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.

Conceptualising and measuring the equity of online brands

Although brand equity is an important source of competitive advantage online, previous conceptualisations and measures overlook the unique characteristics of the internet that render consumers co-creators of brand value. In view of this, a threephased research programme was undertaken to identify the facets of online retail/service (ORS) brand equity and then develop and validate a scale for its measurement. ORS brand equity was found to be a second order construct with five correlated yet distinct dimensions: emotional connection, online experience, responsive service nature, trust, and fulfilment. A series of tests showed that the ensuing 12-item scale has strong psychometric properties. The implications of this research for marketing researchers and practitioners are discussed.

Coppicing shifts CO2 stimulation of poplar productivity to above-ground pools: a synthesis of leaf to stand level results from the POP/EUROFACE experiment

A poplar short rotation coppice (SRC) grown for the production of bioenergy can combine carbon (C) storage with fossil fuel substitution. Here, we summarize the responses of a poplar (Populus) plantation to 6 yr of free air CO2 enrichment (POP/EUROFACE consisting of two rotation cycles). We show that a poplar plantation growing in nonlimiting light, nutrient and water conditions will significantly increase its productivity in elevated CO2 concentrations ([CO2]). Increased biomass yield resulted from an early growth enhancement and photosynthesis did not acclimate to elevated [CO2]. Sufficient nutrient availability, increased nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) and the large sink capacity of poplars contributed to the sustained increase in C uptake over 6 yr. Additional C taken up in high [CO2] was mainly invested into woody biomass pools. Coppicing increased yield by 66% and partly shifted the extra C uptake in elevated [CO2] to above-ground pools, as fine root biomass declined and its [CO2] stimulation disappeared. Mineral soil C increased equally in ambient and elevated [CO2] during the 6 yr experiment. However, elevated [CO2] increased the stabilization of C in the mineral soil. Increased productivity of a poplar SRC in elevated [CO2] may allow shorter rotation cycles, enhancing the viability of SRC for biofuel production.

A data framework for measuring the energy consumption of the non-domestic building stock

The transition to a low-carbon economy urgently demands better information on the drivers of energy consumption. UK government policy has prioritized energy efficiency in the built stock as a means of carbon reduction, but the sector is historically information poor, particularly the non-domestic building stock. This paper presents the results of a pilot study that investigated whether and how property and energy consumption data might be combined for non-domestic energy analysis. These data were combined in a ‘Non-Domestic Energy Efficiency Database’ to describe the location and physical attributes of each property and its energy consumption. The aim was to support the generation of a range of energy-efficiency statistics for the industrial, commercial and institutional sectors of the non-domestic building stock, and to provide robust evidence for national energy-efficiency and carbon-reduction policy development and monitoring. The work has brought together non-domestic energy data, property data and mapping in a ‘data framework’ for the first time. The results show what is possible when these data are integrated and the associated difficulties. A data framework offers the potential to inform energy-efficiency policy formation and to support its monitoring at a level of detail not previously possible.

Measuring construction professional services exports: a case for change

There is limited understanding of the role of services in the wave of globalisation and how the strengths of the UK service sector help to respond to the challenge of global competition. The way in which the construction export data are collected does not reflect the impact of globalisation and the changes in the construction business environment, such as increasing foreign ownership, foreign affiliates, and changing forms of procurement. The paper describes construction service exports, how they are collected and classified, highlighting the challenges of recording the export performance of construction services in a changing world. A case for change is made to ensure the collection of statistics better reflects the role of construction professional services

