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This study seeks to find the dollar value of social costs of gambling. The authors use data from a survey of 99 members of Gamblers Anonymous (GA) groups in southern Nevada. The GA members were asked many questions about their behavior while they were active gamblers, such as how often they missed work because of gambling, how much they borrowed because of gambling, how much they stole because of gambling and their experiences with the judicial system and welfare systems because of gambling. Societal costs of each behavior were calculated and annualized. It was determined that each of the compulsive gamblers imposed social costs of $19,711 on others in southern Nevada. Of these costs, $1,428 (7.2%) were governmental costs, while $6,616 (33.6%) represented economic losses for southern Nevada. Using estimates of the numbers of pathological and problem gamblers in Nevada, it was determined that the overall social costs of compulsive and problem gambling in southern Nevada ranged from $314 million to $545 million per year.

Since the early 1980s, many studies have assessed consumers’ preferences for domestic versus imported apparel; a few have addressed the influence of socio‐economic factors on preference. This study provides a profile of the ethnocentric consumer, one who prefers their own goods over goods made in other cultures, by using an array of socio‐economic factors, including an eight‐category occupation variable and a “greatest generation” age variable, regressed on consumers’ perception of the importance of buying a garment made in the USA. Data were obtained from a convenience sample of rodeo attendees. Results from binary logistic regression reveal that younger, college‐educated respondents and those employed in service occupations are less likely to perceive buying US‐produced apparel as important than other groups.

Many studies have investigated the impact of celebrity endorsers on consumers’ purchase intention. None, however, has studied the effects of an association endorsement. This research examined the effect of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s (PRCA) endorsement of products on consumers’ purchase intentions. Survey data were collected from 1,456 respondents attending six rodeos across the USA. Binary logit regression revealed that individuals who attended rodeo frequently and those with less than a college degree were the most likely to accept the association endorsement. The findings are explained within the social influence framework.

Agile methods have considerably transformed project management. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of agile (as compared to plan-driven) methods on customer satisfaction in the context of knowledge-intensive business services.

This study uses a survey examining the experiences of 361 customers with different outsourced software projects in Switzerland and a regression-based model to test the hypotheses.

The findings show that agile approaches can lead to higher customer satisfaction than plan-driven approaches, but the impact size is not as substantial as expected. The effect does not depend on the number of specification changes.

Managers must be aware that merely switching from a plan driven to an agile approach will not lead to substantial improvement in customer satisfaction. Satisfaction with the process is a more important driver of overall customer satisfaction than satisfaction with the service outcome. Thus, providers of knowledge-intensive services should train their employees in recognizing the importance of the cooperation process.

So far, the positive impact of agile methods is often only based on anecdotal evidence as well as on surveys examining the supplier perspective. This study provides support for the positive impact of agile methods on customer satisfaction, an important response variable from a marketing perspective, which has not been examined before in the context considered here.