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The Commonwealth of Australia Department of Supply, an organization in some respects not unlike the UK Department of Defence Procurement Executive operates a number of research laboratories and factories, staffed by some 1600 or so scientists and engineers and employs 20,000 non‐scientists/engineers, tradesmen, and the like.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked, which may be consulted in the Library.

The pleasant surroundings at Exeter University, which is set in a very beautiful park, were a factor in the success of this year's Conference. Sessions were held in the Washington Singer Laboratories, meals served in the spacious Devonshire House Refectory, whilst residential accommodation was at the new Duryard Halls of Residence, in three ‘houses’ but served by a Central Dining Hall. The main disadvantage was the distance between residence and sessions, which had to be overcome by coach transport, but which was in some measure offset by the warm sunny weather.

There are several studies about the adoption of e-commerce for small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) that separately, and in a dispersed manner, examine different theoretical approaches. The purpose of this paper is to unify a set of variables to form an integrated model of measurement of the adoption of e-commerce for SMEs.

Based on an extensive review of empirical studies focused on the adoption of e-commerce in SMEs, a grouped and integrated model of e-commerce among SMEs was constructed. It was built upon the methodology of psychometrics and was subsequently statistically tested for reliability and validity. A broad study has not been carried out. Thus, the small sample size does not allow the estimation of this model’s predictability.

This paper proposes a final model, comprising 14 variables (82 items), grouping the significant effects of e-commerce adoption.

This tool is feasible, offering an initial model enabling detailed examination of variables affecting the adoption of e-commerce in SMEs. It contributes significantly to the development of this line of research.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to explore how preservice teachers in a young adult literature course critically conceptualize discussions in school spaces about race and police/community relations; and to understand the constraints and affordances of using the young adult (YA) novel, All American Boys, as a critical literacy tool for discussing race and police/community relations.

This qualitative exploratory case study (Stake, 1995) investigated 24 pre-service teachers in two university YA literature courses as they read and discussed All American Boys. Thematic analysis consisted of open coding through the theoretical lenses of critical literacy and critical race theory.

Pre-service English language arts teachers largely thought that while race and police relations was important and the YA book was powerful, it was too political. Their fears about what might happen lead to privileging the role of neutrality as the desired goal for teachers when tackling difficult conversations about racial injustice in America. Although students made some shifts in terms of moving from neutral to more critical stances, three sub-themes of neutrality were predominant: a need for both sides of the story, the view that all beliefs are valid and the belief that we are all humans therefore all lives matter equally.

A search at the time of this study yielded few research tackling racial injustice and community/police relations through YA literature in the classroom. This study is important as stories of police brutality and racism are all too common and adolescents are too often the victims.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the digital divide has a moderating effect on the technological factors that affect the adoption of electronic commerce.

This study proposes an exploratory empirical model that integrates the basic variables of e-commerce adoption through the use of the technology adoption model, making an extension with the facilitating conditions and the digital divide as a moderating variable. A digital survey was randomly distributed in Colombia, reaching a final sample of 745 electronic buyers.

The explanatory result validates that the perception of the digital divide negatively moderates the influence of the variables related to internet technology on the use of e-commerce.

This one of the first studies that analyzes the effect of the digital divide on the adoption of e-commerce.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the social media profiles of logistics service providers, and understand how they use social media for elevating their services and differentiating their brands across industrial partners.

A content analysis was conducted on 3,215 social media posts, which were gathered from the official Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn pages of seven logistics service providers operating in Turkey.

The results demonstrated that logistics service providers engage with multiple social media channels with different branding motives, and that each company has a unique social media profile. The benchmarking analysis also revealed the branding strategies commonly pursued by the companies, and also indicated the alternative themes that differentiate their brands across their competitors.

The findings contribute to the literature on the utilization of social media by business-to-business companies, particularly for logistics service providers, and recommend a frame of benchmarks for practitioners in the development of more effective social media branding strategies in services context.

