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Three types of industrial buyer-seller relational process models are available: joining theory, stage theory, and state theory. However, historically, these models have developed based on the knowledge and cultural context of the Western world. Several researchers note that national culture may have an impact on international industrial buyer-seller relationships. Including culture in the models is highly important, especially as the business environment is increasingly more global and different countries have different business cultures. The goal of this paper is to define the most suitable industrial buyer-seller relational process models for describing relationships in various contexts. The paper includes a through literature review and a single case study in order to reach this objective. A new state theory model evolved during the research. It consists of two beginning states: searching and starting; four purely middles states: constant/static, decline, growth, and troubled; and a purely end state: termination. The state of dormant/inert is both a middle state and an end state, that is, when the relational actors are not in contact does not mean that the relationship has ended, but instead, for example, new legislation may have been implemented, which requires the actors to evaluate their relationship and its future. A relationship goes through the two beginning states in the order mentioned above, but after that, any state may occur.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution of conversation as an element of interaction that occurs in a hairdressing service encounter with the aim of seeking to understand variations in conversation between “short” and “long‐term” clients; how conversation contributes to the development of “commercial friendships”; and how relationships develop through conversation.

Quota sampling is used to select eight hairdressing service encounters in one Australian salon for recording and subsequent interviews with clients. Quotas address gender and duration of continued patronage. Conversations and interviews were analysed thematically and using conversation analysis.

The progress and evolution of conversations varied between short and long‐term customers; topics also varied by this classification as well as gender. Conversation played an important function with respect to building friendship with the service provider; conversation also assisted in the development of long‐term relationships.

Apart from the small sample, the study was highly contextualised because it investigated encounters in a single hairdressing salon and explored perceptions of the service conversation from the perspective of only one party to the conversation, the client.

The findings point out the important role non‐task conversation can play in retaining customers in people‐processing services. Service providers perhaps can achieve more to improve the service experience and satisfaction of customers by placing less emphasis on the need for physical resources or promotion, instead focussing on the intangible of improving the conversation skills of their providers. More non‐task conversation and less task‐related talk may also facilitate a closer relationship between hairdresser and client. Further research on the nature and role of conversation during service encounters should offer guidance for improving the conversation skills of service providers and in improving customer retention.

This study specifically focuses on the role and nature of non‐task conversation as a specific aspect contributing to a customer's service encounter experience in a people processing service.

Adventure training (AT) as a movement has its origins in outdoor‐based experiential programs such as “outward bound”. Recently, educators have questioned the educational value of the “outdoor” component of AT and there is an opinion that it is the novelty of the setting/activities and the provision of psychological (rather than physical) risk that are its key elements. With this in mind, indoor adventure training (IAT) offers new possibilities for management training and development. Indoor‐based experiential education removes uncontrollable outdoor factors such as climate, danger, emotional distress and the need for physical abilities. These outdoor factors can be replaced by educational drama elements that encourage engagement, fantasy and meaning through theatre form. In this paper the theoretical development of IAT is discussed and an outline is given of a revolutionary IAT approach that immerses participants in a themed dramatic experience with the purpose of developing such things as learning about teamwork, problem solving and communication skills.

To describe and discuss the use of educational drama in marketing education, including its relative advantages to both learners and trainers.

The paper involves exploratory qualitative research, using sentence completion and reflective diaries. The approach was to probe in an open‐ended way what students believed they had learnt and gained from the drama, and why; how did the drama affect them; how did they view marketing after the drama; and how did they compare the educational drama to traditional “chalk and talk” classes.

The interpretive qualitative results of the study indicated a very high student acceptance of drama as an educational experience, a widely held view that even though it was drama it had actually enhanced the realism of the learning experience, a greater appreciation of the array and complexity of the various roles in the marketing environment and the alternative perpectives possible, an expressed enhancement of their sense of empathy through the drama, a heightened sense of personal enrichment for the experience as an individual, and expressed enthusiasm for its career simulation benefits.

The study was exploratory and educational drama needs further testing under various contexts, constraints, and controls.

The student and instructor enthusiasm for the benefits, including the perception of enhanced realism, bodes well for practical applications. There is no obvious reason why it could not be used to good effect in commercial, industrial, public sector and not‐for‐profit contexts.

