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Libraries have long played an important role in the preservation, appreciation, and perpetuation of American traditions. As early as 1928, the Archive of American Folk‐Song was established in the Library of Congress to maintain a national collection of manuscripts and recordings of American folk songs. The archive's mission broadened to include all aspects of folklore and folklife, prompting a name change in 1981 to the Archive of Folk Culture. Today, the archive serves as a national repository for primary source material on American folklore, spoken word as well as music, and provides reference and reader services for the fields of folklore and ethnomusicology. In 1976, the American Folklife Center was established at the Library of Congress, and the archive was placed under its auspices. Charged with developing, promoting, and implementing programs that support American folklife, the center sponsors an active research and publications program. Archives are not the only connection, however, between libraries and folklore. With collections and performances of folktales in children's departments, folklore in school programs, family and local history collections in public libraries, and academic research collections, folklore engages a broad spectrum of library users.

What is a customer? By simple definition, a customer is one who purchases goods from another, but it stems from the word “custom” where an individual habitually patronizes a particular business. As companies achieve success, many neglect this concept and forget to keep the idea of “custom” in customer.

This chapter discusses several testable implications of Lazear's (1979) model of mandatory retirement and tests whether they are consistent with the data, using a sample from the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Men. Empirical evidence on the close association between firm pension programs and mandatory retirement programs can be interpreted to lend support to Lazear's model. However, estimates from an econometric model of retirement behavior reject an important implication of the model concerning the relationship between mandatory retirement and the propensity to retire early.

Field survey studies undertaken in Nigeria, Korea, China and India explored the way inner‐age satisfaction is experienced in those culturally diverse societies. Chronologically 20 to 59 year old respondents’ inner‐age satisfaction was gauged as the average difference between feel, look, do, and interest cognitive (self‐perceived) and desired (ideal) inner‐age dimensions. Analyses of covariance (with chronological age factored out) across the four nations showed Nigeria to differ significantly in terms of inner‐age satisfaction from each Asian population, contrary to the Asian societies where no differences were found across samples (except between Korea and India where inner‐age satisfaction differed at a p .05). High levels of satisfaction with inner‐age (coming about when cognitive and desired ages are equal) commonly transpired: 31.4 per cent of Indian, 36.9 per cent of Nigerian, 44.3 per cent of Chinese, and 44.9 per cent of Korean respondents. Age dissatisfaction in an elder direction (ideal age older than self‐perceived age) was atypical and happened most often among Nigerian (23.4 per cent) and least among Korean subjects (10.7 per cent). In contrast, wishing for a younger innerage was a commonplace phenomenon in India (50.6 per cent of the sample), as well as in China where it occurred the least (36.6 per cent). The study’s findings imply the universal nature of the way human beings (irrespective of culture) perceive and feel about inner‐age, as well as the potential of an inner‐age satisfaction psychographic as a relevant consumer behavior segmentation trait for marketing planners of age‐sensitive products and services who seek to standardize their global branding and distribution.

Recent advances in the fabrication technology of heterojunction semiconductor nanostructures have made possible the realization of systems with extremely small sizes. In these devices, electrons are confined along some directions and are free to move in others. Semiconductor nanostructures have become so small that we have to take into account quantum effects. The two dimensional physical model consists of Poisson’s equation for the electrostatic potential φ, coupled with an eigenvalue problem for Schrödinger’s equation. Proposes

The paper's purpose is to analyse the influence of online shopping information dependency and innovativeness on the acceptance of internet shopping.

The impact of online shopping information dependency, domain‐specific innovativeness and technology acceptance model (TAM) variables on future shopping intention has been tested through structural equation modelling techniques. The sample consisted of 465 Spanish consumers who had never purchased online.

Data analysis shows that consumer innovativeness and online shopping information dependency have a direct and positive influence on future online shopping intention and that the basic TAM hypotheses are fulfilled. Online shopping information dependency can be increased with interfaces that are easier to use, but only if perceived usefulness remains high. Consumer innovativeness positively influences internet exposure and the ease‐of‐use perception of the shopping medium, referred to throughout this paper as “shopping channel”.

This research enables companies to know which aspects of their communication strategies to highlight in order to get non‐purchasing web users to participate in e‐shopping. Perceived ease of use and online shopping information dependency has a significant influence on shoppers' willingness to purchase online. This shows that web content and design are key tools in the increase of future online purchasing. It is also recommended that managers target some of their advertising campaigns to the more innovative users.

There are still too few studies that analyse the effects of innovativeness and online shopping information dependency on non‐purchasing web users' behaviour. This work aims to combine the influence of online shopping information dependency, innovativeness and the traditional TAM in order to construct an improved model for internet shopping acceptance. It will use an integrated model to do so.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how consumers’ altruistic values influence their personal norms, environmental attitudes, subjective norms and perceived barriers, all of which in turn influence their pro-environmental behaviour (i.e. the purchase of energy efficient household appliances).

This research follows a hypothetic-deductive approach. A unique conceptual model examines the role of consumers’ altruistic values in relation to their environmentally responsible purchase behaviour. Structured questionnaires were administered to randomly selected Vietnamese consumers who visited busy electronics and appliance specialist stores, which yielded 682 usable responses.

Structural equation modelling revealed that consumers’ altruistic values tend to positively influence their personal norms, environmental attitudes, subjective norms and mitigate their perceived barriers in relation to the purchase of energy efficient appliances.

Marketers, policymakers and sustainability campaigners should develop relevant communication and education programmes that emphasise the importance of purchasing energy efficient appliances for the environment and society, arousing consumers’ sense of moral obligation and societal responsibility to purchase such products. They should also provide a convenient and easily accessible shopping environment for consumers.

This research makes an important contribution by presenting and testing a new altruistic-values-based model that seeks to understand consumers’ environmentally responsible purchase behaviour. This model could serve as a blueprint for future studies in the domain of pro-environmental behaviour, especially those in emerging markets.