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The purpose of this paper is to explore store choice behaviour of Indian apparel shoppers and analyses the factors influencing their choice of retail formats from an emerging market perspective.

The research draws on a data set of 336 structured questionnaires with adult urban Indian respondents to understand their perceptions about organised and unorganised apparel store formats. The exploratory study uses a comprehensive list of demographics, shopping situations and format stimuli parameters along with two established psychographic scales to assess the extent of their effect on the store choice of apparel shoppers.

Factor analysis revealed five well defined store attributes influencing the apparel shoppers’ decision. The growing market for organised retail with a preference for multi brand stores is highlighted. The study establishes that the shoppers’ perception of single-brand stores is still going through a formative phase. Further at the micro level of the decision process, significant differences are established by a number of variables.

The paper explores the store choice behaviour from a wider perspective that may be useful for future research on developing integrated store format choice models. However, the data used herein relates to a cross-section of shoppers in urban India due to the feasibility and convenience of studying relatively organised retail forms and structure of retail in an emerging market environment.

The paper attempts to enumerate befitting analyses of factors that influence the store choice behaviour of apparel shoppers by using apt format classifications that are specific to the emerging retail market scenario in India.

This paper proposes that development of formalized standards for the rapid prototyping (RP) industry will help enable the continued growth and further advancement of RP technologies. Appropriate standards can provide common methods for measuring the benefits and limitations of RP, as well as facilitate the transition of current advanced rapid manufacturing capabilities from the research laboratory to commercial products. Results and recommendations from a prior RP industry workshop at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in October 1997 form the basis for this discussion paper. This paper was presented as part of the 2nd Internet Conference on Rapid Prototyping to gather additional information and obtain further viewpoints regarding the need for and potential content of standards for the RP industry. An addendum is provided to summarize and analyze the results of the conference discussion.

Bibliographic records should now be used in innovative end-user applications that enable users to learn about, discover and exploit available content, and this information should be interpreted and reused also beyond the library domain. New conceptual models such as FRBR offer the foundation for such developments. The main motivation for this research is to contribute to the adoption of the FRBR model in future bibliographic standards and systems, by analysing limitations in existing bibliographic information and looking for short- and long-term solutions that can improve the data quality in terms of expressing the FRBR model.

MARC records in three collections (BIBSYS catalogue, Slovenian National Bibliography and BTJ catalogue) were first analysed by looking at statistics of field and subfield usage to determine common patterns that express FRBR. Based on this, different rules for interpreting the information were developed. Finally typical problems/errors found in MARC records were analysed.

Different types of FRBR entity-relationship structures that typically can be found in bibliographic records are identified. Problems related to interpreting these from bibliographic records are analyzed. Frbrisation of consistent and complete MARC records is relatively successful, particularly if all entities are systematically described and relationships among them are clearly indicated.

Advanced matching was not used for clustering of identical entities.

Cataloguing guidelines are proposed to enable better frbrisation of MARC records in the interim period, before new formats are developed and implemented.

This is the first in depth analysis of manifestations embodying several expressions and of works and agents as subjects.

This chapter will look at the development, types and effectiveness of new forms of advertising in television (NFAs) and report on the current state of research in the field.

The most relevant contributions from the literature describing the practice and assessing the effectiveness of NFAs are presented and reviewed.

NFAs have emerged in response to the decreased effectiveness of conventional television advertising (spots) due to audience fragmentation, zapping, saturation and increased competition. Currently, NFAs are widely used around the world. Although the available empirical evidence indicates that NFAs are more effective than traditional spots in terms of recall, this chapter points to a need for better scientific understanding of key aspects of these new formats. Given the important role that NFAs play in how today’s television advertising market is managed, further research is needed on their effectiveness.

The literature on the practice and analysis of the effectiveness of NFAs is unfocused and varied, making it difficult to adequately determine whether the growing use of these formats can be justified on the grounds of proven arguments regarding the qualities that set them apart from traditional spots. In this regard, the summary provided in this chapter of both the state of knowledge about different types of new advertising formats on TV and their effectiveness is an important reflection of the state of the art in research on these formats.

We integrate cross-cultural literature with broader literature in survey methodology, human cognition, and communication. First, we briefly review recent work in cognitive survey methodology that advances our understanding of the processes underlying question comprehension and response. Then, using a process model of cultural influence, we provide a framework for hypothesizing how cross-cultural differences may systematically influence the meaning respondents make of the questions that researchers ask, how memory is organized, and subjective theories about what constitutes an appropriate answer and therefore the answers participants are likely to give.

