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The study utilized the consumption value theory to explore the motivational factors that define and differentiate the users and nonusers of fashion rental services

A focus group was conducted to generate an initial list of measurement items. These items were refined through a pretest and then used in a self-administered online questionnaire to collect data from a total of 300 users and 300 nonusers. The collected data were analyzed using factor analysis to identify the factors that define users and nonusers. A MANOVA was then conducted to explore the differences in the identified factors between users and nonusers.

Using factor analysis, nine factors were extracted across the five consumption values (functional, social, emotional, conditional and epistemic). MANOVA revealed a significant difference between users and nonusers across all factors. Further analyses suggested that the most differentiating factors are two emotional value factors and one social value factor.

Despite existing studies of fashion rental services, it is debatable whether the phenomenon is fully understood since previous studies primarily focus on consumers who engage in fashion renting services – there is a lack of focus on nonusers. This study provides unique contributions by exploring the phenomenon from both the user's and the nonuser's perspective.

Analyzes a national random telephone survey, carried out in October 1995, on the motivations for and barriers to Internet usage. Eight percent of the random sample reported being Internet users, while surprisingly another 8 percent reported being former users. In total, 85 percent of respondents reported having heard of the Internet. The survey showed evidence of a digital divide, Internet users being generally wealthier and more highly educated, and blacks and Hispanics disproportionately unaware of the Internet. Social and work networks appear to be important for stimulating interest in the Internet and providing users with support. As to reasons for using the Internet, socio‐personal development appears to be the key driver, while nonusers have a decidedly different set of beliefs about the Internet’s value. As to the barriers to Internet usage, even experienced users find it difficult to get started, which confirms other studies of this topic. Barriers include cost and difficulties in understanding how to use the Internet. Concludes that the results of the survey indicate that people strongly desire an easier‐to‐use Internet.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what motivates college students to use LinkedIn and what inhibits them from fully adopting it.

A qualitative approach applying a “uses and gratifications” framework was used to identify the motives of and barriers faced by college students with respect to the LinkedIn usage. The study includes data collected from 30 upper-level, undergraduate business students.

Four uses and gratifications categories emerged explaining why college students would be willing to use LinkedIn. Three categories – interpersonal communication, online identity and information – are similar to those identified for using social networks, such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Career development was found to be a category gratifying only LinkedIn users. Barriers to LinkedIn adoption included students’ ignorance of the network and the erroneous perception that a presence on LinkedIn should be initiated and/or developed only after graduation.

College students’ behavior on social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace, was extensively researched employing the uses and gratifications theory. LinkedIn has recently reached about 200 million users, of which about 30 million are college students and recent graduates. Still, students’ motives, usage patterns and barriers associated with LinkedIn have not been well-documented, which creates a gap that this study attempts to address. The aim is to shed light on what motivates students to use a professional network as opposed to using social networks and what key barriers might prevent college students from fully capitalizing on LinkedIn’s features.

A leading explanation for the growth of wage inequality is that greater use of information technology increased the demand for human capital. This paper identifies four different explanations for the relationships between computers, skills, and wages: computer-specific human capital, greater general human capital among computer users, greater general human capital for both users and nonusers due to contextual effects, and skill-biased changes in the job composition of the workforce. The paper tests the first three explanations and finds little support for them once pre-computer and other job characteristics are adequately controlled. This conclusion receives further support from a comparison of the timing of inequality growth and computer diffusion and from analyses of the contribution of computer use to overall inequality growth using DiNardo, Fortin, and Lemieux's (1996) reweighting standardization technique.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how changes in the firm's information disclosure practices impact the way investors process macroeconomic news. Specifically, the authors examine the role of derivative instruments and hedging activities disclosure, as required by SFAS 133, in shaping invertors response to good and bad interest rate news. In addition, the authors examine whether the effect of SFAS 133 on investors' response to good and bad interest rate news varies between firms with higher and lower earnings volatility.

This study uses data on all US public firms over the period from 1990 to 2019. The authors mainly apply multivariate regression and a difference-in-difference approach to test their hypotheses.

