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This paper aims to describe the results of three rounds of secret shopping conducted at the Hubert Library of Florida International University, and how the results affected and were affected by changes made to circulation desk student training programs.

Volunteers from the campus community asked circulation desk work‐study students preformulated questions, in person or by phone, and recorded both the answers and service quality perceptions for analysis.

Analysis of the results revealed that the program did what it was designed to do: highlight customer service strengths and weaknesses. A majority of shoppers reported favourable experiences, but identified problematic areas and situations to be addressed in student worker training.

Some of the most valuable data came from secret shoppers' comments, which made clear the need to revisit some of the questions. In some instances shoppers' desires to highlight the positive and deemphasize the negative indicated apparent bias.

This study shows how a secret shopping program can guide and fine‐tune a library student training program as opposed to a librarian or library staff training program.

This study aims to propose and test a parsimonious framework for self-congruity, albeit in the context of luxury branding. This paper is the first to propose an integrated model focusing on the drivers and consequences of self-congruity. The model is further applied to explain how self-congruity may motivate future experiences with the luxury brand, mainly by influencing self-perception. Although a substantive marketing literature on self-congruity currently exists, there is a lack of an integrated framework, a gap that the current work addresses.

A paper and pencil survey was conducted among female subjects only, and structural path relationships were tested using AMOS.

Consumers’ self-congruity with a luxury brand (non-luxury brand) is positively (negatively) influenced by its antecedents: social desirability, need for uniqueness and status consumption. Self-congruity with a luxury (non-luxury) brand is found to enhance (undermine) consumers’ self-perceptions. This, in turn, is found to have a stronger (weaker) positive impact on consumers’ motivation to re-use a shopping bag from luxury brand (non-luxury brand) for hedonic purpose. Mediation analyses show that self-congruity has a positive (negative) indirect effect on hedonic use via self-perception for luxury (non-luxury) brand.

Future studies may involve actual shoppers, causal design and additional variables like “utilitarian usage “of shopping bags to extend the proposed framework.

A better understanding of the findings has implications for brand positioning, advertising and packaging.

Till date, no research has examined a parsimonious model for self-congruity complete with its antecedents and consequences and tested it in the context of a luxury versus non-luxury brand.

Service work is often differentiated from manufacturing by the interactive labor workers perform as they come into direct contact with customers. Service organizations are particularly interested in regulating these interactions because they are a key opportunity for developing quality customer service, customer retention, and ultimately generation of sales revenue. An important stream of sociological literature focuses on managerial attempts to exert control over interactions through various techniques including routinization, standardization, and surveillance. Scripting is a common method of directing workers’ behavior, yet studies show that workers are extremely reluctant to administer scripts, judging them to be inappropriate to particular interactions or because they undermine their own sense of self. This paper examines a panoptic method of regulating service workers, embodied in undercover corporate agents who patrol employee’s adherence to scripts. How do workers required to recite scripts for customers respond to undercover control? What does it reveal about the nature of interactive labor? In-depth interviews with interactive workers in a range of retail contexts reveal that they mobilize their own interactional competence to challenge the effects of the panoptic, as they utilize strategies to identify and adapt to these “mystery shoppers,” all the while maintaining their cover. The paper shows the limits on control of interactive workers, as they maintain their own socialized sense of civility and preserve a limited realm of autonomy in their work.

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.

The purpose of the Code is to provide practical guidance on questions which arise out of the formulation and operation of closed shop agreements—that require employees to be members of one or more unions. The code imposes no legal obligations but Section 3(8) of the 1980 Employment Act states that any provisions of the Code are to be admissable in evidence and taken into account in proceedings before any court or industrial tribunal, where considered relevant.

