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This study aims to verify whether a nomological framework of antecedents and postcedents to satisfaction is valid and reliable in both purchase and sales business relationships.

In this study snowball sampling was used to identify relevant purchase and sales managers to collect data from two cross-industrial samples in Taiwan pertaining to purchase and sales business relationships.

The results display the validity and reliability of the nomological framework in both purchase and sales business relationships.

This study verifies the results in previous studies based on purchase business relationships and that the framework also appears to be valid and reliable in sales business relationships.

This study provides purchase and sales managers with insights to assess both their firms' inbound and outbound business relationships in purchases and sales.

This study creates a connection between purchase and sales business literature offering opportunities for further research.

This study aims to explore the relationships, direct and indirect, between business customers’ perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty.

The study was set in the business banking industry, with data collected from 381 micro-enterprise business customers of a large South African bank by means of a self-administered, internet-based questionnaire.

The results reveal that business customers’ perception of value results in both economic and non-economic satisfaction. The results further indicate that non-economic satisfaction mediates the relationship between economic satisfaction and behavioural loyalty.

The study contributes to business services marketing literature by taking a multidimensional approach to the traditional value-satisfaction-loyalty chain.

The study contributes to business services marketing literature by emphasising the importance of perceived value in driving both economic and social outcomes, which, in turn, drives behavioural outcomes. By providing evidence of the outcomes associated with higher perceived value, service providers gain insights into the importance of focussing on value creation and the building of personal connections with micro-sized businesses to ensure future repurchase behaviour.

This research expands on current value research by positioning economic and non-economic satisfaction and attitudinal and behavioural loyalty as outcomes of business customers’ perceived value. This is possibly the first study to investigate satisfaction and loyalty as outcomes of perceived value where both comprise two distinct dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into brand avoidance of service brands and explore whether the different types of brand avoidance identified in a product context apply to service providers.

Because of the exploratory nature of the study, the critical incident method and semi-structured interviews were used to achieve the purpose of the study.

The findings suggest that five types of brand avoidance, as identified in studies involving product brands, can be identified as impacting service brands. In addition, the findings show that advertising avoidance should be expanded to communication avoidance because of the multifarious communication influences that were identified. The study proposes a framework to deepen the understanding of the types of brand avoidance affecting service brands.

Since the different types of brand avoidance previously identified are also evident in a services environment, service providers should develop strategies to deal with the different types of service brand avoidance. The findings are broad in scope because of the exploratory nature of the study, and a detailed analysis of each type of service brand avoidance is still required.

This paper focuses on the various types of brand avoidance and their manifestation in the services context. The study contributes by showing that the broader concept of communication, not only advertising, should be considered when studying brand avoidance in a service context.

The purpose of this paper is to test perceived price and service quality as mediators between price fairness and perceived value in service encounters between micro-enterprises and their banks.

The study is based on a self-administered and internet-based questionnaire conducted in the banking industry. The sample consists of 381 micro-enterprises in South Africa that employ one or two staff members.

The findings of this paper provide evidence for both theory and practice that perceived price and service quality influence the relationship between business banking customers’ perception of price fairness and the value of the service offered.

The measurement and structural properties reported are satisfactory. This paper confirms the hypothesized relationships in the tested research model, and rejects a tested rival model. Limitations are reported, and suggestions for further research are provided.

This paper offers banking executives guidance in managing the pricing structure of their services, and highlights the value of offering greater transparency with regards to service charges and interest rates.

This paper contributes to insights into the mediating effects of perceived price and service quality between price fairness and perceived value in business relationships between micro-enterprises and their banks.

The processes of consumer perception and decision making remain relatively complex phenomena despite the depth of research undertaken in the area. One way in which these processes may be influenced is through the explicit mentioning of product attributes in advertising. This study investigates consumer perceptions of mentioned product attributes in magazine advertising for a specific product category. Results confirm a clear relationship between attributes specifically mentioned in advertising for the three selected brands and respondents’ rating of those attributes against evaluative criteria for the product category. Factor analyses of respondents’ ratings indicate a clear convergence of factors extracted and the mentioned attributes for each brand.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the shaping of public libraries as an infrastructure for a sustainable public sphere through a comprehensive literature review.

In order to capture the whole picture of this research field, we utilize comprehensive review methodology. The major research questions are: first, to what extent have research topics regarding libraries as public sphere institutions expanded and diversified? Which theoretical perspectives inform research? Second, which challenges and topics does the research focus upon, such as: social inclusion and equal access to information; digital inequalities; censorship and freedom of expression; and access to places and spaces with a democratic potential and the role of libraries in that respect? Third, what influence has social media exerted on libraries in the context of the expanding digital world?

The authors identified mainly four themes regarding the public library and public sphere, such as: the importance of public libraries by using Habermas’s theory; the function of meeting places within the public library and setting those places in the center of the library in order to enhance and encourage democracy; the relationship between social inclusion and public libraries and its functions in current society such as diminishing the digital divide; and the emerging electronic resources and arena of SNS in public libraries and utilizing them to reach citizens.

Capturing the recent history of this research field through comprehensive review is valuable.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the history of water governance in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia and the challenges now facing the region as a consequence of rapid growth and global warming. The paper seeks to examine the possible benefits that might accrue from applying a distributed, multilevel approach to water governance in this and other settings.

Interviews with over 100 fruit growers and ranchers and with ten water managers in the Okanagan Valley between 2005 and 2009 are conducted. Archival materials documenting the history of agriculture and irrigation in the valley are examined to provide historical depth to the study. An interdisciplinary review of theoretical literature on multilevel governance is conducted and also a comparative review of water governance systems in Canada and elsewhere.

The evidence supports the conclusion that distributed, multilevel governance systems offer an effective means of managing water in diverse settings, and that they are preferable, for a variety of reasons, to top‐down approaches that concentrate regulatory authority in state‐level institutions.

On a global scale, current water governance practices are proving inadequate to meet the challenges of increasing scarcity and competition. This paper describes a governance model that can be applied in many settings and which can help resolve conflict while facilitating sustainable management.

This paper integrates empirical and theoretical material from a variety of disciplines and diverse physical settings to construct a model of water governance designed to facilitate the combined goals of ecological sustainability, affordability, and equitable access to water resources.

This study aims to use a novel approach, focusing on the manager’s gender, to explore whether it acts as a differentiator in the following aspects of tourist accommodation companies in Extremadura (Spain): the level of information and communication technology (ICT) specialisation of employees, managers’ knowledge of ICTs and the social media and online tourism platform use intensity of managers.

A questionnaire was sent to 238 accommodation companies. The data collected from the questionnaire were analysed using statistical inference techniques and linear and logistic regression.

In general, ICT specialist profiles are more common amongst the employees of male-led companies. Male managers also use Booking and analyse online feedback more intensively. There appear to be no gender-based differences in terms of the ICT knowledge of managers.

These results highlight issues of major practical interest for the sector’s managers and decision makers, especially in Extremadura. They reveal the digital divide in certain aspects between men- and women-led firms in Extremadura. This finding has important consequences for the sector in terms of competitiveness. It highlights the need to continue working to eradicate gender gaps in digital settings.

The study shows the role of the manager’s gender as a differentiating factor in terms of the existence of specialist ICT profiles and ICT use intensity in tourism companies. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study provides the first evidence of such a finding for the tourism sector in general, as well as for the specific case of a rural destination such as Extremadura.