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Taking into account the increasing prices of attending concerts and gigs and the decreasing prices and better sound quality of CDs and music in file‐computer format, is the future of music events threatened by music CDs? Are clients' perceptions about concerts and CDs very different? This study aims to answer these research questions by comparing important perceptions of concert attendees and CD buyers.

An empirical study is conducted in two different contexts: CD buyers and concert attendees. In order to answer the research questions outlined the most appropriate statistical tool is the student's t‐test. The variables to compare do not have normal distributions; therefore, non‐parametric tests have been conducted to confirm the results. In addition, a discriminant analysis has been applied in order to assure that both consumers sub‐samples differ with regard to the variables used in the study.

The future of music events is not threatened at all by music CDs. On one hand, the concert industry has been increasingly making more profits in many countries in last decade. On the other hand, consumer satisfaction, price fairness perception, willingness to pay, customer value, and product/service quality are significantly more highly ranked in concert attendees than in CD buyers. The statistical analyses show clients' perceptions about concerts and CDs are very different. All the variables analysed except image have been significantly different in both sub‐samples of consumers.

This paper examines customer perceptions of two of the most important sectors in the music industry: concerts and CDs, using variables that directly measure these perceptions. It is crucial for music managers to understand motives and feelings of music consumers of these basic sectors in order to make appropriate decisions.

This work analyzes the effect that service company employee behavior has on customer perceptions of the quality of services received, and the consequent company performance. Organizational citizenship behavior has been recognized as relevant behavior of some employees, but its role regarding customer perceptions and company profitability remains unexplored. Beginning with a brief review of the conceptual background of organizational citizenship behavior, service quality, and its consequences, this paper proposes a model to test these relationships empirically. Some helpful recommendations for managing service companies are presented.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the services management literature by identifying a sequence of the different processes of knowledge management (KM) to create customer service value.

The context for the research hypotheses is the Spanish banking industry. The authors conducted a study including 76 banks and 1,832 customers of these banks. This paper uses the partial least squares method to conduct the data analysis.

The authors find support for all the hypotheses proposed in the model. The results show that service firms that are able to apply more knowledge or apply knowledge more effectively are likely to generate more benefits for their customers, and/or reduce their sacrifices, contributing significantly to a higher perception of service value.

The study focusses on one particular industry in a single point in time. A longitudinal analysis of a variety of service industries would enrich the study.

It is argued that KM constitutes a key capability for service firms for the delivery of service value. According to the research, if service firms want to improve the application of knowledge, it is important to focus on knowledge retention while they create new knowledge.

Although a considerable amount of research has been carried out in the fields of KM and customer value, there has been less research that has taken both into consideration simultaneously. This paper addresses this gap in the literature.

This study aims to examine the relationship between a firm's market orientation, product innovation success and market performance.

Data for the empirical research is obtained from a sample of innovative industrial enterprises based in Andalusia (Southern Spain), all of which were required to have introduced a new product in the preceding three years and to have more than 20 employees. Data collection was conducted by means of a postal survey of 294 firms. The respondents were either the director of the marketing department or the general manager. In all, 85 questionnaires were completed correctly by firms and included in the study, a response rate of 28.91 per cent.

The results support a positive relationship between market orientation and new product success, providing also partial confirmation of the moderating role of “product newness” in the relationship between market orientation and new product performance.

This work contributes to the literature as follows. First, it addresses the previously neglected question of the influence of MO on dimensions other than organisational performance (in the broad sense). The literature has suggested that MO improves the performance of innovations, but few studies have examined the relationship between MO and the characteristics of new products (such as degree of newness and success); nor have they examined the moderating role of degree of product newness. Second, the study provides empirical evidence that the relationship between MO and product innovation is influenced by the degree of product newness for the market (NM).

The purpose of this paper is to explore consumers' perceptions of price unfairness in services, what are its antecedents and when it is important for the consumer. Thus, the central question of this research is whether consumers care about how much profit the service company is making and whether there are significant differences to physical goods.

Building on justice and equity theory, a causal model is developed – which analyses the main antecedents (seller profits vs customer value), moderators and consequences of perceptions of price unfairness. Structural equation modelling has been applied to test the proposed model.

The lack of specific tools to measure perceptions of price fairness required the development of a multi‐item scale to capture the complexity of the evaluation. This instrument has been tested for reliability and validity in a variety of settings, with excellent results, and can be appropriate when using the survey as a data collection method. Also, the authors have argued that there should be significant differences due to the nature of the product – service industries vs physical goods– as well as due to the number of available alternatives that the buyer has in the market.

