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Marketing, the discipline, has failed to deliver on its promise as a central corporate philosophy because it has failed to adapt its concepts to corporate concerns. Marketing has ignored non‐customer stakeholders and is less influential on corporate strategy than a decade ago. A framework is provided and examples of how better to integrate marketing into corporate‐wide concerns are presented. It is argued that to accomplish this, corporate management must take on a navigational dimension and marketing must make its mix tools relevant above the business unit level.

Suggests that housewives shift brand preferences when confronted with actual price differentials in a market and, irrespective of income or educational levels, react to price cues on low‐priced grocery items. Discusses and compares various studies conducted across varying price differences and consumer stereotypes in the UK and the USA. Reports results of an experiment designed to extend empirical evidence about the relationships among brand preference, perceived quality and price cues. Sums up that this study once again confirms the basic importance of price to housewives.

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.

The State of Washington’s Mental Health Division (MHD) is the State agency responsible for providing state sponsored mental health services. In 1993, the MHD received a Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) waiver to implement a statewide system of managed care for outpatient mental health rehabilitation services. Payments were to be prepaid and capitated and based on the numbers of clients in each of at least 3 payment tiers. This paper describes financial findings from a HCFA-mandated evaluation of the waiver. It looks at payment rates for children and adults, by tier, and for separately rated groups such as the categorically needy, medically needy, and disabled clients. Three types of State expenditures are compared in this paper: predicted expenditures based on actuarial projections, expenditures made on the basis of service utilization, and expenditures made after being adjusted for over payment controls. Expenditure predictions were consistently lower than actual expenditures, even after adjustments for over payment.

International research data unambiguously correlates effective educational leadership with improved student learning. Such leadership not only improves the professional performance of teachers but also models learning excellence. Undoubtedly, students learn so much from what they observe others doing. But how can educational leaders model what they have not experienced, themselves? How can today's educational leaders model learning excellence when there is an ever-increasing disparity between contemporary improvements in pedagogical approaches and the lived reality of leadership? To prepare world class educational leaders of learning, it is essential that the process for learning about leadership is closely aligned to what is now considered to be best practice in promoting student learning. If enactivism is the new bench mark in pedagogical practice, how could it be applied to the preparation and practice of leaders? This chapter applies the assumptions and intentions of enactivism to the context of leadership. Although this process enables educational leaders to resume their pivotal place as models of learning excellence, it has profound implications for leadership expectations and accountabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how corporate executives of companies are using blogging as a new communications channel.

The paper presents an overview of the blogging phenomenon, placing it in context of the larger growth of Web 2.0 and user‐generated content. The paper provides the reader with a primer on blogs and how they can be used effectively by executives, as well as looking at the importance of monitoring the blogosphere for what is being said by and about a company.

Over 50 corporate CEOs were found who are presently engaged in blogging. The research also identifies companies where employees have been fired for blogging and presents best practices in blogging and blog policies.

The principal limitation of the research is that as blogging is a rapidly growing and evolving area, the present results on executive blogging are accurate only for the moment. The implications of this research are that it provides the foundation for surveying not only the status of blogging by managers but also an agenda for blogging research, which might examine blogging behaviours, develop blog metrics and look toward the return on investment of blogging.

The paper reveals the benefits of managerial blogging for both the company and the individual. It also examines issues concerned with human resources, financial disclosure and policy development that have arisen because of the rise of blogging within companies.

The paper represents a timely review of a rapidly evolving social network and its associated communications technology, providing both management practitioners and academicians with insights into managing in a new age.

The purpose of this paper is to holistically identify and assess the factors affecting the workplace relocation process during its various phases, namely: pre-relocation, relocation and post-relocation. The factors assessment evaluates the perspectives and level of agreement between facilities and real estate management professionals.

Literature review was conducted to identify the factors affecting the workplace relocation process. In total, 34 factors were identified, which formed the basis of a questionnaire survey to assess their importance. Responses to the questionnaire survey were obtained through face-to-face interviews with two groups of professionals in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, 32 facilities managers (FM) and 32 real estate managers (REM). The questionnaire utilized a 5-point Likert scale of importance.

The research delivers rankings of the identified factors for prioritization. Where a moderate (to high) level of agreement between FM and REM professionals was remarked. Significant factors include: “availability of workplace health and safety plan”, “analysis of business needs for relocation”, “cost control and management of the relocation process”, “availability of maintenance plans” and “selection of fit-out contractor”.

The study provides a significant contribution to research and professional practice, while no comprehensive studies have been conducted on the various phases of the relocation process. The findings of this study are genuine to keep professionals and practitioners on the ball managing their workplace relocations, overcoming their unforeseen struggles, resourcefully and efficiently.

The number of internet consumers who adopt ad-blocking is increasing rapidly all over the world. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this phenomenon by: assembling the existing considerations and key theoretical aspects of the determinants of online ad-blocking; and by exploring the consumers’ beliefs and sentiments toward online ads and expected outcomes of ad-blocking behavior.

Data consist of 4,093 consumers’ opinions in response to the news items about ad-blocking, published by a leading news and technology website in the period 2010–2016. The unstructured data are analyzed using probabilistic topic modeling and sentiment analysis.

Five main topics are identified, unveiling the hidden structure of consumers’ beliefs. A sentiment analysis profiling the clustered opinions reveals that the opinions that are focused on the behavioral characteristics of ads express the strongest negative sentiment, while the opinions centered on the possibility to subscribe to an ad-free fee-financed website are characterized on average by a positive sentiment.

The findings provide useful insights for practitioners to create/adopt more acceptable ads that translate into less ad-blocking and improved internet surfing experience. It brings insights on the question of whether ad-free subscription websites have or do not have the potential to become a viable business opportunity.

The research: improves the current understanding of the determinants of ad-blocking by introducing a conceptual framework and testing it empirically; makes use of consumer-generated data on the internet; and implements novel techniques from the data mining literature.