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Considers the extent of the marketers need to communicate quality to the consumer and the best ways of doing so. Examines the results of an experiment involving consumers. Suggests that some communication of quality is generally better than no such communication, although whether specific or non‐specific quality appeals should be used depends on the relative price of the brand.

Notes that researchers and practitioners recognize that listening is a crucial basic skill on a par with reading, writing, and speaking. Although effective listening is important in almost every profession, it seems particularly significant in business‐to‐business selling. Effective listening skills assist the salesperson in adapting to the prospect and to different sales situations. Successful application of these skills contributes to the added value of the personal selling exchange. Presents an initial attempt to explore the relationship between effective listening, adaptive selling behaviors and salesperson performance. In the past, very little has been done to measure the construct of effective salesperson listening and correlate it with key dimensions (adaptive selling and sales performance). Hopes to contribute to discovering a means of measuring the listening phenomena in a sales environment. The subjects for the study were salespeople representing a Fortune 100 international electronics manufacturer. The subjects were participating in a company‐sponsored training program at the time of the survey. Results of the study indicate support for a positive relationship between effective listening and adaptive selling, performance and job satisfaction.

Reports on a study attempting to understand whether, and how, service providers try to communicate quality of their services via advertising. Finds that few quality cues are present in magazine advertising for services. Offers examples and suggestions for the effective conveying of quality through advertising messages.

Integrated healthcare is a central tenant of the NHS Long Term Plan (NHS, 2019). NICE in 2019 published guidelines; advising the integration of multidisciplinary professionals which may lead to an improvement in conservative treatment methods of pelvic organ prolapse. Therefore, current literature on the conservative treatments for pelvic organ prolapse needs to be reviewed to ascertain if an integrated approach would improve the symptoms and quality of life for women.

A systematic review of the literature between 2013 and 2018 was implemented. Papers included were written in English, peer-reviewed and consisted of treatments of pelvic organ prolapse in women. Papers containing surgical interventions, postpartum participants, reviews, evaluations, guidelines, follow-up studies, focusing on cost effectiveness, sexual function were excluded.

Seven studies in total were included, and two overarching themes were identified: quality of life after treatment and the effect of conservative treatment on pelvic organ prolapse symptoms. The literature suggested that integrating care had a more positive outcome on pelvic organ symptoms and quality of life.

To develop a robust enhanced model of care for conservative treatment of pelvic organ prolapse through more mixed method or qualitative research, that incorporates integrative treatment methods with collaboration from multidisciplinary professionals.

The practical implications of integrating the conservative management of pelvic organ prolapse is the communication between the multidisciplinary team must be exceptional to ensure everyone understands and agrees the treatment that is being provided to patient. Also, effective teamwork is important to ensure the patient receives the best care with input from the correct disciplines. The multi-professional team will need to have regular meetings to discuss and implement care plans for patients that might prove difficult to schedule due to differing commitments and priorities. This must be overcome to insure a successful and effective integrated approach to pelvic organ prolapse is delivered.

The social implications of integrating the professional approach to women's care of pelvic organ prolapse involves reducing the severity of the symptoms therefore, increasing the quality of life. This may result in the reduction of surgical intervention due to the patient being satisfied with the conservative management. Through integrating the management of the prolapse the patient will receive an accessible individualised care plan pathway that focuses on treating or reducing the impact of the symptoms that are bothersome to the patient whilst managing patient expectations. Patients will also, be reassured by the number of multi-disciplinary professionals involved in their care.

Global integration of conservative treatments and multidisciplinary-professionals specialising in pelvic organ prolapse and pelvic floor dysfunction is needed.

This study explores the importance of and vulnerabilities in deploying physical access control (PAC) devices in a typical university setting.

The study adopts face-to-face and telephone interviews. This study uses a semi-structured interview guide to solicit the views of 25 interviewees on the subject under consideration. Qualitative responses to the interview are thematically analyzed using NVivo 11 Pro analysis application software.

The findings reveal five importance and seven vulnerabilities in the deployment of PAC devices in the institution. Key among the importance of deploying the devices are “prevent unwanted premise access or intrusions,” “prevent disruptions to university/staff operations on campus” and “protect students and staff from outside intruders.” Key among the identified vulnerabilities are “tailgating”, “delay in emergent cases” and “power outage may affect its usage.”

This study offers insight into a rare area of study, especially in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. Furthermore, the study contributes to the state-of-the-art importance and vulnerabilities in deploying PAC devices in daily human activities. The study is valuable in that it has the potential to establish a foundation for future studies that may delve into investigating issues associated with the deployment of PAC devices.

Women in many countries are breaking through the gender barrier and are working in positions where they have a major impact on the buying and selling activities in business-to-business relationships. A number of studies have investigated the role gender plays in driving perceptions of sales representatives in the USA, however, little research has been undertaken on this important topic in China, one of the largest and most influential countries. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to examine whether the gender of both the buyer and seller, affects perceptions of expertise, trust and loyalty in business relationships.

A survey instrument was developed, tested and used on individuals with purchasing responsibility in China. Confirmatory factor analysis was used in the pre-test and the final study data to develop and refine measurement instruments, assessing construct validity, identifying method effects and evaluating factor variance across groups. Independent t-tests were used to compare male and female buyers on their evaluation of sales reps.

