Co-ethnic markets: Financial penalty or opportunity?

This paper applies the view of resource based theory to minority entrepreneurship. It examines minority entrepreneurs’ reliance on co-ethnic markets in terms of the impact this has on the financial performance of their firms. This research focuses on three minority groups in particular: African Americans, Korean Americans and Mexican Americans. Findings indicate that owner's age and marital status, but not business age, shape the extent to which a business owner relies on co-ethnic clients. Furthermore, Korean American owned firms are less likely to have high proportions of co-ethnic clients compared to Mexican- and African American owned firms. Having a large co-ethnic clientele results in a financial penalty in terms of the revenue an owner draws from his or her business. This penalty occurs in businesses owned by all three groups of entrepreneurs. Findings lend support to the resource based theory view of the firm in terms of the need to dynamically apply resources in order to achieve a competitive advantage. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Exploring supermarket loyalty card analysis to identify who buys fairtrade

The aim of this paper is to show how supermarket loyalty card data from a panel of over 1.7 million shoppers can be analysed to provide insights to profile the fairtrade shopper in order to enhance making targeted marketing decisions. The paper demonstrates the huge marketing potential that loyalty-card-based shopper segmentation can bring to objectively describe who buys fairtrade products, compared to profiling shoppers through a claimed/reported behaviour data-set. A paired-samples t-test is used to test the degree of appeal of fairtrade tea, coffee, chocolate, drinking chocolates, banana and sugar categories in Tesco to life-stage and lifestyle shopper segments in terms of their retail sales values over 104 weeks. The results show that analysing loyalty cards based on actual behaviour provides a more detailed picture of how specific fairtrade food product categories appeal to the various life-stage and lifestyle shopper segments.     

Redefining the Recruitment Niche for the Guide Association in the United Kingdom

This article shows how the concept of a recruitment niche can be valuable in understanding the difficulties the Guide Association in the United Kingdom has in recruiting new volunteers. Understanding Guiding as career volunteering, within serious leisure, shows how the distinctive ethos of the existing volunteers contributes to the social construction of the recruitment niche. The defining boundaries of the niche restrict the ability to recruit new volunteers. Thus the article gives an example of how a recruitment niche for a voluntary organization can be defined using the socially constructed ethos of volunteers involved in career volunteering rather than by characteristics such as level of educational attainment. It also demonstrates the implications of this for voluntary organizations wishing to increase recruitment.     

Becoming a belly dancer: gender,the life course and the beginnings of a serious leisure career

Serious leisure careers have a beginning, middle and end, yet few studies examine the beginning stage of leisure careers dominated by women. Drawing from interviews with male and female belly dancers in the USA, this study examines how people join serious leisure activities. Results show that both men and women were interested in dance, arts and history, had personal ties to belly dance, and wanted an enjoyable form of exercise to match their capabilities when they entered the world of belly dance. Unlike men, the women in this study also experienced major life transitions, such as diminishing familial responsibilities, job and school issues, moving and shifting relationships. These findings have implications for the gendered nature of serious leisure.     

Making the Processes of Designing Explicit Within an Information Technology Environment

In this paper, technology is described as involving processes whereby resources are utilised to satisfy human needs or to take advantage of opportunities, to develop practical solutions to problems. This study, set within one type of technology context, information technology, investigated how, through a one semester undergraduate university course, elements of technological processes were made explicit to students. While it was acknowledged in the development and implementation of this course that students needed to learn technical skills, technological skills and knowledge, including design, were seen as vital also, to enable students to think about information technology from a perspective that was not confined and limited to `technology as hardware and software'. This paper describes how the course, set within a three year program of study, was aimed at helping students to develop their thinking and their knowledge about design processes in an explicit way. An interpretive research approach was used and data sources included a repertory grid `survey'; student interviews; video recordings of classroom interactions, audio recordings of lectures, observations of classroom interactions made by researchers; and artefacts which included students' journals and portfolios. The development of students' knowledge about design practices is discussed and reflections upon student knowledge development in conjunction with their learning experiences are made. Implications for ensuring explicitness of design practice within information technology contexts are presented, and the need to identify what constitutes design knowledge is argued.     

The marketing effectiveness of UK environmental charity websites compared to best practice

All nonprofit organisations need to give attention to their marketing strategies in order to maximise the funding and support they receive and the numbers using their services. The web offers a new communications medium with which to achieve this. This paper compares suggested best practice approaches to web marketing using the websites of UK environmental charities as a type of nonprofit organisation. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications