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The purposes of the study were (1) to examine whether directional dominance between co-existing athlete brands and sponsor brands exists; (2) to explore whether directional dominance influences consumers' memory interference; and (3) to test whether brand interference interacts with directional dominance among brands to influence consumer evaluation and behaviors under multiple endorsement and sponsorship portfolios.

The research is a 3 (directional dominance: symmetric dominance vs. asymmetric dominance with existing vs. asymmetric dominance with newly endorsed brand) x 2 (brand memory interference: interference vs. no interference) between-subjects factorial design.

The results indicate that (1) directional dominance influenced consumer brand interference, and directional dominance interacted with brand interference on (2) brand evaluation and (3) purchase intention in multiple brand portfolios.

Considering that conventional single-sponsor sponsorship or single-endorser endorsement portfolios are increasingly rare, research on concurrent circumstances of multiple endorsers and multiple endorsed brands in multiple brand portfolios was necessary. By expanding and reconceptualizing the context of brand networks, this study provides empirical evidence on how the dominance and directionality between endorser and (existing and newly) endorsed brands—an athlete endorser's strong pre-existing association with an existing endorsed brand in particular—influenced consumer brand interference and the brand evaluation in multiple brand portfolios.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the location of sport brands in sport consumers’ minds using a perceptual map of multiple positions; and examine whether there is congruence between the sport brands’ purported images and the targeted consumers’ perception of the brands’ images.

A mixed method was used. Four steps of data collections (i.e. face-to-face, focus group interviews, and questionnaires) and analyses (i.e. content analysis, MDS analysis, PROXSCAL analysis, multiple regressions analysis, frequency analysis, and congruence score) were performed.

Four positioning typologies (i.e. great quality equipment, equipment for professionals, innovation, and tradition) were identified; each brand’s positions in consumers’ minds were distinctly portrayed in the perceptual map; and the congruence between intended and perceived positions was found in two brands – Titleist and Ping – implying they established a high position-congruity and providing evidence of positioning effectiveness.

The findings will aid practitioners and scholars in positioning and its effectiveness: the results provide information for managers to select, implement, and manage effective positioning strategies and the study provides initial evidence about whether companies and their brands are well-positioned in the sport consumer’s perception.

The authors attempt to examine how consumers perceive brands and how effectively brand positions are portrayed in consumers’ minds. The effectiveness and competitiveness of positioning strategies were examined via a perceptional map.

In the matter of food purity and control Hospital Catering Services have been outside the law, a privileged position where the general law of food and drugs have never applied and the modern regulatory control in food hygiene has similarly not applied. In the eyes of the general public hospital catering standards have always been high above the general run of food preparation. As the NHS continued, complaints began gradually to seep out of the closed community, of dirt in the kitchens and prevalent hygiene malpractices. The general standard for most hospitals remained high but there were no means of dealing with the small minority of complaints which disgusted patients and non‐cater‐ing staff, such as insect and rodent infestations, and an increase in the frequency of food poisoning outbreaks.

This article examines the effect of party composition of government on the centralization of budgeting institutions in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria in 1989-1999, and assesses the impact of the centralization of budgeting institutions on the capacity of these countries to meet the fiscal deficit requirement for the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) membership. The article finds that centralization of budgeting institutions through delegation to a strong finance minister and/or prime minister is likely to occur in one-party governments or coalition governments composed of parties which expect to fight repeated elections together, with effective punishment mechanisms. The article finds that countries with centralized budgeting institutions are likely to be more capable of meeting the EMU deficit requirement than countries with decentralized institutions.

EARLIER in the year a conference was held in Lausanne, Switzerland on future trends in work. Experts from many countries, both developed and developing, spoke of the world‐wide recession and its effects on their respective workforces.

The purpose of the study is twofold: to offer a theoretical model that illuminates families' motivation to invest in private tutoring and to consider the implications of such investments in the context of South Korea. Given that parents invest in private tutoring for their child if the perceived expected benefits, at the time of enrollment, are greater than the direct and indirect costs of such tutoring, the study explores how private tutoring may affect educational inequities and possibly lead to inferior social outcomes.

A theoretical model based on the human capital approach was developed. Three questions based on stylized facts were addressed: (1) Why would a household send a child to private tutoring? (2) Why do different households invest in different amounts of private tutoring? (3) Why may a household over-invest in private tutoring?

The findings of this study indicate that the demand for private tutoring services decreases with the costs of private tutoring, while increasing as levels of academic readiness and aptitude, levels of household education, levels of current wealth and expected returns to private tutoring increase. These findings imply that private tutoring may exacerbate social inequities and cause an inferior social outcome, but that a government can influence the demand for tutoring through taxation.

