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The Australian supermarket industry has long been dominated by two players – Coles and Woolworths. Most recently this dominance has increased significantly and the “Big 2” have used their power more effectively and have introduced an ever-increasing number of “private label” products on supermarket shelves. This study aims to investigate the effect these products have had on the relationship between the supermarkets (buyers) and their suppliers.

This qualitative study used in-depth, high engagement interviews with a range of suppliers. An extensive data analysis process was carried out to ensure the coding of the key insights into themes, which helped to answer the aims and objectives of the research.

A key contribution of this study has been to highlight the ability of supermarket chains to increase existing dominance by using their ever-increasing private label brand portfolio. The findings indicate an uncertain future for food suppliers, with the situation likely to continue to worsen further as the supermarkets continue to exercise and abuse their power.

This paper’s main contribution lies in providing a greater understanding of the significance of the effect of private labels on relationships and the implications of these effects. The impact of the supermarket dominance on innovation is especially interesting, given that this has not been previously discussed in the literature. Additionally, the deterioration in trust is significant in this context and to an extent that is rarely seen.

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.

In retail settings, customer satisfaction is generally associated with a global evaluation of the store, i.e. the store image. Waiting for service is not part of the store image dimensions, but it does play an increasingly important role in the retail experience where waits are often inevitable. The present study seeeks to investigate how waiting for service at the checkout counter influences overall satisfaction, along with the store image.

The study combines services marketing and waiting literature. Data were collected in various supermarkets in The Netherlands. A partial least squares regression technique is used to analyze the data.

The paper demonstrates an important and complementary role of the behavioural construct “negative response to the wait” in explaining overall customer satisfaction in a retail environment. The effect of customers' negative emotional response to the wait on satisfaction is partially mediated by store image, and explained variance in the dependent variable increases by 24 percent when the effect of the wait at the checkout is included.

Measuring customer satisfaction without taking into account the effects of various waits during the retail experience will produce incomplete results.

Moreover, a range of controllable factors influences the customer's wait. Intelligently managing these factors can mitigate negative effects on customer satisfaction, or even increase the overall evaluation of the service. Specific recommendations for service managers and a research agenda are provided.

The study combines service marketing and waiting literature to address the issue of waiting in line and tests the theory with real‐world data from a field study.

WORDS COINED BY IMAGINATIVE WRITERS are nothing more than highly cultured pearls of thought. Though they never come into existence spontaneously or naturally, they truly adorn the language and help to perpetuate the works of novelists, playwrights, and poets. Better still, they prolong indefinitely the popularity of many novels, plays and poems that probably would otherwise slip into oblivion. If Henry Carey had never nicknamed Ambrose Philips Namby Pamby, the two eighteenth century poets would probably long be forgotten, and the English language would lack a choice verbalism as well as the humorous lines:

A significant feature of the post‐war period in the UK has been the continued attempts by successive governments to implement incomes policies, with a total of 22 such policies or stages of policies having been introduced since 1948.

To compare the contrasting approaches of car manufacturers as they compete for market share and revenues.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Global car manufacturers have their own ways of succeeding over their competitors, and have their own contrasting views of such matters as market share over revenue. Toyota has been an undoubted success story, not least for its production methods and achievements of reliability. Other companies have tried to follow Toyota's example but still not matched its efficiency.

Application of individual responsibility for quality control, and the process of continuous improvement, which has been pioneered by Toyota, could be adapted to other manufacturing processes. Similarly, Chrysler's decision to outsource a major part of the production responsibility for a new vehicle, with backing from its employees’ union, could be applied to other industries.

Waiting for service by customers is an important problem for many financial services marketers. The purpose of this paper is to present a new approach proposing that customer evaluation of the service can be increased with an ambient scent. The paper also aims to identify a cognitive variable which differentiates customers by the way they value time.

Pre‐tests included focus groups which highlighted financial services and a pilot test of 105 subjects. These were followed by a main sample of 607 subjects. Structural equation modelling and multivariate analysis of covariance were used for analysis.

Two environmental interventions, music and scent, can increase customer satisfaction among customers kept waiting in a line and reduce queue rage.

Service contact points can reduce incidence of “queue rage” and enhance customer satisfaction by either or both of two simple modifications to the service environment or a preventive strategy of offering targeted customers an alternative.

A new environmental intervention for customers waiting in line and a potential new method of segmentation are proposed.

This paper is about action learning and the pedagogy of professional doctorates. The purpose of this paper is to explore the pedagogical problems of the relatively new professional doctorates and consider whether action learning offers potential solutions.

This conceptual paper seeks to answer the question: how good is the fit between the learning processes of action learning and the learning goals of professional doctorates?

The main conclusions of the paper are that action learning can support the learning of students enroled on professional doctorates by helping them realise the following three key learning outcomes, namely, the capacity to contribute to the advancement of knowledge, that is relevant to professional practice; their own personal and professional capabilities as practitioners; and their capacity to bring about change that directly enhances professional practice, i.e. they can make a direct contribution to professional practice, e.g. through some successful project that they undertake.

While this paper is not based on research, the main implication is that action learning can offer a valuable pedagogic approach in supporting the learning of professional doctoral candidates towards their goal of making an original contribution to the advancement of professional practice.

A second implication is the need for many of those university academics responsible for leading and managing professional doctorates to become more familiar with the theory and practice of action learning. A third implication is the appreciation of the need to weigh up cost against the benefits of using action learning as a pedagogic process on professional doctorates.

This conceptual paper is original as it explores the fit of action learning with pedagogic issues of professional doctorates.

This study aims to examine the effect of situational factors, related to transactions and waiting, on customers' cognitive and affective responses to service delivery time, including their service evaluations.

A web‐based survey included customers of an online credit company.

The authors' results demonstrate that disconfirmation influences cognitive but not affective responses. Both transaction importance and opportunity waiting cost influence wait acceptability, and transaction importance moderates the relationship between disconfirmation and wait acceptability. Delivery time worry and transaction worry increase negative affective responses; affective and cognitive responses then determine service evaluation. Opportunity waiting costs increase the positive effect of wait acceptability on service evaluation.

The main limitations pertain to the small sample size and the restriction of the survey to customers of only one financial company.

The derived guidelines suggest how banks can improve service evaluations by modifying consumer time expectations, as well as reducing opportunity waiting cost, delivery time worry, and transaction worry.

The conceptualization of service delivery time refers to waiting outside the company's premises, as opposed to in‐line waiting on company premises. This study considers the influence of situational factors, such as transaction importance, transaction worry, waiting cost, and delivery time worry, on customers' reactions to service delivery time in the context of online banking services.