Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between different areas of workplace health promotion (WHP) activities and predictors of the number of areas in which WHP activities are offered.

A questionnaire with ten questions on WHP was mailed to the 478 largest businesses in Berlin and Brandenburg, Germany. The cross-sectional data from this survey are presented and explored using correlation and linear regression analyses.

In total, 30 businesses, of which 90 percent offered WHP activities, participated in the survey. Businesses with WHP were, on average, active in 5.59 (SD=2.24) areas of health promotion. Offering an activity was positively correlated with offering an activity in at least one other area for all WHP areas except ergonomic workplace design (p < 0.05). Among businesses offering WHP, reporting that WHP would be strengthened with more support (−2.02, 95 percent CI: −4.04 to −0.01) and being a medium-sized business with an information need (−3.63, 95 percent CI: −5.70 to −1.57) or an opinion that health insurance companies should offer WHP (−1.96, 95 percent CI: −3.86 to −0.05) were all associated with offering activities in fewer WHP areas. In a multiple regression analysis, the information need of mid-size businesses was the only significant predictor (−5.25, 95 percent CI: −9.41 to −1.08).

Addressing the information needs of medium-sized businesses concerning WHP could be an effective strategy for increasing the spectrum of WHP activities offered.

This study complements existing studies by assessing associations between WHP activities and predictors of WHP activity emphasizing business size.

The surging growth of state export promotion budgets in the United States should be justified by evaluating the effectiveness of the activities they support. This study relates the assessment of export promotion efforts to the level of state export activity. Multiple correspondence analysis was used to analyse the telephone survey data collected from export promotion officials in 45 states. Findings show relationships among the level of state export activity and the level of effort required for evaluation, the size of export promotion budgets, and the use of selected export promotion activities.

Government, business support organisations (BSOs), support services and client business firms constitute the key actors involved in the business–government interaction within commercial diplomacy. While businesses are interested in support in their international operations, commercial diplomats (CDs) work towards both objectives: supporting individual firms and promoting the home country's national economy in general. BSOs, public or private or mixed such as bilateral chambers of commerce, sector associations, investment promotion agencies and other self-help business organisations, complete the CD's offer, and are often referred to, and participate directly and indirectly in the home country's trade promotion effort.

The nature of the CD's service to beneficiaries is highly people based, and contains both a consistent amount of government instruction and CD's own personal judgment and initiative in promoting various sectors/sub-sectors and spotting business opportunities. The ‘intermediary’ function of the CD between the beneficiary business and its potential future business partner is important. The interaction may start on either side: the business firm may approach the CD or vice versa. To a large extent, export issues remain the most important enquiries from business to CD vs. other issues such as foreign direct investment, joint venture and debt issues.

From a business perspective the main advantages to use the CD's service are threefold. The CD appears to business firms as the central platform, the starting point to promote bilateral business. Second, CDs enjoy trust as an institution: they are considered credible and neutral (credibility and neutrality). Last but not the least, CDs are found useful in helping out firms in their first steps in foreign markets (not necessarily first exporters but for the firms to which the host country market only is new). The transaction between CD and beneficiary business firm has a material price: some services such as market research are for fee and are often subcontracted. Others being part of a ‘basic service’ of diplomats are free of charge.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether strategic promotion management approach is relevant to the small independent retailers. To address this question, we contrasted the promotion approaches of 397 small independent stores and 115 large retailers. The data were collected from clothing and shoe retailers across eight Australian capital cities. The key finding is that they do in fact adapt their promotion mix to suit their strategic needs. Thus although small independent retailers may lack the financial resources and managerial expertise of larger retailers, they have been found to possess some degree of sophistication in respect to their promotion mix management.

As hybrid organisations operating at the intersection of opposing institutional logics, social enterprises (SEs) pursue the creation of social value w hile functioning as businesses, which generates tensions between social and business concerns. Limited knowledge exists, however, of how hybridity is managed at the intra-individual level. Drawing on regulatory focus theory (RFT), this paper investigates the role of self-regulation in managing hybridity tensions in SEs.

A multiple-case design is useful in investigating the situated cognitive mechanisms underlying individual self-regulation in the context of managing tensions in SEs. The authors interviewed 22 managers from Belgian SEs that had been active in the home-care sector for at least five years before the COVID-19 pandemic to understand how managers handle the tensions between social and business concerns through self-regulation.

The authors show that managers in SEs experience three forms of tensioning: tensioning as intertwining, tensioning as competition and tensioning as superseding. Managers respond differently to tensions depending on their self-regulatory focus (promotion versus prevention) on social and business goals, and this is reflected in their hybridity practices (entrepreneurship, commercialisation, corporatisation and managerialisation). Informed by both social and business logics, hybridity practices serve as tactics used as part of managers' self-regulation, enabling them to handle tensions.

By studying the interactions between individual cognition and institutional logics, this study contributes to the micro-foundations of institutional logics by revealing the role of self-regulation mechanisms in managing tensions in hybrid organisations.

The technology evolution compels retail networks to introduce unique business models to retain customers and to gain a competitive advantage. Customer reviews available through social media need to be taken into account by retail networks to design a model with unique service operations and marketing approaches that will improve loyalty by adding value to customers. Furthermore, the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer spending behaviour is very weak and needs further investigation. Hence the purpose of this paper is to understand how retail network leverage the potential of social media reviews along with unique service operations to satisfy customers. The study analyses the nexus of: a brand, promotional offers, service operations; and their interaction through social media reviews on customer satisfaction levels.

