Thomas Olzak, James Sabovik, Jason Boomer and Robert M. Keefer
Marguerite Moore and Jason M. Carpenter
This paper aims to examine differences in generational perceptions of market cues related to price, quality and shopping enjoyment in the apparel retailing context.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine differences in generational perceptions of market cues related to price, quality and shopping enjoyment in the apparel retailing context.
Design/methodology/approach
A cross‐section of US apparel consumers (n=342) constitutes the sample for the study. Analysis of variance and multiple comparisons are used to investigate differences in market cue perception among US generational cohorts.
Findings
Results indicate significant differences in the cohorts in terms of their perception of quality related to country‐of‐origin, price consciousness, prestige sensitivity and shopping enjoyment.
Research limitations/implications
The results should not be extrapolated to markets outside of the USA. Further, the sample characteristics should be considered for interpretation and application of the results for US markets.
Practical implications
The findings related to the market cues provide both operational and strategic direction for apparel marketers and retailers in terms of country‐of‐origin quality, pricing policy and managerial efforts to control the shopping experience.
Originality/value
The research expands upon the general research into US generational cohorts and consumer behavior by incorporating the entire social cycle within a single study: millennials, the thirteenth generation, the baby boomers and the silent generation.
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Win Shih and Martha Allen
The paper aims to discuss the expectations and needs of Generation Y students for higher education specifically targeting issues relating to libraries and library management.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to discuss the expectations and needs of Generation Y students for higher education specifically targeting issues relating to libraries and library management.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper provides a brief overview of Generation Y personality traits and characteristics. This is followed by a discussion of organizational culture, explaining how to effectively adapt to meet the expectations of the Generation Y students. Two academic libraries' programs designed to meet the needs of the new learners are discussed.
Findings
The paper recognizes the need to address the challenges of the new learners from all levels of library management and provides strategies and programs to enable positive change within the library culture.
Originality/value
The paper highlights generational differences of current higher educational students and library staff and provides practical solutions to enable positive change within library organizational culture.
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Arvid Hoffmann, Simon McNair and Jason Pallant
The purpose of the paper is to examine how psychological characteristics predict membership of and transitions between states of higher vs lower financial vulnerability – and vice…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to examine how psychological characteristics predict membership of and transitions between states of higher vs lower financial vulnerability – and vice versa – over time.
Design/methodology/approach
This research uses a dynamic latent class model (latent transition analysis) to explore the dynamics of consumers’ financial vulnerability over time using longitudinal data obtained by repeatedly administering a measure of financial vulnerability.
Findings
This research finds that consumers in a state of lower vulnerability are “fragile” in having a relatively high likelihood of moving to a state of higher vulnerability, whereas those in a state of higher vulnerability are “entrenched” in having a relatively low likelihood of moving to a state of lower vulnerability. This pattern of results is called the “financial vulnerability trap.” While financial self-efficacy explains state membership, the consideration of future consequences drives state transitions.
Research limitations/implications
Future research could follow consumers over a longer period and consider the role of alternative psychological characteristics besides those examined.
Practical implications
This research provides practitioners with actionable insights regarding the drivers of changes in consumers’ financial vulnerability across time, showing the value of financial self-efficacy and the consideration of future consequences when developing strategies to prevent consumers from sliding from a state of lower to higher financial vulnerability over time.
Originality/value
There is scant research on financial vulnerability. Further, prior research has not examined whether and how consumers’ psychological characteristics help explain their membership of and transitions between states of different levels of financial vulnerability over time.
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This article explores aspects of separation from “post-traditional” religiosity characteristic of certain late/post-modern affiliations. To do so, I analyze in-depth interviews…
Abstract
This article explores aspects of separation from “post-traditional” religiosity characteristic of certain late/post-modern affiliations. To do so, I analyze in-depth interviews with 44 individuals who formerly identified with straightedge – a clean-living youth-oriented scene tightly bound with hardcore music that is centered on abstinence from intoxicants – about their experiences transitioning through associated music assembly rituals. While features of hardcore music assemblies – e.g. moshing, slamdancing, sing-a-longs – have long been treated as symbolic connections that potentially conjure the religious as conceptualized in Émile Durkheim's “effervescence” and the liminality of Victor Turner's “communitas,” data on transitions from these features of ritual remain scant. Ex-straightedgers generally believed the sorts of deep connections they professed to experience in hardcore rituals as youths were not necessarily currently accessible to them, nor were they replicable elsewhere. Findings then ultimately suggest some post-traditional religious experiences might now be profitably considered in terms of the life course, which has itself transformed alongside the proliferation of newer late/post-modern affiliations and communities.
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The purpose of this paper is to argue for an archaeological expedition of sorts, to search for and to uncover a host of stories which might assist us in piecing together a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to argue for an archaeological expedition of sorts, to search for and to uncover a host of stories which might assist us in piecing together a framework worth dedicating our future lives to understanding ageing.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a theoretical paper on ageing.
Findings
An individual's experience of ageing is integrally bound to questions of culture – particularly the systems of meaning within culture – and context. Just as there is not “one true story of aging”, so the paper suggests that we must have multiple narratives to assist us in building our own models of successful ageing.
Originality/value
Narratives of successful ageing, like all narratives, are never told in a vacuum. Rather, there must be those who are able to hear them, often stretching themselves beyond their own experiences, even beyond their own cultural frameworks. This has strong implications for researchers of successful ageing: together, we must try to meet the challenge of listening to diversity.
