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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of gamification on connections between consumers’ self-image congruence in relation to the purchasers of an environmentally friendly product electric vehicles (EVs) and their possession of a stereotype of EV owners as being “unconventional”, and their attitudes towards EVs, having regard to their levels of environmental concern and prior knowledge of EVs. Additionally, the research explored the link between attitudes towards and willingness to purchase EVs.

Participants completed a questionnaire and an Implicit Association Test (IAT) both before and after playing a computer game wherein the player assumed the identity of an EV driver. A structural equation model was constructed to predict attitude to EVs. The relationship between attitude and willingness to purchase was examined via a conditional process analysis.

The experience of playing the game improved the favourability of the respondents’ stereotype of EV owners by an average of 19 per cent, and their attitude towards EVs by 17 per cent. Self-image congruence in relation to EV ownership increased on the average by 14 per cent and reported EV product knowledge by 8 per cent. However, willingness to purchase an EV was not substantially affected. The link between attitude and willingness to purchase was weak, but was significantly moderated by stereotype favourability and self-image congruence with EV owners.

As with any IAT study, it was necessary to pre-specify a particular form of stereotype. Future research could employ alternative stereotypes. The investigation took place in a single country and involved a single environmentally friendly product.

Gamification has much potential for helping manufacturers and government agencies to stimulate the mass market for EVs. To negate unfavourable images of EV owners, marketing communications promoting EVs might usefully employ celebrities, sports personalities and/or leading political figures as exemplars of the types of people who drive electric cars.

The research is the first to explore the effects of gamification on product user self-image congruence and stereotype formation. It is novel both in its employment of an IAT to measure the consumer stereotype of an environmentally friendly product and in its examination of the moderating influences of stereotype and product user self-image congruence on the attitude-willingness to purchase link.

This paper aims to explore the use of an appeal, belonging and commitment social marketing intervention to rescue a failing corporate “charity of the year” exercise that involved a mental disability charity. It describes the improvements experienced consequent to the introduction of volunteer “charity ambassadors” (CAs) appointed to champion the charity’s cause.

The study revolved around company employees’ responses to an open-ended question concerning their attitudes towards people with mental disabilities. A semi-automated qualitative research technique (structural topic modelling [STM]) was used to analyse the replies both pre- and post-intervention. Regression analyses were undertaken to explain whether employees’ replies to the question fell in specific categories.

The intervention was successful. Employees’ attitudes regarding mentally impaired people shifted substantially away from fear and towards feelings of benevolence and compassion. Employees’ financial donations to the charity increased significantly consequent to the intervention. Levels of benevolence and compassion depended significantly on participants’ prior exposure to people with mental disabilities, gender and degree of involvement in activities associated with the intervention.

Stakeholders other than employees were not sampled. Open-ended responses to a single question can oversimplify complex issues.

Outcomes to the research demonstrate how CAs can induce positive attitudes and behaviour towards an “unpopular cause”.

The results highlight some of the problems attached to corporate sponsorship of unpopular causes. A relatively recently developed open-ended qualitative research technique, STM, was used to examine employees’ attitudes. Classifications of findings emerged from the data and did not depend on a predetermined coding scheme.

Editors or senior journalists within a sample of 21 leading UK newspapers were questioned about their opinions of the quality of the information about foreign (especially Third World) catastrophes supplied to them by the major disaster relief charities (Oxfam, Save the Children, ActionAid, etc.). The study also examined the procedures employed by journalists when searching for information about disasters, the major sources of information other than disaster relief organisations to which they referred, and their perceptions of what makes a story about a foreign disaster “newsworthy”. Additionally, the respondents discussed their reactions to the allegation that newspapers’ portrayals of the victims of Third World disasters stereotype, demean and patronise the communities involved. Briefly compares journalistic perspectives on these matters with those of the fund‐raising managers in a sample of seven major disaster relief charities.

Two hundred members of the public were interviewed in high street and railway station locations in central London to ascertain the considerations that encourage them to donate generously to a disaster relief fund‐raising appeal. It emerged that the major fund‐raising triggers involved media representations of the indigency of aid recipients, portrayals of people helping themselves, and highly emotive advertising imagery. Although they were potentially patronising and demeaning to disaster victims, such depictions seemingly exerted powerful influences on donation decisions. Factors discouraging donations included media reports of unfair aid distributions, warfare or internal insurrection, and inefficiency in the relief operation. Combined fund‐raising efforts covering several organisations were viewed more favourably than individual charity initiatives. State endorsements of particular campaigns exerted little influence. Some but not all of the variables known to determine levels of donations to charity in general also explained the incidence of donations to disaster relief appeals. However, people with young children gave to disaster appeals more frequently than the rest of the sample, contradicting previous findings in the general (non‐disaster) charity fund‐raising area.

The purpose of this paper is to report the development and validation of a scale for measuring “post-series depression” (PSD), a concept that describes the feelings of melancholy and longing that can occur when an individual’s all-consuming film or screen product comes to an end. Although largely ignored by academic research in the arts and leisure (A&L) domain, PSD has received wide coverage in grey literature concerning the termination of certain film or TV series.

Exploratory interviews were conducted with fans of a range of A&L products. Questionnaire surveys then examined the relationships between PSD, nostalgia and emptiness, and between PSD, binge-watching and compulsive consumption.

A 15-item scale to measure PSD was developed and its reliability demonstrated.

The study was conducted within an A&L context. It only examined the abovementioned variables and no other potentially relevant psychological and behavioural considerations (e.g. audience involvement, narcissism and social anxiety).

The scale will be useful for investigating the marketing implications of fanship and its connections with addictive behaviour. It will help marketers when segmenting A&L markets, in understanding how to extend the period during which audiences purchase screen product-related memorabilia and to know how to market binge-watching-related items (e.g. box sets, clothing, books, theatre tickets and film studio visits).

This paper provides a rigorous examination of the concept of PSD and presents a scale for its measurement.

Owner‐managers or managing directors of 106 UK public relations consultancies completed a questionnaire concerning the extent of their firms’ client reputation management activities and their attitudes and opinions about reputational work. The results suggested widespread interest in the concept and practice of reputation management as an area of activity separate and distinct from other aspects of PR. However, respondents expressed concerns about the existence of barriers to the implementation of reputation management programmes within client companies. The executives most likely to agree with the “academic” definition of corporate reputation were those whose consultancies offered a large number of reputation management services; who believed that the demand for these services was about to rise; and who clearly distinguished between reputational and general PR activities. Only a small percentage of the sample disagreed with the proposition that most innovations in the field of reputation management were attributable to practitioners rather than academics.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/03090599210012856. When citing the article, please cite: Roger Bennett, (1992), “Developing People for Real: Some Issues and Approaches”, Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 16 Iss: 5.

Respondents in 86 UK companies known to engage in the sponsorship of schools and school activities participated in a survey designed to investigate the extent to which sample firms perceived and managed their schools sponsorship programmes as commercial investments rather than as philanthropic donations. The study also examined the reasons for schools sponsorship, how closely it was integrated with other forms of marketing communications, the location of responsibility for its administration, whether it was leveraged by other marketing communications instruments and how it was monitored and evaluated. Cluster and multiple group discriminant analyses were completed to identify the characteristics of the sample businesses which adopted materialistic as opposed to altruistic approaches towards the practice.

The men who make the decisions about whether to promote a woman are often prejudiced, notes Roger Bennett. He considers how women can manage the disadvantage, looks at the shortcomings of remedies like codes of practice, and concludes that what is needed is radical positive action.