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Like many organisations, the Army is preparing itself for significant population changes in the 1990s. The demographic trough means that there will be something like 25% fewer 16–19 year olds in 1995 than there were in 1985. These statistics have a significant bearing on the recruiting environment for the Army, because it will continue to need large numbers of young men and women to consider the armed forces as a career choice throughout this period.

Secure mental health services in one UK region have acted within a network to develop a range of involvement practices. A new quality benchmarking tool has been created to appraise the implementation of these involvement practices. The purpose of this paper is to report upon a qualitative evaluation of this development.

Staff and service users involved in the co-production of the benchmarking tool were engaged in a series of focus groups and participatory inquiry approaches enacted in the course of scheduled network meetings. Data thus collected was subject to thematic analysis.

Four distinct themes were identified which were titled: Taking time, taking care; The value not the label; An instrument of the network; and All people working together. These are discussed in relation to recent theorising of co-production.

Effectively, this study represents a case study of developments within one region. As such, the findings may have limited transferability to other contexts.

Staff and service users can work together effectively to the benefit of each other and overall forensic services. The benchmarking tool provides a readymade mechanism to appraise quality improvements.

Despite a prevailing culture of competition in wider health-care policy, cooperation leads to enhanced quality.

The benchmarking tool is a unique development of a longstanding involvement network, demonstrating the positive implications for enacting co-production within secure services.

Self-gifting is a performative process in which consumers purchase products for themselves. The literature to date remains silent on a determination and connection between the extents of post-purchase regret resulting from self-gifting behavior. The purpose of this paper is to examine identification and connection of self-gifting antecedents, self-gifting and the effect on post purchase regret.

This study claims the two antecedents of hedonistic shopping and indulgence drive self-gifting behaviors and the attendant regret. A total of 307 shoppers responded to a series of statements concerning the relationships between antecedents of self-gifting behavior and the effect on post-purchase regret. Self-gifting is a multi-dimensional construct, consisting of therapeutic, celebratory, reward and hedonistic imports. Confirmatory factor analysis and AMOS path modeling enabled examination of relationships between the consumer traits of hedonistic shopping and indulgence and the four self-gifting concepts.

Hedonic and indulgent shoppers engage in self-gifting for different reasons. A strong and positive relationship was identified between hedonic shoppers and reward, hedonic, therapeutic and celebratory self-gift motivations. hedonic shoppers aligned with indulgent shoppers who also engaged the four self-gifting concepts. The only regret concerning purchase of self-gifts was evident in the therapeutic and celebratory self-gift motivations.

A major limitation was the age range specification of 18 to 45 years which meant the omission of older generations of regular and experienced shoppers. This study emphasizes the importance of variations in self-gift behaviors and of post-purchase consumer regret.

This research is the first examination of an hedonic attitude to shopping and indulgent antecedents to self-gift purchasing, the concepts of self-gift motivations and their effect on post-purchase regret.

This paper aims to investigate the role of store brands as a time- and money-saving heuristic in the context of an omnipresent store brand hierarchy. Drawing on the work of Tversky and Kahneman (1982), it proposes that the store brand hierarchy is characterised by many of the traits of frequently used heuristics employed by grocery shoppers.

Based on Chaiken’s (1980) model of information processing and Stigler’s (1961) perspective on the economics of information search, the study deductively establishes a model of store brand proneness to reveal the role of store brands as time- and money-saving heuristic. The model is tested on a sample of 535 US households using structural equation modelling and subsequent multigroup analysis based on two subsamples of households experiencing high financial pressure but who differ in terms of time pressure.

The findings provide strong support for store brands as a time- and money-saving heuristic and as a substitute for price search among households experiencing financial and time pressures.

The main limitation is that the study is based on a sample of households located in one region of the US market.

Retailers need to be aware that any extension of the store brand portfolio beyond the traditional multi-tiered price/quality hierarchy risks undermining what has emerged to be a valuable heuristic used by certain shoppers.

This study extends our understanding of the role of store brands in the marketplace by going beyond their conceptualisation as a competitive device used by retailers to instead position them as a decision-making tool used by consumers. It also deepens our understanding of the boundary between rational search activities and the transition to the use of frequently flawed heuristics within the shopping process.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

This chapter focuses on individuals’ mental representations of complex decision problems in transportation. An overview of approaches and techniques in this recent area of research is given as well as an illustration. The illustration concerns an application of CNET (causal network elicitation technique) to measure mental representations in a shopping activity scheduling task. The presence of an online shopping alternative is varied to investigate the influence of an online alternative on how individuals represent the choice problem.

Mental-model and means-ends-chain theories are discussed. These theories state that individuals when faced with a decision problem construct a mental representation of the choice alternatives by activating relevant parts of their broader causal knowledge that allow them to evaluate consequences regarding their existing needs. Furthermore, these theories emphasise that situational and person dependence of this process can explain observed variability in preferences of travellers.

The results indicate that considerable variation exists between individuals in terms of both the complexity, and the attributes and benefits that are activated in the mental representation of the choice problem. Presence of an online alternative has an influence on the benefits that individuals consider important. The impact is however small.

