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This study aims to develop and empirically validate the concept of experience capability, which represents an organisation's ability to be adept at managing the customer experience. Organisations that build an experience capability develop an expertise in deploying a set of resources and routines to understand, evaluate and improve how they interact with customers across all the points of contact.

A rigorous process was employed to identify, operationally define, evaluate and validate six dimensions reflecting experience capability. The dimensions were developed and validated using relevant literature, expert interviews, item-sorting techniques, a pilot survey and two surveys, providing a degree of certainty that the intellectual insights are generalisable.

The experience capability concept is identified as comprising six dimensions that are informed by 27 measurement items. The six dimensions are employee training, employee empowerment, employee evaluation, experience performance management, cross-functional work and channel integration. The findings provide evidence suggesting that the multi-item measurement scale exhibits appropriate psychometric properties.

The empirically validated 27-item measurement scale provides practitioners with an approach to evaluate and improve their organisation's experience capability. It permits both longitudinal comparisons of individual organisations and competitive benchmarking both within and across industry sectors. The approach alerts managers to the critical operational areas that should be measured and provides a structured method to pursue competitive advantage through customer experience capability.

Developing valid and reliable measurement scales is an essential first step in effective theory-building. The paper proposes a theoretical foundation for the experience capability construct and validates a corresponding measurement scale. The scale was developed carefully to achieve the specificity required to undertake meaningful practitioner-centric assessment while maintaining relevance across sectorial contexts. The results complement existing customer-centric experience research by providing distinct intellectual insights from a practitioner perspective. The developed scale permits future intellectual investigation through capability comparisons both within and between companies in different industries/sectors.

This paper aims to explore how motivations to stand out and fit in through consumption affect consumers’ perceptions of subcultural and popular brand coolness. Importantly, how do perceptions of brand coolness affect consumers’ formations of hot, emotional brand attachments and their willingness to pay more?

This study incorporates survey data from consumers regarding cool brands. A structural equation modeling approach is used to assess the relationship between the variables of interest.

Susceptibility to influence is positively related to desire for unique consumption. While this desire may be fulfilled by both subcultural and popular perceptions of brand coolness, only subcultural coolness has a positive relationship with the willingness to pay more. The importance of an emotional brand attachment is established between both dimensions of brand coolness and price premiums.

This study is based on cross-sectional survey data. As brand coolness is often transitory, longitudinal research on trends focusing on different elements of brand coolness may shed light on the cool brand lifecycle.

Firms wanting to position brands as cool should emphasize how the brand can help consumers stand out. If a cool brand is already well-known, resources should be allocated to building hot, emotional attachments to command price premiums.

This research contributes to a nascent body of literature empirically exploring brand coolness. It builds on past literature that notes the tension between standing out and fitting in conceptualizations of coolness by assessing individual differences. Significantly, it examines specific attributes of cool brands to explore the differences in how subcultural and popular perceptions of brand coolness relate to important marketing outcomes.

A sizable literature exists showing that the general public is supportive of the police, but that substantial differences exist in levels of support among minorities and whites. Few studies, however, have examined the impact of violent police‐citizen encounters on perceptions of the police. Using survey data from a random sample of Cincinnati residents over an 11‐year period, we examine the effect of a violent televised arrest of an African‐American youth on minority and white opinions of the police. Furthermore, we interpret the results of the analysis in the context of Easton’s (1965) theory on diffuse and specific support for political institutions. The results suggest that although substantial differences exist among minorities and whites in their levels of support for the police, most indicators of diffuse support were unaffected by the controversial televised arrest.

Public‐private partnerships (PPPs) and other innovative procurement mechanisms are frequently used to deliver both an asset and a public service over a protracted period. The value streams to the parties involved can be complex, but generally arise from the satisfactory provision of infrastructure that is fit for purpose throughout its life. This research aims to investigate the effectiveness of the facility management (FM) function in delivering long‐term value to both the client and consortium.

This paper describes a case study of a PPP in Australia that delivered social infrastructure in multiple locations to a state government. Drawing upon multiple perspectives from within the consortium, it utilises inductive principles to identify the influences on value generation through innovation by the FM function.

The ability of an Australian FM contractor to provide value within a PPP context has been shown to reflect some of the attributes described in literature. However, the extent of innovation, especially in the design and construction phases, has been limited by organisational history and capability, and relational and contextual issues.

This research highlights a flaw in the rhetoric relating to PPP delivery, namely the disconnection between the asset delivery and service delivery phases, which stifles the consortium's capacity to innovate and maximise value. It reveals a set of influences that both resonate with the literature and plausibly explain the suboptimal performance of the FM function within an Australian PPP. By using highly iterative analysis leading to within‐case generalisability, it provides a robust basis for wider investigation of the problem.

This chapter introduces the topic of mental health and wellbeing in schools and the overarching theoretical framework for the book. The evolving role of schools from nurturing environments to frontline support for pupils’ mental health and wellbeing is scrutinised in the context of demand, capacity and constraints in a post-pandemic world. Alongside this is a critical consideration of schools’ and education staff’s role, responsibilities and boundaries. The disparate mental health needs of pupils within the school population are discussed, as well as key risk and protective factors to help facilitate timely identification and appropriate support pathways for vulnerable pupils. Key topics and case studies which comprise the remainder of the book are introduced to navigate the reader, and this concludes the chapter.

From the mid‐nineteenth to the early twentieth century universities and colleges were founded throughout Australia and New Zealand in the context of the expanding British Empire. This article provides an analytical framework to understand the engagement between changing ideas of higher education at the centre of Empire and within the settler societies in the Antipodes. Imperial influences remained significant, but so was locality in association with the role of the emerging state, while the idea of the public purpose of higher education helped to widen social access forming and sustaining the basis of middle class professions.