Olfaction and the retail environment: examining the influence of ambient scent

This article concerns the ability of smell to assist the development and communication of retail brand image. It presents a number of propositions regarding ambient smell and the retail environment derived from the literature—including the potential for novel ambient aromas to act as a distinctive element in a retailer’s marketing mix. Empirical testing is achieved through a ‘natural experiment’ in a large electrical store using fragranced and unfragranced conditions. An environmental psychology base was used to develop an in-store questionnaire, supported by direct measurement of customer dwell times and subsequent interviews. In total, 329 questionnaires were returned and 429 customer groups were timed in the two departments where the experiment occurred. Significant differences in consumer perceptions of the store’s environmental attributes were identified, despite the fact that less than 10% of respondents questioned were aware of the use of in-store fragrances. The qualitative interviews provided some initial confirmation for the more complex propositions concerning the memory of scents.     

Validating the search,experience, and credence product classification framework

Prior research identifies the influential factors for patronage intentions as product classes, retailer attributes, and risk perceptions. The Internet's ability to offer easy information search, therefore to reduce certain types of risk for products mandates evaluation of a new product classification framework called Search, Experience, and Credence. To test the nomological validity of the SEC-framework, this study investigates whether the SEC-products influence the (1) level of importance consumers place on retailer attributes, (2) level and types of risks consumers perceive, and (3) consumer patronage intentions for Internet and physical stores. The relationships between the (4) importance consumers place on retailer attributes and their risk perceptions, and (5) risk perceptions and patronage intentions for Internet and physical stores are investigated. The findings indicate while the importance of retailer attributes is equally significant across the four product classes, the SEC-products influence consumer risk perceptions and purchase-intentions for online and physical-stores. The relationship between important retailer attributes and risk perceptions is also significant.     

The moral discourse of banks about money laundering: an analysis of the narrative from Paul Ricoeur's philosophical perspective

In this paper, we will use Ricoeur's philosophy in order to present money laundering as a metaphor and a narrative. We will firstly analyze the corporate moral discourse of 10 banks about money laundering. We have selected 10 banks that have codes of ethics and a corporate moral discourse about money laundering. The banks come from six countries: United States (2), Canada (2), Switzerland (2), Spain (2), Germany (1), and Belgium (1). We will see how their moral discourse about money laundering contributes to deepen the understanding of money laundering as a narrative. Then, we will see to what extent Ricoeur's philosophy could help us to better understand the moral discourse of banks. We will describe the main components of money laundering as a narrative.     

Teaching Business Ethics,or the Challenge of a Socratic-Nietzschean Self-Transcendence for Teachers

Business ethics courses often focus on the path toethical behaviour. This paper discusses why teachersask to themselves how to modify major aspects of thepersonality (values, virtues, moral principles) oftheir students. There are two basic motives behindsuch an obsession of results: (1) the claim that wecan modify the personal value systems of our students;(2) the desire and anxiety to be, as teachers,counter-cultural agents. We will use a philosophicalframework, and will define self-transcendence forteachers (as well as for students) as including botha Socratic radical doubt about reality and knowledge(the awareness of our illusory understanding ofreality, and the ability to question our mostcherished beliefs and values) and the Nietzschean``Overman (the ability to assess things, people andevents in focusing on their ``worth for life, ingetting rid of our will to believe and our will totruth).     

The Economic Dimension of Quality in Tourism: Perceptions of Portuguese Public Decision Makers at the Local Level

A quality assessment scale in tourism was constructed in five dimensions: economic, development, human resources, marketing and product. We presents the research findings for the economic dimension, aiming to understand the perception of Portuguese public decision makers at the local level. Using survey methodology, a sample of Portuguese municipalities was used for data collection. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed, and three factors supported quality assessment regarding economics: development strategy (F1), economic factors of demand (F2), and financial incentives (F3). Results focus on the validation of the psychometric properties of this measuring instrument, identifying key issues for future research.     

Persona-fied brands: managing branded persons through persona

We investigate how the concept of persona can be used in managing brand persona-fication. Based on interviews with informants working across the gastronomy sector, we examine the characteristics of the chef persona, and the role that chef persona plays in restaurant management. We differentiate persona-fied brands from other human brands, we dimensionalise the chef persona, and we identify two possible models of brand management through persona: (1) the distributed or fragmented persona-fication of the brand, which is based on a disjunction of different facets of the brand persona, each embodied in different persons; and (2) the unified persona-fication of the brand, which is based on the conjunction of the different facets of the brand persona. Here, the persona is embodied in a single person who embodies the different facets of the brand persona. Our analysis surfaces theoretical resonance with the performative turn in marketing scholarship.     

Job stressors and voluntary work behaviours: mediating effect of emotion and moderating roles of personality and emotional intelligence

Framed within an emotion‐centred model, the current study investigated the mediating role of negative and positive emotion between job stressors and counterproductive work behaviours (CWB) and organisational citizenship behaviours, and the moderating effects of personality and ability‐based emotional intelligence (EI) on the relationships between job stressors and emotions. Results from a sample of 202 Caribbean employees across eight public and private sector organisations showed that both positive and negative emotion mediated the relation between job stressors and citizenship behaviours, whereas only negative emotion was found to mediate the relation between job stressors and CWB. Some support was found for the moderating effects of personality and EI. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Revisiting Covered Interest Parity in the European Union: the DCCA Approach

This paper analyzes the evidence of financial integration, with covered interest parity (CIP), for a group of countries that have already adopted the euro and another group of countries that kept their currencies. We use detrended cross-correlation analysis, which allows analyzing the behavior of time series even when they are not stationary. The main results indicate that countries that adopted the euro do not show much evidence in favor of CIP, before joining the Eurozone, which could imply they will not benefit from all common currency advantages. In the group of countries that did not adopt the euro, Denmark, Sweden, the UK and the Czech Republic are the ones presenting better conditions for financial integration with the euro, while Bulgaria has also some evidence of this. Some possible explanations of CIP deviations are agents not considering all countries’ assets as similar and also the underdevelopment of markets and liquidity problems (more pronounced due to periods of turmoil).