This study did not address the non-pecuniary benefits that may be derived from private tutoring. The most important limitation and potential source of weakness of the study is that the model is theoretical. These results therefore need to be interpreted with caution.

The study indicates the need for private households, as well as government officials, to carefully consider the costs and benefits of private tutoring in South Korea. Although the study focuses on South Korea, the findings may apply to other countries in which private tutoring offerings are prominent.

The educational choices that families make for their children have important financial and social implications in all countries, but especially in South Korea. The important implication is that private tutoring will tend to aggravate educational and social inequality.

The existing body of research on private tutoring investment in South Korea suggests that the phenomenon is ubiquitous, growing and spreading to other countries. Furthermore, the motivation behind households' decisions to invest in private tutoring for their children is not always addressed in the published literature. Also, far too little attention has been paid to the economic impact private tutoring has on households and children, as well as society in general.

This study attempts to fill the gap in organisational identity literature. It describes the use of sound in communicating brand identity and explains the roles of the principal ‘players’ in the production of one organisation's audio identity. As a case study, this research focuses on Radio Scotland's need for an identifiable sound, and also details the process involved in the design and implementation of its identity. Information about the case was generated via unstructured, open‐ended interviews with key informants within Radio Scotland and external parties who participated in the project. A chronology is used to present the findings of the case with analysis of the data led by four key research issues concerning: —sound's ability to communicate identity, —the balance between science and intuition in designing audio identity, —responsibility for sound identity production, and —requisite qualifications or knowledge for shaping audio identity. Conclusions show the use of sound to be instrumental in communicating Radio Scotland's identity, with the author suggesting that more research should be undertaken into the role of audio designs given the growth explosion in audio visual communications technology.

Using panel data on gasoline and grocery transactions in Korea, the purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the effect of a retail chain store’s establishment of on-site fuel sales. The empirical analyses present strong empirical evidence that the sale of fuel had statistically and economically significant effect on retail store traffic and revenue in the short run. However, the effect did not remain significant in the longer run. To explain the dramatic decrease in the effect of the fuel sale, the authors consider the enhanced competition in the local gasoline retail industry and examine cross-sectional price variations at the station level. The results suggest that the increased competition led to the reduction in the price dispersion across stations and thereby to an increase in consumer welfare.

Using a linear specification that has traditionally been used to model retail chain data, the authors developed a series of difference-in-differences models. This technique is ideal for estimating the effect of a treatment in the presence of possible selection bias and has been widely employed in many social-science studies on policy intervention.

In a certain environment, introducing fuel sales did not increase retail chain store traffic or revenue in the long run, despite having statistically and economically significant effects in the short run. The results document empirical evidence of myopic management in a common marketing practice, which often leads to a negative impact on the firm value in the long run.

The span of data and sample size were limited to meet the company’s data protection policy.

Considering that many of developed countries are characterized by a gasoline retail environment similar to that which is investigated in this paper, the authors believe that the implications of the results are particularly valid for practitioners and policy makers.

The findings document empirical evidence of myopic management in a common marketing practice, which often leads to a negative impact on the firm value in the long run. Marketing researchers should make efforts in establishing metrics to help identify myopic management decision.

This paper addresses an interesting and practical issue related to the effects of the introduction of gasoline sales by a supercenter store on its store traffic.

FORTHRIGHT comment on the value of competition in the aerospace industry was the theme of Mr George S. Schairer, F.A.I.A.A., V.P. for Research and Development of the Boeing Company, when he gave the annual Wilbur and Orville Wright Memorial Lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society early in December. The title of his paper was ‘The Role of Competition in Aeronautics’ and in his introduction he said that much progress had come through the heat of competition and that the monetary costs of competition were small and completely overshadowed by the economic benefits accruing from it. Competition had been the life blood of aeronautics and must be kept alive. His objective in presenting the paper was to stimulate in each member of the R.Ae.S. audience ‘a strong personal belief that competition has been a major contributor to making aeronautics what it is today and a most necessary ingredient in the future of aeronautics.’

This article is the seventh in a series that aims to analyse the constantly changing structure of the technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sector. It seeks to covers the period 25 March 2005 to 24 March 2006.

The article is designed so as to contain at its core the creation of a series of databases in tabular form that can be used to analyse structural trends over a period of many years.

Prior to March 2002, the TMT sector spent two years in the doldrums, and the overall trend continued to be broadly negative during the ensuing year, partly driven by the implosions at the likes of WorldCom. The following two years saw companies coming to terms with a radically different environment. The year commencing March 2005 witnessed a sharp upsurge in restructuring activity somewhat reminiscent of the late 1990s.

Empirical research based on current data is very scarce in the public domain. This series of articles makes a major contribution to the analysis of how and why the structure of the TMT sector is evolving.