The impact of pronoun choices on consumer engagement actions: Exploring top global brands' social media communications

To enhance the understanding of consumer engagement with brand content on social media, this study examines how pronoun choices affect different types of consumer engagement (e.g., likes, comments, shares) by simultaneously exploring five different pronoun types (first-person singular, first-person plural, second person, third-person singular, and third-person plural). Furthermore, this study explores how the effects of these linguistic (pronoun) choices vary across two brand classifications: characteristics (hedonic vs. utilitarian) and offerings (goods vs. services). The proposed multivariate Poisson regression model, analyzing 15,788 unique brand posts from Facebook over an 8-month period, reveals differences in engagement due to pronoun usage across brand classifications. These results offer a deeper understanding of how the way brands talk to consumers on social media platforms influences consumers' attitudes (likes), propensity to engage with the brand (comments), and willingness to share branded content with their social networks (shares) across different brand classifications.     

Professionalising gender and development expertise: innovations in capacity‐building and credentialing

Gender training does not adequately prepare gender and development professionals (GDPs) to undertake robust gender integration of development and humanitarian assistance (D&H) policies and programmes and limits their ability to impact gender equity and equality and development overall. In particular, GDPs lack sector‐specific and applied technical skills in gender analysis and integration. These limitations undermine GDPs’ own performance and their credibility with employers and colleagues who rely on them for professional guidance in gender integration. To address these shortcomings and advance the field of gender and D&H, this note describes a new model of gender capacity‐building that introduces three innovations: (1) sector‐specific, job‐related and outcome‐based gender analysis and integration competencies, (2) a professional development capacity‐building short course based on the competencies and applications to D&H policies and programmes and (3) a professional credential that recognizes possession of these critical competencies.     

Who's Afraid of Rural Poverty? The Story Behind America's Invisible Poor

Rural poverty and rural issues in general remain invisible in the United States to the urban majority. Rural sociologists have tried to raise these issues, but even in the field of sociology, they have been sidelined for several generations. Progressives treat urban poverty with sympathy and rural poverty with contempt because the latter is stereotyped as a problem that afflicts only white families, who are then blamed for failings of the economy as a whole. In fact, persistent rural poverty is concentrated in pockets in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and several other regions, many of which are inhabited by blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Nevertheless, it seems that making rural poverty as much a concern among progressive Democrats as urban poverty has been will require a different political orientation towards rural issues. Such an approach was visible briefly during Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, but it has had little influence on other candidates for high office.     

Exciting red and competent blue: the importance of color in marketing

From beverages to consumer electronics, marketers are using color in innovative ways. Despite this, little academic research has investigated the role that color plays in marketing. This paper examines how color affects consumer perceptions through a series of four studies. The authors provide a framework and empirical evidence that draws on research in aesthetics, color psychology, and associative learning to map hues onto brand personality dimensions (Study 1), as well as examine the roles of saturation and value for amplifying brand personality traits (Study 2). The authors also demonstrate how marketers can strategically use color to alter brand personality and purchase intent (Study 3), and how color influences the likability and familiarity of a brand (Study 4). The results underscore the importance of recognizing the impact of color in forming consumer brand perceptions.     

Teaching for critical thinking: preparing hospitality and tourism students for careers in the twenty-first century

Twenty-first century tourism educators and career-seeking graduates are faced with a host of novel challenges. Given the dynamic, complex nature of the contemporary tourism industry, students must be equipped with relevant twenty-first century skills. To address this need, critical thinking is currently being promoted, via university initiatives, as an employable skill. This study assesses the extent to which critical thinking is being transmitted to tourism students at a large southeastern university in the United States. Precourse and postcourse data were collected from students (n = 85) who participated in a tourism management class, that emphasized case study learning, during the fall 2014, spring 2015, and spring 2016 semesters. Uncorrected results indicate significant positive increases in overall critical thinking and two of five sub-domains – inference and deduction; however, in the conservative, corrected results there are no significant effects. Recommendations for improving critical thinking and three sub-domains – analysis, evaluation, and induction – are discussed.     

联邦制森林治理:分权管理经验和潜在影响

80%以上的发展中国家和经济转轨国家正在进行着某种形式的分权试验。以11个国家(拥有全球森林总量60%以上)为例,简要描述了实施联邦制的主要林业国家当前的森林行政管理类型以及施政形式,认为分权后强化了跨部门联系的重要性,许多政府机构都介入了有关森林资源的各项决策;有效的森林治理取决于各种管理机构的能力;私营部门和民间组织在成功治理各种森林资源中也发挥着重要作用。从11国经验中分析了各种潜在优势、潜在危险,指出分权管理减少了中央政府的官僚和决策障碍,但会使全国性的政策协调、实施和监督变得困难。     

Understanding the contribution of curb appeal to retail real estate values

The concept of curb appeal and its impact on property values has been largely neglected in the real estate literature. In the context of retail real estate, curb appeal represents the general attractiveness of a store as viewed from the sidewalk or parking lot that is expected to affect consumer patronage decisions and consequently property values. We first develop a measurement instrument for curb appeal and assess its validity using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Our results suggest that curb appeal is multidimensional and consists of an atmospheric, architectural and authenticity dimension. Then, we use survey responses, transaction data and spatial regression to quantify the impact of curb appeal on sales prices. We find that the atmospheric and architectural dimensions have a significantly positive impact on sales prices. We also show that curb appeal dimensions are highly correlated with observable building features traditionally included in hedonic pricing models.