Search results

The purpose of this paper is to study motivational effects and age differences of gamification in product advertising. Game-elements can easily be embedded within product advertisements, but little is known about the success factors of this technology. We investigated which motivational incentives of game designs influence the purchase intentions of consumers. The theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) was expected to explain purchase intentions for non-gamified sports products, whereas the modified technology acceptance model (Herzig et al., 2012) was expected to predict purchase intentions of gamified sports products.

Participants were 101 consumers who performed sports on a regular basis. Age and prior experience with digital games were assumed to influence the effectiveness of gamification.

Purchase intentions of conventional products were predicted by attitudes, subjective norm and perceived control, whereas purchase intentions of gamified products were predicted by attitudes and the perceived usefulness. Enjoyment and flow were significant mediators between motivational incentives and purchase intentions. Consumers with prior gaming experience had higher purchase intentions for gamified products.

Gamify products for younger target groups with gaming experience; use intrinsic and extrinsic motivational incentives; focus on enjoyment, flow and the perceived usefulness.

Game-elements in sports advertisements might also be suitable for public health campaigns. They may motivate people be more physically active and lead a healthier lifestyle.

This study specifies predictors for purchase intentions of gamified products and emphasizes the importance of flow and enjoyment as mediators. Age differences indicate that young consumers had higher intentions to purchase the gamified product, judged it as more useful and perceived more flow and enjoyment than the older age group.

Reports on an investigation of the buying behaviour of air freight forwarders and tests the validity of one particular model of buying behaviour. The dominant buyclass in freight forwarding is seen to be a modified rebuy and the model is seen to be appropriate. The significance of service rather than price is again noted as a factor for business exploitation.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

The primary function of the Baltic is the provision of facilities for the fixing of cargoes for merchant vessels. Of all the City of London's worlds of invisible earners, none is perhaps more invisible than the intricate array of shipbrokers, chartering agents, marine arbitrators, surveyors, average adjusters and others; these provide for more of the services essential to the world's shipping than all other countries put together. Moreover, their contribution to the UK's balance of payments has grown faster than any other item in the City's invisible earnings.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The Case takes place at the headquarters of Genesee & Wyoming, Inc. (GWI), one of the leading short line railroads in the United States. The Case revolves around three executives - Mortimer B. Fuller III, Chairman and CEO, Mark Hastings, CFO and Treasurer, and Alan Harris, Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Office - and the dilemma over whether to pursue international expansion.

GWI has generally pursued a strategy of diversification through acquisition. However, there are other approaches to diversification, including international expansion. With increasing deregulation and privatization of railroads around the world, GWI and its competitors must weigh the risks of internationalization with the rewards. GWI fears that a failure to move quickly might result in missed opportunities as competitors acquire railroads around the world.

An opportunity has recently arisen in Australia, where the government is selling Australian National Railway. GWI believes Australia might be a good initial foray into the international market given the similarities of the country and its railroad industry to the United States and its railroad industry. The Case asks the question, “Should GWI enter the bidding?”

This article examines the attitudes of chief executives across five service industries (transportation and travel; retail; financial services; communications and information; and professional services) to explore industry differences with regard to strategic challenges, as well as links between strategic challenges facing firms and specific sets of staffing policies.

Presents a series of articles on each of the following topics: digital strategy in the next millennium (Digital strategy – a model for the millennium; Searching for the next competitive edge; The technology link; Value web management opportunities; clash of the Titans: communications companies battle for new ground; and a guide through the maze); retailing and distribution in the digital era (The business case for electronic commerce; superdistribution spells major changes; VF Corp. sews up software operation; IBM seeks to harness digital revolution; Egghead’s bold move to a Web‐based strategy; achieving successful Internet banking; and enterprising uses for IT); and the changing shape of the aviation industry (boom times ahead for air cargo; United Airlines flies high through employee ownership; Asian practices to West at Cathay Pacific; and Ryannair strips to the bone).

This paper analyzes the impact of economic downturns on the revenue and expense sides of city financing for the period 2003 to 2009 using a convenience sample of the audited end of year financial reports for thirty midsized US cities. The analysis focuses on whether and how quickly and how extensively revenue and spending directions from past years are altered by recessions. A seven year series of Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) data serves to explore whether citiesʼ revenues and spending, especially the traditional property tax and core functions such as public safety and infrastructure withstood the brief 2001 and the persistent 2007 recessions? The findings point to consumption (spending) over stability (revenue minus expense) for the recession of 2007, particularly in 2008 and 2009.

Ethical consumption exemplifies thinking locally and acting globally, and the political economy in which it exists makes its ethics problematic. This chapter uses ecotourism to illustrate two aspects of thinking locally in ethical consumption. One is the local institutions and practices that this form of consumption reflects, embodied in the Western commercial capitalism that provides what Westerners consume ethically. Ethical consumption extends the reach of that local capital and its logic. The second is the local understandings and values it reflects, embodied in the desires of ethical consumers and met by commodity producers and the institutions that influence them. Ethical consumption does not, however, only impose local institutions and values globally; but it also shapes local consumers, by portraying individual market choice as an appropriate vehicle for bringing about an ethical world, thereby diverting attention from other sorts of ethical action.