Redefining brand salience using memory theory and implications for measurement

The concept of brand salience, or brand accessibility in memory, has been prevalent in the area of brand research for several decades. Brand salience has been driven by memory theory and psychological research, but debate has continued over the structure of memory systems, the way in which consumers undertake memory search, and what they do with brand information once it is retrieved. With the rise to prominence of brand equity, brand salience has been subsumed into the awareness category, as an operationalisation of recalling information. This paper looks at redefining brand salience and proposes new methods for measuring brand salience.

Organisational memory and the propensity to mentor

In many countries, people are retiring earlier than ever before and the retirement of the baby boom generation over the next two decades further intensifies this trend. Accompanying this phenomenon is the potential loss of organisational knowledge and memory and with it, potential loss of the organisation's competitive advantage. Organisations, while recognising that older workers possess valuable organisational memory, seem to assume these same workers will readily divest themselves of their knowledge, if given the opportunity. Furthermore, offering experienced workers the opportunity to act as a mentor to pass on their knowledge is often mentioned in the management and related literature as a way of attracting and retaining these workers. While the relationships between age and the possession of organisational memory has been supported through age's positive relationship with organisational tenure and rank, past research on mentoring reveals a negative relationship between age and willingness to mentor. Employees, especially older workers in the possession of considerable organisational memory may, or may not be willing to divulge that information to others for a number of reasons. Their willingness to act as a mentor may be constrained by awareness of possible costs involved in the mentoring relationship. This paper investigates the relationship between an individual's estimated level of organisational knowledge and memory, and their inclination to mentor others. In doing so, it considers the expected costs and benefits of mentoring. It also investigates the role of mentoring in the psychological adjustment to retirement for older individuals, and discusses the rationale for a research agenda to address these issues and the likely variables of interest. The proposed research aims to go beyond the prescription of "mentoring others" as a general panacea for utilising the skills and experience of workers while ensuring the transfer of potentially threatened knowledge within organisations, by suggesting other motivations that may be operating when employees are invited to share or volunteer their prized knowledge.

Development and validation of the awareness of narrative identity questionnaire (ANIQ)

The utility of a narrative approach to identity and its role in psychological functioning are becoming increasingly recognized across various fields of inquiry. The current study aimed to develop a quantitative, self-report measure of the awareness of narrative identity and how globally coherent one's autobiographical memories are perceived to be, specifically, in terms of temporal ordering, causal associations, and the perception of unifying themes. The construct validity and reliability of the Awareness of Narrative Identity Questionnaire (ANIQ) were assessed across three studies. In the first study, exploratory factor analysis of the responses of a large sample (N = 441, M [age in years] = 33.1, SD = 15.2) to an initial item pool resulted in a 20-item four-factor structure congruent with the proposed subscales, and convergent and divergent validity were established. In the second study, and with a different sample (N = 320, M [age in years] = 26.2, SD = 4.0), further evidence for the factor structure was provided through confirmatory factor analysis. Validity findings from Study 1 were replicated and extended on, and test-retest reliabilities were found to be high (r = .72-.79). Importantly, in the third study (N = 71, M [age in years] = 24.9, SD = 6.9), criterion validity was established, whereby the ANIQ subscales were demonstrated to be associated with dimensions of narrative coherence coded from written turning-point narratives. Across all studies, the internal reliabilities for the subscales were high (α = .86-.96). The ANIQ represents a valid, psychometrically sound, and novel method of assessing the awareness of narrative identity and autobiographical memory coherence.