The authors develop a conceptual model for the social media era. The authors combine the idea of loyalty- and value-based models of Chatterjee (2013). The authors employed a survey questionnaire method to elicit opinions of retail customer satisfaction based on social media reviews, service operations and marketing efforts. The authors derive measures of the model from existing literature and expert opinion.

Social media reviews dramatically impact upon customer satisfaction. Similarly the empirical analysis identifies the significant and positive role played by service operations in customer satisfaction levels. Interestingly the authors did not find unequivocal support for brand satisfaction impacting on customer satisfaction. However, when promotions interact well with service operations, the level of customer satisfaction is significantly affected. Similarly the authors did not observe a positive outcome when there is an interaction between promotion and social media reviews. After reading the reviews, some potential buyers make a visit to store before making final decisions and surprisingly, promotional effects do not change their mind set.

Research findings confirm the importance of social media reviews, marketing and interaction between promotion and service operations enabling retail networks to build loyalty and value-based models. Based on customer behaviour, the study suggests a need to consider operational efficiencies when promoting sales; through careful planning, customer satisfaction and profitability levels can be increased. This sends a strong message to the retail network to defend their position within a very competitive business market.

The empirical evidence based on customer experience would be helpful for companies in integrating their operations and marketing efforts enabling them to convert different segment of customers such as “free riders (higher satisfaction and low profitability)” and “vulnerable customers (low satisfaction and higher profitability)” into “star customers (higher satisfaction and high profitability)”. Through a considered approach: combining social media reviews, marketing and operations, businesses will be better-placed to survive in the ultra-competitive social media-influenced era.

Advancement in technology has increased the use of social media among Internet users. People are on social media all day and brands cannot miss this opportunity to turn these users into potential customers. The purpose of this research paper is to identify the prominent social media platforms in Indian beauty and wellness industry and to establish dimensions of social media activities.

This is a qualitative study in which in-depth interviews were conducted with owners and managers of beauty and wellness centres, who use social media for promotion of their business.

This study establishes 5M's of social media activities (Motives, Media, Management, Merits and Metrics) that play a major role in social media promotion. It also identifies that Facebook and Instagram are prominent social media platforms for this industry, followed by Snapchat, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Being a qualitative study, it is exploratory in nature and confined to beauty and wellness centres only, thus, findings cannot be generalised. Research implication is that social media still preserves its popularity over traditional media for marketing purposes.

The results of the study are useful for business owners, promoters and marketers, who are struggling to effectively use this low-cost marketing tool.

The result of the study are useful in providing awareness and the importance of social media in promoting benefits to the society.

Social media is extensively used for promotion of beauty services but there are very few theoretical studies on the same. This paper provides rich understanding about how to use social media effectively using 5M's.

The purpose of this study is to explore managers' understanding of workplace health promotion (WHP) and experiences of WHP activity within small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in a Health and Social Care Trust area of Northern Ireland. The paper aims to focus on engagement with activities within the context of prevention of ill‐health and health protection, lifestyle issues and working culture and the environment as defined in the Luxembourg Declaration on WHP.

A Heideggerian interpretive phenomenological methodology is adopted, using in‐depth telephone interviews with a purposive sample of 18 SME managers. Data are analysed using Benner's strategy for data analysis.

“Levels of awareness of WHP activity” are revealed as a central theme and interpreted as “high awareness activities”, including the need to: preserve and protect employee health and safety, prevent ill‐health and injury and promote employees' quality of daily living, and “low awareness activities”, including the provision of training and development, human resource management and environmental considerations.

An “Iceberg” model, grounded in the data, draws attention to the limited awareness of what constitutes WHP activities and the untapped meaningfulness of organisational and environmental activities.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Swedish Advertisers’ Association's role in the institutional development of Swedish international advertising during 1955–1972.

A qualitative analysis of business association sources is used to explore the institutional development of international advertising.

A new postwar paradigm that focused on a consumer-oriented brand ideology enabled marketing executives in the Swedish Advertisers’ Association to develop a new discourse on international advertising in Sweden, which then was institutionalized within a national network on export promotion. The institutionalization process was supported by a corporatist system typical of smaller export dependent postwar European economies.

While based on a national case, this study points to the importance of understanding how advertising concepts are embedded within other economic, political and cultural systems than in those they originated in and how this contributes to a heterogenous implementation of similar ideas and practices. This study also illustrates how members can use their association to institutionalize a new discourse on marketing and network with other actors to enhance the use and reputation of its ideas and practices.

By highlighting the importance of analyzing both internal and external organizational relations, this study contributes to the research on history of marketing by making salient the importance of an institutional perspective to understand key processes in marketing. In practice neither the institutional perspective nor the explanatory power of discourse has received much attention, therefore the study results should be both interesting and valid for practitioners as well.

The study of the historical development of international advertising is limited and often descriptive. This study contributes to the literature by using a theoretical and methodological approach to make salient how the interaction between discourse, marketing associations and other collective actors propelled the institutionalization of international advertising within a specific national context.

Given the ways in which the research pressures on university staff are becoming seemingly ever greater, an issue of the European Journal of Marketing that is given over to a survey of the kinds of research initiatives which are currently being carried out is timely. The study which provides the basis for this was conducted between December 1994 and February 1995, with questionnaires being sent to staff in universities throughout Europe. At the time the final selection was made, a total of 150 responses had been received from 18 countries.