The researchers were not able to locate any other study examining the use and benefits of educational drama within a marketing setting such as this one. Used effectively, educational drama is seen to be a valuable learning and experiential tool.

The industrial buyer-seller relational process models from the Eastern and Western worlds have not been combined. The Western world has dominated the development of the models, while there exist only a very limited amount of guanxi development models from the East. This paper is exploratory in nature, focusing on combining the development of these two worlds into one intercultural model. Four case relationships verify the proposed model.

This paper focuses on only one cultural context outside of the West, that is to say, China. In order to justify the model to be completely an intercultural one, research in other cultural contexts is necessary.

The role of tourism/hospitality industry management in ensuring service quality is now generally regarded as being of considerable importance. Notwithstanding this, relatively little is known about the preconceptions and expectations regarding the management role that potential tourism/hospitality industry employees bring to the workplace. This study has examined the expected problem‐solving styles of hospitality industry management when faced with a complaint about visitor‐staff conflict. The sample was drawn from school leavers in a major district community, many of whom would soon seek employment and careers in the tourism/hospitality industry. Two major problem‐solving styles were identified, one involving Investigation of the complaint, and one involving Avoidance and possibly rudeness. Major Service Quality Ideals were also identified as predictors of each management problem‐solving style. Finally, the implications of these findings for tourism/hospitality industry management and for employees are explored.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how routine violence seeps into the interstices of social life. Routine violence is part of a continuum of violence that extends from intimate violence to large-scale wars. It is gendered/racialized/classed and it is often invisible because it is normalized in everyday life.

Using cases from India we illustrate facets of routine violence and then use the frame to discuss some examples from the United States.

We discuss the social implications of routine violence including the significant harm on large sections of people in today’s world.

We meld theoretical discussions about violence associated with states with scholarship on violence against women; we use Indian activists’ concepts of routine violence and examine routine violence in the United States.

Social interaction is a vital facet of life for all age‐groups; for older individuals, the exercise of interpersonal exchange, and the expectation of an accompanying sense of well‐being, can assume an even greater importance when other aspects of life no longer provide opportunities for positive reward. Sociability experiences are likely to influence major indicators of both emotion and cognition, such as life and context satisfaction. The demonstration of personal competence, as may be found in the exercise of problem‐solving strategies, is also an important facility for seniors. This study of both domestic and international senior tourists has examined preferences for travel planning as the expression of a measure of personal control that are associated with sociability needs in regard to family and friends, cultural contacts, entertainment and nightlife, and to retail experiences. Also examined was the extent to which various sociability needs and planning control preferences influence measures of destination satisfaction, intention to return and also a willingness to recommend the destination. This study has found that seniors with higher sociability needs for cultural contact and associated with family and friends would more likely perceive the necessity to prepare for their trip, and also would express higher levels of satisfaction; destination satisfaction was also found to be associated with both the expressed intention to return to the destination, and also a willingness to recommend the destination to others; travel planning was not found to be associated with destination evaluative measures. Implications of these findings for destination managers and for researchers in the senior travel domain are considered.

The emergence of “interorganizational marketing” as a hot topic leads to one key question: can interorganizational governance mechanisms (socialization, incentives, and monitoring) offered by marketing theory be applied to China, an emerging economy characterized by the Chinese guanxi relationship? The purpose of this paper is to seek to answer this question by introducing the importance of guanxi roles and by illustrating how to apply proper governance mechanisms to roles activation in Chinese business practice. The paper finds that the answer is “yes” and develops a theoretical model to show such interactions.

The paper applies interorganizational strategies to interpersonal relationships. Guanxi was categorized into three categories – family members, helpers and business partners – which meet each of the three governance mechanisms (in addition to favoring exchange as a special and typical Chinese governance mechanism) in the model.

Through ex post role activation, the paper argues that guanxi is a dynamic balance and the ways in which various governance mechanisms can set roles will lead to the roles either changing (reinforcement or dilution) or switching (helper to business partner, and vice versa). It seems futile to implement external governance mechanisms on family ties (the main category of guanxi) that have been firmly rooted in Chinese culture. On the other hand, applying the four mentioned governance mechanisms could reinforce, maintain, or dilute helper and business partner roles, or even make it possible to switch from one to another.

The paper proposes a new concept regarding relationship marketing, namely the application of governance mechanisms to interpersonal relationships, which provides people doing business in China with a new perspective for reference.