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Females are underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), both in the workforce and in universities. Low self-efficacy and limited access to role models are key factors preventing retention of female STEM students enrolled in university degrees. This paper aims to report on one social marketing pilot programme that was co-designed to increase self-efficacy in females currently enrolled in STEM programmes.

The Co-create, Build and Engage (C-B-E) framework was applied. Process and outcome evaluations were conducted using a repeated measure design to assess pilot programme effectiveness.

A significant increase in self-efficacy and high satisfaction rates were observed for STEM students that attended the bias literacy workshop. Social advertisements raised awareness for available STEM specific university services.

This paper outlines the application of the C-B-E framework. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study delivers the first scientific paper reporting an outcome evaluation for a social marketing programme seeking to retain women enrolled in university STEM degrees.

Cross-border e-commerce continues to garner much attention within the international marketing literature as the world becomes hyperconnected through digital channels. Although there is an abundance of international marketing research on cross-border e-commerce, there is a lack of information regarding the influences of meta-institutional factors, such as a country’s level of globalization, on the relationship between digital advertising and cross-border e-commerce buyers. The objective of this research is to examine the effects of digital media ad spend at the country level on cross-border e-commerce buyers across countries under differing degrees of formal (i.e. political) and informal (i.e. cultural) institutional globalization.

This work examines the influence of digital ad spend at the country level and the degree of the country’s formal and informal institutional globalization on the share of cross-border e-commerce buyers. We examine this issue within a 21-country, 8-year, unbalanced panel dataset.

We find that there is substantive heterogeneity in degrees of formal (i.e. political) and informal (i.e. cultural) institutional globalization and cross-border e-commerce across countries. Digital ad spend at the country level is positively associated with cross-border e-commerce buyers within a country. A country’s level of political globalization enhances, but cultural globalization was found to dampen the positive association. The results indicate that political and cultural globalization of a country both contribute to increased interconnectedness with the global market, yet the nature of the interconnection differs.

The findings are informative to international marketing managers navigating the digital landscape and highlight the importance of institutions in international marketing activities. The study specifically demonstrates the varying effects of the meta-institutional factors of a country’s level of political and cultural globalization on the association between digital ad spend and cross-border e-commerce buyers at the country level, across a wide variety of countries, thus also contributing to the effort to improve generalizations from multi-country comparisons in international marketing research.

Previous research has provided limited evidence on whether and how demographic factors associate with sensory processing patterns (SPP) in adults. This paper aims to examine relationships between SPPs and sociodemographic factors of age, sex, education and ethnicity in healthy adults.

A cross-sectional study design was used. A total of 71 adult participants was recruited from the community, using convenience sampling. Each participant completed the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile (AASP) and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales – short version (DASS-21). Demographic information on age, sex, education and ethnicity was collected. Results were analysed using descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVA).

SPPs, as measured by the AASP, were significantly correlated to demographic factors of age and education after controlling for emotional distress using the DASS-21. A statistically significant multivariate effect was found across the four dependent variables (low registration, seeking, sensitivity and avoiding) for the age category, F = 6.922, p = 0.009, ηp2 = 0.145, in the presence of a covariate DASS. The education category showed significance only in the seeking domain (p = 0.008, ηp2 = 0.10) after controlling for DASS. There was no significant correlation between SPPs and gender or ethnicity. Results also indicated that mean scores of participants in this study were “similar to most people” as standardised in the AASP.

This was a cross-sectional study with limitations including that the study used a relatively small sample and was based on self-reported healthy participants.

SPPs may correlate with healthy adults’ age and to a lesser extent education. This suggests that it might be helpful to consider such demographic factors when interpreting SPPs in clinical populations, although further research in larger samples is needed to reach firmer conclusions about possible implications of demographic variables.

The findings in this paper add to the growing evidence that suggest that SPPs vary with sociodemographic factors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore differences in the degree of innovation in employment relations (ER) between emerging and established firms,

A large national telephone survey (N=1,416) of both emerging (<5 years) and established firms was conducted.

Emerging firms were more casualised, less unionised, and experiencing higher levels of market expansion and unpredictability. Despite these differences, younger firms showed otherwise remarkable similarity to older firms across a range of ER practices, and both categories showed a reliance on business networks, rather formal training, for ER knowledge. While introducing ER changes more rapidly than older (and larger) firms, they were converging towards a suite of ER practices similar to that adopted by older firms. The results suggest that, if anything, established firms may have been engaged in greater innovation in more unusual ER practices.

Only managers were surveyed. The data are cross-sectional rather than longitudinal. As the study was undertaken in only one country, replication in other settings would be desirable.

The results raise major doubts about the notion that new firms represent the cutting edge of innovation, and highlights the degree to which newer firms match or mimic older firms’ ER architecture.

This study aims to evaluate the usability of the augmented reality-based Evoke Education System (EES) to improve service operations in educational settings. The EES uses an animated character (Moe) to interact with children in a classroom by reproducing their teacher's movements and speech.

