Another trip to the mall: a segmentation study of customers based on their activities

In this exploratory study, a segmentation analysis of a shopping mall's customers is conducted according to the activities they performed during their visit, based on a methodology developed by Bloch et al. (J. Retailing 70 (1994) 23). This methodology is extended with measures of perceptions, emotions, and motivations. Activity-based clusters, obtained with the Variable Neighborhood Search metaheuristic applied to the P-median problem. (Hansen and Mladenovi , 1997) proved to be significantly different along many psychographic dimensions (including atmospheric perceptions), and demographic variables. This profiling methodology successfully synthesizes many segmentation approaches that were used separately in previous studies. This results in a complete and distinct profile of each group that may be a useful tool for retail strategists.     

Demystifying demotion: A look at the psychological and economic consequences on the demotee

Given the high levels of attrition in the teaching profession there is a need for research to better understand factors that lead to greater teacher well-being and engagement. The present study explores the roles of coping and buoyancy in predicting teacher well-being and engagement. In particular, a process model is hypothesized in which the use of ‘direct’ coping strategies (mastery orientation and planning) predict high levels of buoyancy, well-being, and engagement, while ‘palliative’ coping strategies (self-handicapping and failure avoidance) predict low buoyancy, well-being, and engagement. Amongst a sample of 515 teachers from 18 schools, results generally supported this model with particularly strong direct effects for buoyancy and strong direct and indirect effects for mastery orientation. Failure avoidance, self-handicapping, and planning also produced significant direct and/or indirect effects via buoyancy on teacher well-being and engagement. Implications for school executives and future research are discussed.

Virtual Decoupling for IT/Business Alignment – Conceptual Foundations, Architecture Design and Implementation Example

IT/business alignment is one of the main topics of information systems research. If IT artifacts and business-related artifacts are coupled point-to-point, however, complex architectures become unmanageable over time. In computer science, concepts like the ANSI/SPARC three-level database architecture propose an architecture layer which decouples external views on data and the implementation view of data. In this paper, a similar approach for IT/business alignment is proposed. The proposed alignment architecture is populated by enterprise services as elementary artifacts. Enterprise services link software components and process activities. They are aggregated into applications and subsequently into domains for planning/design and communication purposes. Most design approaches for the construction of enterprise services, applications and domains are top-down, i. e. they decompose complex artifacts on a stepwise basis. As an alternative which takes into account coupling semantics, we propose a bottom-up approach which is demonstrated for the identification of domains. Our approach is evaluated using a telecommunications equipment case study.