Studies explaining the social media engagement of business-to-business companies in service sector are lacking, and also, the services branding literature in the context of social media is rather scarce. This study investigates the social media profiles of logistics service providers and explores how they use social media for branding their services.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the utilization and goals of digital marketing, and examines factors that influence the adoption and use of digital marketing channels in SMEs.

The data comprises semi-structured theme interviews in SMEs among 16 managers and 421 survey respondents in Central Finland.

The results of this study reveal that SMEs seem not use the full potential of the new digital tools, and so are not deriving benefit from the opportunities they provide. Furthermore, the results also raise the question of whether SMEs have understood the fundamental change in the nature of communication brought about by digitization.

The data comes from one region and thus the research context limits the generalizability of the results.

SMEs seem not to be keeping pace with digital developments, mostly due to the lack of knowledge of digital marketing. Most of the studied SMEs do not apply the full potential of the new digital tools and hence are not benefitting fully from them.

Discussions on the future regional development of SMEs have called for training programmes to help SMEs exploit digitization. This is something that the government should take note of.

Whereas the adoption process of new technologies such as IT in general and the internet in particular have been examined in the SME literature, this is among the first studies examining adoption and usage of digital tools from the marketing perspective.

The internet has made it possible to diffuse totally digitized products on a very large scale. The newspaper business is one of the sectors that has been most affected by this technological revolution. Given such products’ uneven commercial success, an analysis of the literature suggests that these mixed results could be explained by the digitized nature of the product combined with a price judged too high. Both these elements reduce the perceived global value of the digital support compared with the print version on paper. To test this proposition, the authors have constructed an experimental design, manipulating the format (digital newspaper vs. print newspaper) and the price (high vs low). The results show that newspaper digitization significantly reduces perceived global value for the consumer compared with the print format. The authors also show that the perceived intangibility of the product exerts a more complex effect on perceived global value: this effect depends on both the nature of the intangibility (mental vs physical) and the cost and benefit analysis.

An experimental study was conducted with two factors: digitalization (print vs digital format) and price (low vs high). The authors carried out a mixed-factor variance analysis and follow Preacher and Hayes procedure to test the hypothesis. A sample of 387 undergraduate students was interviewed in laboratory.

The results show that newspaper digitization significantly reduces (i.e. destroys) perceived global value for the consumer (i.e. it destroys value), compared to the print format. The reuslts also show that the perceived intangibility of the product exerts a more complex effect on perceived global value: this effect depends at the same time on the nature of the intangibility (mental vs physical) and the account taken of costs and benefits.

One major result is the fact that digitizing newspaper strongly destroys its perceived global value for the consumer, compared to the physical alternative. To explain this phenomenon, the product’s perceived intangibility had been considered, as well as how this is related to the perceived costs and benefits. It appears that it has an overall direct negative effect on perceived value; therefore, the more a newspaper format is perceived as physically intangible, the more its perceived global value decreases. Results shows that this loss of value can be counteracted in two different ways, through the indirect effects of costs and benefits.

This paper aims to posit the central argument that traditional media of old presented a clear, ordered world of communication management for organisations to extol their corporate social responsibility (CSR) credentials. In contrast to this, new Web 2.0 social media is increasingly being used by activists and hactivists to challenge corporate communication CSR messages and does so by highlighting instances and examples of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) (Jones et al., 2009; Tench et al., 2012).

The paper reports on research data from the European Communication Monitor, 2010, 2011 and 2012 (www.communicationmonitor.eu/) and draws on work already published in this area (Tench et al., 2009; Verhoeven et al., 2012; Zerfass et al., 2010, 2011) to illustrate the unruly, unregulated Web 2.0 social media communication landscape in Europe. A range of literature is drawn on to provide the theoretical context for an exploration of issues that surround social media.

In late modernity (Giddens, 1990), communication comes in many guises. Social media is one guise and it has re-shaped as well as transformed the nature of communications and the relationship between organisations and their stakeholders.

Communicating CSR in the Wild West of social media requires diplomatic and political nous, as well as awareness and knowledge of the dangers and pitfalls of CSI. The data reported on in this paper well illustrate the above points and set out scenarios for future development of corporate communication of CSR through and with social media.