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Customer referral programs (CRPs) are popular; however, they often generate low referral rates. The authors propose that certain CRP referral tasks may hinder consumers’ referral likelihood. This study aims to explore the effects of referral tasks (communication content and approach) on customers’ referral likelihood on social platforms and the role of self-construal.

This study establishes a theoretical model based on online social platforms and conducts three scenario-based experiments. The authors obtain data from consumers on Sojump platform and test the hypotheses using analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis and mediation analysis in SPSS. The valid sample sizes for these three experiments are 288, 203 and 214, respectively.

Three experimental studies indicate that communication content and approach have a significant effect on referral likelihood. Furthermore, the effect of communication content on referral likelihood depends on the communication approach. Self-construal plays a moderating role in the effect of communication content and approach on perceived social costs.

CRPs typically involve tasks and rewards; consumers are asked to complete a referral task and then receive a reward. Both tasks and rewards can affect an individual’s willingness to participate; however, existing studies on CRP focus primarily on the reward component. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically investigate the role of referral tasks (communication content and approach) in CRPs. The authors extend the related research by examining the impact of referral tasks on consumers’ willingness to recommend. In addition, this study introduces self-construal into CRPs research.

Only a small amount of research is available as yet on the performance of property developments. This article seeks to analyse the performance of property developments in institutional property investors' portfolios over four European countries – France, Germany, Sweden, and the UK – based on property level data submitted to the IPD property databank. The study also aims to consider total returns of standing investments as a benchmark for property developments.

Performance data over the period 1998 to 2002 are analysed by means of a multi‐factor analysis of variance where the factors are the country, property use type, year of completion, duration and capital value groups of property developments. As property developments usually carry higher risks, one would expect total returns of developments to be higher than for standing investments. By comparing weighted total returns of property developments with those of standing investments, support was found for this assumption in most cases.

Only in Germany did property developments perform even worse than the standing investments. Country and capital value were found to be the key performance drivers for property developments in the four countries. Interestingly, property use type does not yield a significant impact on performance.

As a first contribution, the findings of the study are supposed to be valuable for European institutional property investors in their asset allocation decision processes.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the particularities of the time consumption of transactions performed in an insurance firm and the prospective impact on costing.

This paper uses the results of an archival study conducted on data collected in an insurance firm.

The results suggest that the reasons underlying the heterogeneity of transactions’ time consumption are multiple and rule out a systematic and unique explanation. They lend support to the importance of the “human effect” in explaining the time consumption of service transactions and support the need for more research into the evolution of marketing thought that subordinates the concept of transaction to the concept of relationship. In addition, our results not only suggest that the drivers of time consumption and their importance are contingent on the type of service activity performed within the same firm, but also that inside a generic service activity, deviations in time consumption remain due to the provision of specific services.

Services have their own characteristics which make it difficult to trace their resource consumption. Yet limited research has focused on examining the impact of services’ characteristics on predicting costs. Our findings contribute to our understanding of such impact and cast doubt on the possibility of obtaining accurate costs for very detailed transactions for an acceptable cost-benefit trade-off.

In Germany, open‐ended funds represent the prevailing form of indirect real estate investment for retail and institutional investors. The purpose of this paper is to address whether significant performance differences occur between retail and institutional funds.

The relative fund performance of 137 funds investing in Germany and abroad are each measured against tailored Investment Property Databank performance benchmarks of direct property investments. Such benchmarks shall mimic the asset allocation of any particular fund. Data on retail fund performance are retrieved from the fund association BVI, the data on institutional fund performance are derived from the individual statements of accounts for each fund.

German open‐ended funds show significant differences in mean relative returns. The differences are mainly driven by the respective asset allocation of the funds, although relative returns against tailored benchmarks as dependent variables are supposed to offset country‐specific return fluctuations. Institutional investors tend to be better‐off than retail investors.

Liquidity holdings are not (and can not be) extracted from fund performance with the given data. In this regard, it must be acknowledged that retail funds by nature are induced to carry more liquidity. Second, the high significance of the factor asset allocation may indicate that country‐specific benchmarks could still be tailored more effectively. However, the conclusions from this paper remain unaffected. Ex post variations in the grouping of funds explain additional fund performance variance. In particular, it would be interesting to analyze the performance patterns of single‐investor funds and the influence or control that is being exercised by single‐investors in institutional funds.

Results give new insights into the performance of open‐ended real estate funds. The analysis helps explaining performance patterns and contributes to an improved understanding of the German indirect real estate investment market.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the formability of cotton and cotton/polyester woven fabrics and their selected properties: weft density, weave and a way of finishing. It shows how the mentioned properties influence fabric formability and analyze a statistical significance of investigated relationships.

In paper two groups of cotton and cotton/polyester woven fabrics of different structure and a way of finishing have been measured in the range of their basic structural properties as well as bending rigidity and initial Young’s modulus. Formability of investigated fabrics has been calculated on the basis of bending rigidity and initial Young’s modulus. Next, ANOVA has been performed in order to analyze the relationships between the weft density, weave and a way of finishing of woven fabrics and their formability.

The paper shows that all selected properties of woven fabrics significantly influence their formability as well as that there is statistically significant interaction between mentioned independent factors. It provides empirical results confirming that the influence of raw material composition of investigated cotton and cotton/polyester woven fabrics on the formability of fabrics is statistically insignificant.

Results of investigations can be applied for cotton and cotton-like woven fabrics.

The paper includes implications for woven fabric engineering from the point of view of achieving the expected fabric formability.

The results enables the choice of appropriate fabric for the given clothing.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how the formability of woven fabrics can be shaped by an appropriate selection of their structure and a way of finishing.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether question and keyword‐format queries are more successfully processed by search engines encouraging answers to searching and keyword‐format querying, respectively. This study aims to investigate whether web user characteristics and choice of search engine affects the relevancy scores and precision of the results.