The results show a significant decrease in the asymmetry of responses to good and bad interest rate news for users of interest rate derivatives following the adoption of SFAS 133. However, in contrast to this finding, the authors also find that the adoption of SFAS 133 has no impact on the asymmetry of responses to good and bad interest rate news for nonusers of interest rate derivatives. Consistent with the ambiguity theory, the finding suggests that SFAS 133 indeed decreases investors’ uncertainty (ambiguity) about the cash flow implications of changes in the interest rate. The authors also find that the decrease in the asymmetry of response to good and bad interest rate news after the adoption of SFAS 133 is greater for users of interest rate derivatives with higher than lower earnings volatility. This implies that derivatives and hedging activities disclosure, as required by SFAS 133, are more important for firms with higher than lower earnings volatility. The finding is consistent with the idea that investors demand more accounting information when underlying earnings volatility is higher. In a set of additional analyses, the authors find that the effect of SFAS 133 on investors' response to good and bad interest rate news varies depending on the level of analyst coverage and interest rate exposure. Specifically, the authors find that the decrease in the asymmetry of response to good and bad interest rate news after the adoption of SFAS 133 is greater for users of interest rate derivatives with higher interest rate exposure and lower analyst coverage.

The findings of this study help market participants including regulators and standard setters to understand the impact of mandatory disclosure practices on investors' reaction to macroeconomic news. Moreover, the findings of the study help managers to understand the influence firm-specific characteristics (e.g. earnings volatility, analyst coverage and interest rates exposure) on the effectiveness of mandatory derivative instruments and hedging activities disclosure.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to explore how firm-specific information environment affects the way investors process macroeconomic news. This study contributes to the literature by providing the empirical evidence that derivatives instruments and hedging activities, as required by SFAS 133, affect investors' response to good and bad interest rate news. In doing so, the results provide insights about how firm-specific information environment affects the way investors process macroeconomic news. This study shows that the cross-sectional variation in earnings volatility, analysts’ coverage and interest rate exposure affects the impact of SFAS 133 on investors' response to good and bad interest rate news. The findings are not only the notable addition to the existing literature on the topic but also can aid to market participants including policy makers, regulators, standard setters and managers to understand the influence of firm-specific characteristics on the effectiveness of mandatory derivative instruments and hedging activities disclosure. Finally, the findings contribute to the general debate about the effectiveness of SFAS 133 by showing that the adoption of SFAS 133 indeed decreases information ambiguity.

Customer interactions are integral to service brands. Indeed, many product brands have added services in order to create more opportunity for customer interaction. This paper deals with the strategic use of customer interactions to build a strong brand. Customer interaction strategy has evolved considerably beyond traditional sales and advertising in how customer interactions are conducted. Yet the Pareto rule (e.g. 80% of sales from 20% of customers) continues to guide who brands interact with. Conventional wisdom is that firms should target heavy users or customers high on the recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) value of purchases. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to examine how brands can use brand purpose and brand communities to target light users and even nonuser stakeholders as well.

There is reason to hypothesize that brands can go beyond the heavy user limit of targeting customer interactions by developing brands around purpose. Purpose can be based on engagement with personal goals or values or on societal values about doing good for others. Brand purpose can be reinforced by either life purpose brand communities or societal purpose brand communities.

The paper reviews findings in the brand interaction, brand purpose and brand communities literature.

The two types of brand purposes and brand communities offer the possibility of growing a brand by targeting customer interactions at light users and nonuser stakeholders.

There are important future research issues to be addressed, but this approach could increase the value of brands to consumers and extend the life cycle of brands for organizations.

Furthermore, the concept of societal brand purpose could allow firms to focus on creating shareholder value as well as addressing social and environmental problems.

This paper broadens the current conception of customer interaction strategy and is thus relevant to relationship and experience marketing.

Banks and other financial institutions have nowadays a keen interest in their customers’ bank and mode of bill payment selection criteria, and in factors underlying this decision making. Recent developments in the financial services industry, for example increasing competition, co‐operation, and convergence mean that new strategies to attract and maintain customers are becoming of key importance for managers. Attempting to reveal the preferences of today’s customers, a survey type of study was undertaken to increase the understanding of consumers’ selection criteria for a mode of payment in Finland. Altogether 1,167 usable responses were used for the data analysis. The results of the study suggest that primary factors affecting the choice of a mode of bill payment are speed, security and trustworthiness, easy‐to‐use, and price of the payment. Some consumers appreciated short distance to a branch. Conversely, examples from friends and relatives, social contacts with the banking personnel, and bank’s name had a relatively low impact on selection of bill payment mode.