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Jason M. Carpenter and Vikranth Balija
The purpose of this paper is to provide a general understanding of retail format choice among consumer electronics shoppers in the US market.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a general understanding of retail format choice among consumer electronics shoppers in the US market.
Design/methodology/approach
US consumer electronics shoppers (n=252) were surveyed via telephone. Linear regression was used to evaluate the data.
Findings
Profiles shopper groups who frequent specific retail formats (department stores, specialty stores, discounters, category killers, internet‐only retailers, and catalogs) based on demographic characteristics (gender, age, education, income) and desired retail attributes (price competitiveness, customer service, product selection, presence of new products, hours of operation, ease of access to the retailer, store atmosphere).
Research limitations/implications
Although general observations and predictions about the demographic variables and important retail attributes for shopper groups are possible, future studies could expand upon this exploratory work by initiating comparisons of specific retail formats and examining cross‐shopping behavior among consumer electronics shoppers.
Practical implications
This paper provides consumer electronics retailers with specific knowledge of the attributes that consumers consider to be important when making format choices and identifies the demographic characteristics of shoppers who frequent each retail format.
Originality/value
This exploratory study uses demographics and retail attributes to profile consumer electronics shoppers of each major retail format in the USA. The paper is unique because the investigation of retail format choice among consumer electronics shoppers has been very limited.
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Yiga Sirajje, Ernest Abaho, Isa Nsereko, Edith Mwebaza Basalirwa, Ngoma Muhammed and Juma Wasswa Balunywa
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between generational persona, adaptability tendencies and entrepreneurial behavior. The paper also aims at testing the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between generational persona, adaptability tendencies and entrepreneurial behavior. The paper also aims at testing the mediating role of adaptability tendencies in the relationship between generational persona and entrepreneurial behavior among millennial entrepreneurs in an African setting.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a quantitative methodological approach with a cross-sectional, questionnaire survey and correlational design where hypotheses were statistically tested using Structural Equation Modelling based on survey data (n = 382) from millennial entrepreneurs in Kampala Uganda.
Findings
Drawing on the sample of 382 millennial entrepreneurs in Kampala, findings show that both generational persona and adaptability tendencies are positively and significantly associated with entrepreneurial behavior. Results further indicate that adaptability tendencies partially mediates the relationship between generational persona and entrepreneurial behavior among millennial entrepreneurs.
Research limitations/implications
This study focused only on millennial entrepreneurs in Kampala Uganda ignoring other equally important groups of entrepreneurs like the baby boomers, generation Xers, generation Y and others. As such, the findings of this research do not entirely apply to all entrepreneurs in the country and this may have affected the generalizability of the results. Therefore, future studies can be done on the entrepreneurial behavior focusing on all entrepreneurs from all generations. Also, the study used a quantitative approach, future studies should consider a mixed methodology, which may give a more holistic understanding of entrepreneurial behavior.
Practical implications
In practice, millennial entrepreneurs may use the results of the study to see how they can improve their performance for their businesses to benefit. Specifically, they ought to focus on adaptability, and generational persona to exhibit those entrepreneurial behaviors which will generally lead to the improvement of their businesses.
Originality/value
To the authors’ knowledge, this study provides a shred of initial empirical evidence on the relationship between generational persona, adaptability tendencies and entrepreneurial behavior using evidence from a low developed African country Uganda. Mostly, this study provides initial evidence of the mediating role of adaptability tendencies in the relationship between generational persona and entrepreneurial behavior. This study incorporates the Generational Cohort Theory and the Complex Adaptive Systems Theory into an applied theoretical framework that explains entrepreneurial behavior. More still, this study answers the call for more empirical studies on entrepreneurial behavior.
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Jason Wallin, Jeffrey Podoshen and Vivek Venkatesh
The second wave (true Norwegian) black metal music scene has garnered attention for its ostensible negative impact upon contemporary consumption. Producers and consumers of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The second wave (true Norwegian) black metal music scene has garnered attention for its ostensible negative impact upon contemporary consumption. Producers and consumers of the scene, as potential heretics, have been associated with acts of church burning, Satanism, murder, and violence. Such actions have circulated under the signifier of evil, and have been associated with anti-Christian semiotics and pagan practices. Contemporary media has positioned such acts of evil beyond rational comprehension via the deployment of a rhetoric of evil. This enframement has evaded the psychoanalytic question of evil and the significant role of negative ethics in theorizing the allure and potential impact of black metal music. The purpose of this paper is to examine the evil in the music scene, its relation to ID evil, and its consumption and production practices.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing upon Zizek’s (2006) development of evil through Lacan’s three registers, this paper examines evil production and consumption through a detailed analysis of true Norwegian black metal. The authors rehabilitate the complex corridors of evil against its conceptual collapse as merely the ontological absence of good. Via Zizek, the authors offer a reconsideration of the anti-establishment violent activities enacted by some proponents of black metal ideology. Herein, the authors deploy a reading of ideological evil in order to interrogate the role of enjoyment and desire at work in the black metal scene.
Findings
After extensive immersion in the true Norwegian black metal scene, the authors elucidate on the key issues surrounding good, evil and Satanism, and their relationships to production and consumption. What many might term as “evil” is far more complex than what appears on the surface-level aesthetics.
Originality/value
While there have been examinations of the black metal scene, there has been scant literature that delves deep into the symbolism of the Satanic and the evil beyond the surface. This paper sheds light on the value of exploring evil in a scene as something that is much more than the mere absence of what is considered good.