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The purpose of this paper is to propose that customer readiness and web-channel readiness for internet banking (IB) adoption are the twin universal determinants of retail customers’ attitudes and intention towards IB-adoption. The paper delineates IB-readiness as the state of preparedness, ability, and willingness to engage in IB, and the authors argue that both the potential banking customer and the financial institution's web-channel must be equally ready before IB-adoption can occur. This paper presents the results of the initial test of the IB-readiness model with a sample of retail banking customers in Scotland.

Nine customer-related and ten channel-related predictor-variables isolated from existing literature were tested for their effects on attitude and intention towards IB-adoption. Seven demographic mediators were also tested for their impacts on the effects of the predictor-variables on attitude and intention. A sample of 1,000 customers was surveyed. Multiple regression and logistic regression analyses were used to test the influence of the predictors and mediators.

Of the seven mediators, only three were significant. Also, only eight of the original 19 predictor-variables were significant, with the impact of mediation, in determining customer attitude and intention towards IB-adoption.

The results present some consumer behaviour and marketing communications implications for bank marketing. To convince potential customers to adopt and continue using IB, bank marketers must ensure that the eight predictors validated in this study are facilitated and sustained.

A valuable contribution of the paper to the global IB-adoption theory is an equal evaluation model of potential universal antecedents of IB-adoption – the “EQUAEVAL” – which can be further-tested in future cross-national research.

This study reports findings about British advertising agency managers’ response patterns to a mail survey and four follow‐up techniques (original, photocopy, postcard and letter), which were manipulated to determine their individual impact on response rate. Findings should provide original insights to mail survey researchers planning to sample advertising agency managers in reducing both non‐response and sampling bias. The initial response rate was just over 18 per cent and four follow‐up techniques altogether lifted the overall response rate to a little less than 32 per cent. There are several statistically significant differences of importance to mail researchers in reducing non‐response bias and increasing response rate.

While the entrepreneurship and small business research literature has tended to portray women as lesser than men in identifying the differences between them, little research has looked at how gender is construed in business ownership. The purpose of this paper is to provide a new focus, examining how male and female business owners construe each other.

The research employs George Kelly's personal construct theory and repertory grids to examine the constructs associated with male and female business owners.

It is found that there are many constructs used to describe business owners and, counter to predictions from some of the literature review, few differences between the way in which male and female business owners are construed. The paper offers explanations as to why so few differences are found.

The sample is limited to just one area of Britain and the businesses had all been established in the last three years. This will influence the generalizability of the findings.

This paper is able to offer research evidence to demonstrate that male and female business owners do not construe male and female business owners differently.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a re‐directed and purposeful attention to the design of research on gender and entrepreneurship moving forward.

The paper questions the value of more studies on the men v. women binary and encourages research on the institutions supporting the gendered construction.

The paper suggests a re‐framing of gender (to include men, women, femininity, masculinity, etc.) both in topics investigated and in building the cadre of scholars engaged. It asks for discrimination of gender from biological sex in language use and believes that dialogue will be improved if the word “gender” is maintained as a socially constructed phenomenon directed at distinguishing the norms around “what women do” and “what men do”. Researchers, too, must necessarily confront personal pre‐existing ideas and language shaped by the norms and habits of one's upbringing and daily life in societies that are not acute observers of gender in action.

The paper assesses trends in research on gender and entrepreneurship and recommends ideas regarding new directions to create better research and application in practice, teaching, and training.

Applying social concepts to the social relations that the entrepreneur maintains, this research seeks to identify the impact of these relationships, and the learning that might result from them, on the decision‐making process. A social and conversational model of experiential learning is put forward, where learning and influence are seen to emerge as part of an ongoing negotiated process. This argument complements Kolb's “fundamentally cognitive” theory of experiential learning, by challenging the view that the learner should be viewed as an “intellectual Robinson Crusoe”, and stating that even when an individual reflects and theorises their thoughts have a social character. Data were collected using critical incident technique through one‐to‐one in‐depth interviews over several weeks. The paper goes some way to confirm the importance of networks in the business development process, helping further to define how networks exist. The learning identified, is understood therefore as part of an ongoing negotiated process within a complex network of domestic, voluntary, commercial and professional relations.

This study seeks to explore the idea that consumers select a particular shopping mode – i.e. bricks and mortar versus online outlet – based on their perceptions about whether a product or service is best bought from one or the other. It aims to posit that this perception is associated with the importance allocated to various shopping motivation dimensions.

Data for this study were collected using a self‐administered mail survey from 689 internet‐enabled US households. They represent a 28 percent response from 2,500 households that received the survey. Extensive non‐response analysis ruled out serious bias in the data.

The results from this empirical study suggest that different shopping motivations indeed influence perceptions of service type and shopping mode congruence differently. In addition, the results also suggest that services are more likely to be associated with the online shopping mode, whereas more tangible products are likely to be associated with bricks and mortar stores.

The findings have significant implications for services retail managers of both bricks and mortar and online service outlets in the areas of segmentations, targeting, and retail mix strategies. Apparently, consumers also tend to group related services or products into homogeneous shopping baskets based on their perception of congruence between the product or service and the shopping mode – online versus bricks and mortar store. These findings should help a manager plan for retailing mix strategies, catering to various shopping motivation dimensions, thus enhancing consumer satisfaction. In addition, the results hold important implications in the areas of segmentation and targeting decisions.