B2B service brand identity: scale development and validation

Several brand identity frameworks have been published in the B2C and the B2B brand marketing literature. A reliable, valid and parsimonious service brand identity scale that empirically establishes the construct's dimensionality in a B2B market has yet to be developed. This paper reports the findings of a study conducted amongst 421 senior executives working in the UK IT Service sector to develop and validate a B2B Service Brand Identity Scale. Following established scale development procedures support is provided for a B2B Service Brand Identity Scale comprising five dimensions; employee and client focus, visual identity, brand personality, consistent communications and human resource initiatives. Concluding remarks discuss theoretical and managerial implications with limitations and directions for future research.

Measuring societal awareness of the rural agrarian landscape: indicators and scale issues

The work presented in this report is part of the effort to define the landscape state and diversity indicator in the frame of COM (2006) 508 “Development of agri-environmental indicators for monitoring the integration of environmental concerns into the common agricultural policy”. The Communication classifies the indicators according to their level of development, which, for the landscape indicator is “in need of substantial improvements in order to become fully operational”. For this reason a full re-definition of the indicator has been carried out, following the initial proposal presented in the frame of the IRENA operation (“Indicator Reporting on the Integration of Environmental Concerns into Agricultural Policy”). The new proposal for the landscape state and diversity indicator is structured in three components: the first concerns the degree of naturalness, the second landscape structure, the third the societal appreciation of the rural landscape. While the first two components rely on a strong bulk of existing literature, the development of the methodology has made evident the need for further analysis of the third component, which is based on a newly proposed top-down approach. This report presents an in-depth analysis of such component of the indicator, and the effort to include a social dimension in large scale landscape assessment.

Small-scale mining, poverty and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa: An overview

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM)-low tech, labour intensive mineral processing and excavation activity-is an economic mainstay in rural sub-Saharan Africa, providing direct employment to over two million people. This paper introduces a special issue on 'Small-scale mining, poverty and development in sub-Saharan Africa'. It focuses on the core conceptual issues covered in the literature, and the policy implications of the findings reported in the papers in this special issue. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Perspectives on experiences of innovation: the development of an assessment methodology appropriate to construction project organizations

The UK construction industry is in the process of trying to adopt a new culture based on the large-scale take up of innovative practices. Through the Demonstration Project process many organizations are implementing changed practices and learning from the experiences of others. This is probably the largest experiment in innovation in any industry in recent times. The long-term success will be measured by the effectiveness of embedding the new practices in the organization. As yet there is no recognized approach to measuring the receptivity of the organization to the innovation process as an indication of the likelihood of long-term development. The development of an appropriate approach is described here. Existing approaches to the measurement of the take up of innovation were reviewed and where appropriate used as the base for the development of a questionnaire. The questionnaire could be applicable to multi-organizational construction project situations such that the output could determine an individual organization's innovative practices via an innovation scorecard, a project team's approach or it could be used to survey a wide cross-section of the industry.

Measuring perceived brand luxury: an evaluation of the BLI scale

This paper investigates the psychometric properties of Vigneron and Johnson's Brand Luxury Index scale. The authors developed the scale using data collected from a student sample in Australia. To validate the scale, the study reported in this paper uses data collected from Taiwanese luxury consumers. The scale was initially subjected to reliability analysis yielding low α values for two of its five proposed dimensions. Exploratory and confirmatory factors analyses were subsequently performed to examine the dimensionality of brand luxury. Discriminant and convergent validity tests highlight the need for further research into the dimensionality of the construct. Although the scale represents a good initial contribution to understanding brand luxury, in view of consumers' emerging shopping patterns, further investigation is warranted to establish the psychometric properties of the scale and its equivalence across cultures.

Measuring students' emotions in the early years: the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Elementary School (AEQ-ES)

This article reports about the development and validation of a measurement instrument assessing elementary school students' achievement emotions (Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Elementary School, AEQ-ES). Specifically, the instrument assesses students' enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom pertaining to three types of academic settings (i.e., attending class, doing homework, and taking tests and exams). Scale construction was based on Pekrun's (2006) control-value theory of achievement emotions. The instrument was tested using samples from German and American elementary school classrooms. The results of Study 1 (German sample) corroborate the reliability and structural validity of the new emotion measure. Moreover, they show that students' achievement emotions were linked with their control and value appraisals as well as their academic performance, thus supporting the external validity of the measure as well as propositions of Pekrun's (2006) control-value theory of achievement emotions. Study 2 (American sample) corroborated the cross-cultural equivalence of the measure and the generalizability of findings across the German and American samples. Implications for research on achievement emotions and educational practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)(journal abstract)

How large is congressional dependence in agriculture. Bayesian inference about ‘scale’ and ‘scope’ in measuring a spatial externality

The political economy literature on agriculture emphasizes influence over political outcomes via lobbying conduits in general, political action committee contributions in particular and the pervasive view that political preferences with respect to agricultural issues are inherently geographic. In this context, ‘interdependence’ in Congressional vote behaviour manifests itself in two dimensions. One dimension is the intensity by which neighboring vote propensities influence one another and the second is the geographic extent of voter influence. We estimate these facets of dependence using data on a Congressional vote on the 2001 Farm Bill using routine Markov chain Monte Carlo procedures and Bayesian model averaging, in particular. In so doing, we develop a novel procedure to examine both the reliability and the consequences of different model representations for measuring both the ‘scale’ and the ‘scope’ of spatial (geographic) co-relations in voting behaviour.