The chapter provides an overview of recent developments in the study of mental representations underlying choice behaviour. Traditionally, this has been the exclusive domain of qualitative research methods. The techniques reviewed enable larger samples and a formal representation of mental representations. Thus, the approach can help to better understand preference heterogeneity and incorporate this in (transport) choice models.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of product and customer dimensions in the contribution of brand experience to the formation of true brand loyalty. The dimensions included are brand credibility, affective commitment and involvement. Synthesising past studies, the researcher proposes brand credibility and affective commitment to mediate the relationship between brand experience and true brand loyalty. Furthermore, the researcher investigates the variation in hierarchical pattern, i.e. brand experience-brand credibility affective commitment-true brand loyalty, under different levels of involvement.

The variations in hierarchy were compared by design. The authors investigated the variations in hierarchy on the basis of products which belong to different level of involvement, on the basis of individual differences in involvement, and on the basis of the interaction of product involvement and subject involvement. Multi-group invariance tests in SEM were used to explore model variations.

The hierarchy-of-effect model was found to vary based on the level of product involvement, subject involvement and interaction involvement. Three patterns of hierarchy have been observed: the first pattern was observed in high-high groups (both product involvement and subject involvement were high), the second pattern was observed in low-low groups (both product and subject involvements were low) and the third pattern among high-low or low-high groups.

The variation observed highlights the need to segment the market by interaction involvement. This would be useful for managers engaged in building sustainable consumer-brand relationships.

This study considered the interaction of product approach and subject approach in defining involvement which is rarely attempted in research. The study also integrates the variations in the role of customer dimensions, namely involvement, brand credibility and affective commitment with the relationship between the central constructs brand experience and true brand loyalty. The variations observed are among a socio-economically homogeneous sample of respondents.

The technology adoption propensity (TAP) index is a parsimonious yet robust tool for measuring an individual’s willingness to accept new technologies. However, further investigation is still needed to evaluate its merits in non-Western countries. With this task in mind, this study assesses the psychometric properties and predictive capabilities of TAP in Turkey.

The researchers utilized an iterative process of forward-backward translation and three rounds of piloting to ensure the cross-cultural, conceptual and linguistic equivalence for the chosen tool. The final survey was conducted online on a convenience sample of 352 academics and in person for 2 other convenience samples that comprised a total of 259 municipal officers and 300 individuals.

TAP’s four-subscale structure was confirmed by a principal component analysis (PCA), and A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed an acceptable fit across all samples. The total composition of the optimism, proficiency, dependence and vulnerability subscales was found to have adequate internal consistency and discriminant validity. Measurement invariance testing further demonstrated that TAP’s factorial organization was invariant across gender, age and income at configural, metric, scalar and strict levels. Finally, logistic and ordinary leas squares (OLS) regression analyses revealed that the TAP scores were predictive of prior technology adoption and use frequency.

Although these results are still preliminary, the confirmation and replication of TAP in Turkey clearly suggest that TAP is a dependable tool for assessing technology readiness that can be utilized well across different cultures.

The main purpose of this paper is to highlight the significance of service quality factors on customer retention within the Australian traditional and automated banking contexts.

The relative importance of traditional and automated service quality factors on customer retention was examined with the intention of determining which indicator factors are likely to have a significant impact on customer retention. The paper then proposes a conceptual model of the relationship between service quality factors within the two contexts and customer retention. AMOS 5 was used to test for the hypothesized relationships.

All of the traditional service quality factors have positively influenced customer retention. Conversely, this paper finds that automated service quality in general has no positive significant influence on customer retention.

This research was applied to the financial institutions in Queensland, Australia. Further testing of the proposed conceptual model across different industries and countries is needed to determine the generalisability and consistency of this study's findings.

The proposed model of retention prediction has the potential to help Australian bank managers to strengthen the customer‐bank relationship and, ultimately, to enhance customer retention ratios.

The key contribution of this paper is a conceptualisation of customer retention predictors that takes into account both traditional and automated service customer interactions with banks.

Recent years have seen an explosion in the study of emotions in organizations, and although emotions play a central role in the job stress process, their role is largely neglected in empirical stressor–strain studies. Our chapter aims to build consensus in the literature by showing that discrete emotions provide a mechanism through which stressors exert their impact on well-being. By examining a larger domain of stressors, emotions, and well-being, we begin to develop and expand upon the nomological network of emotions. In an effort to build on the job demands–resources (JD-R) model, which includes both job demands (i.e., negative stimuli such as time pressure) and resources (i.e., positive stimuli such as autonomy), we include both negative and positive discrete emotions with the expectation that negative emotions will generally be linked to demands and positive emotions will be linked to resources. We also propose that there may be circumstances where demands trigger negative discrete emotions and lead to greater experienced strain, and conversely, where resources arouse positive discrete emotions, which would positively affect well-being. The model in our chapter sheds light on how discrete emotions have different antecedents (i.e., job demands and resources) and outcomes (e.g., satisfaction, burnout, performance), and as such, respond to calls for research on this topic. Our findings will be of particular interest to organizations where employees can be trained to manage their emotions to reduce the strain associated with job stressors.