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The utilization of the Internet and Internet marketing for marketing research has received considerable attention. Although there is a growing body of research devoted to this issue little has been done to explore the impact of Internet technology, e‐mail users’ on‐line skills and experience, on their choice of the new survey medium. This study is based on a sample of 122 responses from UK marketing executives using e‐mail and mail questionnaire surveys respectively. The research instrument included measures of respondents’ extent of e‐mail use, their general knowledge of online communications and their time of using the Internet. Some significant impact of these factors has been identified. The empirical evidence supports the hypotheses that the use of e‐mail survey methods is positively connected with high technology awareness and extensive e‐mail use. The findings imply that proper survey planning and administration are important for Internet‐based marketing surveys and suggest the existence of certain user patterns among different Internet user populations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of topic sensitivity and the research design techniques of forced answering (FA) (i.e. cannot proceed if leave an answer blank) and response options (use of “prefer not to answer” (PNA) option) on respondent motives for participating in an internet-based survey.

Data were collected in a field experiment in Hong Kong using a 2×2×2 factorial design. Variables manipulated were topic sensitivity, use of FA, and response options. The dependent variables were eight specific motives which were obtained from responses to the survey participation inventory (SPI).

Topic sensitivity has a significant influence on seven of the eight motives. The use of FA does not appear to affect motives. In contrast, the use of the response option “PNA” has a significant effect on all motives except “obligation”. The SPI appears to be a viable measure to the use with Hong Kong online panellists, and perhaps with other Asian and non-Western cultures/countries as well.

The present study tested only two specific topics, each with a specific level of sensitivity. Further research should apply the SPI to topics of varying levels of sensitivity. The present study used a sample of panel members. Future research could examine motivation for survey participation for use with off-line samples.

There are differences in motivation for survey participation among panellists. The authors relate panellists' motivation to topic sensitivity and confirm that panellists who answered questions about a sensitive topic were less motivated to participate in every motivational aspect, except for incentives. The authors find that the survey design feature of FA is largely unrelated to panellists' motivation.

This is one of the few studies that show the impact of topic sensitivity, FA, and response options on motives for responding. It is the first use of the SPI in a non-Western culture/nation.

Identifying the best predictors of environmental citizenship behavior (ECB) has been a major concern of both researchers and educators aimed at protecting environmental quality and sustain person-environment transactions. This study aims to examine the unique contribution of personality traits and self-efficacy beliefs to the ECB of university youth in Sri Lanka.

Quantitative research approach used. The internet-based survey method was used to collect data from undergraduates studying at six state universities and two nonstate universities. The measurement items of five personality traits, ECB and academic self-efficacy were adopted on established scales from the literature.

Multiple regression results revealed that the personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness and openness to experience, as well as academic self-efficacy, are significant predictors of ECB. Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience significantly influenced academic self-efficacy. Model 6 of the PROCESS macro results indicated that academic self-efficacy partially mediated the contribution of extraversion, agreeableness and openness to experience traits to ECB.

These findings have broad implications for interventions aimed at enhancing youth environmental behavior. Whereas personality traits represent stable individual characteristics that mostly derive from individual hereditary endowment.

The study showed a holistic approach in explaining ECB that combined both personality traits and self-efficacy beliefs, indicating that they are interrelated and should not be treated in isolation.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the impact of the level of cooperation in the supply chain on lean production (LP) adoption. The effect of the level of cooperation with both suppliers and customers with regards to the intensity of LP adoption is examined, as is the joint effect of cooperation and information integration with customers.

Analysis is carried out on a sample of 84 manufacturing plants that are first tier suppliers to original equipment manufacturers in the Spanish automotive industry. Data were gathered from plant CEOs via a combination of regular mail, e‐mail and internet‐based survey methods. Data are analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and hierarchical regression.

The results show that while greater levels of cooperation with suppliers do not impact on the intensity of LP adoption, greater levels of cooperation with customers do have a significant effect. Also, the greater the cooperation with customers and the more information integrated with them, the higher the intensity of LP adoption.