This study uses a quantitative approach for the system usability evaluation. The ESS was evaluated by 71 children aged 6–8 years old, from two primary schools. After interacting with the EES, they completed a system usability questionnaire and participated in a knowledge acquisition test.

The knowledge acquisition test undertaken on the initial day showed statistically significant improvements for children taught with the EES, compared to children taught through traditional teaching approaches. However, the retest nine days later was not statistically significant (as only one school participated) due to low power. This study used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), resulting in the identification of five essential factors (likeability, interactiveness, retention, effectiveness/attractiveness and satisfaction) that contribute to the EES's usability. The comparison with existing literature shows that these factors are consistent with the definition of system usability provided by the International Organization for Standardization and current academic literature in this field.

The findings presented in this study are based on the data from only two schools. The research can be extended by involving children from a greater number of schools. Mixed methods and qualitative research approaches can be used for future research in this area to generalise the results.

This study proposes an innovative augmented reality-based education system to help teachers deliver their key messages to the children in a fun way that can potentially increase their knowledge retention.

Digital freight forwarder (DFF) start-ups and their associated business models have gained increasing attention within both academia and industry. However, there is a lack of empirical research investigating the differences between DFFs and traditional freight forwarders (TFF) and the impact of digital start-ups on incumbents' companies. In response, this study aims to examine the key business model characteristics that determine DFFs and TFFs and propose a framework illustrating the extent to which digital logistics start-ups influence incumbent logistics companies.

Based on the primary data gathered from eight interviews with experts from start-ups' and incumbents' logistics companies, as well as secondary data, the authors identify the main factors of DFFs start-ups that have an impact on TFFs and analyze the similarities and differences in regard to the business model components' value proposition, value creation, value delivery and value capture.

The results show that differences between DFFs and TFFs appear in all four business models' components: value proposition, value creation, value delivery and value capture. In particular, the authors identify three main factors that need to be considered when assessing the impact of DFFs on TFFs: (1) the company size, (2) the market cultivation strategy and (3) the transport mode.

This is one of the first studies to specifically examine the key business model differences between DFFs and TFFs and to propose a conceptual framework for understanding the impact of digital logistics start-ups on incumbent companies.

Young people’s involvement should lead to research, and ultimately services, that better reflect young people’s priorities and concerns. Young people with a history of treatment for alcohol and/or drug problems were actively involved in the youth social behaviour and network therapy study. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of that involvement on the study and what was learnt about involving young people in drug and alcohol research.

The initial plan was to form a young people’s advisory group (YPAG), but when this proved problematic the study explored alternative approaches in collaboration with researchers and young people. Input from 17 young people informed all key elements of the study.

Involvement of young people needs to be dynamic and flexible, with sensitivity to their personal experiences. Engagement with services was crucial both in recruiting young people and supporting their ongoing engagement. This research identified a need to critically reflect on the extent to which rhetorics of participation and involvement give rise to effective and meaningful involvement for young service users. It also highlights the need for researchers to be more flexible in response to young people’s personal circumstances, particularly when those young people are “less frequently heard”.

This research highlights the need for researchers to be more flexible in response to young people’s personal circumstances, particularly when those young people are “less frequently heard”. It highlights the danger of young people in drug and alcohol research being unintentionally disaffected from involvement through conventional approaches and instead suggests ways in which young people could be involved in influencing if and how they participate in research.

There is an apparent contradiction between dominant discourses and cultures of health services research (including patient and public involvement) that often do not sit easily with ideas of co-production and young people-centred involvement. This paper provides an alternative approach to involvement of young people that can help to enable more meaningful and effective involvement.

The flexible and young people-centred model for involvement which emerged from this work provides a template for a different approach. This may be particularly useful for those who find current practice, such as YPAG, inaccessible.

A perceived misalignment between socially responsible fans and football club management has recently led to a major crisis during the annual meeting in 2021 of Bayern Munich, one of the largest professional football teams in Europe. In an unprecedented scenario, Bayern Munich fans demanded that management drop one of its largest sponsors due to alleged violation of human rights. The goal of this paper is to examine this particular phenomenon, as it not only demonstrates a discrepancy between the social organizational identity and its image, but more importantly, how it impacts legitimation strategies and the fans' loyalty attitudes towards the club.

Using the underlying concepts of legitimacy and loyalty, this conceptual model paper proposes two frameworks for social responsibility in professional football clubs: (1) analyzing how the (mis-)alignment between organizational identity and image impacts fan loyalty and (2) depicting four different types of social responsibility strategies to align organizational identity and image.

The authors identify various theoretical concepts that influence organizational identity and image in and for social responsibility and combine the two critical concepts of legitimacy and loyalty to categorize the social responsibility strategies for professional football clubs.

Both frameworks advance the understanding of the decision-making behind social responsibility strategies and also synthesize the current literature to offer conceptual clarity regarding the varied implications and outcomes linked to the misalignment between organizational identity and image.