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The purpose of this paper is to develop a digital marketing capability maturity model (CMM) as a guiding framework in support of increasing international student recruitment to the public universities in Saudi Arabia (SAPUs).

The CMM was constructed by comparing the common practices of Web 2.0 usage for international student recruitment from five SAPUs and from five Scottish universities. The stages of the awareness, interest, desire and action (AIDA) marketing model were used to guide the analysis of the data and used as the business processes for the CMM.

All SAPUs use Web 2.0 for the recruitment of international students focusing on awareness and interest, but the content often lacks consistency and depth. Scottish universities use Web 2.0 across all stages of the AIDA model, and the content often has greater consistency and depth.

The analysis draws on published content from a small sample of SAPUs and Scottish universities but did not solicit the views of the staff about the content's effectiveness.

This study extends the knowledge about the strategic use of Web 2.0 in SAPUs for addressing international student recruitment marketing challenges.

Increasing the international student population at SAPUs is one strategy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's 2030 vision to reduce its dependency on oil exports.

This study applies the AIDA model to develop a CMM for the use of Web 2.0 in SAPUs explicitly for international student recruitment.

Online shopping is unattractive to many people, because they prefer a fuller social interaction engaging senses other than sight and sound prevalent in most online shopping channels. Advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs) will permit online multi‐sensory engagement between people, and between people and products, providing opportunities for new marketing channels and enhancing existing marketing channels. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview for retail marketing managers of some developments in ICTs that will enhance the online shopping experience, so that they can make informed choices when designing their marketing strategies.

One of the key objectives in the Patient’s Charter was to reduce the amount of time typically spent waiting for treatment in NHS out‐patient clinics, a documented source of discontent. Presents the results of a quality improvement programme instituted at Leicester General Hospital. Discusses some of the techniques and problems encountered in the measurement exercise. While the results of the monitoring exercise indicated that waiting times were being radically reduced, doubt is expressed as to whether this one simplistic indicator is sufficient to measure the overall quality of out‐patient clinics. There is a danger that measurement systems have concentrated on that which is measurable rather than that which is significant. In particular, the voice of the patient is not incorporated into the league table approach to out‐patient quality. Discusses several approaches to the measurement of overall quality and the problems and dangers inherent in adopting a league table approach to quality measurement.

In The Patients’ Charter, a standard is laid down that all patients who attend out‐patient clinics should be seen within 30 minutes of their appointment time. Discusses how a statistical monitoring system using a “low technology” approach was implemented at Leicester General Hospital during 1992‐93. This was instrumental in raising the proportion of patients seen within 30 minutes from under 50 per cent to over 80 per cent in 15 months. Points to the fact that statistical monitoring alone is not sufficient to deliver quality improvements. Suggests that only enlightened management action which brings both management and clinicians into a quality improvement programme is likely to be effective. Discusses some of the measurement problems involved. Warns against the fact that over‐reliance on purely quantitative measures (as indicated in “Charter” standards) to the neglect of more qualitative measures may be counterproductive. Suggests that qualitative approaches need to complement the normal statistical monitoring.

This article explores how employees can perceive and be impacted by the fakeness of their company slogans.

This conceptual study draws on the established literature on company slogans, employee audiences, and fake news to create a framework through which to understand fake company slogans.

Employees attend to two important dimensions of slogans: whether they accurately reflect a company’s (1) values and (2) value proposition. These dimensions combine to form a typology of four ways in which employees can perceive their company’s slogans: namely, authentic, narcissistic, foreign, or corrupt.

This paper outlines how the typology provides a theoretical basis for more refined empirical research on how company slogans influence a key stakeholder: their employees. Future research could test the arguments about how certain characteristics of slogans are more or less likely to cause employees to conclude that slogans are fake news. Those conclusions will, in turn, have implications for the morale and engagement of employees. The ideas herein can also enable a more comprehensive assessment of the impact of slogans.

Employees can view three types of slogans as fake news (narcissistic, foreign, and corrupt slogans). This paper identifies the implications of each type and explains how companies can go about developing authentic slogans.

This paper explores the impact of slogan fakeness on employees: an important audience that has been neglected by studies to date. Thus, the insights and implications specific to this internal stakeholder are novel.

Measuring attitudes of healthcare providers and managers toward change in health care organizations (HCOs) has been of widespread interest. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the psychometric characteristics and usability of an abbreviated German version of the Change Attitude Scale.

The Change Attitude Scale was used in a survey of healthcare providers and managers in German hospitals after the implementation of a breast cancer center concept. Reliability analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling and bivariate analysis were conducted.

Data from 191 key persons in 82 hospitals were analyzed. The item-scale structure produced an acceptable model fit. Convergent validity was shown by significant correlations with measures of individuals’ general opinions of the breast center concept. A non-significant correlation with a scale measuring the hospital’s hierarchical structure of leadership verified discriminant validity. The interaction of key persons’ change attitude and hospitals’ change performance through change culture as a mediator supported the predictive validity.

The study found general support for the validity and usability of a short version of the German Change Attitude Scale.

Since attitudes toward change influence successful implementation, the survey may be used to tailor the design of implementation programs and to create a sustainable culture of high readiness for change.

This is the first study finding that a short instrument can be used to measure attitudes toward change among healthcare providers and managers in HCOs.