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With the growth of online shopping, during which consumers are not able to touch products, there is much for researchers and marketers to learn about the underlying role of the need for touch (NFT) in driving online shopping decisions. Consumers' emotional state prior to purchase is considered a situational variable that affects their attitude and behaviour. This study explores the effects of consumers' NFT and pre-purchase emotional states on their online decision-making behaviour, examining perceived quality, confidence in product judgment and intention to purchase.

A field experiment was conducted using a scenario presenting buying a sweater as a real purchase opportunity available to participants. A convenience sample of two hundred ninety-eight university students at a university in the southeast of France was used in this study. A 2 (NFT: high/low determined by a median split) × 2 (emotional states: high/low level) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to further examine the interaction of NFT and emotional states in consumer decision making.

The results indicate that autotelic NFT and positive emotional states experienced before shopping have an impact on consumers' decisions in relation to perceived quality, confidence in product judgment and intention to purchase. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that instrumental vs autotelic NFT affects consumer decision making, with mixed support found for negative emotional states acting as possible moderators.

This study advances the NFT field and leads to insights regarding online consumer purchase decision making by exploring instrumental vs autotelic NFT and pre-purchase emotional states as antecedents of consumer decisions.

With the proliferation of virtual reality (VR) applications in electronic commerce, investigations on the effects of VR on consumer responses are important. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of online presentation modes (i.e. situational VR, pure VR and picture) on consumer responses for three product types (i.e. geometric, material and mechanical).

This study conducted a 3×3 between-subjects experiment to validate the research model and hypotheses.

The results revealed that both the situational VR mode and the pure VR mode had a greater impact on product knowledge and purchase intention than the picture mode. The situational VR mode yielded a higher level of product knowledge and purchase intention than the pure VR mode although it was not statistically significant. Furthermore, the pattern of VR modes superiority was found to be consistent across geometric, material and mechanical product types.

This research study contributes to the VR literature by investigating a new type of VR: situational VR, and offering a more comprehensive picture of consumer responses to online product presentations. The authors then drew the implications from the findings to suggest guidelines for practitioners to efficiently allocate resources and maximize the effectiveness of online presentation modes.

Most research on branding highlights the role of associations for a single brand. Many firms, however, have multiple brands and/or different versions of one brand. The latter is largely the case for many corporate brands. This paper aims to broaden the understanding of corporate brand associations and their transfer within the firm’s brand and product portfolio. In particular, this paper also examines the concept of corporate brand innovativeness and the influence of brand architecture as supportive and restrictive boundary conditions for its transfer.

This conceptual paper explains the nature, benefits and challenges of corporate brand innovativeness within the context of a firm’s brand architecture. On the basis of a literature review, the authors provide an overview of the domain and derive avenues for future research.

Research and practice have not fully realised the importance of corporate brand images for supporting a firms’ product portfolio. In particular, (corporate) marketing managers need to consider the potential value of favourable perceptions of corporate brand innovativeness across products and the moderating role of brand architecture.

More empirical research is needed to understand the reciprocal relationship and transfer between corporate and product brand associations and equity.

A corporate marketing perspective allows firms to use corporate brand associations to support products and services for that brand. This paper discusses perceived corporate brand innovativeness as one particularly important corporate brand association.

The authors discuss the use of corporate brand associations under the consideration of brand architectures and boundaries and draw on several research streams in the brand management literature. Much of the branding and innovation literature centres on the product level; research on corporate brand innovativeness has been relatively neglected.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between women’s sexual health agency and their intent to initiate communications with their doctors. The research questions examined the effect sexual health agency has on patient-doctor communication, women’s emotional responses to health advertisements encouraging patient communication with their doctors, attitude toward the message and behavioral intentions after exposure to the advertising message.

An experimental design was implemented via an online questionnaire instrument to test the differences between younger-aged women (25 to 45 years) and mature-aged women (46 to 70 years). It was observed that 188 women who reported their status as single and sexually active in the past 12 months were exposed to a health advertisement that encouraged patient-doctor communication. Analyses were conducted to compare between-group measures on sexual health agency, emotional response and attitude toward the ad and behavioral intention.

