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The purpose of this paper is to discuss financial aspects of illegal dog‐fighting in the UK and to reflect upon and discuss the difficulties of researching illegal entrepreneurial activities such as dog‐fighting which are operated for criminal profit. Such activities are conducted by urban criminals often in a rural setting. Such crimes invariably occur in a closed social milieu to which the authorities and the academic researcher cannot legitimately gain access. In this case the illegal activities, as well as being status and animal welfare crimes, can legitimately be regarded as being an entrepreneurial activity as they entail trading in a Kirznerian sense as well as financial implications associated with gambling.

The methodological approach used in this article is that of desk‐based research to locate and review academic articles in relation to the illegal activity of dog‐fighting and to synthesise this knowledge with empirical material gathered from a search of British newspapers on the subject to develop an aperçus in relation to financial aspects of the crime.

Very little is known about the financial aspects of illegal dog‐fighting in the UK. It is an activity shrouded in secrecy. The primary purpose of the activity is to engage in gaming activities with the intention of making money. This qualifies it as a financial crime.

The paper is of value because of its novelty and also because it highlights the difficulties in investigating certain illegal entrepreneurial criminal activities. It is vital to conduct such research because otherwise the subject matter would be ignored by the research community.

In the light of the recent rapid growth in the ownership of ‘status dogs’ in the UK, and drawing upon research conducted in Britain and North America, this article considers the motivation of the dogs' owners, the relationship between the ownership of ‘status dogs’ and urban street gangs, and the social impact of these dogs.

The purpose of this paper is to offers the authors’ perspective on a problem rarely considered by those making strategic decisions: conflicting laws at different levels of jurisdiction, specifically those related to stigmatized products.

The authors use as examples of product categories from marijuana to single-use plastic bags, describing the conflicting laws that add to costs for marketers and consumers.

The authors find that conflicting laws add to the uncertainty, legal expenses, and therefore, the cost of marketing a stigmatized product, whether stigmatized because of its impact on the environment, on health or on moral grounds.

The examples are not exhaustive, but their implications are significant: that as state legislatures are preempting local bans, Congress may preempt state laws.

This paper adds one more complexity to decision-making in the area of products to offer and/or merger/acquisition decisions that may bring company products that face conflicting laws.

Three questions are explored regarding ethnozoology’s place in sociology. First, why has sociology been slow to explore this subject or to give it much credibility? Resistance by sociologists to ethnozoology is strikingly ironic, given the discipline’s willingness in recent years to consider the plight of virtually every human minority. Although androcentric and conservative biases no doubt are part of this resistance, it is suggested that significant resistance comes from sociologists involved in the study of various oppressed groups. Second, what has sociology done to study ethnozoology so far? Acritique is made of prior attempts to categorize research in this area along topical lines. Instead, the value of theoretically organizing this literature is advocated. Finally, how should sociology proceed with ethnozoological research? An argument is made for increasing applied research. Two exemplars are provided, including the trend by police to racially profile urban pit‐bull owners and the growth of uneasiness among veterinary students who resist the traditional use of animals as educational tools.

This study aims to examine the effects of celebrity negative publicity on attitude towards brand, corporation, brand reputation and corporate reputation, both directly and through the moderating effects of social media involvement, brand commitment, identification and attribution (both types). Associative network theory has been used to explain these effects.

A quantitative survey of 550 respondents was carried out in London and surrounding areas. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The findings suggest that celebrity negative publicity affects brand reputation and corporate reputation. Further, the moderating effects of social media involvement and brand commitment on attitude towards brand and corporation, identification on attitude towards brand, attribution types on attitude towards corporation were not found.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the effects of celebrity negative publicity on attitudes towards brand, attitude towards corporation, brand reputation and corporation reputation, directly, and through the moderating effects of attribution (both types), identification, commitment and social media. Findings from this study will minimise the gap in the literature on the topic and will help managers and policymakers to understand the effects of celebrity negative publicity in detail.

THE major problem in the planning of a country's future defence requirements is always the prediction of the exact nature of the next conflict and the range of performance of the military equipment required to deal with it. Such predictions can only be based on the experience of the last conflict, modified by the knowledge of subsequent developments in military technology and tactics. Inevitably, as the time since the last ‘hot war’ increases, the lines of development of equipment become more influenced by advances in technology than by the demands of real battle conditions. This tendency is fully realised, and for this reason ‘hot wars’ such as Vietnam or the Israeli‐Egyptian conflict are closely followed by military strategists to see how the lessons of actual combat modify contemporary military theory.

The concept of the design process is not well understood by the general public. Indeed industry is now looking for graduates with the core skills of mathematics and science but enhanced by a firm grounding in the engineering design process. At Southampton a number of initiatives have been implemented in teaching practices and further activities are being constructed to increase the undergraduate's awareness of the order and execution of the modern design process. The demands of manufacture on design and the abilities of the undergraduate to use high grade CAD/CAM computer packages to perform these tasks is the focus of the developments. The exact package that is being used is not important, more so the thinking processes required in using them to their best advantage. The paper will describe the concepts behind these initiatives and how the engineering education process must itself become an example of the integration of disciplines.

The Interboard Administrative Commercial and Clerical Training Liaison Group was formed in 1977 under the sponsorship of the Training Services Division of the MSC. Its membership was not only from Industry Training Boards but also from organisations such as British Rail, British Gas, Insurance Industry Training Council, and Electricity Supply Industry Training Committee. Its terms of reference were to provide a forum for communication, discussion and liaison on administrative, commercial and clerical training; to maintain links with professional and educational bodies; to identify areas of need in administrative, commercial and clerical training; where a number of members had an interest, to establish a Working Group to investigate and determine further action. The long term objectives were to establish areas of common interest, and to draw up an annual operational plan for the liaison group. This has usually included a number of one‐day workshops and an annual conference.

The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of different brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and comparative advertising on consumers’ brand attitudes. Additionally, this study also aims to demonstrate the effects of inspiration, self-relevance and empathy on the relationship between brand positioning and comparative advertising.

A two-by-three factorial design was employed with brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and three types of comparative advertising (noncomparative, indirect comparative and direct comparative) as the independent variables. Inspiration serves as the mediator, while self-relevance and empathy act as moderators and brand attitude is the dependent variable.

The results show that different brand positions significantly affect brand attitudes, with respondents having a better brand attitude toward the underdog brand. Brand attitude is partially mediated by inspiration. Self-relevance moderates the relationship between brand positioning and brand attitude. However, brand positioning, comparative advertising and empathy do not have interaction effects.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the effect of psychological variables on brand positioning and comparative advertising.

The results suggest that the underdog setting requires a real and honest story because consumers will spot a fake underdog story, which will damage consumer trust in the brand and harm the brand image.

There is a lack of research using psychological variables to demonstrate the effect of being the underdog brand. This study contributes to the literature by employing psychological variables to illustrate the effect of underdog positioning. These findings can help brands develop branding positioning strategies.