Mediated free online bibliographic search services were offered to 70 academic chemists and 262 industrial scientists and technologists. Consistent with earlier studies of users and nonusers of computer‐readable bibliographic databases, generally negligible differences were found. Nor were the correlates of use in an industrial setting generally replicated in an academic setting. However, prior information ‘style’, satisfaction with more traditional information resources, and attitudinal predisposition to the possible utility of online search services have some small effect on subsequent usage of online services.

This study aims to explore the potential use of infographics as a technology-based information dissemination tool in Egyptian public university libraries.

A quantitative approach was used in the form of a survey conducted in February 202. The survey tool was a self-administrated questionnaire. The study sample consisted of valid responses from 231 library staff. Of this number, 173 (74.9%) were infographics users, and 58 (25.1%) were infographics users.

Infographics users tended to be males between 31 and 45 years of age, mostly BA holders, librarians, with work experience ranging from 11 to 25 years. On the other hand, infographics nonusers tended to be also males between 31 and 45 years of age, mostly BA holders, librarians, with work experience ranging from 11 to 25 years. The majority of library staff used infographics mainly to provide information about the library's map, news, services, events, contact, working hours, policies and activities, to provide guidance, instructions on the library use, explain its classification scheme and provide statistical data. The largest number of library staff indicated that their use of informational infographics ranged from “Completely used” to “Most used”, followed by statistical infographics and timeline infographics The use of informational infographics and statistical infographics described to be at least fairly easy to them. In addition, the use of timeline infographics, statistical infographics and informational infographics has also been described to at least fairly useful to them. A very large number of infographics users indicated that these means are attractive, effective, persuasive, focused, easy to embed, easy to read, artistic, easy to track, highly digestible data, easily shareable, easily rememberable, informative and understandable. About two-thirds of infographics users showed that they provided infographics through a computer-based format, followed by both printed and computer-based formats, and printed format. Barriers, such as lack of awareness of infographics, lack of knowledge about infographics, lack of time needed and lack of necessary technical skills, have been described as the greatest barriers to the use of infographics by library staff.

This study is one of the very few studies concerned with the potential role of using infographics in Egyptian public university libraries, which relates to the presentation of information in the library environment.

In an attempt to attain a better understanding of the research work on building information modeling (BIM) adoption, this study aims to examine the criticality of BIM adoption barriers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) developing countries from the lens of the sociotechnical theory. Further, the study investigates the differences in the perceptions of various constructions players (owners, contractors and designers) to BIM barriers, as well as possible discrepancies in the perception of BIM users and non-BIM users to the significance of the perceived constraints.

To reach this aim, the study starts with a systematic evaluation and a critical review of the literature on BIM barriers. A set of 22 BIM adoption limitations was drawn from the literature which was used to design the survey. To capture a broad perception, a mixed approach was used, and data were collected through an interview study and a survey involving Architecture, Engineering and Construction professionals in the MENA construction sector. The collected data were analyzed using the mean score, standard deviation and nonparametric tests. The further principal component analysis (PCA) grouped the barriers to uncover the latent factors of BIM barriers.

The actors ranked the barriers as follows: lack of knowledge and BIM awareness, commercial issues and investment cost, lack of skills and BIM specialist, interoperability and lack of client demand. The examination of the PCA resulted in four underlying BIM limitation factors namely: human, technological, structural and financial. The analysis of the ranking indicated that 16 of the 22 barriers are considered critical in the MENA area. The results of the Mann–Whitney test indicated that there is a statistically significant difference in perceptions of BIM users and nonuser for seven barriers, pointing out that users care most about the financial barriers; however, nonusers are mostly concerned with structural and technological barriers. However, the results of the Kruskal–Wallis test indicated that there is no statistically significant difference in the perceptions of the three categories of stakeholders in ranking all BIM barriers.

The outcomes will back policymakers and construction participants with the knowledge to develop policy propositions that can positively affect BIM adoption in the construction industry. The significance of this study lies in being one of the very first explorative investigations that comparatively and empirically explored BIM adoption barriers across the whole MENA developing countries.

While several research studies have examined BIM adoption barriers in various countries, none to the best of the authors' knowledge have attempted to study the whole MENA region as one entity, and none highlighted the impact of user's roles on their perception of adoption barriers within their community. The results contribute to the discussion of the relationship among practitioners' level of involvement in BIM projects and their perception of adoption barriers which is underrepresented in extant studies. The above can assist with prioritizing the barriers that are considered to be more significant given the characteristics of the community under study. The result revealed the value of the structural and human attributes in prioritizing BIM adoption barriers within the MENA construction industry.