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In today’s increasingly competitive environment, it is important to measure the service firm’s performance in the areas which contribute most significantly to the client’s overall satisfaction. Previous research indicates that marketing research clients are concerned with a research provider’s performance in four areas; product quality, service quality, cost management, and timeliness. A survey of 155 marketing research clients indicated that these clients perceive product quality as being most important in accomplishing their research objectives, followed in order by service quality, cost, and timeliness. The results of the study indicate that less than half of the clients were completely satisfied with the ability of their primary research supplier to save them money or to provide them with a useful analysis. A research provider that is capable of improving performance in these two areas may be able to create a competitive advantage that could lead to increased client satisfaction and improved customer loyalty. These research findings provide insights for other business services in assessing client needs and tracking client satisfaction.

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the existence and strength of the relationship between proactive environmental policies and brand equity for the winery. Results of this study suggest that consumer perceptions about product quality, consumer trust, consumer perceptions about pricing, and positive expectations for the consequences of the winery's actions undertaking the pro‐environmental policies, all have strong, positive relationships with the winery's brand equity. Trust in the winery and brand equity for the winery increased significantly when the winery in this study adopted proactive environmental business policies.

Points out that collaborative relationships, such as partnering between service suppliers and client firms, are often seen as a strategy for improving quality and reducing costs. Yet, successful relationship building depends on situational factors that serve to nurture and sustain the relationship. Sets forth a proposed framework and develops a decision model that managers can use to improve the process for deciding whether or not to partner with research suppliers. Understanding what it takes to make a partnership effective will enable managers to avoid unproductive and costly mistakes in relationship building.

Co‐branding is an increasingly popular technique marketers use in attempting to transfer the positive associations of the partner (constituent) brands to a newly formed co‐brand (composite brand). This research examines the effects of co‐branding on the brand equity of both the co‐branded product and the constituent brands that comprise it, both before and after product trial. It appears that co‐branding is a win/win strategy for both co‐branding partners regardless of whether the original brands are perceived by consumers as having high or low brand equity. Although low equity brands may benefit most from co‐branding, high equity brands are not denigrated even when paired with a low equity partner. Further, positive product trial seems to enhance consumers’ evaluations of co‐branded products, particularly those with a low equity constituent brand. Co‐branding strategies may be effective in exploiting a product performance advantage or in introducing a new product with an unfamiliar brand name.

We investigate the relationships between violence, drug use and methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) for women injection drug users (IDUs). The data presented here come from a longitudinal study of 233 IDUs both in and out of MMT in the San Francisco Bay Area. Each was interviewed five times over a period of three years, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Using grounded theory principals, we analyze 55 women's accounts of violence. We find that violence acts both as a barrier to entry to treatment and to successful treatment outcomes. Violence is related to drug use and treatment in several ways, primarily in that violence is a traumatic experience to which some women respond by using drugs. Violence may include forced drug use or methadone diversion. Violence may cause women to interrupt or postpone treatment. Finally, two women experienced violence from their treatment providers, which forced them to leave their programs. We suggest that in order to maximize successful treatment outcomes and reduce drug‐related harm for women, violence must be addressed in the treatment process.

In this chapter, practice-theoretical perspectives on the production of gender and childhood are extended by the theory of new materialism. A practice-theoretical view of masculinity(ies) radicalises the concept of doing gender and thereby makes it possible to show that gender is always co-produced as part of other complexes of praxes. Thus, the connection between masculinity(ies) and youth cultural praxes can be discussed. The chapter first elaborates theoretically the connections between masculinity and childhood research. We will explore how these theoretical and methodological thoughts might be used in empirical research on masculinity(ies) and boyhood by referring to our own study on children and young people riding stunt scooters in a medium-sized city in north-west Germany.

The purpose of this paper is to engage with a foundational gendered imaginary in Western medical and popular discourse regarding fetal sexual development. It is an imaginary that consists of dual narratives that bolster an oppositional complementary model of sex-gender. By these accounts male sexual development results from complex and multi-faceted processes generated by the Y chromosome while female sexual development is straightforward, articulated through a discourse of “default sex” (Jost, 1953). Such apparent truths fit seamlessly with the timeworn notion of maleness and masculinity as always already active, and femaleness and femininity always and inevitably passive. In other words, he does and she is.

Despite embryogenetic findings thoroughly debunking these ideas, contemporary medical and biological textbooks remain haunted by outdated androcentric models of sex development. This paper attends to biomedical and everyday understandings of sex and gender to demonstrate how fresh lines of inquiry produce conditions that enable new ways of understanding bodies and embodied experiences.

This paper demonstrates how new ways of thinking can lead to a new understanding with regards to sex, gender, bodies, and experiences.

This paper attends to biomedical and everyday understandings of sex and gender to demonstrate how fresh lines of inquiry produce conditions that enable new ways of understanding bodies and embodied experiences.

RLG's New Search System Debuts at Dartmouth Eureka, the new patron‐oriented search service from the Research Libraries Group, was previewed at Dartmouth College in January and will be put through its paces by campus users for the next six months. Dartmouth users will have access to Eureka through the college's campus‐wide information system.