Consumer motivations for social media usage and its impact on customers' trust and long-term relationships

New challenges and opportunities have recently arisen for companies’ relationships with customers as a result of the increasing prevalence of social media. By enabling companies to build online communities, social media allow marketers to access information about consumers, identify consumers’ needs, and gain direct consumer feedback. Thus, social media can be a very important and helpful tool for interacting and communicating with customers. In order to sustain such relationships for the long term, however, efforts must be centred around building consumer trust and commitment.This study investigates the role of social media based communities in building relationships with consumers, and the influence of such communities on consumers’ attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, the study investigates whether such influences can lead to trust, commitment, and loyalty towards the organisation. Drawing on Uses and Gratification Theory, Consumption Values Theory, and the Commitment-Trust Theory, the study examines the relationship between consumers using social media channels, trusting these channels, and trusting the organisation that owns these channels.Adopting a positivist deductive approach, quantitative data was collected via a survey strategy. A questionnaire targeting telecommunications company fan pages users in Saudi Arabia was distributed through Twitter and Facebook with help from people who have many followers/likes such as celebrities. More than 700 responses were collected, of which 522 were usable for factor analysis.Based on the results, a cognitive behavioural model was established in relation to social media uses and gratifications, perceived values of social media fan pages, organisational trust, commitment, and loyalty. Users who perceived utilitarian benefits from following a company’s fan pages were likely to trust these pages, whereas perceived hedonic and social benefits did not have an influence on trust towards organization’s fan pages. The findings additionally indicated that consumers who trusted the organization’s fan pages were likely to trust the company. Therefore, telecommunication companies’ fan page users who perceived trust were expected to be committed and loyal to the company, which would consequently, lead to more frequent and larger purchases. The findings contribute to marketing theory and suggest ways in which marketers can tailor companies’ web presence for more effective communication and relationship-building with customers

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Communication and the Knowable Community

This essay draws on Raymond Williams\u27s concept of a knowable community in an effort to understand the myriad of connections that exist between individuals and society. Williams, who sees communication and community as synonymous, suggests that a knowable community may ultimately emerge through the process of communication and that in the discovery of connections between individuals and society, an understanding of historically specific patterns may be shown. This essay also discusses an oral history project with journalists who worked for Gannett in the 1960s as an example of an emerging knowable community that questioned traditional notions of community and challenged dominant ideological constructions of media history

Humility, Listening and ‘Teaching in a Strong Sense’

My argument in this paper is that humility is implied in the concept of teaching, if teaching is construed in a strong sense. Teaching in a strong sense is a view of teaching as linked to students’ embodied experiences (including cognitive and moral-social dimensions), in particular students’ experiences of limitation, whereas a weak sense of teaching refers to teaching as narrowly focused on student cognitive development. In addition to detailing the relation between humility and strong sense teaching, I will also argue that humility is acquired through the practice of teaching. My discussion connects to the growing interest, especially in virtue epistemology discourse, in the idea that teachers should educate for virtues. Drawing upon John Dewey and contemporary virtue epistemology discourse, I discuss humility, paying particular attention to an overlooked aspect of humility that I refer to as the educative dimension of humility. I then connect this concept of humility to the notion of teaching in a strong sense. In the final section, I discuss how humility in teaching is learned in the practice of teaching by listening to students in particular ways. In addition, I make connections between my concept of teaching and the practice of cultivating students’ virtues. I conclude with a critique of common practices of evaluating good teaching, which I situate within the context of international educational policy on teacher evaluation

The Effect of Health Changes and Long-term Health on the Work Activity of Older Canadians

Using longitudinal data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS), we study the relationship between health and employment among older Canadians. We focus on two issues: (1) the possible problems with self- reported health, including endogeneity and measurement error, and (2) the relative importance of health changes and long-term health in the decision to work. We contrast estimates of the impact of health on employment using self-assessed health, an objective health index contained in the NPHS - the HUI3, and a "purged" health stock measure. Our results suggest that health has an economically significant effect on employment probabilities for Canadian men and women aged 50 to 64, and that this effect is underestimated by simple estimates based on self-assessed health. We also corroborate recent U.S. and U.K. findings that changes in health are important in the work decision.health, health changes, employment, older workers