In the next millennium there will be more large firms in the hospitality industry, and these large firms will get larger. But despite the fact that we have had such chains for nearly 50 years, we know remarkably little about the operational management of chains. This article considers the importance of chain operations and reviews alternative theoretical perspectives on how such chains should be managed. It proposes a new model of multi‐unit management based around six key activities – integration, location, configuration, organisation, implementation and adaptation.

A checklist of functions and capabilities of online searching systems has been compiled, from experience, and from a study of some of the major vendor systems. The checklist attempts to cover all system features, and is not restricted to the searching functions. It is offered as a tool for checking features of a new system which is being learned, as a framework for comparison of systems, and as a source of suggestions for functions and capabilities which might be incorporated into new and developing online systems such as OPACs. It could also serve as a ‘snapshot’, permitting a comparison of functions and capabilities currently available with those which may become available on future systems.

There has been an explosion in the number of retail Web sites since 1995, e‐retail offering shares a few common elements specifically a product search facility (often augmented by a product evaluation facility), an on‐line purchase function and a product delivery capability. There is a body of theory and empirical research in the study of customer loyalty drivers in the services sector, which demonstrates that customers evaluate services on the basis of tangibles, responsiveness, empathy, assurance, reliability and control. These service qualities depend on the customer’s perception of the overall service experience. The most influential element in the service experience is the relationship between the service provider and the customer. The Internet is a poor service delivery medium, it lacks the capacity for direct personal interaction enjoyed by non‐Internet based services. Sets out a number of marketing and Website design implications for e‐retailers and suggests means by which e‐retailers can manage customer perceptions to increase sales and develop greater customer loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a tool that generates authority files to be integrated with linked data by means of learning rules. AUTHORIS is software developed to enhance authority control and information exchange among bibliographic and non-bibliographic entities.

The article analyzes different methods previously developed for authority control as well as IFLA and ALA standards for managing bibliographic records. Semantic Web technologies are also evaluated. AUTHORIS relies on Drupal and incorporates the protocols of Dublin Core, SIOC, SKOS and FOAF. The tool has also taken into account the obsolescence of MARC and its substitution by FRBR and RDA. Its effectiveness was evaluated applying a learning test proposed by RDA. Over 80 percent of the actions were carried out correctly.

The use of learning rules and the facilities of linked data make it easier for information organizations to reutilize products for authority control and distribute them in a fair and efficient manner.

The ISAD-G records were the ones presenting most errors. EAD was found to be second in the number of errors produced. The rest of the formats – MARC 21, Dublin Core, FRAD, RDF, OWL, XBRL and FOAF – showed fewer than 20 errors in total.

AUTHORIS offers institutions the means of sharing data with a high level of stability, helping to detect records that are duplicated and contributing to lexical disambiguation and data enrichment.

The software combines the facilities of linked data, the potency of the algorithms for converting bibliographic data, and the precision of learning rules.

Many libraries have expressed an interest in the possibility of using CD‐ROM to provide an interactive public access catalogue, as an alternative to fiche‐based products and to providing online access to the networked library system. Similarly, many systems suppliers have included CD‐ROM in their list of future developments. However, to date in the UK, there have been few moves to introduce CD‐ROM‐based library catalogues. One of the first library systems' suppliers to provide a CD‐ROM product is CLSI; as with all CD‐ROM products, it has found its first users in the US market, though it is available to all CLSI customers. In the US, libraries have turned to CD‐ROM sometimes as an interim solution between manual or fiche catalogues and an integrated online public catalogue or, sometimes, when the multi‐site nature of the organisation or cooperation between library organisations made a union catalogue necessary. In these cases, the enhanced and interactive searching available on CD‐ROM made it a preferable option to fiche or other passive catalogue forms. This article does not discuss the feasibility of CD‐ROM for library catalogues; these arguments have been covered elsewhere, for example in the report by John Akeroyd et al to the British Library Research & Development Department. This article is a purely descriptive account of one commercial product which happens to be the first available in the UK aimed specifically at providing an interface similar to that available on an OPAC. In this instance the OPAC in question is CL‐CAT; CD‐CAT emulates the facilities and searching available on CLSI's online CL‐CAT, but takes advantage of the power of the CD workstation (the PC) to make greater use of features such as windows, colour and output to print files.