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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a web‐based virtual ideation tool, dialogr.com, can be used to capture insights from consumers and to gain an understanding of consumer satisfaction with package design during and after product use. The authors also demonstrate how the resulting rich qualitative data can be combined with output from traditional survey research, to provide insight into the impact of satisfaction with package design on purchase intent.

A mixed‐methods approach was employed that captured qualitative insights from a large number of consumers regarding their experience using product packaging and combined the quantitative rigor of survey research to capture brand familiarity and perceptions, as well as brand preference and loyalty.

Results demonstrate that design is important to consumers and also that consumers are increasingly design literate. The perceived quality of the package design does impact brand evaluation. Negative reactions to product packaging adversely impacted intent to purchase and intent to recommend the product to others.

Results show that the mixed model is a promising method for gaining feedback on new package designs. Substantive implications include: design drives purchase, consumers want to be involved in design, and getting user input on design is important.

Consumer packaged goods companies often test packaging prototypes in a limited way – they either ignore qualitative measurement completely or use small sample focus groups. This quali‐quant method offers two advantages over the methodologies most commonly used to study package design; it has the capacity to engage large numbers of consumers and it can be set up to gather data from consumers during or immediately after product use.

As an aid to understanding brand image and brand attitude, this paper aims to present an innovative method of capturing qualitative brand associations from very large virtual groups.

From the target market, two familiar brands were selected: one more favored and one less favored by the market segment. Two samples of respondents engaged in a collaborative, virtual ideation session designed to elicit “top of mind” brand associations for two fast food brands, McDonald's and In‐N‐Out. Members of each group posted their brand associations and then rated each other's associations on the basis of agreement.

Analysis provided by dialogr.com showed sharp differences between the two brand images. To independently assess brand attitude, two judges evaluated favorability of the free associations as either “good,” “neutral,” or “bad.” The results confirmed initial expectations. The more favored brand received considerably more favorable free associations than did the less favored brand. The results are shown in qualitative word maps.

A potential limitation of this paper is that the proposed qualitative method is more applicable to well‐known, familiar brands; thus these techniques may not work as well with less familiar brands.

Virtual collaboration tools provide a proficient method of measuring brand image and brand attitudes, for very large groups. These tools are well suited for gaining greater understanding of the cognitive and affective dimensions of a realized brand position (image) as well as an aid to re‐positioning an errant brand image.

Most qualitative group interviews are limited to a small number of respondents, ranging from five to 12 people. Virtual ideation sessions, which are designed to elicit “top of mind” brand associations, enable collection of qualitative data from large groups quickly and efficiently; without the negative influences of face‐to‐face group interaction.

This paper presents a model relating Nagle and Holden's factors of price sensitivity to expected price and willingness to pay. This work presents various perspectives on price elasticity/sensitivity, empirically tests aspects of the influence of perception of the offer (product/service) on expected price, and illustrates how the pricing methods developed within provide quantitative precision to the practice of price setting by capturing perceptions important to consumers.

The authors used a within‐subjects design to study four brands in two product categories, automobiles and computers. Model evaluation employs ordinary least squares regression.

Ten qualitative factors were studied. Overall, the results show four factors predict expected price for the target market, product and brand. The factors are perceived substitutes, quality, fairness, and unique value.

This research makes the following contributions. First, the authors are able to quantify ten factors of price sensitivity relevant to the evaluation of product pricing. Second, they are able to identify the relevant factors of price sensitivity for two product categories specific to a given target market. Third, they provide a data‐driven model that enables translation of pricing variables into quantitative values to arrive at the price of a product. The major theoretical contribution of this paper is to show that Nagle and Holden's ten factors of price sensitivity may act in the following way: the change in product/service perception may influence expected price, and then the change in expected price influences willingness to pay. The empirical focus of the current research is on the first of these two changes.

This paper aims to examine the sources of consumer‐brand relationship investment, specifically isolating the sources and outcomes of communality and exchange relationship characteristics.

