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As consumers interact with various small businesses, they develop a mental image, called a prototype, to represent what small businesses are as a generalized, conceptual category. However, prior research has said little about what this small business prototype entails. Thus, the aim of this study is to explore consumers’ perceptions of the prototypical small business by identifying common attributes among small businesses that differentiate them from large businesses.

This study undertakes a thorough review of the relevant consumer research literature for the attributes that consumers use to evaluate small businesses. Then, using a contemporary parallel analysis approach, it conducts an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on a sample of 266 university students who were asked to evaluate how common those attributes are of small businesses. A second comparative EFA for large businesses is also conducted.

The EFA reveals two dimensions on which consumers evaluate small businesses: a sincere–authentic dimension and a disruptive–innovative dimension. Specifically, consumers view the prototypical small business to be relatively high on sincere–authentic and moderate on disruptive–innovative dimensions.

Through a comprehensive literature review and exploratory analysis, this study provides a novel understanding of consumers’ conceptualizations of small businesses. In studying the mental image consumers associate with the prototypical small business, this research fills a significant gap in the existing literature and provides important insights for practitioners and researchers alike.

The purpose of this study is to understand the destination image perceptions about Australia – a Western culture country – as held by the rapidly increasing, high spending, culturally dissimilar new segment of travellers, the Emiratis[1] from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

A qualitative methodology was used to understand the cognitive, affective and conative images of Australia. A structured categorisation matrix was used to analyse the data so that only aspects fitting the matrix were selected.

Within the cognitive variable, Australia was found to be pleasant, family oriented, a fun place, laid back and the local people friendly. From an affective factor perspective, Australia was seen as being exciting, because of the variety of activities available for these tourists. Exciting was expressed by words like fantastic, amazing and extreme experience. In terms of the conative variable most of the Emirati tourists expressed strong feelings to go back to Australia and to even re-visit with friends. They also mentioned that they would recommend Australia to family and friends.

A limitation of this study was that our sample comprised informants mainly from the Emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the two largest Emirates of the nation. The study offers destination marketing organisations’ (DMOs) insights into Emirati travellers’ perceptions about Australia, which would benefit destination marketing.

This study examines the under researched area of how Australia – with its liberal Western culture – could be better marketed to the growing numbers of culturally conservative, high spending Emirati outbound tourists from the officially Islamic UAE, and also more generally to the socio-culturally homogeneous Gulf Cooperation Council region that the UAE is part of. Whilst destination image is an intensively analysed topic within the realm of tourism research, and reportedly a powerful influence on destination choice, the extant literature on how Australia is perceived as a travel destination by Emiratis is scant. For DMO’s attempting to attract wealthy Emirati tourists into Australia, this research is valuable and timely, as several Emiratis are seeking newer travel destinations away from the Western hemisphere, where the general anti-Arab/Islamic sentiments are currently quite strong.

Over the last twelve years, an innovative community engagement practice has immersed undergraduate students enrolled in a 300-level leadership course in adaptive leadership by giving them power to make progress on complex challenges at the local level. This unique partnership between a university, donors, and a local United Way, makes students equal partners in awarding and distributing up to $10,000 per year to local organizations seeking to meet a complex community need. Within a framework detailed in a Memorandum of Understanding established among the three partners, students create a request for proposals (RFP), distribute RFPs, review proposals, visit sites, and determine which priorities to fund that are in alignment with both the donors’ and United Way’s vision. The experience culminates in a formal recommendation to the United Way Board of Directors and the donors for approval and allocation of funds. Throughout the process, the President/ CEO of the United Way, the instructors of the course, and the donors mentor the students directly. A preliminary study exploring the student learning outcomes for past program participants found positive outcomes related to community involvement, teamwork, civic engagement, and critical thinking.

This study aims to shed some light on destination image formation by exploring whether image is altered as a result of tourists’ experience intensity with a destination.

A visitor experience intensity index was developed based on the amount of events and attractions visitors have already attended/visited or were planning to attend/visit during their stay. The data were collected using self-administered questionnaires and the total sample consisted of 400 tourists in Linz, Austria. Principal component analysis, multivariate analysis of variance and discriminant analysis were applied to analyse the data.

The findings indicate that the higher the experience intensity score, the more favourable the cognitive and affective evaluations of destination image, indicating that tourists’ experiences are central in the formation of the in situ image.

The “level of psychological involvement” with the destination should be considered by future studies, as this paper focussed on level of experience intensity.

This paper supports the effective and innovative solutions for place marketing and branding of tourist destinations such as promoting experiences that further enhance destination image. The study also assists places with bad reputation or negative image, like the selected case study (Linz, Austria), in repositioning themselves as attractive experience providers.

The paper’s originality lies in applying “mere exposure theory” in tourism and using an innovative way of measuring tourists’ experience through an intensity index. The study addresses a significant, but still neglected image determinant, that of experience intensity, contributing to a better understanding of the in situ destination image formation process.

To examine how social media restrict and recreate messages within current interactionist scripts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), this study applies a framework of digital reflexivity highlighting stages of information flow. It applies the symbolic interaction concept of emotional events to analyze the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi and the role of social media in disseminating Bouazizi’s act as one catalyst of the MENA citizen uprisings. The role of social media in the “Arab Spring” merits investigation because social media provide opportunities to examine shifting identities, interactions, and actions of citizen activists in the MENA uprisings. This study is important and timely because little symbolic interactionist scholarship exists on MENA identities and social movements, or on crowd interaction and activism outside the West. The nuanced nature of MENA political activism and complex processes of the development of activists’ “mutable” selves (Zurcher, 1977) are fluid and resistant to symbolically defined social roles, interactionist scripts and reflexivity, and public communication practices in a MENA under political and social transition.