'What's so special about family business?' An exploratory study of UK and Irish consumer experiences of family businesses

While family-owned businesses are considered to have specific advantages in customer relationships, limited research has been conducted into how these abilities are developed or understood by the public. Consumers may indeed perceive family businesses differently from non-family businesses, but this aspect has received scant attention within the literature. This paper sets out exploratory work designed to gain an understanding of Irish and UK consumer perceptions of family-owned businesses, within both urban and rural communities. The study provides insight into the meaning of `familiness' in consumers' minds when linked to family businesses, and explores the relationships and experiences that respondents have of family firms. Emerging issues include family business heritage, community bonds and social stewardship, consumer loyalty and generational transfer, distinction, choice and retail heterogeneity. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that researchers should be paying more attention to the positive aspects of family businesses within communities, and concludes with suggestions for future research to further extend this area of study

Establishing children's wishes and feelings for family court reports: the significance attached to the age of the child

Current UK government policy is to promote mediation as a way of avoiding family court proceedings and there is a risk, therefore, that welfare report-writing practice may receive less critical attention than it merits. A largely unstudied aspect of this practice is the significance given by practitioners to the child's age. More widely, across a broad academic and policy canvas, preoccupying concerns with children's rights, their ability to participate and their individuality have shifted attention away from questions about the age relatedness of competence. Two sets of findings from recent research are presented in this article: first, statistical data relating to the age of children involved in welfare report enquiries; and, second, data drawn from a qualitative study of how private lawpractitioners establish the wishes and feelings of children of different ages