Search results

The widespread adoption of online purchasing has prompted increasing concerns about product safety, and regulators are beginning to hold e-commerce sites accountable for dangerous product defects. For online consumers, understanding the many inherent safety risks among the extensive array of products they browse is a formidable task. The authors attempt to address this problem via a client-side software artifact that warns shoppers about potential product safety hazards at the point of sale.

In this study, the authors built four candidate designs and assessed their effectiveness by means of a large randomized controlled experiment (n = 466). The authors define effectiveness as significant changes in dependent variables associated with health behaviors and technology adoption.

The authors find that all of the designs score high on adoption likelihood, that designs incorporating highlighting and scoring are better at increasing safety knowledge and that simpler designs are better at enhancing safety awareness.

These findings will inform the design of safety information dissemination systems and open new areas of safety awareness enhancement research. More generally, the authors introduce a novel method of testing text visualization variations and their impact on behavioral decisions.

Variations in customer expectations pose a challenge to service quality improvement in the airline industry. Understanding airline customers' expectations and satisfaction help service providers improve their offerings. The extant literature examines airline passengers' expectations in isolation, neglecting the overall impact of online reviews on service quality improvement. This paper systematically evaluates the airline industry's passengers' expectations and satisfaction using expectation confirmation theory (ECT) and the SERVQUAL framework. The paper analyzes online reviews to examine the relationship between airline service quality attributes and passengers' satisfaction.

The SERVQUAL framework was employed to examine the effects of customer culture, the reason for traveling, and seat type on customer's expectations and satisfaction across a large sample of airline customers.

A total of 17,726 observations were gathered from the Skytrax review website. The lowest satisfaction ratings were from passengers from the USA, Canada and India. Factors that affect perceived service performance include customer service, delays and baggage management. Empathy and reliability have the biggest impact on the perceived satisfaction of passengers.

This research increases understanding of the consumer expectations through analysis of passengers' online reviews. Results are limited to a small sample of airline industries.

This study provides airlines with valuable information to improve customer service by analyzing online reviews.

This study provides the opportunity for airline customers to gain better services when airline companies utilize the findings.

This paper offers insights into passengers' expectations and their perceived value for money in relation to seat types. Previous studies have not investigated value for money as a construct for passengers' expectations and satisfaction relative to service quality dimensions. This paper addresses this need.

At the marketing/entrepreneurship interface, most research concerns how entrepreneurs market their businesses, rather than how advertisers market to entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to address this gap.

The authors undertake a content analysis of 88 recent issues of the two largest print magazine titles targeted at American entrepreneurs, with particular attention to advertising content for known small business success factors.

This study finds no correlation between factors most important to small business success and advertising volume. However, this study finds a strong, inverse correlation between US small business performance for each success factors and the volume of advertising for that competitiveness factor. Finally, it is found that advertisement characteristics (placement, timing, repetition, contact channel, and competitor comparison) vary by competitiveness factor.

This study is limited to print advertising to US entrepreneurs. The findings imply that small business competitiveness factors may need to be amended, and that the nature of advertising to small businesses should be further investigated.

The ability to identify shortcomings in what small businesses need to succeed may spur advertisers to remedy the gap with product promotions that create awareness of need solutions.

This study is the first to use content analysis of B2B print advertising targeted at entrepreneurs to develop insights into the nature of the target market (US entrepreneurs); to explore the extent to which advertised goods and services match needs of the target market; and to examine whether advertisers communicate the various factors that address target market needs, in different manners.

United Learning is a family-owned leader in the K-12 supplementary teaching material market. In January 2001, United Learning realized that sales for one of its flagship products, a drug and prevention program, were rapidly deteriorating because the program was not mentioned on a recently released U.S. Department of Education list of recommended products. United Learning must decide on which action to take: regain sales or focus on its other educational products—which are also threatened by changes in the regulatory environment.

THE ARTICLE by Simon Francis in the last issue of NLW (and the letter from Anthony Croghan in the Record for December) are clear indications that the honeymoon between the library profession and the British Library is drawing to a close. To change the metaphor, we have done our share of cheering and clapping, and are beginning to ask interesting questions about the new package deal. Surprisingly we are finding a dearth of hard facts within the mass of publicity which is being poured out. There are those who see this as a gigantic public relations exercise—what has the British Library to hide?

THE ORGANISATION OF a survey at Manchester Polytechnic, following closely upon prolonged correspondence in a semi‐professional journal, testifies to the fear of some colleagues that the public takes a poor view of its librarians. ‘The catalogue does not mention it and the librarians here are useless,’ said Livy in the Apollo Library in Rome. But need we imagine that many modern readers would echo his verdict?

The University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) is a principal producer of instructional simulations for preparing educational administrators. The most recent simulation product of the Council is the Monroe City Simulation, parts of which are currently being disseminated and other parts of which are still in various stages of planning and development. The authors describe in this article five generic issues which UCEA simulation developers have had to resolve and which continue to face others engaged in similar kinds of development work. The issues described include those of (1) the use of theoretical vs. empirical models, (2) realism, (3) bias, (4) complexity and (5) learning effects.

Effective leadership of human capital is a major managerial issue. Hiring and keeping employees is key to sustainable competitive advantage. E‐recruiting as a general process is job‐specific and offers computer‐assisted screening interviews and statistical prediction to aid in reducing recruiting costs, time‐to‐hire and employee turnover. This paper examines the application of this technology to recruiting and retaining knowledge workers in an e‐commerce, information‐intensive environment.

I. Introduction For over forty years, a model for Third World development has gained widespread acceptance. Three key premises underpin the traditional development model: (1) the identification of “development” with the maximization of the rate of national economic growth; (2) the quest to achieve Western living standards and levels of industrialization which require the transfer of labor from the agricultural to the industrial sector as well as increased consumerism; and (3) the integration into the interdependence of Third World nations in the global economy and the global marketplace. Increasing the demand for a Third World nation's exports (in other words, export‐led growth) is viewed as leading to the maximization of a nation's Gross National Product (GNP).