Why Are Themed Brandstores So Powerful? Retail Brand Ideology at American Girl Place

Although there is growing interest in themed brandstores, we still know very little about the source of these retail environments’ power to affect consumers profoundly. Utilizing an ethnographic study of American Girl Place, a culturally rich and highly successful retail environment, we find that effective retailing in these contexts is an intensely ideological affair. In our participant-observation of, and on-site interviews with, consumers at American Girl Place we find that the ideology of the brand manifests powerfully through a variety of different and distinct areas within the store: the Museum, the Library, the Café, the Salon, the Theater, and the Photo Studio. Ideological expression is central to each of these places. Tracking the influence of brand ideology through consumers’ retail experiences, we theorize about the centrality of retail place in ideological branding. Although the confluence of ideology and retailing has been referenced in prior research, this paper focuses on and systematically develops the theoretical interconnection between the two. The physical immediacy of themed brandstore experience acts as a quilting point that links together related cultural concepts into a strong retail brand ideology. The implications of this theory draw our attention to ideological and morally-bound retail brand expressions, emphasize the importance of a variety of retail formats within a single store, and provide practical guidelines for retailers eager to build successful brands of their own.     

The implications of job matching for retirement health insurance and leave benefits

This paper focuses on potential reasons for variations in benefit packages, in particular variations in the availability of retirement health insurance and leave. An important feature of our analysis is that we do not start with heterogeneity in workforces to explain fringe benefit differences across employers. It would be straightforward to say that differences across employers in fringe benefit packages simply represent differences in the preferences of their workforces. Rather, we focus on heterogeneity across employers as an important source of differences in fringe benefit packages. Preliminary evidence is found supportive of the predicted differences in the likelihood of such fringe benefits as retirement health insurance and leave based upon two variables–the extent of on-the-job training offered by the employer and the size of the employers. We also examine the implied links between these fringe benefits and such variables as average tenture and the proportion of the workforce that is female.     

Do tourists disperse weed seed? A global review of unintentional human-mediated terrestrial seed dispersal on clothing,vehicles and horses

Human-mediated seed dispersal is recognised as an important, but under-researched, issue. To assess the potential for tourists to act as unintentional seed dispersal agents, we reviewed published and unpublished data on seed dispersal via clothing, vehicles (cars) and in/on horses and donkeys, all of which can be used by tourists. Seeds from 754 species of terrestrial plants have been collected from these vectors, 15% of which are internationally recognised environmental weeds. Seeds were collected from personal clothing and equipment (228 species), the fur of donkeys and horses (42 species), horse dung (216 species) and vehicles (505 species). Most were herbs (429 species) or graminoids (237 species) and native to Europe. Annual Poa, White Clover, Kentucky Bluegrass and Yorkshire Fog were the most frequent species. There have been eight studies specifically on tourists, which identified 12 species on clothing, 26 on vehicles and 133 from horse dung. Methods that minimise the risk of tourists as human-mediated dispersal agents may therefore be appropriate for some tourism activities/destinations: suggestions are made. Further sampling using standardised experimental techniques is required to assess the relative risk associated with specific tourist activities and locations and determine which, and how much, seed is transported.     

Risk,uncertainty and the theory of planned behavior: A tourism example

The differential impacts risk and uncertainty have on travel decision-making were explored by examining the constructs' influence on the antecedents of intentions to visit Australia using the theory of planned behavior. Respondents were obtained from online consumer panels in South Korea, China and Japan. The South Korean and Chinese samples were general population samples, while the sample from Japan was an international travelers' sample. The extended model fitted the data well, explaining between 21 and 44 percent of the variance in intentions. Subjective norms and perceived behavioral control significantly impacted on intentions in all country samples, whereas attitudes toward visiting Australia were only significant in Japan. Subjective norms influenced attitudes and perceived behavioral control in all country samples. Finally, perceived risk influenced attitudes toward visiting Australia in South Korea and Japan, while perceived uncertainty influenced attitudes toward visiting Australia in South Korea and China and perceived behavioral control in China and Japan.     

