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The importance of customer satisfaction as a critical success factor has been recognized by practitioners and academics for several years now. Although customer satisfaction plays an important role in industrial markets due to their special characteristics, most researchers focus on consumer goods or services, leaving industrial goods fairly uncovered. In order to give manufacturers of industrial goods well-founded recommendations on how to reach a high level of satisfaction, the main drivers of customer satisfaction have to be revealed. The identification of these drivers is the primary goal of this study. Taking into account that there has been a change of paradigms in scale development we created a state-of-the-art questionnaire consisting of 15 constructs to be measured with 52 items, which was administered to respondents in 12 countries worldwide. The drivers’ analysis using Partial-Least-Squares (PLS) reveals a lot of penalty-services, whereas only the quality of machines and the quality of quotations offer a significant chance on increasing customer satisfaction, therefore disagreeing with previous results.

In the present paper we explore the long-term influence of childhood neglect on violent behavior in the transition to adulthood. In particular, we test whether neglect is spuriously related to violence due to their common association with academic achievement, physical abuse, and general offending. We then ask whether neglect has an indirect effect on violence through its impact on parental attachment, alcohol use, emotional negativity, academic achievement, or staying in school.

We use two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and employ both regression models and INDIRECT, a syntax file that allows for the testing of indirect effects using SPSS (Preacher & Hayes, 2008).

We find that the long-term association between childhood neglect and violence in the transition to adulthood is robust in models controlling for GPA, physical abuse, and other forms of offending. Neglect did not have an indirect effect on violence through attachment, negative emotionality, or academic achievement but did have indirect effects on violence through its association with staying in school and with alcohol use.

This set of analyses was exploratory in nature. Further research on neglect should be undertaken, using finely tuned measures and research questions. In addition, our findings imply that the association between neglect and later violent behavior may be intertwined with certain dynamics of physical abuse and alcohol use, which should be further studied.

Purpose – Despite the increasing use of formative measurement models in literature, little is known about potential consequences for substantive theory testing. Against this background, the aims of this chapter are (1) to highlight some problems that may arise when formative instead of reflective measures are used to test even simple theoretical models with covarianced-based methodologies, (2) to illustrate some approaches that might help overcome these problems, (3) to pinpoint potential interpretation difficulties of the results involving re-specified measurement models, and (4) to stimulate discussion on the implications for theory development when models are tested with formative measures.

Methodology/approach – Potential consequences of formative measurement models for theory testing are highlighted using an empirical study on consumer animosity as an illustrative example and applying covarianced-based structural equations modeling procedures for estimation purposes.

Findings – The empirical study shows (a) that some scaling options for the (composite) latent variable result in non-convergence problems, (b) that, assuming convergence, parameter estimates, standard errors, and significance levels vary depending on the scaling method used, and (c) that goodness-of-fit statistics cannot be used as diagnostic measures for the appropriateness of divergent results.

Originality/value of paper – The contribution of this chapter is two-fold: First, it shows that to enable estimation, it is often necessary to modify (i.e., expand) the original theoretical model in a conceptually reasonable manner and to do so before data collection. Second, it demonstrates that alternative scaling options for composite latent variables may result in inconsistent substantive conclusions. Consequently, the impact of formative measurement on theory testing is a critical topic and needs to receive further attention in future literature.

Numerous scales have been developed and utilized in the tourism and hospitality field, yet, their psychometric properties have not been systematically reviewed and evaluated. This gap compromises researchers' ability to develop better measures and improve measurement decisions. In this current study, 56 scales were identified and evaluated in terms of their psychometric properties. It was found that most scales were imperfect in measuring tourism and hospitality domains, and most scales did not provide explicit information about the scale development procedures that were adopted. The scale development procedure and psychometric properties of the reviewed scales are summarized, evaluated, and recommendations are made for future tourism and hospitality scale development.

Purpose – This chapter presents a framework useful in conducting multicountry marketing and advertising research. For the purpose of illustrating the series of steps involved in conducting such investigations, a six-country study examining global consumer culture positioning (GCCP) is presented. The suggested steps are relevant for the exploration of a wide variety of marketing- and advertising-related topics.

Methodology/approach – Steps essential to a well-planned research design are addressed in detail, including: theory identification, stimuli selection, hypotheses formulation, measurement development, country selection, fictitious ad development, survey design, cross-national data equivalence, and hypotheses testing. Particular attention is given to construct specification (in this case for soft-sell and hard-sell advertising appeals) and fictitious ad development. General consumers in six countries responded to the ads. Specific procedures for validating formative constructs and testing their cross-country equivalency are suggested.

Findings – The chapter provides practical recommendations for conducting cross-cultural research. These recommendations are likely to prove useful to both researchers conducting multicountry investigations, and to instructors teaching graduate-level courses in international marketing and advertising research.

Originality/value of paper – Multicountry research requires a series of challenging decisions. Although a well-planned research design is particularly essential in a cross-cultural setting, little attention has been given in providing researchers and instructors with methodological recommendations. This chapter is intended to be a useful reference for these audiences.

Most of us believe that entrepreneurs are special. We do this because both scholars and practitioners tell us so.

We suggest that globalization, a process that fosters greater interdependence and mutual awareness among actors around the world in their economic, political, social, and cultural interactions, will also decrease the social distance among them and thus increase individuals' propensities to cooperate with distal others. We demonstrate in a multi-country public goods experiment that among the four domains of individual participation in globalization, economic participation in globalization has the least effect in prompting cooperation. Conversely, the other three domains of globalization have strong effects on individual cooperation, and this is robust to different specifications of the econometric model.

Making a classroom a space that can become a place of lively discussion and interaction is a goal of many instructors, but it can be challenging to assess the extent to which classroom engagement is resulting in meaningful participation. The use of an assessment tool called classroom mapping provides a way to trace and analyze students’ interaction, performance, and involvement in a class. It maps discussions and shows feedback on what is going on; including who is talking, for how long, what subjects and instructional strategies engage which students, and what kinds of connections are being made with the students and the instructors. This chapter considers the broader implications of using technology to elevate classroom mapping from formative assessment to potential learning analytic, with particular attention to the practical, pedagogical and ethical implications of recording and mapping how students engage in their classes.

Open Courseware, in many ways, was the starting point towards mainstream discussion and adoption of open learning, particularly in higher education. In its first iteration, the concept specifically excluded assessment recognition, and credentialisation, which aims to ‘liberate’ knowledge without shattering the designing, teaching and awarding processes traditional education has relied upon for decades, if not centuries.