Consumer Alienation: Relationships with Marketplace Interaction Styles

Within today’s shopping environment where discretionary purchases are the norm, individuals’ purchasing activities are affected by the degree to which they interact with the marketplace. One factor which appears to affect the degree of interaction consumers have with the marketplace is the degree of consumer alienation experienced. When attempting to better understand consumer alienation, marketplace interaction styles (e.g., assertiveness and aggressiveness) appear to be an area of particular interest. Individuals with stronger feelings of alienation can logically be expected to possess marketplace interaction styles which differ from those of individuals who are less alienated from the marketplace. These relationships were examined using a chronologically and educationally homogeneous sample of 1008 participants. Relationships were observed supporting the hypotheses. Individuals who feel more alienated from the marketplace appear to be less aggressive and less assertive in the marketplace than are individuals who feel less alienated from the marketplace. When the consumer alienation factors are examined, the results indicate that the relationships observed between consumer alienation and the assertiveness and alienation and aggressiveness originate in the second and third consumer alienation factors (informed choice and personal norm) and not the first consumer alienation factor (business ethics). When the assertiveness factors are examined, the results indicate the relationship between alienation and assertiveness originates in the first two assertiveness factors (requesting information or assistance and resisting requests for compliance), but not in the third factor (seeking remedy for dissatisfaction). These results suggest that individuals experiencing differing levels of consumer alienation possess differing marketplace interaction styles

The Role of Empathy in the Benefits Sought from Volunteering

Increasing needs for volunteers have led many nonprofit organizations to seek to understand the benefits sought by individuals from volunteering. This study examines empathy. Empathy is believed to be one of the causes of individuals engaging in helping or prosocial behavior, an activity which includes volunteering. What role does empathy play in the benefits sought by individuals from volunteering? The objective of this study is to examine this question. The relationship between empathy and benefits sought by collegiate business students from volunteering are explored. Individuals who possess relatively higher levels of empathy appear to be more likely to participate in volunteering activity and hence, are likely to perceive that they receive a higher level of benefits from engaging in volunteering activity than individuals who possess a relatively lower level of empathy. The sample was comprised of members of Generation Y pursuing higher education in business. Questionnaires were distributed to students enrolled in marketing courses. The most commonly employed measure of empathetic emotional response was employed (Mehrabian et al. 1972). Benefits sought by individuals from volunteering were measured by the Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI) developed by Clary et al. (1998). The results indicate that while empathy plays a role in each of the previously identified benefits sought from volunteering, it plays a larger role in the “escaping from negative feelings” benefit. The findings suggest that although empathetic appeals to potential volunteers may be universally successful when attempting to attract young adults, appeals targeting young adults who are looking to volunteer to escape from negative feelings (protective benefit) may be particularly successful

Loyalty Cards: a Review of the Research and Suggestions for Future Research

Several larger retailers have adopted loyalty cards as a means to acquire information to better serve their customers. To participate in a loyalty card program, consumers must provide a significant amount of personal information to the retailer. How aware are consumers of the data which they are providing retailers by using loyalty cards? How aware are they of how their information is being used? The purpose of this paper is to begin to raise these issues

Ethics in Retail Buying and Sales: Perceptions of Future Retail Personnel

Unlike many other industries, collegiately educated individuals pursuing a career in retailing often find themselves involved in both buying and selling activities and/or interacting with those who do during their careers. As a result, policies enacted by a retailer which affects one of these two environments will likely affect the other. Perceptions of potentially ethically troublesome situations and practices in buying were found to be strongly related to perceptions of potentially ethically troublesome situations and practices in selling. The only exceptions concern socialization between retail salespeople and their peers and/or management, and whether vendors service small accounts. It appears that these two issues are viewed by respondents as having a nature different from the remaining issues

Extending the Conversation: A Network Analysis of Academic Associations in Workplace Spirituality

Examining academic networks provides insight into boundaries and boundary crossing as well as knowledge diffusion. We examine four academic networks focused on business, spirituality, and religion to identify network boundaries and boundary crossing. Scholars tend to align with networks consistent with the nature of their employing institution, both in its relative emphasis on research and its religious affiliation. Network and religious differences contribute to the relative isolation of research communities, despite shared topical interests and reliance on similar scholarly sources. The use of normative authorities may limit networking, but the relative absence of weak network links across networks may underestimate similarities. Increased boundary crossing may enhance innovation across networks

Landslides in sensitive soils, Tauranga, New Zealand.

In the Tauranga region sensitive soil failures commonly occur after heavy rainfall events, causing considerable infrastructure damage. Several notable landslides include a large failure at Bramley Drive, Omokoroa in 1979, the Ruahihi Canal collapse in 1981, and numerous landslides in May 2005; recently the Bramley Drive scarp was reactivated in 2011. These failures are associated with materials loosely classified as the Pahoia Tephras - a mixture of rhyolitic pyroclastic deposits of approximately 1 Ma. The common link with extreme rainfall events suggests a pore water pressure control on the initiation of these failures. Recent research on the structure of the soils shows a dominance of halloysite clay minerals packed loosely in arrangements with high porosity (51 – 77 %), but with almost entirely micropores. This leads us to conclude that the permeability is very low, and the materials remain continuously wet. The formation of halloysite is encouraged by a wet environment with no episodes of drying, supporting this assumption. A high-resolution CPT trace at Bramley Drive indicates induced pore water pressures rising steadily to a peak at approximately 25 m depth; this depth coincides with the base of the landslide scarp. We infer that elevated pore water pressures develop within this single, thick aquifer, triggering failure through reduced effective stresses. The inactive halloysite clay mineral results in low plasticity indices (13 – 44 %) and hence high liquidity indices (1.2 – 2.4) due to the saturated pore space; remoulding following failure is sudden and dramatic and results in large debris runout distances