Assisted remote viewing of a teleoperation work cell

Intelligent viewing systems are required if efficient and productive teleoperation is to be applied to dynamic manufacturing environments. These systems must automatically provide remote views to an operator which assist in the completion of the task. This assistance increases the productivity of the teleoperation task if the robot controller is responsive to the unpredictable dynamic evolution of the workcell. Behavioral controllers can be utilized to give reactive 'intelligence.' The inherent complex structure of current systems, however, places considerable time overheads on any redesign of the emergent behavior. In industry, where the remote environment and task frequently change, this continual redesign process becomes inefficient. We introduce a novel behavioral controller, based on an 'ego-behavior' architecture, to command an active camera (a camera mounted on a robot) within a remote workcell. Using this ego-behavioral architecture the responses from individual behaviors are rapidly combined to produce an 'intelligent' responsive viewing system. The architecture is single-layered, each behavior being autonomous with no explicit knowledge of the number, description or activity of other behaviors present (if any). This lack of imposed structure decreases the development time as it allows each behavior to be designed and tested independently before insertion into the architecture. The fusion mechanism for the behaviors provides the ability for each behavior to compete and/or co-operate with other behaviors for full or partial control of the viewing active camera. Each behavior continually reassesses this degree of competition or co-operation by measuring its own success in controlling the active camera against pre-defined constraints. The ego-behavioral architecture is demonstrated through simulation and experimentation.

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.

Global responses of terrestrial productivity to contemporary climatic oscillations

The terrestrial biosphere is subjected to a wide range of natural climatic oscillations. Best known is the El Niño–southern oscillation (ENSO) that exerts globally extensive impacts on crops and natural vegetation. A 50-year time series of ENSO events has been analysed to determine those geographical areas that are reliably impacted by ENSO events. Most areas are impacted by changes in precipitation; however, the Pacific Northwest is warmed by El Niño events. Vegetation gross primary production (GPP) has been simulated for these areas, and tests well against independent satellite observations of the normalized difference vegetation index. Analyses of selected geographical areas indicate that changes in GPP often lead to significant changes in ecosystem structure and dynamics. The Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) is another climatic oscillation that originates from the Pacific and exerts global impacts that are rather similar to ENSO events. However, the longer period of the PDO provided two phases in the time series with a cool phase from 1951 to 1976 and a warm phase from 1977 to 2002. It was notable that the cool phase of the PDO acted additively with cool ENSO phases to exacerbate drought in the earlier period for the southwest USA. By contrast in India, the cool phase of the PDO appears to reduce the negative impacts of warm ENSO events on crop production.

Measuring lexical diversity among L2 learners of French: an exploration of the validity of D, MTLD and HD-D as measures of language ability

In this study two new measures of lexical diversity are tested for the first time on French. The usefulness of these measures, MTLD (McCarthy and Jarvis (2010 and this volume) ) and HD-D (McCarthy and Jarvis 2007), in predicting different aspects of language proficiency is assessed and compared with D (Malvern and Richards 1997; Malvern, Richards, Chipere and Durán 2004) and Maas (1972) in analyses of stories told by two groups of learners (n=41) of two different proficiency levels and one group of native speakers of French (n=23). The importance of careful lemmatization in studies of lexical diversity which involve highly inflected languages is also demonstrated. The paper shows that the measures of lexical diversity under study are valid proxies for language ability in that they explain up to 62 percent of the variance in French C-test scores, and up to 33 percent of the variance in a measure of complexity. The paper also provides evidence that dependence on segment size continues to be a problem for the measures of lexical diversity discussed in this paper. The paper concludes that limiting the range of text lengths or even keeping text length constant is the safest option in analysing lexical diversity.

Measuring the consumer benefits of improving farm animal welfare to inform welfare labelling

Policy makers in the European Union are envisioning the introduction of a community farm animal welfare label which would allow consumers to align their consumption habits with their farm animal welfare preferences. For welfare labelling to be viable the market for livestock products produced to higher welfare standards has to be sufficiently segmented with consumers having sufficiently distinct and behaviourally consistent preferences. The present study investigates consumers’ preferences for meat produced to different welfare standards using a hypothetical welfare score. Data is obtained from a contingent valuation study carried out in Britain. The ordered probit model was estimated using Bayesian inference to obtain mean willingness to pay. We find decreasing marginal WTP as animal welfare levels increase and that people’s preferences for different levels of farm animal welfare are sufficiently differentiated making the introduction of a labelling scheme in the form of a certified rating system appear feasible.