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The purpose of this paper is to find out whether LibQUAL+^TM can account for student loyalty to the library of an institution of higher education. LibQUAL+^TM is a marketing tool that is used to measure perceived service quality of libraries, and the present analysis aims at validating this service quality instrument within a more comprehensive theoretical satisfaction‐image‐loyalty framework.

The data source is a survey among students at the bachelor's level of a university college in Norway. The analysis is based on structural equation modelling.

The three LibQUAL drivers (information control, affect of service and library as a place) account for 85 per cent of the variation in student loyalty.

This research has been applied to a specific university college. The research should be expanded to other institutions offering higher education.

The study gives practical insight to managers regarding drivers of student loyalty for decision making and strategic control. The library as a place has the greatest impact on loyalty in this study.

Relationship marketing and management have become increasingly important for higher education managers. By identifying drivers of student loyalty regarding image building and satisfaction creation, and by allocating resources to activities that are important for students regarding these two processes, managers may obtain increased student retention, thus helping to ensure future public funding.

The purpose of this paper is to address financial decision support for marketers and provide suggestions for improvement potentials.

The context is the Norwegian furniture and fishing industries. The samples consisted of 118 respondents, 69 from the fishing industry and 49 from the furniture industry, with an average response rate of 33 per cent. Respondents reported on six groups of marketing costs, gave an overall evaluation of their existing and potential management accounting systems and of the systems' existing and potential decision support in nine marketing decision areas.

Marketing costs represented 8.9 per cent of total revenues in the fishing industry and 16.2 per cent in the furniture industry. The difference can be attributed to items that resulted in revenue reductions and promotional costs. Both industries showed significant potential for improvements in management accounting systems. Priorities regarding the nine decision support areas differed between the two industries. Additionally, priorities in the fishing industry seemed to differ regarding time horizons (short‐ versus long‐term).

While the discussion was based on a survey representing 55 per cent of the total turnover for the fishing industry and 40 per cent for the furniture industry, the findings cannot be considered valid in other contexts. Thus other studies are welcomed.

The findings suggest a need to be fairly familiar with business contexts when preparing a management accounting system. Therefore marketers should become involved and make substantial contributions when any system is developed. At a minimum, marketers should ensure that necessary decision‐relevant information is made easily available.

Few studies have focused on the cost and profitability aspects of marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze associations between practitioners' perception of marketing and business performance, and discuss possible implications for marketing education.

A survey was conducted in Norwegian companies in the furniture and fishery sectors. The relationship between practitioners' perceptions of marketing and business performance is analysed by combining ordinal regression with cluster analysis. The latter is used to categorize practitioners' views of marketing.

The results indicate that the cluster to which a firm belongs makes a difference in business performance. Firms that share a common view of marketing, strongly focused on both core marketing and sales, perform better than firms that share a more narrow view of marketing. Thus, both “intrinsic” and “instrumental” aims may be important to any core curriculum for marketing education.

Even though the data set accounts for a large percentage of the two selected sectors in terms of total turnover, the sample itself is small.

Vocational skills such as sales management should be an integrated part of marketing education. Financial accountability and customer profitability analyses should preferably also be included.

This study of the relationships between practitioners' perceptions of marketing and business performance, by combining cluster analysis and ordinal regression, is a new and valuable approach in this context. The findings have also important practical implications for marketing education.

In social psychology literature, gender is often an important predictor of differential outcomes. However, gender as it influences consumer behavior has not attracted much research interest in a retailing context. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze associations between gender, drivers (antecedents) of store satisfaction and store satisfaction in grocery retailing. It employs various approaches. Thus an additional purpose is to discuss the findings from the various approaches with respect to consumer marketing.

The data source is a survey among customers of a chain‐based Norwegian grocery store. T‐tests, factor analyses and various multiple regression analyses were conducted.

A direct significant effect of gender on store satisfaction was found when controlling for other included antecedents. Gender does not have any moderating effect on the relationships between antecedents and store satisfaction. Females have higher satisfaction levels than males, but the satisfaction drivers are gender independent.

