and India place a greater focus on the product element. In terms of ethical perceptions of service, only Brazil places high focus on this domain. The results indicated that uncertainty avoidance was significant for five of the six countries focusing on price, suggesting that price provides a level of certainty and therefore less ambiguity.

The importance of this study is based on the idea that consumer trust is vital to the efficient running of economic activity.

Reports on the results of an empirical test to evaluate the effectiveness of alternate forms of bank advertising, the alternative forms of which differ in terms of main message strategy and overall method of presentation (structure). Examines the relative effects of verbal only advertisements compared to those which combine both pictures and words. Specifically focuses on the differences between informational and transformational strategies. Examines alternative forms of the latter to include both male and female models, and studies several alternative measures of advertising effectiveness. Results suggest that an informational strategy is more effective for bank advertising than a transformational strategy. Advertisements which include both verbal and pictorial components were superior. No statistically significant differences were observed when male versus female models were employed.

The present study compares the ethical perceptions of three sub‐cultural groups living in the USA – Anglos, strongly identified Hispanics, and weakly identified Hispanics. It compares the responses of these three groups to two ethical scenarios using conjoint analysis, in addition to the traditional comparison of central tendencies. A comparison of means does not show any significant differences among the three groups and the overall pattern of relative importances is similar for all three sub‐cultural groups. However, conjoint analysis did detect some difference between Anglos and Hispanics. Less assimilated Hispanics were found to be somewhat more concerned about the magnitude of dollar loss as opposed to the Anglo focus on probability of loss in their ethical perceptions; two utilitarian, albeit somewhat different orientations.

Examines the issue of how variations in language used in advertising affect advertising preference with a sample of bilingual, Korean Americans. Uses past literature to hypothesise that the level of acculturation would moderate ethnic consumers’ preference for advertisements in English versus their native language. Extends previous research in the field of ethnic advertising by considering whether findings from studies conducted with Hispanic American consumers are applicable to Asian Americans. Shows that no significant differences were detected in bilingual Korean American preferences for advertisements in which the message was presented in English as compared with those that used Humgul (Korean language) to communicate with the audience. Concludes with suggestions for further research.

ST. Mary's College, Blairs, the Catholic seminary on the banks of the river Dee, five miles from Aberdeen, celebrated in 1929 its centenary. Few people, however, realise that the college has roots reaching far back into Scottish history, and that it is linked by many historical associations, but especially by its library, with the oldest of all Scottish educational establishments, the Scots College, Paris, which was founded under the auspices of King Robert the Bruce.