The validity of a new model is tested by means of an empirical research conducted in four different settings, two different services (automobile repair services and music concerts) and their related physical goods (automobiles and music CDs). A multi‐item scale is also developed to capture the complexity of price fairness perceptions. Finally, significant differences between contexts, as well as due to the number of available alternatives present in the marketplace are examined.

In recent years, practitioners have identified a number of problems with traditional performance management (PM) systems, arguing that PM is broken and needs to be fixed. In this chapter, we review criticisms of traditional PM practices that have been mentioned by journalists and practitioners and we consider the solutions that they have presented for addressing these concerns. We then consider these problems and solutions within the context of extant scholarly research and identify (a) what organizations should do going forward to improve PM practices (i.e., focus on feedback processes, ensure accountability throughout the PM system, and align the PM system with organizational strategy) and (b) what scholars should focus research attention on (i.e., technology, strategic alignment, and peer-to-peer accountability) in order to reduce the science-practice gap in this domain.

In this paper, the author advocates recognizing, developing, and promoting “critical interactionism” as a legitimate and pragmatically useful scholarly project. The author argues that critical interactionism includes different interactionist traditions, critical approaches, methodological styles, and sensitizing concepts – as long as they tell us something about how power and inequality operate. I review two fundamental elements of this project that constitute its past and likely future: (1) theoretical interventions that excavate critical insights, diversify founders, integrate critical theories, and promote interactionism's usefulness for critical inquiry and (2) empirically grounded conceptual interventions that shed light on generic processes of inequality reproduction. Although the larger discipline of sociology continues to marginalize interactionism yet selectively adopt its principles, critical interactionism has the potential to break through what David Maines called the fault line of consciousness. The promise of critical interactionism is that it can simultaneously make interactionism more relevant to our discipline and make our discipline more relevant to the social world.

To know the digital competence of rural teachers to carry out the tutoring process with members of the educational community through digital resources (teacher-student, teacher-families and teacher-teaching team). As specific objectives, gender, teaching specialties, interaction between gender*teaching speciality, and significant predictors were analysed.

The research was quantitative, with a non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive and inferential design.

The results showed an explorer-expert teacher, where the generalist teachers had a superior competence compared to the rest of the specialties. Gender and teaching speciality were significant predictors in the communication that the teacher has with all the agents involved, while the interaction of both predictors was only significant between the teacher-teaching team and teacher-families.

Another issue worth considering relates to the development of the classification tree for the use of digital resources in tutorial action. Due to lack of space, the proposal has focused on gender and particular subjects, but it would be interesting to focus on the dimensions of the instrument with regard to tutorial action with the different agents (students, teaching staff and families).

After reviewing the literature, the authors can conclude that very little quantitative research is focused on the level of self-perception of digital competence of teachers in rural schools. Furthermore, the teaching speciality of teachers has up until now hardly been taken into account as a variable that can determine the levels of digital competence. Not many studies have analysed the use of digital resources to communicate with the different members of the educational community.

Since the early modern age, the debt of the State was a constant source for concern to the Spanish governments. Episodes of defaults caused by enormous expenditure to keep the Empire slowly faded out until a certain reorganization of public finance was attained in the central decades of the nineteenth century. The core idea that finance ministers and economists, in general, had at that time was to balance the public budget controlling expenses, in order to handle the problem of public debt. However, alternative views on government finance existed. Focusing on a crucial period for the consolidation of Spanish liberal regime and its public finance, this chapter shows that, among a predominant concern for reducing public expenditure as the best way to stabilize the economy and promote economic growth, the character of Luis María Pastor emerges to support government expansionary policies financed with credit. Far from fearing deficit, Pastor, one of the leaders of the Spanish liberal school of economic thought, believed that investment in infrastructures financed through debt was the key to economic growth. Through a multiplicative effect, a program of public investment would enhance economic growth, eventually solving the long-term insufficiency of Spanish finance. This gives evidence that ideas on public finance of classical liberal economists were far from uniform, contributing to a more precise view on the body of doctrines of this school.

Beginning with the premise that complementary resources represent the most valuable resource combinations, theory is developed to explain the impact of complementary resources on firm boundary decisions. Uncertainty surrounding resource combinations or control of a complementary resource influences firm boundaries by impacting access to needed resources. An implication is that acquisition decisions and performance are influenced by prior investment. Resulting insights have competitive advantage implications of interest to both management research and practice.