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This paper seeks to address current limitations in approaches to training evaluation by presenting a conceptual model of work‐based learning and an associated evaluation framework.

The model and framework presented in this paper are based on a critical review of current approaches to learning evaluation and insights from learning transfer research and programme theory.

This paper sets out a conceptual model of workplace learning based on five elements: a pre‐learning stage, the trigger (need) for learning, the learning event, application of learning and the impact of learning. A linked criterion evaluation framework is also described. It is proposed that this provides a scientifically robust but practitioner friendly framework for workplace learning evaluation.

While most organisations wish to evaluate the effectiveness of their investment in employee training and development, few do. One of the barriers to effective learning evaluation is the failure to ground approaches in a contemporary and comprehensive model of workplace learning. The model and framework set out in this paper aim to assist evaluation by addressing this gap in a practitioner friendly way.

This paper sets out a novel, flexible and comprehensive conceptual model of workplace learning along with an innovative approach to training evaluation that addresses limitations in existing approaches. It is hoped that this will contribute to the debate on appropriate evaluation methods and assist practitioners to undertake evaluation in a more credible manner.

This paper discusses some issues and challenges which library information systems in developing countries have faced in planning, implementing and managing CD‐ROM services. It focuses on the measures taken to solve these challenges in terms of planning, funding, hardware, software, database selection, installation, staff and user training, publicity, use policies and procedures, document non‐availability and evaluation. The paper concludes that the implementation of CD‐ROM in developing countries will continue growing, and that users will increasingly become more sophisticated and will keep demanding better CD‐ROM resources and services. In order to cope with these demands, institutions involved in implementing CD‐ROM services will continue pursuing the current trend of adopting resourceful, creative and innovative approaches in tackling the challenges posed by the implementation of CD‐ROM. Finally the paper recommends, among other things, that it is crucial to develop a new vision based on a thorough needs assessment to guide library information systems in planning, implementing and developing user‐oriented CD‐ROM. It is also strongly recommended that a partnership approach between library information systems and relevant departments (like information technology departments), funding organisations, CD‐ROM publishers and vendors is crucial for developing sustainable CD‐ROM services.

The objective of the Contemporary Marketing Practices (CMP) research program is to develop an understanding of how firms relate to their markets in a manner that integrates both traditional and more modern views of marketing, and incorporates an understanding of both the antecedents and consequences of different practices. This paper aims to review its first decade.

The paper adopts a theoretical approach. It reviews the history of CMP research and its outcomes. The assessment concludes with a discussion of the program's contribution to marketing knowledge and some issues and challenges for future research.

Now a decade old, the CMP research program has undertaken research in over 15 countries. The study finds that it has made a unique contribution to marketing knowledge by bridging the gap between theory and practice.

By adopting a multi‐paradigm philosophy and a multi‐method approach, a broad perspective has been achieved that integrates the traditional managerial view of marketing with relational and process arguments.

This paper presents a simple methodological framework to characterise the tangible and intangible benefits of a university athletics department. The methodology is applied to the athletics department at Gonzaga University (GU) in Spokane, Washington USA. The brand equity associated with this department is estimated at approximately US$5.8 million in 2006. Of this, between $617,000 and $2.71 million is ascribed to a specific type of tangible brand equity (with the most plausible estimate being $926,000); namely, the impact of GU athletics events on the economic vitality of the local community. The remainder is attributed to (unobserved) intangible brand equity benefits.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the usefulness of the TANGSERV (tangible quality) scale by examining the effect of tangible quality constructs on restaurant patrons' affect and behavioral intentions.

A model was proposed based on the literature of tangible quality in service, which posits that tangible quality leads to affective quality and they both have positive impact on customer re‐patronage intentions. Subsequently, an empirical study in Turkey's casual restaurants was conducted to test the aforementioned model.

The food and service construct and accessibility construct of tangible quality exhibited positive impact on the affect towards restaurants, which in turn influenced re‐patronage intention for restaurants. Affect was a strong mediator, facilitating the relationship between tangible quality and behavior.

Restaurant operators should focus their efforts on ensuring an interesting variety of food and drink offerings presented in interesting and unique ways. They should also ensure that the type of service delivered is consistent from one visit to the next. Cultivating positive feelings toward the brand name is a good approach to increasing re‐patronage intentions. In addition, careful consideration and research should be completed prior to selecting a restaurant location and provision of convenient parking.

The study helps restaurant managers select the most important tangible restaurant feature for consumers and guide the investment resources to address customer expectations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship among joint venture survival in Sichuan and two types of trust: intangible trust and tangible trust. Intangible trust encapsulates the internal affective aspects of trust, whereas tangible trust captures the external and more easily visible willingness to commit resources to the partnership.

The primary data used in this research are based on surveys conducted in 2002-2003 of 274 foreign invested firms in Sichuan province and are from a follow-up investigation of firm survival in 2009.

The results show that both intangible trust and tangible trust are significant in predicting survival in joint ventures seven years into the future. In addition, the authors explore determinates of intangible and tangible trust. Management control had no impact on intangible trust, but it had a significant positive impact on tangible trust via the presence of a foreign general manager. Cultural distance had the expected negative effect on intangible trust, but an unanticipated positive influence on tangible trust.

The main contribution of this research is establishing a link between measures of trust taken in 2002 with a performance measure from 2009. Trust today, whether it is tangible or intangible, predicts performance in the future. The majority of prior research linked a current measure of trust with a current measure of performance, which blurs the trust and performance relationship, as it is likely that the relationship is reciprocal and higher levels of trust may be the result of good performance just as much as good performance is a result of higher levels of trust.

