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The aim of this paper is to explore the meaning of the term “retail brand” to small‐ to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) owner managers and how this impacts upon brand management practice.

This research utilises a case study approach, which involved 12 SME retailers located in two regions of the UK, combining qualitative interview data with desktop research and documentary evidence.

The findings of this paper confirm that the owner manager is central to the brand management function in SME retail firms. Furthermore, it was found that the retail brand encompasses both symbolic and functional meaning to the owner manager.

This research contributes to the retail and SME literature by offering a conceptual framework, which presents the interpretation of the retail brand from abstractive, service and environmental perspectives.

It is recommended that SME owner managers set an overall direction for branding across all aspects of the retail business. In doing so, existing retail brand models may be utilised as a tool kit for SME brand managers.

The research begins to address a significant empirical lacuna in branding at the SME retail marketing interface. This paper also adds to wider marketing discourse, through the presentation of terminological adaptation within a small retailing situ.

Discounting has become the crack cocaine of senior management with terrifying effects on both revenue and profits. The purpose of this paper to show managers how and where to put a stake in the ground to kick the discounting habit and move to a more effective and disciplined approach to pricing.

The author leverages his research on trust in buyer seller relationships with extensive experience with real world pricing to provide insights in why and when discounting is not appropriate and how business can benefit in terms of both profits and revenue growth by adopting more appropriate pricing tactics.

Prior research has shown that more effective pricing can lead to an 11 percent improvement in a firm's profitability. By focusing on eliminating unnecessary discounting, managers can improve profits by more than 20 percent. Specific management tactics are identified which reflect the realities of doing business in today's world of increased competition, product commoditization and sophisticated buyers.

Provides insights in why and when discounting is not appropriate and how business can benefit in terms of both profits and revenue growth by adopting more appropriate pricing tactics.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of what the author believes to be his major contributions to the field of Educational Administration.

The approach taken is a personal review and reflection based on research. For purposes of structuring the article three themes have been selected – complexity, development, and being close to and providing an empirical base for policy and practice. In addition, three areas are discussed that the author regrets having not taken further – the relationship between a school and its system from the school's perspective, the role of quality evidence, particularly the provision of valid and reliable surveys for use by practitioners, and public attitudes to education, including re‐examining the purposes of schools and their enactment.

The studies reviewed stress the importance of the interrelationship between the individual, organisational and contextual in effective teaching of educational administration, organisational development in schools, leadership for organisational learning and student outcomes, and successful school principalship. These studies promote a “tinkering towards Utopia”. “Tinkering” in the sense of improvement from the inside out rather than from outside schools and from the top down, and being about small scale and developmental rather than wholesale and/or continuous change. “Utopian” in the sense of focusing on complexity and heterogeneity rather than simplicity and homogeneity in both purposes and processes. “Utopia” is about learning for all, especially through facilitating schools as communities of professional learners. However, there continues to be a need for researchers in the field to provide a stronger empirical base for policy and practice, including providing quality, culturally specific evidence.

While clarity is provided on the links between leadership and student outcomes in schools and areas for further research are identified, the article is limited by its heavy reliance on the author's Australian research findings.

The article has value in that the links are clarified between leadership and a breadth of student outcomes. It broadens what counts for good schooling and school leadership and provides clear evidence for improvements in policy and practice.

This study aims to provide insights into ecosystem builder futurists’ work and their orientations toward creating more connected communities of the future.

Anticipation of and relationship with the future are not straightforward. How we approach the future and our relationship with it has underlying ontological and epistemological assumptions (Poli, 2010, 2017). Forecasting (Makridakis et al., 2008), foresight (Bishop and Hines, 2012; Hines and Bishop, 2013; Popper, 2008), futures studies (Bell, 2009; Gidley, 2017) and anticipatory logics (Miller and Poli, 2010; Miller et al., 2017; Nadin, 2010; Poli, 2017) inform this research study of a select group of futurists’ relationships with the future. This research explores ecosystem builder futurists’ work and their orientations toward creating more connected communities of the future. A primary driver of this research aims to understand how futurists with emergentist understandings think about and work with their clients to better understand how to facilitate individual and community transformations through anticipatory future perspectives.