Controlling land they call their own: access and women's empowerment in Northern Tanzania

Formal rights to land are often promoted as an essential part of empowering women, particularly in the Global South. We look at two grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on land rights and empowerment with Maasai communities in Northern Tanzania. Women involved with both NGOS attest to the power of land ownership for personal empowerment and transformations in gender relations. Yet very few have obtained land ownership titles. Drawing from Ribot and Peluso’s theory of access, we argue that more than ownership rights to land, access–to land, knowledge, social relations and political processes–is leading to empowerment for these women, as well as helping to keep land within communities. We illustrate how the following are key to both empowerment processes and protecting community and women’s land: (1) access to knowledge about legal rights, such as the right to own land; (2) access to customary forms of authority; and (3) access to a joint social identity–as women, as indigenous people, and as Maasai. Through this shared identity and access to knowledge and authority, women are strengthening their access to social relations (amongst themselves, with powerful political players and NGOs), and gaining strength through collective action to protect land rights

What Determines the Demand for Occupational Pensions in Germany?

Demographic change causes an undersupply of financial old age benefits within the statutory pay-as-you-go pension system in Germany. Therefore, the provision of occupational as well as private pensions has to be enhanced. However, there seems to be an undersupply of occupational pension provision particularly in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Using survey data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and the German SAVE survey, the present paper studies econometrically the determinants of occupational pension provision in Germany. It shows that occupational pensions depend not only on supply-side factors such as firm size and industry, but also on demand-side factors such as individual socio-demographic attributes and people's savings motives.Occupational Pensions, Retirement Provision, Demographic Change, SMEs

Cottage Economy or Collective Farm? English Socialism and Agriculture Between Merrie England and the Five-Year Plan

The cottage economy and the collective farm are two alternative models of socialist agriculture that relate broadly to the traditions of Romantic and utilitarian socialism and embody diametrically opposed attitudes to food and its production. In the decades following the Russian Revolution of 1917 – at a time when collectivised agriculture was being implemented on a previously unimaginable scale, with disastrous consequences – the case for such a model was made enthusiastically by British Stalinists such as George Bernard Shaw, Jean Beauchamp, Margaret Cole, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. This fed into a wider shift in British society where responsibility for securing the food supply was increasingly seen as a function of the state rather than the market. During the inter-war decades the centre of gravity for British socialists’ thinking about food production shifted from the cottage economy to the collective farm. Yet there were those – like Chesterton, Belloc, Orwell and Muggeridge, as well as the emerging thinkers of the organic movement like Louise Howard and G. T. Wrench – who in various ways held on to the cottage economy ideal and the peasant smallholder as a bulwark against the vast, industrialised mega-farms of the Soviet Empire. They were often seen not as socialists but as cranks. This paper explores the debates around this issue and considers their continuing relevance to our own thinking about the ways food is produced

Class Notes

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The Effect of Health Changes and Long-term Health on the Work Activity of Older Canadians

Using longitudinal data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS), we study the relationship between health and employment among older Canadians. We focus on two issues: (1) the possible endogeneity of self- reported health, particularly "justification bias", and (2) the relative importance of health changes and long-term health in the decision to work. The NPHS contains the HUI3, an "objective" health index which has been gaining popularity in empirical work. We contrast estimates of the impact of health on employment using self-assessed health, the HUI3, and a "purged" health measure similar to that employed by Bound et al. (1999) and Disney et al. (2003). A direct test suggests that self-assessed health suffers from justification bias. However, the HUI3 provides estimates that are similar to the "purged" health measure. We also corroborate recent U.S. and U.K. findings that changes in health are important in the work decision.Health; Health Changes; Employment; Older Workers; NPHS