The paper utilizes a survey‐based empirical study and subsequent structural modeling approach to test a series of hypotheses concerning how brand performance perceptions influence the development of consumer relationship connections.

The paper finds that perceptions of product performance and service quality influence the development of brand reliability and brand fidelity respectively. Similarly, brand reliability is the primary source of an exchange orientation, while brand fidelity leads to communal brand connections and, ultimately, consumer‐brand relationship investment.

This research is limited by the scope of the sample, fast food restaurants. Future research should explore consumer relationship investment in other product and service categories in order to determine the extent to which relationship development processes vary by product category.

Brands that wish to develop enduring relationships with their customers must understand the relative impact of both personal and functional (exchange) relationship characteristics on the development of relationship investment. Each has a specific role to play and the roles of each vary at different relationship stages.

This research offers at least three significant contributions to the marketing discipline and marketing practice. First, it introduces constructs and associated scales for brand fidelity, communality, exchange and relationship investment. Second, it demonstrates how brand service and product performance differentially contribute to two dimensions of consumer‐brand relationships. Finally, it describes three discrete relationship development stages that play specific roles in the evolution of consumer‐brand relationship investment.

The statements which have recently been made in various quarters to the effect that Danish butter is losing its hold on the English market, that its quality is deteriorating, and that the sale is falling off, are not a little astonishing in face of the very strong and direct evidence to the contrary furnished by the official records. As an example of the kind of assertions here alluded to may be instanced an opinion expressed by a correspondent of the British Food Journal, who, in a letter printed in the March number, stated that “My own opinion is that the Danes are steadily losing their good name for quality, owing to not using preservatives and to their new fad of pasteurising… .”

The aim of the paper is to provide an understanding of the various factors that enable intrapreneurship in established firms. The paper reports on a case study of intrapreneurship in a large knowledge‐intensive industrial firm.

Based on the existing literature, it is suggested that the use of different factors can either enable or inhibit intrapreneurship and five enabling factors that are identified. Based on interviews, on‐site observations and documents and reports the five factors with a potential influence on intrapreneurship are examined and alternative factors considered.

The five enabling factors that are identified in the literature are not sufficient to enable intrapreneurship in knowledge‐intensive companies, and it is concluded that three additional factors enabling intrapreneurship in established firms should also be taken into account.

The knowledge of what makes factors either enablers or inhibitors are incomplete and to enhance the intrapreneurial ability of an organisation, managers must learn which factors to use in different situations.

Only very few papers have studied intrapreneurship in specific organisations. This paper contributes with a synthesis of the literature in the area and with a suggestion of a model that is used in the empirical analysis and augmented based on that. The paper furthermore contributes to the body of literature on the factors enabling intrapreneurship in general.

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:

In a recent reference to changes brought about by the local government reorganisation of 1974, we criticised some of the names given to the new areas. Some of these name changes have made difficulties for those who follow from afar the doings of local authorities, as well as raising the ire of local people. Local names, however, are not the only casualty. The creation of new and larger governmental organisations rarely, if ever, results in economy and as anticipated, it was not long before the new local authorities were being directed to embrace financial stringency and all that it incurs. One such other casualty has been the loss of so many of the annual reports of local authority departments, very few now arriving at BFJ offices. In every case, the reason has been the same—severe restrictions on spending. Not that this was not necessary in many fields, but in respect of annual reports, we are convinced it was false economy. For so many of the reports, it was our pleasure to review them in the pages of BFJ. A prominent Labour politician was once heard to refer to them as “hard and dry reports for hard and dry officials”. It all depends probably on what you are looking for in them. Statistics there must be but most enforcement officers and public analysts, endeavour to keep these to the minimum, the general impression being that these are “dry”. If you are looking for trends, for comparison of the year under review with preceding years and then for comparing the results reported in one part of the country with another, where the population, eating habits, consumer reactions may be different, the tables of statistics are highly important.