Understanding contemporary marketing: Development of a classification scheme

The term Relationship Marketing has been used in a multitude of ways to describe and define marketing in the contemporary environment. This has led to the term being loosely defined and applied in the literature, resulting in frustration for both researchers and practitioners. Therefore, a classification scheme is developed from analysis of the extant literature, and used to systematically examine the meaning of marketing across twelve dimensions which reflect issues related to marketing practice. From this scheme, the authors identify two ‘perspectives’ of marketing, which encompass four distinguishable ‘types’ of marketing. Implications for future research in the area are discussed.     

The effects of role strain on the consumer decision process for groceries in single-parent households

Single-parent families are becoming a larger part of American society. But what is known about their decision-making processes? Role strain is of particular interest when studying single parents because of their need to serve multiple family roles otherwise carried out by dual-parent families. In this study, the consumer decision process for single parents is empirically examined in the context of grocery shopping. Role strain was found to have a significant effect on problem recognition style and reactive shopping behaviors. Advertising positively influenced proactive shopping behaviors and had a negative relationship with reactive shopping behaviors. Implications for food retailers are provided.     

Enlargement and the EU Periphery: The Impact of Changing Market Potential

We study the impact of changing relative market access in an enlarged EU on the economies of incumbent Objective 1 regions. First, we track the impact of external opening on internal spatial configurations in a three‐region economic geography model. External opening gives rise to potentially offsetting economic forces, but for most parameter configurations it is found to raise the locational attractiveness of the region that is close to the external market. Then, we explore the relation between market access and economic activity empirically. We simulate the impact of enlargement on EU Objective 1 regions. Predicted market‐access‐induced gains in regional GDP and manufacturing employment are up to seven times larger in regions proximate to the new accession countries than in ‘interior’ EU regions. We also find that a future Balkans enlargement could be particularly effective in reducing economic inequalities among the EU periphery, due to the positive impact on relative market access of Greek regions.     

Does Hindsight Bias Change Perceptions of Business Ethics?

Ethical decision theory may not be sufficiently well developed to furnish reliable guidelines to people involved in complex decision making that involves conflict between ethical considerations and business imperatives such as making a profit. In conditions of ethical uncertainty hindsight bias may occur, and this study reports on an exploration of hindsight bias effects among participants in continuing education in business programmes. Perceptions of business ethics were found to differ among groups within the sample depending on what they thought had been the outcome of the ethical decision concerned.     

Young in class: Implications for inattentive/hyperactive behaviour of Canadian boys and girls

Using data from the Statistics Canada National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), this paper investigates the impact of school entry age on inattentive/hyperactive behaviours. We employ both an across‐provinces and time difference‐in‐differences approach and a within‐province regression discontinuity design. We find that being young in class causes greater inattentive/hyperactive behaviour, exacerbating any inattentive/hyperactive behaviour exhibited prior to school entry. These results also hold in sibling fixed effect models. We do not find gender differences in the effects, although since boys are more likely to be inattentive/hyperactive at school entry, they are more affected. These effects persist into early adolescence.