This research has been applied to a specific grocery store belonging to a specific chain of retailing grocery stores.

Findings that could be perceived as mixed, confusing and difficult to handle in decision making are discussed and clarified, which should provide consumer marketers insights into resource allocation with respect to the “satisfaction‐profit chain.”

Gender has only a direct effect on store satisfaction. Stable gender‐independent drivers of store satisfaction were identified. These insights can contribute to consumer marketing activities that favorably influence shoppers' attitudes, thus resulting in sustained revenues and profitability in the future.

Public funding of institutions offering higher education is becoming scarcer, more complex, and to an ever‐increasing extent performance‐based. Concerning the teaching area the financing is partly based on student credits and professional degrees. Thus student loyalty has become an important strategic theme. The purpose is to study relationships between student satisfaction, students' perceptions of the reputation of an educational institution and student loyalty; hypothesizing positive relationships between satisfaction and loyalty, reputation and loyalty, and between satisfaction and reputation. Antecedents of student satisfaction and reputation are also included in the study.

The data source is a survey among students at the bachelor level of a university college in Norway, analyzed by a structural equation modeling approach.

The findings strongly support the three hypotheses. The university college may be looked upon as being satisfaction‐driven. Still reputation management is of great importance. Significant antecedents are identified and discussed.

This research has been applied to a specific university college. The research should be expanded to other institutions offering higher education.

Based on a theoretical framework the study gives practical insight concerning drivers of student loyalty so that key success factors for the coming period of time can be identified.

When determining the most appropriate management strategy, such insight is becoming even more important than earlier. By allocating resources to activities that are important for the students, the managers may increase the value offered so that student retention may be obtained, thus ensuring governmental funds in future.

Customer satisfaction is perceived as being a key driver of long‐term relationships between suppliers and buyers, especially when customers are well acquainted with products and markets, and when industries are highly competitive, as is the case for Norwegian fish exporters. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most influential drivers (antecedents) of customer satisfaction.

The data source is a market survey. Items measuring customer satisfaction as well as importance and performance (satisfaction) of drivers of customer satisfaction have been included in a questionnaire answered by 128 customers from approximately 25 countries, and analysed by use of multiple regression, factor analyses and importance‐performance grids.

Managers of the exporting companies should provide quality products and focus on service quality aspects in order to attain a high level of customer satisfaction. Prices have not been identified as satisfiers; however, according to the item‐based importance‐performance grid, competitive prices are important and can perhaps be perceived as “hygienes”, focusing more on what is important for customer loyalty.

The research should be expanded to other business‐to‐business contexts (industries).

The study gives practical insight regarding drivers of customer satisfaction so that key success factors for the future can be identified.

Few studies focus both on importance and performance (explicit and implicit importance) of drivers of customer satisfaction. By allocating resources in a cost‐effective way to activities that are key drivers for customer satisfaction, managers may attain increased customer satisfaction, increased customer loyalty and increased customer profitability in the future.

This study examines how the strong emphasis placed on the purposes of budgeting, referring to a comprehensive focus on budgeting, is related to top managers' education and tenure while controlling for their functional positions in their respective firms and ages, as well as several company-specific predictors (information quality, firm size, information technology, importance of profit and strategy).

Survey data were collected from senior managers of large manufacturing firms in Finland and Sweden.

The results suggest that academic business education is positively associated with a comprehensive focus on budgeting, but tenure as well as functional position in the company (Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or not) and age are not. Overall, the company-specific control variables in general and information quality in particular are shown to have greater explanatory power than the top management characteristics analyzed.

This study identifies several empirically supported factors that seem to contribute to a comprehensive focus on budgeting. The effects of information quality, business education, the importance of profit and firm size could be considered in future research.

Academic business education matters more than the other top management characteristics analyzed. If organizations want to make comprehensive use of budgets, they should employ business graduates and be mindful of company-specific variables.

This study is the first to address a comprehensive focus on budgeting and some of its determinants. Future research could investigate a broader set of such determinants in different contexts.