The findings stress the importance of having a holistic vision of the supply chain to explain the degree of LP adoption. Further developments include simultaneously studying the role of both information and physical flows along the supply chain in LP adoption, and analyzing the time lag that occurs between a company increasing cooperation with suppliers and customers, and progress being made in the intensity of LP adoption.

Practitioners must be mindful that a greater level of cooperation with customers creates a favourable environment for increasing the intensity of adoption of LP.

This paper contributes to research on the explanatory factors of LP adoption by adding new factors to explain it, including the level of cooperation between supply chain agents and the interaction of information integration and cooperation with customers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze relationships between operational characteristics and business growth in Italian manufacturing companies comparing high lean performers (HLPs), which are companies with a high degree of application of lean practices, and low lean performers (LLPs). This analysis aims at highlighting the effect of the implementation level of lean practices on operational characteristics of Italian companies and, as a consequence, on business growth.

A classification in “LLPs” and “HLPs” of Italian manufacturing industries has been developed in order to measure the company’s degree of application of lean practices. A survey was carried out, and a combination of cluster analysis and multi-group structural equation path model was developed in order to answer research hypotheses.

Results suggest that HLPs are characterized by a greater number of employees and a larger turnover. The operational characteristics that contribute to the business growth owing to the introduction of lean practices are as follows: the range of different finished products managed, the delivery reliability, and speedy response to warranty claim. No differences between HLPs and LLPs in terms of business growth have been highlighted when companies vary the batch size, reduce the medium production time, reduce the percentage of finished products which are subject to claim, and increase the percentage (of turnover) of R&D investment. The study highlights that “LLPs” companies are apparently capable of changing their production schemes and adjusting themselves better for customizing their products.

Companies that aim at implementing lean practices should focus their attention on practices that affect the operational characteristics that contribute to the business growth. Moreover, because of the complexity and effort for the implementation of certain lean practices connected to supplier, workforce, quality, and production efficiency, these practices are more suitable only for large firms with enough resources.

As an attempt to offer strategic and operational perspective on Italian lean practices implementation, this study examined how the degree of application of the different lean practices has an impact on operational and companies’ performance. Hence, even if the present study is limited to the Italian manufacturing companies, it could be a representative of companies that are operating in developed countries that are facing the so-called “anemic growth.”

The aim of the investigation is to identify enabling and disenabling factors in the development and operation of virtual teams; to evaluate the importance of factors such as team development, cross‐cultural variables, leadership, communication and social cohesion as contributors to virtual team effectiveness.

A total of 115 employees in virtual teams using an on‐line survey contributed a 55 per cent response rate. An on‐line survey combining both quantitative Likert scale and qualitative explanatory questions measured the following variables in addition to those above: team member roles and responsibilities, relationships and trust and team dynamics.

Results indicated that cross‐cultural communication improvement, managerial and leadership communication, goal and role clarification, and relationship building are most important to virtual team performance.

Further research focusing on particular sectors such as knowledge‐ intensive firms (KIF), including information and telecommunications, and research and development is needed to provide in‐depth insights into virtual team operations. In addition this research highlights potential issues in cross‐cultural composition of virtual teams and the need for further work on appropriate team training, selection factors in comprising virtual teams and communications.

While there is a growing body of research on knowledge and information economy issues and the changing sociology of work for example in the ICT sector and in tele‐remote work and call centres, empirical work specifically on virtual team operation is embryonic. This exploratory research begins to add to the understanding of variables important in the operational effectiveness of virtual teams.

This study aims to explore the gaps concerning the organizational operant resources (OORs) of logistics service providers (LSPs) expected in outsourcing relationships. The study considers the views of both manufacturing firms (M-firms) and LSPs in India and DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) seeking gaps within and across regions.

This research employed a survey targeting executives from large M-firms and LSPs in both India and DACH. The perceptions about the importance and improvement expectations of 17 OORs are analyzed. A modified version of importance-improvement analysis (A-B), a novel comparative A-B analysis (CABA) method, has been proposed to identify the importance and improvement gaps in OORs between M-firms and LSPs within and across India and the DACH region.