This qualitative study was designed to explore the why, where and how of the ecosystem builder futurists. The “why” question of their work focused on capacity building, disruption and community for evolving systems revealing an emergentist orientation to the future. The “where” question, focusing on where their passions and ideas for futures work came from, revealed a commitment to forge new territories and support communities through the change process. Finally, the “how” questions revealed using both/and methods of traditional and innovative approaches with a special focus on changing the hearts and minds of those who participated in their community change initiatives.

A total of 15 ecosystem futurists participated in this study. Their perspectives were strongly affiliated and aligned with ecosystem building and communities of the future ideas. The narrow focus, however, is important to represent this particular population of the futurists.

There is a great need for ecosystem futurists who can work with communities for social and community transformations. This paper introduces ecosystem builder futurists as a unique population of futurists with specific drivers for and perspectives of change.

Especially in post-normal, mid-pandemic times, there will be more opportunities and need for ecosystem builder futurists to engage groups of individuals in transformative and community building processes. This study focuses on ecosystem futurists and how they work toward fundamental, community change.

Futurists work across many areas and emerging fields. A search of futurist activities reveals some of these areas including Marketing, Team Building, Coaching, Strategic Planning, Partner Management, Marketing Strategy, Ecosystem Building and Sustainable Community Development, to name a few. The purpose of this study is to describe the perspectives and underlying drivers of a particular group of futurists who have been working in large and small communities, organizations, governments and with clients with an underlying focus on creating communities of the future.

Many studies have investigated consumers’ loyalty to businesses situated in the local area, in the community, the region or in the same country. However, the effect of loyalty to the state in which the consumer resides has received little attention. This paper aims to propose the concept of home-state attachment (HSA) and develop models of its antecedents and its effects on criterion variables such as loyalty to local business.

After refinement of the measure of HSA, the authors conduct two studies (n = 202 and n = 201) among residents of two different Canadian provinces (states). They estimate the models, which include both formative and reflective indicators, using structural equation modeling.

The results of both studies show that HSA can be distinguished from related constructs like consumer ethnocentrism (CET). HSA has a strong effect on loyalty to local businesses, independent of the effect of CET, testifying to its importance. HSA also affects other criterion variables, with loyalty to local business playing a mediational role.

This paper shows that HSA, a social-identity-based motivation for local patronage, is an important but largely overlooked determinant of loyalty to local businesses. The robustness of the results over two studies suggests that appeals to consumers based on this motivation may enhance the effectiveness of marketing programs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore primary care psychological therapists’ experiences of working with mid-life and older women presenting with intimate partner violence (IPV) and develop a theoretical framework using a grounded theory approach to identify the experiences of those practitioners working with this phenomenon.

Interviews with 17 practitioners were conducted. The data analysis was informed by a grounded theory approach, which requires three states of data coding: open, axial and selective. Data codes were thematically sorted into causal, contextual, strategic, intervening, interactional and consequential conditions.

A core state of therapist helplessness was uncovered. The framework demonstrates that psychological therapists can doubt their ability to work meaningfully with women over 45 years of age experiencing IPV. To avoid the core state of helplessness, therapists use strategies such as avoiding asking questions about partner violence, making assumptions of how patients interpret their own experiences, addressing symptoms rather than the root cause and going above and beyond in attempts to rescue patients. The consequence of therapists’ helplessness often results in burnout.

The framework identifies barriers in working effectively with IPV and women in the mid-to older-aged populations.

This study is the first to suggest a framework that is grounded in practitioner experience with capability to transfer to a range of professionals working with mid-to older-aged women such as forensic, medical and specialist psychologists.