The results indicate that the gender of the sales person does not seem to be a consideration for male buyers in evaluating reps in any of the variables tested. However, female buyers consistently give less favorable evaluations to female sales people than male sales representatives. The possible implications of these findings are discussed.

First, this research uses a quantitative methodology in both the collection and analysis of the data. Thus, future studies may want to use a qualitative data set to gain a more in-depth understanding of the business-to-business relationships between men and women in the workplace. Also, as the study was concentrated on a relatively small number of business professionals from only one area in China, subsequently researchers should consider increasing the geographic domain where respondents are sampled, to help improve the generalizability of the results.

The gender bias by female buyers found in this study has several important implications for businesses in China. Specifically, the suggests that female buyers may carry with them a “collective negative bias” against other women, in this case, female sales reps. The solution to this problem is not to avoid assigning female sales reps to female buyers, rather, it is to change the negative collective social-esteem identity preconceptions. Organizations can do this through training by making women aware of their own predisposition to unfairly evaluate women that they interact with in the workplace.

It has been argued that gender plays a small role in perceptions of sales representatives in buyer-seller relationships. While this seems to be true in the USA, it has not (until now) been empirically tested in China. Somewhat surprisingly, the gender differences we did uncover are not from male buyers in their assessments, but from female buyers in their evaluation of women sales representatives. This result provides some interesting insight into Chinese business relationships and how some women in positions of power are more critical of other women within their sphere of influence.

The purpose of this paper is to explore Australasian students’ current perception towards a sales career.

Data were collected through a self-administered survey from 431 students enrolled in a Sales Management unit in a large Australian university and its Asian campuses.

The study reveals a four-factor solution with factors labeled as “exciting,” “deceptive,” “taxing,” and “challenging,” with “exciting” being the only factor to significantly predict likelihood of pursuing a sales career. Although no differences of perception were found between males and females, Asian students were found to perceive sales career as more exciting, innovative and fun than Australian students.

Although significant difference was noted between Australian and Asian students’ perceptions towards sales as an exciting career, it is prudent to interpret and generalize the finding with caution as Asia is the largest continent with different cultures, religions and races.

The four factors that were found to influence students’ perception towards a sales career are novel, psychometrically sound, and are pertinent for businesses conducting graduate recruitment. This study indicates how sales education at university level assist in changing students’ views towards a sales career from negative to positive.

While previous research has reported negative perceptions about sales as a career, this study reveals that students consider sales to be an “exciting” career.

This paper aims to identify the effectiveness, student perceptions and impacts of integrating comics into the English as a foreign language (EFL) writing curriculum for undergraduate Ecuadorian polytechnic students.

This research followed a mixed method design to obtain quantitative information through a researcher-made survey and paired T-test, which would be corroborated by the qualitative data obtained from semistructured interviews.

From the descriptive and T-test results and the interview answers, it is concluded that students have a favorable view of the effectiveness of using comics to improve their writing skills. They also expressed their engagement and motivation to work with comics.

First, the research sample, comprised of 109 students, may restrict the generalizability of the findings beyond the specific context of this study. This constraint suggests caution in extrapolating these findings to broader student cohorts, emphasizing the need for larger-scale studies to validate the robustness and applicability of the outcomes. Second, the study’s focus solely on students from a polytechnic state university introduces a potential limitation concerning the diversity and representativeness of the participant pool. Consequently, the findings might be limited in their applicability and may not fully encompass students’ varied responses and attitudes from other educational backgrounds.

The scaffolding afforded by comics aligns with genre-based literacy perspectives, valuing instruction in textual genres and social purposes. From a practical pedagogical point of view, this paper’s results suggest the potential of comic narratives and storyboarding. Comics writing could be added to classroom activities to vibrantly aboard brainstorming, drafting and peer reviewing before dealing with higher-stakes assignments. Legitimizing alternative mediums like comics for academic writing tasks has social implications for promoting literacies in a multimedia world.

Writing comics nurtures multiliteracies aligned with participatory digital cultures by expanding traditional linguistic-centric norms. This multimodal composing can potentially increase access and representation and amplify voices across identities and cultures.

Although the paper addresses a topic that is not entirely novel in research, its originality lies in its focus on data originating from Ecuador, where specific cultural nuances and educational contexts may influence the effectiveness of using comics to enhance EFL writing skills. Thus, it fills a gap in the existing literature on this subject.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and describe how service providers’ and service receivers’ teleological actions relate to negative emotions after critical incidents in service encounters have occurred.

Three categories of teleological actions are used: transformative – ad hoc and present-based actions, formative – pre-determined and past-based actions and rationalist – goal-directed and future-based actions.

The empirical findings indicate that airline ground staff should interact differently with air passengers based on the negative emotions involved and the teleological actions undertaken after critical incidents in service encounters have occurred.

The current research improves the interactive and sequential understanding of how to manage negative emotions through teleological actions in service encounters between a service provider and a service receiver after critical incidents have occurred, as well as providing numerous opportunities for further research in services.

It is an important and relevant insight that it is necessary to understand both the initial and derived causes of negative emotions and the subsequent effects and outcomes occurring in service encounters after critical incidents have arisen.

This current study provides theoretical and managerial contributions to manage negative emotions after critical incidents have occurred in service encounters.