No statistical difference existed between younger and older women. In general, women expect their doctor to lead conversations about sexual health but are positively reinforced by health messages that encourage their assertiveness as patients.

The small sample size also may have limited the study’s potential to evaluate differences between age segments. Future research should explore this further.

The study provides evidence that sexual health advertising can reinforce women’s intent to initiate conversations with doctors regardless of age.

Health communications can bolster women’s sexual health agency and improve patient-initiated conversations with doctors.

The study is the first to explore advertising messaging’s potential for applying health agency as a communication strategy for encouraging sexual health communications between women and their doctors.

Studies on consumer knowledge calibration have used different measures of calibration. The purpose of this paper is to undertake a comparative assessment of important measures. In addition, it seeks to identify the best performing measure.

The paper reports on three studies. The first study uses eight survey data sets. The second and third studies use experiments.

The study found that the Brier score component measure is most responsive to feedback and is the most suitable measure of knowledge calibration. The results also indicate that researchers should use measures that use item-level confidence judgements, as against an overall confidence judgement.

By documenting the relationship between the different measures of knowledge calibration, the study enables proper interpretation and accumulation of results of various studies that have used different measures. The study also provides guidance to researchers in psychology and education where this issue has been noted.

The study provides guidance to managers in knowledge intensive industries, such as finance and insurance, interested in understanding their consumers’ knowledge calibration.

This is the first study in consumer research that examines this issue.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

In the face of the failure of command economic systems and the introduction of free‐market principles in Central and Eastern Europe, there will be an increasing need to provide timely and relevant information to business people who may be interested in marketing their products or services to these countries. One practical way to present this information in software form is through the use of knowledge bases and expert systems. Knowledge bases contain information which can be obtained through specific queries or via keyword searches. Expert systems act as decision‐support tools, providing consultation and advice in much the same manner that a human expert would use. Describes an expert system designed to aid the international manager in decision making, particularly with respect to target market evaluation and selection. It includes specific information on several Eastern European nations, as well as many more traditionally capitalistic countries. Descriptions of the technical structure and theoretical foundations of this expert system are presented, as well as its uses and implications for future development.

This paper adds to the ongoing debate on judgements, opportunity evaluation and founder identity theory and shows that founders vary in their prioritisation and combination of judgement criteria, linked to their respective social founder identity. It further reveals how this variation among founder identity types shapes their perception of distinct entrepreneurial opportunities and the forming of first-person opportunity beliefs.

This study uses a qualitative approach by presenting three business scenarios to a sample of 34 first-time founders. It adopts a first-person perspective on their cognitive processes during the evaluation of entrepreneurial opportunities using verbal protocol and content analysis techniques.

The theorised model highlights the use of similar categories of judgement criteria by individual founders during opportunity evaluation that followed two distinct stages, namely search and validation. Yet, founders individualised their judgement process through the prioritisation of different judgement criteria.

The authors provide new insights into how individuals individuate entrepreneurial opportunities through the choice of different judgement criteria that enable them to develop opportunity confidence during opportunity evaluation. The study also shows that first-time founders depict variations in their cognitive frames that are based on their social identity types as they assess opportunity-related information and elicit variations in reciprocal relationships emerging between emotion and cognition. Exposing these subjective cognitive evaluative processes provides theoretical and practical implications that are discussed as well.

A hybrid approach for integrating group Delphi, fuzzy logic and expert systems for developing marketing strategies is proposed in this paper. Within this approach, the group Delphi method is employed to help groups of managers undertake SWOT analysis. Fuzzy logic is applied to fuzzify the results of SWOT analysis. Expert systems are utilised to formulate marketing strategies based upon the fuzzified strategic inputs. In addition, guidelines are also provided to help users link the hybrid approach with managerial judgement and intuition. The effectiveness of the hybrid approach has been validated with MBA and MA marketing students. It is concluded that the hybrid approach is more effective in terms of decision confidence, group consensus, helping to understand strategic factors, helping strategic thinking, and coupling analysis with judgement, etc.