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Investigates the moderating effect of firm and environmental variables on the importance of a strategic element, customer service, in explaining satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Explores first, the direct impact of certain firm and environmental variables on satisfaction. Next, investigates the quasi‐moderating effects of firm and environmental variables on the relationship between customer service and satisfaction. Indicates that product line growth rate and supplier flexibility contribute to customer satisfaction both directly and through an interaction with customer service. Suggests that the remaining environmental variables tested – channel configuration, reseller size, rivalry, and reseller power – do not affect the amount of customer service provided.

Observes that interfunctional co‐ordination is important to the provision of outstanding customer service since both marketing and logistics activities are required. Builds on a model first presented by Mentzer, Gomes and Krapfel, which conceptually integrated the logistics and marketing aspects of customer service. Communication, an additional logistics dimension, is added to the Mentzer, Gomes and Krapfel model. Uses factor analyses to test for convergent and discriminant validity, as well as to test for the appropriate number of model dimensions. Reliability of the measures is also assessed. Indicates seven dimensions of customer service. Three are from logistics: availability, delivery quality and communication; and four are from marketing: pricing policy, quality, product support‐sales representatives and product support‐customer service representatives. These differ somewhat from the Mentzer, Gomes and Krapfel model, which suggests that the physical distribution customer service dimensions might include availability, timeliness and delivery quality.

To measure the relationships between varieties of patriotism and fan reactions to anthem-linked athlete activism and to test the effects of teammate allyship.

In this study of US sport fans (n = 519), the authors examine whether two varieties of patriotism—the affective “symbolic patriotism” and the cognitive “uncritical patriotism”—might explain fans' reactions (support v. opposition) to anthem-linked athlete activism. The authors also consider whether fans' acceptance of nonactivist teammate allyship moderates patriotism influences on those reactions.

Using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), the authors posit and show that fans' reactions to athlete activism are driven more strongly by uncritical patriotism than by symbolic patriotism. The authors also show that fans' acceptance of nonactivist teammate allyship significantly moderate the strength and direction of fans' reactions to athlete activism.

The authors contribute substantive, new knowledge into the sways of athlete activism, teammate allyship and fan patriotism within the sport world. By way of novel heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations, the authors show evidence of discriminant validities of symbolic patriotism and uncritical patriotism. Using PLS-SEM moderation tests, the authors also show that fans' acceptance of teammate allyship moderates the influences of these patriotism types differently.

Few empirical studies to date have investigated sport fans' reactions to athletes' displays of social activism (e.g. taking a knee to protest racism).

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:

The goal of this research is to identify which service activities contribute most to customer satisfaction in the technical wholesale industry in the Baltic States.

In order to obtain an understanding of customer service in the countries of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, a mail survey was done to investigate customer service obtained by 184 customers of a large technical wholesale firm doing business in the Baltic States.

The overall results of this research indicate that in the technical wholesale industry of the Baltic countries customer service contributes to customer satisfaction. Of the six dimensions tested, all of the relationships were in the expected direction. Only one did not contribute significantly to customer satisfaction. In order of importance to customer satisfaction the dimensions are: process quality, product quality, delivery quality, communication, availability and product support.

To obtain more generalizable results, future research areas should include investigating the model using other firms within the same industry, and testing the model in additional industries within the Baltics. Additional research may include testing the model in other countries in Northern and Central Europe such as the well‐developed Scandinavian countries, and the lesser developed countries of Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland as well as other areas of the world. This model was tested using data from the technical wholesale industry and additional research may focus on testing the model across different industries in different countries as well.

The results are of relevance to practitioners, in particular for firms expanding to the Baltic area. In addition, anecdotal evidence suggests that the level and number of customer service activities provided by technical services firms in the Baltic area of Northern Europe are based solely on management judgment or practices borrowed from competitors without considering the impact of service provision on customer satisfaction. Instead practitioners should consider the process used to deliver services and products.

This is the first empirical work measuring the impact of customer service dimensions on customer satisfaction using data from the Baltic States.

Reports that franchisors are sometimes found liable for consumer injuries resulting from faulty products that the franchisor neither designed, manufactured, inspected, nor distributed. Examines the legal doctrines by which these outcomes are reached. In addition, reviews and supports the basic public policy arguments underlying vicarious franchisor liability. Finally, provides managerial recommendations for dealing with this aspect of the legal environment to both franchisors and franchisees.

This article aims to explore the new challenge posed by the first generations of people with learning disabilities who are now living into older age in significant numbers. Most are living with family carers, who are themselves ageing. This represents a major transition in people's lives and one to which services must respond if a normal life event is not to be turned into a crisis. Though this issue has been acknowledged by government, much more needs to be done to provide people with learning disabilities and their families with the necessary support to enjoy a healthy and active old age.

This article draws on the work of the authors for over a decade in this field.

Learning disabled people are likely to experience the age discrimination common in much older people provision and practice and the caring relationship is undermined in the short and long term. Evidence on the extension of personalisation indicates that it presents very considerable challenges for this group of families.

More information is needed on this growing population. More preventative support is needed to sustain the caring relationship while the family is living together, to support families to plan for the future, and to provide support when the caring relationship breaks down.

The article draws together data from the fields of ageing, learning disability and family care to highlight the increasing challenge, which this growing, but neglected, population presents both for policy and practice. It examines the implications for both the older people themselves and for the ageing family carers with whom the majority live and of current government policy in social care and welfare benefits for this very vulnerable group.

This study examines the effect of a Medicaid disenrollment on employment, sources of health insurance coverage, and health and health care utilization of childless adults using longitudinal data from the 2004 Panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation. From July to September 2005, TennCare, the Tennessee Medicaid program, disenrolled approximately 170,000 adults following a change in eligibility rules. Following this eligibility change, the fraction of adults in Tennessee covered by Medicaid fell by over 5 percentage points while uninsured rates increased by almost 5 percentage points relative to adults in other Southern states. There is no evidence of an increase in employment rates in Tennessee following the disenrollment. Self-reported health and access to medical care worsened as hospitalization rates, doctor visits, and dentist visits all declined while the use of free or public clinics increased. The Tennessee experience suggests that undoing the expansion of Medicaid eligibility to adults that occurred under the Affordable Care Act likely would reduce health insurance coverage, reduce health care access, and worsen health but would not lead to increases in employment.