Search results

The purpose of this paper is to review Olympic mascots in the electronic and traditional communications environments.

Olympic mascots from 2006 to 2012 are analyzed using a descriptive semiotic analysis technique.

Results found that none of the 2006-2012 mascots clearly represented the two most recognizable icons of the Olympic movement, the Olympic Rings and the Olympic Flame. The association of the London 2012 mascots with the Olympic Games are found to be limited.

This research sets the stage for a number of future studies to further assess the management issues, social benefits, and potential missteps regarding mascots at the Olympic Games and other mega-events.

The practitioner of today working for a mega-event like the Olympic Games needs to be aware of the potential benefits and inherent risks of developing and implementing a mascot.

This research is the first to look specifically at Olympic mascots in the electronic age and contrast their use to traditional communications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore consumer behavior regarding women's decisions concerning fashion in the emerging marketing of Kazakhstan.

Literature review formed the basis of the questions asked to several focus groups and in‐depth interviews of 48 Kazakhs representing the average age of Kazakhstan. The approach of the paper is exploratory as there is not a lot of research concerning the Kazakhstani marketplace.

Kazakhstani women are becoming aware of their rights to choose clothing and location of purchase. They expect to be treated with respect. The women are value conscious, thinking brand names enhance the value of clothing and will shop sales regardless of the actual discount. Kazakhstani women are extremely fashion conscious and look to the media for current fashions. They are wary of anything coming out of China. There are five market segments into which these women can be divided.

The study was done in Almaty and may not reflect people outside urban Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan is opening as a marketplace. In order to understand how to market in Kazakhstan, firms must understand what is wanted and this paper begins this exploration.

This market is unexplored both academically and by many clothing manufacturers. This market is opening and thus information concerning the marketplace is necessary.

With the emergence of the knowledge economy different countries are responding with changes within their tertiary education systems. Education is increasingly recognized as a cornerstone to the continued growth of a country but with the globalization of business is education becoming a commodity?

This paper examines educational policies and their implementation within the UK and Canada.

This paper finds that education in the UK has become a commercial product within the international arena, unlike Canada where tertiary education has remained a domestic pursuit.

This paper engages in a controversy that questions whether the economic value to a nation of education is found only in the numbers of students or can be enlarged to include the results of the education for the students.

The purpose of this paper is to design, develop and evaluate a reliable and valid scale for the measurement of online retail service quality, specifically in the French context.

Study 1 derived scale items from the literature by content analysis. Study 2 extracted items from two quantitative data sets, gathered by questionnaire from 172 and 125 online shoppers, by exploratory factor and reliability analyses. Study 3 applied psychometric testing and confirmatory factor analysis to data from a survey of 178 e‐shoppers.

The outcome is “E‐tail SQ”, a 15‐item scale to measure five key user values (labelled ease of use, information content, fulfilment reliability, security/privacy and post‐purchase customer service). These scale items derived from French data are found to be similar to those identified in previous international studies, except that French e‐shoppers place more emphasis than their English‐speaking counterparts on internet security and privacy of personal information.

The sample profiles place limits on the applicability of the scale across markets and service categories. Further research must be conducted to improve its external validity.

“E‐tail SQ” can help online retailers in the French marketplace to measure service quality delivered, and thereby to improve it, and may be transferable to other national markets.

This new scale for the measurement of service quality in a specific cultural environment offers online retailers a framework within which to manage their web‐based relationships with a growing number of online shoppers.

This paper aims to explore the role and meaning of openness for the purpose of enhancing the understanding of collaborative innovation from an industrial network perspective.

The theoretical framework is based on the Industrial Network Approach, and the concepts of activity links, resource ties and actor bonds are used as a starting point for capturing the content and dynamics of the interaction. The empirical part consists of five case studies: two historical and three contemporary cases dealing with collaborative innovation projects. The cases are analyzed with regard to openness in business relationships and their connections in the network.

The main contribution is a conceptualization of openness in business relationships and relationship connections. The paper describes various forms and contents of openness – and closeness. It is postulated that the concept of openness can be used as an analytical tool for digging deeper into relationship and network-related issues of relevance to firms’ behavior in the context of collaborative innovation. Openness, as it is defined in this paper, is also put forward as an explanation of why (or why not) collaborative innovation projects become successful.

The conceptualization of openness differs from openness as it is commonly described in the open innovation literature. There, openness is the opposite of closeness, that is, a pattern where the innovation activities take place internally within the company. In this paper, openness, instead, has to do with how firms interact with other network actors in the context of collaborative innovation.

Les mutations importantes observées depuis une quinzaine d'années dans tous les domaines de la vie se reflètent dans le tourisme, ses services et ses produits. De nouvelles formes de vacances, de voyages et de loisirs émergent et prennent le pas sur les types les plus classiques. Face à cette montée de nouvelles conceptions, dont le tourisme alternatif est devenu le symbole le plus évident, se font entendre ceux qui estiment qu'il ne faut plus considérer le patrimoine de manière élitiste, qu'il existe de nouvelles formes de patrimoine à protéger, mettre en valeur et montrer aux touristes et aux populations.

The prevalent literature considers interlocking directorates as a mechanisms of cooperation among companies, but if the same director seats on the boards of two companies that are in competition, interlocking directorates, matching cooperation with competition, become a coopetition mechanism. This article aims to argue that the analysis of both the structure and the evolution of interlocking directorates provides some relevant insights on the driving forces behind the coopetition among firms.

Through a longitudinal study the authors analyzed relations among Italian listed firms belonging to financial or manufacturing sectors and traced the evolution networks of interlocking directorates among them. They then analyzed the coopetitive nature of interlocking directorates among firms acting in the same sector that are in direct competition and their impact on M&A processes.

It was evidenced that interlocking directorates among firms belonged to the same industry could be considered a coopetitive mechanism if they facilitate formation of deeper relations among competitors such as their integration through M&A.

This article offers a new perspective of analysis in interlocking directorates' field of research.

Interrelations of writings in a complex field such as studies of science, technology and society, turn out to be highly patterned when data on author co‐citations are statistically analysed and mapped. For both authors and specialities, the maps reveal structures of subject matter and intellectual impact, based on the perceptions of hundreds of citers since 1972. A new tool thus is available to historians and others concerned with a field's intellectual development.

DURING the three years I have attended the meetings of this branch association, papers of so interesting a character have been read that I am well aware of the difficulty each paper reader must have in keeping up the standard. But as my subject seems a good one, you may be inclined to overlook an indifferent treatment of it.