The results of two search engines, Google and AskJeeves, were compared for question and keyword‐format queries. It was observed that AskJeeves was slightly more successful in processing question‐format queries, but this finding was not statistically supported. However, Google provided results on keyword‐format queries and the entire set of queries, which were statistically superior to those of AskJeeves.

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the age of web user is not as affective on the relevancy score and precision of results as other factors. Interactions of the main factors were also affective on the relevancy scores and precision, meaning that the different combinations of various factors cause a synergy in terms of relevancy scores and precision.

This was a preliminary work on the effect of user characteristics on comprehension and evaluation of search query results. Future work includes expanding this study to include more web user characteristics, more levels of the web user characteristics, and inclusion of more search engines.

The findings of this study provide statistical proof for the relationship between the characteristics of web users, choice of search engine and the relevancy scores and precision of search results.

The purpose of this study is to investigate dimensional accuracy (Δd), surface roughness (Ra) and micro hardness (HV) of partial dentures (PD) prepared with synergic combination of fused deposition modelling (FDM) assisted chemical vapour smoothing (CVS) patterns and conventional dental casting (DC) from multi-factor optimization view point.

The master pattern for PD was prepared with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) thermoplastic on FDM set-up (one of the low cost additive manufacturing process) followed by CVS process. The final PD as functional prototypes was casted with nickel–chromium-based (Ni-Cr) alloy by varying Ni% (Z). The other input parameters were powder to water ratio P/W (X) and pH value (Y) of water used.

The results of this study suggest that for controlling the Δd and R_a of the PD, most important factor is X, followed by Z. For hardness of PD, the most important factor is Z. But from overall optimization viewpoint, the best settings are X-100/12, Y-10 and Z-61% (in Ni-Cr alloy). Further, based upon X-bar chart (for HV), the FDM-assisted DC process used for preparation of PD is statistically controlled.

This study highlights that PD prepared with X-100/12, Y-10 and Z-61% gives overall better results from multi-factor optimization view point. Finally, X-bar chart has been plotted to understand the statistical nature of the synergic combination of FDM, CVS and DC.

The purpose of this paper is to objectively evaluate the cost benefit of applying corrosion prevention coatings throughout a mid-life logistics fleet supporting the Canadian Army.

A database of maintenance records for an Army logistics vehicle throughout a four-year study period is mined. Statistical analysis (primarily ANOVA) accounting for the frequency of treatment and geographic region is executed.

Statistical analysis indicates counter-intuitive results. Vehicles that are most frequently treated to prevent corrosion incur the highest maintenance costs. Consultation with operational units suggests that a strategic approach to corrosion prevention is largely absent. Instead, vehicles are treated on an ad hoc basis, or – equivalently – on an as available basis.

Among high tempo organizations, vehicles most readily available to maintenance support are those that are in the greatest state of disrepair. Vehicles that are in better condition are preferred by operators for daily operations and are not available. Consequently, the vehicles that are subject to preventative maintenance most often are those near their end-of-life or are in disrepair and therefore gain little through further investments in corrosion prevention initiatives.

Clearly, having corrosion prevention compounds applied to a fleet on an ad hoc basis suffers from the natural bias occurring among operators to retain vehicles in best condition for operational purposes. Corrosion prevention requires a more strategic approach including disciplined maintenance operations in order to provide dividends on a fleet-wide basis.

This paper analyzes the connection between the sustainability performance of Chinese banks and their financial indicators to explore whether sustainability regulations can be implemented without decreasing the financial performance of the banking sector.

The study examined reports and websites of Chinese banks, categorized different corporate sustainability aspects and conducted panel regression and Granger causality to analyze cause and effect variables.

The environmental and social performance of Chinese banks increased significantly between 2009 and 2013. Furthermore, a bi-directional causality between financial performance and sustainability performance of Chinese banks has been found. Based on institutional theory, this interaction may be influenced by the Chinese Green Credit Policy.

The findings suggest that corporate sustainability performance and financial performance are not a trade-off but correlate positively. Further research is needed to analyze the effect of financial regulations, such as the Chinese Green Credit Policy.

According to the good management theory by Waddock and Graves (1997) that claims a positive impact of corporate social performance on financial performance, Chinese banks can invest in corporate sustainability to increase their financial success and re-invest parts of the additional returns – also called slack resources – in sustainability activities.

Chinese banks are able to influence the economy to become greener and less polluting without sacrificing financial returns.

This is the first study to explore the sustainability performance of Chinese banks, including their products and services.

The purpose of this paper is to explore teenagers' and young adults' use of social networking sites (SNS), in light of certain personal, social and educational outcomes and attitudes.

Data were gathered on the basis of surveys, and were analyzed through a series of multivariate models.

It was found that participants' reasons and motivations for online presence varied as a function of gender and age. Different degrees of Facebook usage were linked with different school‐related attitudes. More specifically, more extensive usage was associated with more negative school and peer attitudes; more so for females and for college students. Furthermore, greater reliance on online interactions for social and emotional support was found disadvantageous for college students, while neutral or in some cases beneficial for high school students.

Gender and educational level appear to be important factors explaining some of the variation in school‐related attitudes, and thus should be explored separately.

The differential impact of online presence on school attitudes for college and high school students highlights the need for teachers and student advisors to be sensitive to such transitional groups.

The authors found that more popular students, those often viewed as “opinion leaders”, tended to show more negative school outcomes than less popular students in general; a relevant point for organizations.

Facebook usage and school‐related attitudes were observed simultaneously in high school and college populations studying in Budapest, Hungary.