Retail shopping bags are a form of secondary packaging, which are provided by retailers (free of charge) to customers as a means of transporting merchandise. In Hong Kong, the reuse of shopping bags is a common phenomenon. What are the important reasons for consumers to use and reuse shopping bags? What are the usage frequencies of different kinds of shopping bags? There are no published studies relating to shopping bags, therefore, this exploratory study aims to provide an initial insight toward consumer perceptions of shopping bags. After qualitative work, a survey consisting of a total of 200 personally‐administered questionnaires was conducted at a selection of Hong Kong’s Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) stations in Hong Kong. The target sample included males and females aged 15 or over, with an equal distribution of each gender. The findings indicated that the majority of interviewees would like to use and reuse paper shopping bags rather than plastic shopping bags. In addition, the interviewees desired different attributes from paper shopping bags when compared with plastic shopping bags. Finally, the relationship between the duration of keeping a shopping bag and the frequency of reusing the same bag is identified.

Internet technology has changed the way information is distributed and the way people do business in the industry. Its impacts have been well studied, but the time element seems to be ignored for the investigation of risks taken and trustworthiness held by online shoppers. The time element should be included because pre-travel plans are usually made and a time lapse does exist between “the time a reservation is made” and “the time the reservation is confirmed.” This study proposes an online purchasing model to investigate the relationships among trustworthiness, time lapse, and online reservation activities. A significant correlation was found between trustworthiness and online reservations but despite such significance, time lapse neither sways the trustworthiness nor leads to low reservation retention.

Responding to calls for a greater understanding of consumer socialization in young people, this paper aims to investigate daughters' perceptions of shopping with their mothers. It seeks to provide insights into the significance of the retail shopping experience for young women.

This exploratory study is based on 30 online and three face‐to‐face interviews with young women aged between 20 and 22. The authors asked the young women who they shopped with and why and to recount some of their best and worst shopping experiences. The interviews were coded and analysed to reveal several recurring themes. This paper reports only on data relating to shopping with their mothers.

The four major themes that emerged from the interviews with the young women were: gaining independence; trust in mother; the bank of mum; quality time with mum.

The sample is limited to young women in a Midwest university in the USA. Attitudes to consumption and shopping and the mother daughter relationship are culturally derived and may differ in other contexts.

Women are critical to the retail industry and make the bulk of buying decisions for the family. Daughters represent the next generation of this major market force. Marketers and retailers must be cognizant of the power of this relationship.

This paper is the first to report on the daughter‐mother shopping experience, with daughters' perceptions of this experience and the outcomes of the consumer socialisation that occur.

To examine the use of student workers in libraries, and to outline how a student worker training program can be designed and implemented. A review of published works (1978–2014), which aims to provide information on training and using student workers for more advanced tasks. A description of the history of student workers in the reference department of the Earl K. Long Library, along with a detailed account of the training used to transform the Student Reference Assistant positions. Finally, a survey sent electronically to all Louisiana academic libraries to gather information on how other libraries use student workers. Many libraries rely on student workers for staff-level tasks. Libraries can use student workers to fill in staffing gaps, to a certain extent, as long as a proper training program is implemented. Research was limited to Louisiana academic libraries, so it is not a comprehensive view of student workers throughout the country. While there were a good number of respondents, the survey was not answered by representatives of each Louisiana academic library. A broader study of how student workers are used in libraries should be conducted in the future. Many libraries still rely on staff to do everything. This chapter will provide libraries with options for using student workers in more advanced ways. It also offers key guidelines to follow when forming a training program. Most research in this area focuses on training or assessing student workers and not on finding ways to use them to fill in staffing gaps.

Summarizes the responsibilities that schools have to include child protection and prevention of abuse within the curriculum. Describes how the Department for Education is making £3 million available for training of one teacher in each school to handle issues of child abuse, and lists the roles of these teachers. Explains how any programme designed to prevent abuse must be suitable for all children, whether they have suffered abuse or not. Lists the six key concepts that underpin such educational programmes. Observes how failure to boost self‐esteem and encourage assertiveness skills will make children and young people more vulnerable to abuse. Describes cross‐curricular exercises and topic themes that make it possible to focus on the key concepts relevant to the prevention of child abuse.