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In the era of the retail Apocalypse, the surge of e-commerce has transmuted the competitive landscape for many traditional retailers that heavily rely on brick-and-mortar stores. This study examines the relationship among retail quality, market environment and businesses' survival in the context of the sporting goods retail industry.

Based on a data set from yelp.com, the authors examine the survival of 1,360 stores within 306 zip codes in the United States using mixed effects logistic modeling.

(1) Retail quality is positively related to survival, but the relationship is nonlinear; (2) the author find a null relationship between market competition and survival, which is subject to several competing interpretations; (3) 10% of the individual variation in survival is due to systematic differences between zip codes and (4) chain stores and stores with more heterogenous reviews have a higher closure rate.

This study contributes to the literature by offering an empirical testing of the relationship between retail quality and business survival and examining the impact of trading area in the modern marketing milieu. The findings have practical implications for site selection and designing a service quality program.

This study investigated the effectiveness and applicability of China’s innovation-driven policies on encouraging sports firms to invest in research and development (R&D) activities.

Through a series of multiple linear regression models, this study examined the direct and interaction effects of innovation-driven polices and firm characteristics on R&D investment for sport firms listed on the New Third Board in China.

Results showed that financing constraints and certification as a high-tech enterprise were not themselves significant predictors of R&D investment; instead, the number of R&D staff and a firm's total assets were identified as key internal factors predicting the level of a firm's R&D investment. Other effective policy tools for stimulating Chinese sport firms' R&D investments included pre-tax deductions of R&D expenses, government R&D subsidies and income tax relief for high-tech enterprises, although their effects were heterogeneous.

This study observes a new theoretical discovery that when the financing constraints do not limit R&D investment, innovation-driven strategies remain effective tools to stimulate the R&D investment of sports firms.

The findings provided practical guidance for both government–industry policymakers and sport business managers to prioritize the identified areas of significance when promoting R&D.

First, this study focused on sport firms, which constitute a quickly growing industrial sector in China. The findings offered important insights for the government as well as corporate management with regard to promoting new industries and new enterprises. Second, this paper analyzed the effects of three special innovation-driven policies on R&D investment and explored enterprise innovation development in more detail. Third, this paper discussed not only the effects of innovation-driven policies on R&D investment but also the heterogeneity of their effects. The related conclusions could help improve the development, implementation and assessment of innovation-driven policies.

Sponsorship has undeniably become one of the fastest growing global marketing practices. Business corporations seek sponsorship opportunities to actualize their overall organizational objectives, marketing goals, and promotional strategies, particularly to enhance brand equity. This study aimed to examine the influence of consumers’ involvement, emotions, and attitude toward Beijing Olympic Games on the branding effects of the event.

Participants (N=556) were university students in China who had watched at least some coverage of Beijing Olympic Games. Two duplicate versions of a questionnaire were formulated and respondents were randomly selected to evaluate perceived branding effects of Beijing Olympic Games to be sponsored by two brands – Li‐Ning and Nongfu Spring.

An analysis of the structural model, relating brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand association/awareness to respondent's involvement, emotional responses, and attitude toward the event, revealed that the proposed model fit the data well (CFI=0.96, TLI=0.98, RMSEA=0.048, WRMR=0.93). The findings revealed that branding effects were positively associated with consumer's attitude toward the sponsored event, which was partially determined by consumer's involvement and emotions.

This study examined the relationships among respondent's affective and cognitive involvement, negative and positive emotional responses, and attitude toward the Beijing Olympic Games on the perceived branding effects of event sponsorship.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between image congruence, tourist satisfaction and intention to revisit in marathon tourism. The results show that both affective image congruence (AIC) and cognitive image congruence (CIC) have a positive influence on tourist satisfaction and intention to revisit in the context of marathon tourism. The results also reveal that demographic and behavioural characteristics have a significant impact on revisiting intentions; and past experience of marathon tourism controls the relationship between image congruence and tourist satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the role of accounting in the construction and maintenance of political hegemony during Mao’s People’s Commune movement in China between 1958 and 1966. Drawing on concepts of ideological power and intellectual diffusion in political and civil society from Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, it analyses the process by which accounting intellectuals established a set of socialist accounting practices to meet the political challenges of the People’s Commune.

Gramsci’s theory is adopted to examine how the accounting systems of People’s Commune acted as a mechanism that reflected Mao’s political ideas.

This paper demonstrates that the accounting system that emerged during these socio-political movements served the ideological purpose of reinforcing Mao’s political ideology and his hegemonic leadership. Accounting functioned within the spheres of both political and civil society to facilitate a national collective will, and to construct behaviours that satisfied the political requirements of the People’s Commune.

This paper will contribute to the accounting history in China from 1958 to 1966.

Sporting goods retailing is a significant sector within the sport industry with the total revenue of this sector reaching $52.2 billion in 2018. Beset with formidable competition, sporting goods stores are compelled to augment their merchandise with service and improve retail quality. The purpose of this study is to investigate retail quality of sporting goods stores (RQSGS).

Based on 27,793 online reviews of 1481 stores in the United States, this study used Leximancer 4.0, a text mining software, to identify critical retail quality dimensions associated with sporting goods stores, and further explored the most salient dimensions among different levels of ratings.

