The role of brand loyalty and social media in e-commerce interfaces: survey results and implications for user interfaces

This paper explores the role of brand loyalty and social media in e-commerce interfaces. A survey consisting of 118 respondents was contacted to address the questions relating to online shopping and brand loyalty. Link between the frequency of access and time spent on an e-commerce user interface, and brand loyalty, gender and age profile differences, and the role of social media to branding and on-line shopping was analyzed. It was found that online loyalty differs from offline loyalty and loyalty also differed across genders, showing men were more loyal than women when shopping online. Information shared about products on social media by friends and family played an important role in purchase decision making. Website interface and ease of navigation were also key aspects for online shopping. The research concluded with recommendations to create multimodal websites which are more interactive and targeted so customer experience is enhanced and loyalty is achieved through the use of interactivity and social media

A survey of shipping finance research: setting the future research agenda

Financing shipping related investment projects has always been a focal area of debate and research within the international maritime industry since access to funding can determine the competitiveness of a capital-intensive business as well as its success or failure under adverse market conditions. This paper provides, for the first time, a comprehensive and structured survey of all published research in the area of shipping finance and investment. The review spans approximately four decades (1979-2018) of empirical evidence, including 162 studies published in 48 scholarly journals, complemented with select books and book chapters. The study provides a bibliometric analysis and comprehensive synthesis of existing research offering an invaluable source of information for both the academic community and business practice, shaping the future research agenda in shipping finance and investment

Putting the ‘we’ into workout: The association of identity leadership with exercise class attendance and effort, and the mediating role of group identification and comfort

This research examined how identity leadership displayed by group exercise instructors is associated with exercisers’ class attendance and in-class effort. Group exercise participants assessed their instructors’ engagement in identity leadership at baseline before indicating their comfort in the exercise environment, identification with the exercise group, class attendance, and in-class effort four weeks later. Results indicated positive associations between instructors’ identity leadership and exercisers’ group identification and comfort in the exercise environment four weeks later. Furthermore, results provided evidence of indirect effects. First, identity leadership was associated with members’ more frequent class attendance through their stronger group identification. Second, identity leadership was associated with members’ greater in-class effort through (a) their stronger group identification, and (b) their greater comfort. These relationships remained significant when accounting for the effect of established motivational predictors (i.e., competence and autonomy). These results point to the role that instructors’ leadership plays in promoting physical activity by suggesting that instructors’ engagement in identity leadership is associated with exercisers’ group-related experiences which, in turn, are a basis for group exercise participation

Alternative Conceptions and the Learning of Chemistry

A great deal of research has indicated that teaching is rarely a matter of introducing learners to material that simply replaces previous ignorance, but is more often a matter of presenting ideas that are somewhat at odds with existing understanding. In subjects such as chemistry, learners at school and university come to their studies already holding misconceptions or 'alternative conceptions' of subject matter. This has implications for subsequent learning, and so for teaching. This article reviews a number of key issues: (i), the origins of these alternative conceptions; (ii), the nature of these ideas; and, (iii), how they influence learning of the chemistry curriculum. These issues are in turn significant for guidance on (a) how curriculum should be selected and sequenced, and (b) on the pedagogy likely to be most effective in teaching chemistry. A specific concern reported in chemistry education is that one source of alternative conceptions seems to be instruction itself.None

Identity Work and Organizational Identification

In this paper, I analyse five approaches to identity work - discursive, dramaturgical, symbolic, socio-cognitive, and psychodynamic - and show how these are helpful in exploring the ways people draw on their membership of organizations in their constructions of self, processes generally referred to as organizational identification. Collectively, these approaches constitute a distinctive perspective on identities and identifications which suggests that they are ‘worked on’ by embedded social actors who are both constrained and enabled by context. In so doing, I draw attention to issues of agency and process, the always dynamic and complex, often fractured, and sometimes contradictory nature of identities and identifications, and raise a series of issues and questions for further research