Search results

The principal purposes of this paper are to provide normative advice in terms of managing the British Monarchy as a Corporate Heritage Brand and to reveal the efficacy of examining a brand's history for corporate heritage brands generally.

Taking a case history approach, the paper examines critical events in the Crown's history. It is also informed by the diverse literatures on the British Monarchy and also marshals the identity literatures and the nascent literature relating to corporate brands. Six critical incidents that have shaped the monarchy over the last millennium provide the principal data source.

In scrutinising key events from the institution's historiography it was found that the management and maintenance of the Crown as a corporate brand entail concern with issues relating to: continuity (maintaining heritage and symbolism); visibility (having a meaningful and prominent public profile); strategy (anticipating and enacting change); sensitivity (rapid response to crises); respectability (retaining public favour); and empathy (acknowledging that brand ownership resides with the public). Taking an integrationist perspective, the efficacy of adopting a corporate marketing approach/philosophy is also highlighted.

A framework for managing Corporate Heritage is outlined and is called “Chronicling the Corporate Brand”. In addition to Bagehot's dictum that the British Monarch had a constitutional obligation to encourage, advise and warn the government of the day, the author concludes that the Sovereign has a critical societal role and must be dutiful, devoted and dedicated to Her (His) subjects.

This is one of the first papers to examine the British Monarchy through a corporate branding lens. It confirms that the Crown is analogous to a corporate brand and, therefore, ought to be managed as such.

Examines the use by marketing researchers of a set of techniques, originally developed in mathematical psychology, and termed multidimensional scaling or MDS. States that MDS techniques can operate on a variety of different types of data — they have a common set of objectives and these are examined. Puts forward that MDS techniques seek to represent these relationships in a spatial configuration or model, so that the relationships between brands and variables can be used to aid product positioning and respondents' product requirements can be used as a basis for market segmentation. Proffers that identification of brand images has been approached from two broad directions — the aggregative approach and the disaggregative approach, and goes on to explain these terms and uses in full. Highlights types of scaling and relevant data involving three types of scaling: stimulus space generation; dimension identification; and joint space analysis, discussing these in greater detail. Summarises by stating there remain certain technical problems and limitations of MDS that require further investigation and that results are not always as clear‐cut as examples cited.

I was fairly certain that I had explored most aspects of Whitehaven history. However this town of endless surprises had yet one more to spring on me. On his return my plumber friend unwrapped a parcel: it contained a ship's log — not the official one, but one kept by an apprentice on a voyage to the far east in the early nineteenth century — and the minute book of the Whitehaven Literary Society, 1820–1822. Of all the material things written about White‐haven very little has been said about its cultural activities. For the development of an interest in art it should be said by the way that the town owes a debt to William Gilpin of Scaleby Castle, the agent for Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven. Directly through his patronage of Matthias Read, and indirectly through his son and grandsons Gilpin contributed not a little to the promotion of painting in Cumberland and elsewhere.

Since the declaration of reform and market opening from China in 1990, China has drawn much attention from the world thanks to its rapid economic growth and its emergence as the world's major consumer market and the center of the global economy. Moreover, it established the new trade order, making East Asia the center of the new trade trend as it becomes a manufactural and sales stronghold of multinational companies. The Chinese distribution market is expected to show a high growth rate by 2010 and it draws attention as a new business sector which can bring huge profits. However, advancement of the Chinese distribution industry now faces systemic problems and research on such problems is insufficient. Therefore, in this study we will conduct SWOT analysis based on previous studies on the Chinese distribution industry and use it as a ground to propose strategic solutions for development.

In this keynote address, I use Georg Simmel’s sociology of social forms approach to amend Erving Goffman’s interaction order perspective into a contemporary analytical framework for empirical analysis of everyday life in our twenty-first century mediated social order. For Goffman, the interaction order provides a foundational basis for social order. As a cornerstone of the human condition, Goffman maintained that most of us spend our daily lives in the direct presence of others. However, rapid advancements in interactive media formats in the last few decades have given rise to an unprecedented twenty-first century interaction order. Many of us now also spend our everyday lives in the mediated presence of others, the effects of which parallel those of face-to-face interaction in importance. These changes, I contend, provide a necessary occasion to reimagine Goffman’s interaction order. In what follows, I first provide a brief synopsis of Goffman’s interaction order. Next, I outline the twenty-first century interaction order and illustrate the importance of Simmel’s formal sociology in amending Goffman’s original framework in relation to this unforeseen order. Finally, to highlight a few key points – I incorporate empirical examples from my work as it relates to police legitimacy. I conclude with some suggestions for future research and note a few limitations.

The need for subject access on OPACs has been widely recognised since their early development in the USA (Markey, 1984; Matthews, 1985b). Many OPACs in UK academic libraries provide subject access to catalogue records, mostly through search strategics such as keyword access or subject headings searches. However, users do find subject searching more difficult than known‐item searching (Markey, 1985; Bagnall and Jeffreys, 1986) so most OPAC systems provide help screens to assist users in their searches.

The increase in subject access provision on British OPACs over the last decade is described: end‐users may carry out subject searches using such facilities as keyword access or Boolean operators; the use of browsing is particularly flexible and appeals to end‐users. A research programme at Manchester Polytechnic is discussed which has identified the conceptual problems created by subject searching, including general OPAC instructions, inputting of search terms, refining the search strategy and the subject description of each record. Progress is described on research into subject searching on a number of fronts and the enhancement of facilities discussed.

It is almost unprecedented for any practical consequences to result from a conference — getting things done is not what academics are famous for. Nevertheless, in Portsmouth and Cambridge recently two conferences came near to changing the professional lives of facilities managers, who were barely represented among those present.

IN our last issue of 1935 we published a symposium, contributed to by well‐known British librarians, on the above fascinating subject. The symposium aroused a considerable amount of interest. Readers will, we feel sure, welcome the views of a number of distinguished overseas librarians on the same subject.