Customer service and store aspects are the two higher-order dimensions of RQSGS; holistic experience, manager and staff are three themes under customer service, and product, B&M store and online–offline integration are three themes under store aspects. Furthermore, extreme reviews focus more on customer service, whereas lukewarm reviews focus more on store aspects.

Knowledgeable staff, managers and online–offline integration are instrumental in creating superior retail quality. Sporting goods stores should enhance hedonic and social values for consumers in order to ward off online competitions.

This study explored retail quality dimensions that are pertinent to sporting goods retailing utilizing text mining methods. This study to certain extent cross-validated the existing retailing literature that is developed on alternative methods.

Justice rules are standards that serve as criteria for formulating fairness judgments. Though justice rules play a role in the organizational justice literature, they have seldom been the subject of analysis in their own right. To address this limitation, we first consider three meta-theoretical dualities that are highlighted by justice rules – the distinction between justice versus fairness, indirect versus direct measurement, and normative versus descriptive paradigms. Second, we review existing justice rules and organize them into four types of justice: distributive (e.g., equity, equality), procedural (e.g., voice, consistent treatment), interpersonal (e.g., politeness, respectfulness), and informational (e.g., candor, timeliness). We also emphasize emergent rules that have not received sufficient research attention. Third, we consider various computation models purporting to explain how justice rules are assessed and aggregated to form fairness judgments. Fourth and last, we conclude by reviewing research that enriches our understanding of justice rules by showing how they are cognitively processed. We observe that there are a number of influences on fairness judgments, and situations exist in which individuals do not systematically consider justice rules.

The year 1988 marks a special anniversary for Russia. Exactly 1,000 years ago Christianity was officially introduced into Russia from Byzantium. This was accomplished when, in 988, Prince Vladimir of Kiev ordered a mass baptism of the Russian people

The overall objective of this research was to elucidate the ecosystem of women’s health social enterprises (WHSEs) based in the United States. The Aim I was to conduct a secondary data analysis of a random national sample of non-profit WHSEs based in the United States regarding their characteristics and areas of intervention. Aim II was to conduct a qualitative assessment of a sample of WHSEs based in the United States regarding their perspectives on the ecosystem of WHSEs. Aim I utilized the GuideStar database and assessed enterprise size, geographic location, financial distress, health intervention area, and health activity category using descriptive statistics, statistical tests, and multivariable regression analysis via SPSS. Aim II utilized in-depth interviewing and grounded theory analysis via MAXQDA 2018 to identify novel themes and core categories while using an established framework for mapping social enterprise ecosystems as a scaffold.

Aim I findings suggest that WHSE activity is more predominant in the south region of the United States but not geographically concentrated around cities previously identified as social enterprise hubs. WHSEs take a comprehensive approach to women’s health, often simultaneously focusing on multiple areas of health interventions. Although most WHSEs demonstrate a risk for financial distress, very few exhibited severe risk. Risk for financial distress was not significantly associated with any of the measured enterprise characteristics. Aim II generated four core categories of findings that describe the ecosystem of WHSE: (1) comprehensive, community-based, and culturally adaptive care; (2) interdependent innovation in systems, finances, and communication; (3) interdisciplinary, cross-enterprise collaboration; and (4) women’s health as the foundation for family and population health. These findings are consistent with the three-failures theory for non-profit organizations, particularly that WHSEs address government failure by focusing on the unmet women’s health needs of the underserved populations (in contrast to the supply of services supported by the median voter) and address the market failure of over exclusion through strategies such as cross-subsidization and price discrimination. While WHSEs operate with levels of financial risk and are subject to the voluntary sector failure of philanthropic insufficiency, the data also show that they act to remediate other threats of voluntary failure.

Aim I findings highlight the importance of understanding financial performance of WHSEs. Also, lack of significant associations between our assessed enterprise characteristics and their financial risk suggests need for additional research to identify factors that influence financial performance of WHSE. Aim II findings show that WHSEs are currently engaged in complex care coordination and comprehensive biopsychosocial care for women and their families, suggesting that these enterprises may serve as a model for improving women’s health and health care. The community-oriented and interdisciplinary nature of WHSE as highlighted by our study may also serve as a unique approach for research and education purposes. Additional research on the ecosystem of WHSE is needed in order to better inform generalizability of our findings and to elucidate how WHSE interventions may be integrated into policies and practices to improve women’s health.

THE Hastings Conference of the Library Association has come and gone, and the battle fought during the Annual General Meeting was in full keeping with the town's historical tradition. But whereas the defeat of Harold in 1066 led to a long era of stability in English history, the results of the A.G.M. vote last month will cause chaos and uncertainty in the immediate future of the Library Association. After protracted debate the Council's proposals for reorganisation went to the vote and gained a majority of very nearly 4 to 1. But just before the ballot it transpired that, at the request of the Privy Council, to which body the bye‐law alterations must be sent for approval, the votes of institutional delegates had to be counted separately from those of personal members. At the count, over 500 personal members voted for, with 35 against, but the institutional delegate vote was 135 for, with 141 against. So, for the present, all is uncertainty, and librarians everywhere will now await the Privy Council's decision with more than usual interest and impatience.