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This paper develops a general service sector model of repurchase intention from the consumer theory literature. A key contribution of the structural equation model is the incorporation of customer perceptions of equity and value and customer brand preference into an integrated repurchase intention analysis. The model describes the extent to which customer repurchase intention is influenced by seven important factors – service quality, equity and value, customer satisfaction, past loyalty, expected switching cost and brand preference. The general model is applied to customers of comprehensive car insurance and personal superannuation services. The analysis finds that although perceived quality does not directly affect customer satisfaction, it does so indirectly via customer equity and value perceptions. The study also finds that past purchase loyalty is not directly related to customer satisfaction or current brand preference and that brand preference is an intervening factor between customer satisfaction and repurchase intention. The main factor influencing brand preference was perceived value with customer satisfaction and expected switching cost having less influence.

In August 2005, an investment manager of a hedge fund is considering purchasing an equity interest in a start-up biotechnology firm, Arcadian Microarray Technologies, Inc. The asking price is $40 million for a 60 percent equity interest. Managers of the firm are optimistic about the firm's future performance; the investment manager is more conservative in his expectations. He calls on the help of an analyst with her firm to fashion a counterproposal to Arcadian's management. The tasks for the student are to apply the concept of terminal value, interpret completed analyses and data, and derive implications of different terminal-value assumptions in an effort to recommend a counterproposal. Very little numerical figure-work is required of the student.

When Arnold Carr was a 13‐year old office boy, he vowed he'd be boss. Now 70, Carr has built a wide ranging industrial combine, Thomas Ward, which has earnt the title the ‘Harrods of Industry’. Ken Gooding reports

This study aims to investigate the influence of Muslim tourist perceived value (MTPV) on Muslim millennials’ intention to revisit Bandung (Indonesia) with customer satisfaction as an intervening variable.

Using quantitative methods, this study analyzed responses to a questionnaire distributed to 250 respondents from all over Indonesia. To test the hypothesis, the data were analyzed through Path Analysis using SPSS 24.I software.

The results suggest that MTPV has a significant effect on revisit intention to the city. This finding affirms that Islamic values and customer satisfaction are very important in encouraging millennial Muslims to revisit Bandung (Indonesia).

To increase Muslim millennials’ intention to revisit Bandung (Indonesia), tourist perceived value and satisfaction are central factors. The government's role is central in promoting halal tourism through various platforms, such as social media, seminars, workshops inter alia to increase MTPV and satisfaction rate toward the city. In addition, stakeholders in tourism sector should raise the awareness to support and encourage halal tourism through certifications of halal products and tourism services, and view halal tourism as a promising sector of tourism.

This study is the first to study the effects of Muslim tourists perceived value on revisit intention of millennial Muslims to Bandung (Indonesia) with customer satisfaction as an intervening variable. This study reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the perceived value of Muslim tourists in influencing millennial Muslims to revisit the city.

Barack Obama has had considerable support among scholarly circles since his win in the Iowa primary in early 2008. A segment of the Association of Black Sociologists (ABS), “Black and Progressive Sociologists Obama Working Group (BPSOWG),” was particularly active during the 2008 campaign. The purpose of this chapter was to determine if the level and type of activism among this group differed from other progressive groups of sociologists.

The data for this study were collected from a web-based survey administered to approximately 800 professional sociologists in the United States. The survey consisted of items that focused on the extent to which respondents supported the Obama campaign for the presidency and the extent to which they were satisfied with and/or agreed with his policies during first two years of his presidency.

The response rate for the survey was 40% (N=305) and 96% of respondents (N=293) submitted surveys with complete information. Over two-thirds of participants were members of the American Sociological Association Section on Race and Ethnic Relations and 5.5% of respondents identified themselves as members of the BPSOWG. A slight majority (53.6%) of study participants were females and the largest two racial groups making up the study population were whites (47.1%) and African Americans (36.1%). Most of the respondents provided support for President Obama during his first campaign, including financial contributions (66%).

Sociologists who responded to the survey were generally positive about Barack Obama as a candidate and a President. However, the subtle differences between groups about Obama administration policies and the use Presidential power highlighted key areas in which diverse coalitions for progressive change are needed.

With increasing market pressure and fragmentation Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) must move beyond the change philosophy of Continuous Improvement (CI) and develop a culture of innovation. To find out if SMEs could go beyond CI to achieve effective business innovation as a change management philosophy, a literature survey and a research survey on 15 SMEs was conducted to provide additional relevant information. The main research findings were: the SMEs exhibited a range of Continuous Improvement and innovation characteristics – some had adopted a culture of Continuous Improvement, while others had not; the SMEs which had adopted a culture of Continuous Improvement found that it could provide a solid foundation on which to build a culture of effective business innovation; and these SMEs were found to have embraced all the different components of innovation, as measured, more readily than those SMEs which did not have a culture of Continuous Improvement.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

Arthur W. Frank's dialogical narrative analysis (DNA) has been a recent addition to the plethora of methods in analysing stories. What makes this method unique from the rest is its concern for both the story's content and its effects. Stories are seen as selection/evaluation systems that do things for and on people. This chapter aims to provide the reader a heuristic guide in conducting DNA and emphasises learning through exemplars as the way of learning DNA. It provides an outline of DNA and reviews how researchers have applied it in different disciplines. Then, DNA will be applied in in the current ‘war on drugs’ in the Philippines. The stories of the policy actors – for and against the drug war – will be analysed to explore how stories affect policy choices and actions, call actors to assume different identities, associate/dissociate these actors and show how they hold their own in telling their stories. Finally, the potential of using DNA in criminology and criminal justice will be discussed.

This article aims to investigate the application of re‐engineering methodology to public sector health care, in order to determine if increasing demands for customer satisfaction resource cuts in this sector can be addressed. Public sector health care faces large scale change owing to increasing Government performance targets, resource cuts and increasing customer/patient demands. Re‐engineering is a large‐scale change philosophy and methodology that has been applied with varying degrees of success and failure in the private sector. In public sector health care there is a paucity of in‐depth case study research to determine key success factors for re‐engineering in this sector. There is a need to determine the appropriateness of re‐engineering for helping to address the challenges faced in public sector health care. This article presents the results from a case study application of re‐engineering in a public sector health care Trust. The area re‐engineered was that of telecommunications. The methodology applied and the key success factors determined by the study are discussed in detail.

Small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are coming under increasing market pressures due to larger more agile companies encroaching on their markets and increasing integration in the supply chain. Thus SMEs need to increase their innovativeness to improve and survive. The aim of this paper is to see how quality practices can be used to instill innovation within SMEs. The research methodology involved a statistical analysis of over 60 SMEs to determine their approach to quality and innovation. This approach was followed up with ten in‐depth case studies to determine deep rich data. The case study data, presented in this paper, show that quality is an essential foundation for progressing to large scale innovation and also continues to act as a catalyst for innovation.