How do cities approach policy innovation and policy learning? A study of 30 policies in Northern Europe and North America

This paper reports on a study of current practice in policy transfer, and ways in which its effectiveness can be increased. A literature review identifies important factors in examining the transfer of policies. Results of interviews in eleven cities in Northern Europe and North America investigate these factors further.The principal motivations for policy transfer were strategic need and curiosity. Local officials and politicians dominated the process of initiating policy transfer, and local officials were also the leading players in transferring experience.A range of information sources are used in the search process but human interaction was the most important source of learning for two main reasons. First, there is too much information available through the Internet and the search techniques are not seen to be wholly effective in identifying the necessary information. Secondly, the information available on websites, portals and even good practice guides is not seen to be of mixed quality with risks of focussing only on successful implementation and therefore subject to some bias. Officials therefore rely on their trusted networks of peers for lessons as here they can access the ‘real implementation’ story and the unwritten lessons. Organisations which have a culture that is supportive of learning from elsewhere had strong and broad networks of external contacts and resourced their development whilst others are more insular or inward looking and reluctant to invest in policy lessons from elsewhere. Solutions to the problems identified in the evidence base are proposed.City to city policy transfer is a very active process in the field of transport. Not enough is yet understood about its benefits or the conditions under which it is most effective. Such understandings should help to promote and accelerate the uptake of effective and well matched policies.     

Book review

Built by Japan: Competitive Straegies of the Japanese Construction Industry, Fumio Hasegawa & Shimizu Group FS New York, John Wiley & amp; Sons, 1988, 204 pp., US$25.00.

Technological Change at Work Ian McLouglin & Jon Clark Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1988, 202 pp., Pb £9.00, Hb £25.00.

Enterprising Innovation: An Alternative Approach Veronica Mole & Dave Elliott London, Frances Pinter, 1987, pp. 180.

Flexible Automation: The Global Diffusion of New Technology in the Engineering Industry Charles Edquist Jacobsson Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988, Hb £35.00.

Expert Systems: Strategic Implications and Applications A. Beerel Chichester, Ellis Horwood Ltd, 1988, 173 pp., £22.50.     

Urban Political Ecologies and Children's Geographies: Queering Urban Ecologies of Childhood

This article focuses on the material and discursive constructions of nature and children in the city. While dominant representations and idealizations of nature and childhood depend on the binary logic of the nature/culture and rural/urban divide, there is also a simplification and romanticization of nature in children's geographies and a lack of children and their spaces in urban political ecology. We argue that children and nature in cities need to be removed from a binary model of being and attended to in more nuanced ways in urban political ecology and children's geographies. In this regard, we suggest that both nature and children in cities need to be queered. We need to ask how the production of urban spaces (re)creates particular romantic and idealized relations with natures that reify the binaries between nature/culture, and male/female through a heteronormative framework. The purpose of this article is to bring the critical nature–society theories of urban political ecology into conversation with work in children's geographies that explores the ‘nature' of childhood, and in doing so queer the relationship between children and nature. Drawing on research on queer ecologies, and queered childhoods, we aim to provide a framework to rethink and queer both nature and children in cities.     

Product development with multiple partners: Strategies and conflicts in networks

This paper provides an insight into and discusses the variety of sources of conflict in linking multiple partners in a network to the product development process. Conflict issues are discussed in relation to focal company strategies for product development within networks. On the basis of three case studies representing three different strategic intentions and network situations, our findings suggest that the sources of conflict are related to the actors' definition and negotiation of the development task at hand. The study suggests that the ability to combine and find complementarities in the strategic intentions of the multiple participating actors is essential to accomplish innovation. The paper concludes that influential actors initiating or acceding to changes are crucial for reaching a positive outcome in joint product development.