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This paper aims to investigate if the more stringent requirements of AASB 138, effective 1 January 2005, regarding capitalising research and development (R&D) spending could have been a catalyst for changes in managerial decisions that consequently resulted in reduced R&D spending in Australian companies.

Financial data of 31 Australian listed firms for financial years from 2001 to 2010 were used. Companies were classified as either capitalisers or non-capitalisers. A regression model was used to ascertain whether managers reduced R&D spending to manage earnings to attain short-term goals. Also, the research intensity ratios were calculated to determine trends in R&D spending of the two groups.

The pursuit of choosing short-term earnings targets to the detriment of long-term returns is referred to as short-termism. This study found a marked increase in the significance of short-termism in explaining changes in R&D of capitalisers before 2005. Furthermore, the median research intensity ratio of capitalisers declined almost three times that of non-capitalisers after the introduction of AASB 138. These findings suggest that AASB 138 could have been a catalyst for changes in managerial decisions in pursuit of short-termism, resulting in reduced R&D spending as a means to manage earnings.

This study is useful to standard setters and board of directors as it alerts them about the potential adverse effect AASB 138 might have on the survivability and competitiveness of Australian companies and hence the Australian economy.

This study seeks to focus on front‐line service employees and their views of internal branding and the extent to which personal and job‐specific factors impact on the success of internal branding in the reinforcement of brand identification and brand loyalty among service employees.

The research, based on a multiple case study representing the hotel industry in Thailand, involved the completion of 30 in‐depth qualitative interviews with customer‐interface employees followed by a quantitative survey with 680 customer‐interface employees located in five major hotels.

Corporate service brands need to coordinate internal branding activity to enhance their employees' identification with, commitment to, and loyalty to, the brand. The relationships between the concepts of identification, commitment and loyalty of employees are determined. Personal variables such as age, education, and length of service as well as situational factors regarding their work environment are found to have moderating effects on the effectiveness of the internal branding process.

The paper highlights the importance of internal branding on employees' brand identification, commitment and loyalty. However, management should also be aware that the impact of internal branding would not be constant across all employees within an organisation. Personal variables such as age, educational background, and length of service with the brand should also be taken into account. The impact of internal branding on an employee's attitudes and behaviour are heightened when employees are satisfied with their workplace. As such, internal branding cannot be looked at in isolation and is unlikely to be successful if the work environment is not conducive to the employees and the brand values.

Much of the work on internal branding is conceptual and based on small‐scale studies undertaken with management or consultants. This paper provides empirical evidence from the front‐line service employees' perspective on the relationships between internal branding and brand identification, brand commitment, brand loyalty and brand performance. It also provides an empirical investigation of potential moderators for internal branding.

By drawing on theories of social identity, attraction, social comparison and consumer identification, this research seeks to examine how consumers' perceptions of other customers of an organisation (the other customer effect) may have an influence on corporate image and consumer‐company identification. This study aims to test a model integrating these constructs in two contexts, i.e. products and services. It also seeks to investigate the attitudinal and behavioural consequences of a favourable corporate image in order to provide more insights to the argument that a corporate marketing approach helps to enhance marketing performance.

A survey of a convenience sample of 383 adult consumers is conducted. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is employed in order to test the proposed model. An alternative model is examined both in products and in services contexts.

The results indicate that perceptions about other customers influence customers' affective and behavioural reactions towards a company for both products and services. This finding suggests that corporate‐level marketing activities aiming to increase interaction among consumers lead to favourable corporate image and higher consumer‐company identification and hence desirable marketing outcomes. Furthermore, results show that for services the other customer effect is more prominent than for product offerings.

This study extends the concept of other customer effect to the context of corporate image and consumer‐company identification studies. It provides evidence that shifting towards corporate‐level marketing gives organisations another avenue for gaining a distinct position in the minds of consumers. Furthermore, by addressing both service and product contexts, it shows that other customer effect may exist beyond services studies.