Recognizing the importance of scale in the ecology and management of riverine fish

Processes affecting fish populations range in scale from local to global. Fish response is also scale‐dependent, with some activities varying locally while others depend on large‐scale connectivity within or between watersheds. These issues are still only partly recognized, with large‐scale research often affected by non‐independent sampling, weak inference, poor model testing or model over‐extrapolation. Available multi‐scale studies can reach different conclusions about factors affecting fishes from local studies, but results vary between examples. Potential explanations are (i) effects on fishes are context‐dependent; (ii) different species or life‐stages are limited in different ways; (iii) multi‐scale studies are too few for generalization. We advocate improved use of geostatistical tools to guide sampling or interpret the spatial extent of management problems, and we illustrate this using brown trout in Welsh streams. Our strongest recommendation is that fish ecologists recognize the importance of interactions across scales in quantifying effects on fishes so that management decisions can be better based on evidence rather than judgement or extrapolation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Branding and relationships: Customer and supplier perspectives

This paper explores and investigates the role of branding within financial services. Specifically, the study aims to assess the importance of branding and its associated elements including brand image and brand experience in the relationships that exist between consumers and their financial brands. It aims to achieve this through research, which identifies gaps between the managerial and consumer perspectives on branding in relationships in retail financial services. It is well established that the characteristics of services are different from those of manufactured goods and that service personnel play a central role in the services experience. Moreover, the concept of relationship marketing within services proclaims the importance of one-to-one relationships between businesses and customers as well as relationships between consumers and their brands. Drawing from the fields of brand management, relationship marketing and services marketing, this research aims to investigate the perceptional differences between consumers and suppliers in relation to the importance of branding in financial service relationships. The research findings indicate that brand experience appears to be far more salient than brand image in shaping and building meaningful and lasting brand perceptions and promoting customer retention.     

Are Socially Responsible Firms Associated with Socially Responsible Citizens? A Study of Social Distancing During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Journal of Business Ethics - The literature on the interplay between geographic communities and organizations has largely ignored the role of individual residents. In adopting a meso-perspective,...     

Determinants of dining satisfaction and post-dining behavioral intentions

The purpose of this research is to empirically investigate the determinants and consequences of dining satisfaction with restaurant services. A total of 338 undergraduate business students participated in this research. Results reveal that there exist three sources of customers’ satisfaction with restaurant services: positive emotions, perceived service quality and negative emotions. Positive emotions have more impact on customers’ satisfaction than negative emotions. In addition, emotions mediate the impact of perceived service quality on dining satisfaction. Finally, satisfaction has a significant impact on recommendation, customer loyalty and willingness to pay more.     

Social comparison motivation of mothers’ with their adolescent daughters and its effects on the mother’s consumption behaviour

Whereas prior research has focused on consumer socialisation and intergenerational influence theories to study mother–daughter interactions, this research draws on identity to emphasise the association between mothers’ social comparison and their related clothing consumption behaviors in the presence of adolescent daughters. A survey of 423 adolescent daughters’ mothers shows how personal and relational identities combine to favor mothers’ social comparison process with their adolescent daughter and explain a set of consumption behaviors, including co-consumption practices (common shopping, joint purchases, clothing exchanges) and mothers’ changes in brands, stores and styles. In order to better target adolescent girls’ mothers, retailers could develop more inter-generational practices.     

Wages,selectivity, and vacancies: Evaluating the short-term and long-term impact of the minimum wage on unemployment

Using a circular matching model (Marimon R, Zilibotti F. Unemployment vs. mismatch of talents: Reconsidering unemployment benefits. Economic Journal 1999;109; 266–291), where the wage setting is similar to Weiss (Weiss A. Job queues and layoffs in labor markets with flexible wages. Journal of Political Economy 1980; 88; 526–538), we reexamine Card and Krueger's (Card, D., Krueger, A. Myth and Measurement, the New Economics of the Minimum Wage. Princeton University Press; 1995) intuition on the impact of the minimum wage on unemployment. In the short term, a rise in the minimum wage increases the employment level by making firms less selective. In the long term, numerical simulations show that, despite the reduction of job creation, introducing a minimum wage may lower unemployment as soon as workers and jobs are sufficiently differentiated. However, beyond some limit, the wage increase raises unemployment whatever the degree of differentiation is.     

Subjectivity in credit allocation to micro-entrepreneurs: evidence from Brazil

This paper estimates the impact of loan officer subjectivity on microcredit granting by exploiting an exceptionally detailed database from a Brazilian microfinance institution. The loan officers collect field data, meet with applicants, and make recommendations to the credit committee, which has the final say on both loan approval and loan size (LS). The loan officer’s subjectivity is captured through gender bias. Our estimations indeed show subjective gender gap in LS. This gap is almost exclusively attributable to loan officers. We interpret this finding as evidence that, despite monitoring and wage incentivization, microcredit officers let their subjective preferences interfere with loan granting. We conclude by suggesting alternative means to curb subjectivity in credit allocation to micro-entrepreneurs.     

Influence through ignorance

An individual (the leader) with free access to information decides how much public evidence to collect. Conditional on this information, another individual with conflicting preferences (the follower) undertakes an action that affects the payoff of both players. In this game of incomplete but symmetric information, we characterize the rents obtained by the leader as a result of his control of the generation of public information. These rents capture the degree of influence exerted by a chairman on a committee from his capacity to keep discussions alive or call a vote. Similar insights are obtained if the leader decides first how much private information he collects, and then how much verifiable information he transmits to the follower.     

Corporate social responsibility and marketing: An integrative framework

This article introduces a conceptualization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) that emphasizes the role and potential contribution of the marketing discipline. The proposed framework first depicts CSR initiatives as the actions undertaken to display conformity to both organizational and stakeholder norms. Then, the article discusses the managerial processes needed to monitor, meet, and even exceed, stakeholder norms. Finally, the analysis explains how CSR initiatives can generate increased stakeholder support. Isabelle Maignan (imaignan@feweb.vu.nl) is an assistant professor of marketing at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on corporate social responsibility and its marketing dimensions in an international setting. Her work has appeared in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of International Business Studies, theJournal of Business Research, theJournal of Advertising, among other journals and conference proceedings. O. C. Ferrell (oc.ferrell@colostate.edu) is chair and a professor of marketing at Colorado State University. His research focuses on marketing ethics and corporate social responsibility. His work has appeared in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of Public Policy and Marketing, as well as other leading journals. In addition, he is the coauthor ofMarketing: Concepts and Strategies, Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases, Business and Society: A Strategic Approach to Corporate Citizenship, Marketing Strategy, and other textbooks.