There are more gaps between M-firms and LSPs in India compared to DACH. Cross-country comparisons reveal that LSPs in India and DACH have similar perceptions concerning the OORs, but M-firms in India have significantly higher improvement expectations than those in DACH.

This study proposes an analytical approach that enables managers to identify improvement areas and better align with their outsourcing relationship partners. It also highlights aspects that need to be considered while entering emerging markets such as India.

The analysis approach using CABA is novel. Also, among the cross-country studies, this is the first to compare outsourcing relationships in India with the DACH region while involving both users' and service providers' perspectives.

Food experience is gaining importance in the increase of sustainable competitiveness of tourism businesses, hence the importance of food consumption measurement in the context of recent gastronomic trends. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is not any appropriate scale to measure food consumption in the context of recent gastronomic trends. This study aims to fill this gap by developing and validating a scale that tends to measure tourists’ food preferences.

This is an explorative study with its unique construction and methodological approach. More specifically, scale development procedures were followed through reviewing the literature and gathering the opinions of 20 experts, and then the primary data were collected through the survey applied to 248 foreign visitors to Turkey. Finally, the subsequent survey was applied to 628 foreign visitors to Turkey for the sake of validity.

This study reveals a scale and validates it. The scale development and validation processes resulted in a three-factor model with 14 items to assess food consumption tendencies: modernist cuisine tendencies, fusion cuisine tendencies and local cuisine tendencies.

This study contributes to the relevant knowledge accumulation by developing and validating a scale measuring food consumption tendencies within the frame of recent gastronomic trends. The authors hope to broaden understanding and utilization of the tendencies and trends by both stakeholders in the tourism industry and academic circles.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first food consumption scale development and validation attempts within the frame of recent gastronomic trends. Considering this, it is hoped that the outcomes are unique and lead academia and practitioners in further research.

This empirical study aims to explore the relationship between Total quality management (TQM), Total productive/preventive maintenance (TPM) and Just-in time (JIT). It also seeks to examine the relationship between Just-in time (JIT) and agile manufacturing.

Data for the study were collected from a survey of 205 industrial companies and the relationships proposed in the framework were tested using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that (1) TPM has a positive impact on TQM and JIT, (2) TQM has a positive effect on JIT and (3) JIT has a direct positive relationship with agile manufacturing. In addition, the results reveal an indirect effect of TPM and TQM on agile manufacturing through JIT.

The conceptual model proposed and tested in this study can be used by researchers for developing Lean manufacturing practices (TQM, TPM and JIT) and agile manufacturing theory. In addition, this model shows to practitioners the importance of integrating TQM, TPM and JIT in manufacturing firms. In other words, this study shows practitioners how firms can support their agile manufacturing system.

This research presents an innovative approach since it examines simultaneously the interdependencies between TQM, TPM and JIT and their direct and indirect link with agile manufacturing using structural equation modeling.

The purpose of the present study is to examine the effect of waiting lines on customers’ decisions between using a self-service alternative and using a service employee. As self-service technologies are expensive and time-consuming to design and implement, service providers need to understand what drives customers to use them. Service operators have the most control over waiting lines and flexibility in expanding capacity, either by adding service employees or by adding self-service kiosks.

The study used online scenario-based surveys following a 4 (number of customers waiting for the self-service technology) × 4 (number of customers waiting for the service employee) design. A binary dependent variable was used to record participants’ choice of service delivery alternative.

Using logistic regression, the authors found that customers are increasingly motivated to use self-service technology as the waiting line for the service employee grows longer. This effect is influenced by perceived usefulness, anticipated quality of the self-service technology, need for interaction and technology anxiety.

This study should be replicated in a real-world setting where actual behavior, and not only intention, can be measured.

The study provides guidance on how service providers can design their service to take advantage of the motivating effect of waiting lines on usage of self-service technology.

The present study is the first to combine a scenario-based experiment with a binary dependent variable to isolate the impact of waiting lines on the choice between using a self-service technology and using a service employee. The use of the binary dependent variable overcomes the ambiguity of extrapolating from a continuous measure of intention to draw conclusions about behavior, a binary variable.