Job information through word-of-mouth (WOM) has a crucial impact on employer attractiveness. The phenomenal rise of social media offers alternate WOM platforms for sharing job information, which is quite different from traditional face-to-face WOM. The purpose of this paper is to examine the differential impact of traditional word-of-mouth (t-WOM) and social media word-of-mouth (s-WOM) on employer attractiveness along with the difference in the job attributes and relationship strength with the information source.

A 2 × 2 × 2 experiment was conducted to examine the impact of information source (t-WOM and s-WOM), job attributes (tangible and intangible) and relationship strength (strong and weak), on employer attractiveness. Source expertise and source trust were treated as the control variable.

The result shows the differential impact of t-WOM and s-WOM on employer attractiveness. Moreover, t-WOM from strong relation source found to have a high impact on employer attractiveness than s-WOM. No significant difference due to job attributes was found.

Use of only positive WOM and not the negative one, student as the subjects, etc.

The present study suggests using t-WOM and s-WOM to attract talented job seekers.

This is the first study to analyze the differential impact of t-WOM and s-WOM on employer attractiveness.

Contemporary tourism product, in terms of its systemic understanding, consists of tangible and intangible elements. These two elements lead to the increase of tourist satisfaction in a way to provide tourism products and services that match tourist expectations. Finally, tourist satisfaction is considered as a key factor influencing repeat visit intention. In line with mentioned, this study aims to empirically test a model linking tangible and intangible elements, tourist satisfaction and revisit intention.

Using data from the Montenegrin survey called Guest Survey 2010, structural equations modelling has been used to determine the impact of tangible and intangible constructs on tourist satisfaction and tourist repeat visit intention in Montenegro.

Working on a sample of 740 tourists, the results reveal that both tangible and intangible elements improve tourist satisfaction that influences tourist repeat visit intention. Noteworthy, the findings indicate that intangible elements have a stronger impact on tourist satisfaction than tangible elements have.

Tangible and intangible elements as factors of satisfaction are analysed and evaluated so that they could be improved in a way that provides superior experience to tourists, which hopefully could result in repeat visitation that is considered as a tool for boosting destination competitiveness, thus indicating the need for the systemic approach to tourism management.

This paper extends earlier tourism research by empirically analysing separately both tangible and intangible elements and their association with repeat visitation that is mediated by the tourist satisfaction. Therefore, a more holistic approach relating the antecedents of tourist repeat visit intention is proposed.

Historically, firms have dedicated an abundance of resources in the pursuit of customer satisfaction and its corresponding favorable consequences. However, research indicates that customer satisfaction may not necessarily result in the outcomes pursued. This paper aims to focus on the concept of customer delight and explore antecedents and consequences of interest to the service firm. More specifically, the proposed model explores the linkages of employee effort, employee expertise and the firm’s tangibles to customer surprise and joy which in turn lead to customer delight and per cent of budget spent.

Data were collected from a grocery store. The hypothesized relationships were tested using structural equation modeling.

Results from this study yield new insights into the dual pathways leading to customer delight through joy and surprise. That is, joy and tangibles lead to both joy and surprise, whereas expertise leads to joy alone. Both joy and surprise are completely mediated through delight to per cent of budget spent. Interestingly, higher frequency customers experience a stronger relationship from joy to delight.

The findings have implications for the ongoing debate on the viability of customer delight and extending the theoretical understanding of why customer delight represents such a powerful force in the service environment.

By providing specific variables that impact both joy and surprise, management can develop tactics to develop delight initiatives.

This is the first study proposing multiple paths to customer delight. Further, this is the first study to link needs based and disconfirmation into a single model.

There has been a significant increase in flooding in the UK over the past ten years. During this time, Government policy has moved from investment in flood defences towards encouraging property owners to take responsibility for reducing the impact of flooding. One of the ways in which this can be achieved is for homeowners to adapt their properties to flood risk by implementing property level flood risk adaptation (PLFRA) measures. While there has been some attempt to develop an understanding of the benefits of such measures, these previous studies have their limitations in that the intangible benefits have not been fully considered. As such, there remains a need for further development of these studies towards developing a more comprehensive understanding of PLFRA measures. It is against this background the purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual cost benefit analysis (CBA) framework for PLFRA measure. This framework brings together the key parameters of the costs and benefits of adapting properties to flood risk including the intangible benefits, which have so far been overlooked in previous studies.

A critical review of the standard methods and existing CBA models of PLFRA measures was undertaken. A synthesis of this literature and the literature on the nature of flooding and measures to reduce and eliminate their impacts provides the basis for the development of a conceptual framework of the costs and benefits of PLFRA measures. Within the developed framework, particular emphasis is placed on the intangible impacts, as these have largely been excluded from previous studies in the domain of PLFRA measures.

The framework provides a systematic way of assessing the costs and benefits of PLFRA measures. A unique feature of the framework is the inclusion of intangible impacts, such as anxiety and ill health, which are known to be difficult to measure. The study proposes to implement one of the stated preference methods (SPM) of valuation to measure these impacts, known as the willingness to pay method, as part of a survey of homeowners. The inclusion of these intangible impacts provides the potential to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the benefit cost ratio (BCR) for different stakeholders. The newly developed CBA conceptual framework includes four principal components: the tangible benefits to insurers; the tangible benefits to the government; the tangible benefits to homeowners; and the intangible benefits to homeowners.

This tool offers the potential to support government policy concerned with increasing the uptake of PLFRA measures through increasing the information available to homeowners and thereby supporting the decision-making process.