Explaining non-renewal behaviour : an empirical investigation of recently lapsed NRL club members

This paper reports on a survey of lapsed members of an Australian professional National Rugby League (NRL) Club. Analysis of the 195 useable responses returned suggest that these lapsed members had originally joined as much for intangible aspects, such as seeking a greater level of involvement with the club, as for the functional aspects such as savings on game entry. Overall, these lapsed members were satisfied with the service they received whilst a member, and claimed it had been performed in line with expectations. The main drivers of satisfaction were also a mix of tangible and intangible factors such as feeling valued by the club and receiving discounts on entry costs. The members gave a number of reasons for not rejoining in 2002, but primarily cited an inability to attend games. Despite joining for intangible reasons, it seems that if these members could not get to games, they perceived that membership was not worth maintaining. That said, a large number of members indicated that as their circumstances change they will rejoin the club, supporting the theory that non-renewal is not driven by service failure, but rather the perception that attendance is still the core product (entertainment). The overall level of satisfaction had a weak but positive relationship with the likelihood of members rejoining in the future.

Self-concept and motivation as predictors of actual consumer behaviour

The need to predict consumer behaviour outcomes is considered to be a very important issue for marketers. Isolated individual psychological constructs such as attitudes, motives, personality traits and learning styles have been used to identify their predictive capacity for actual consumer behaviour with varying degrees of success. This paper attempts to test
empirically the predictive power of two constructs, motivation and self-concept, regarding business consumer’s actions in a service context, using an Australian representative sample.

Career orientations of marketing employees : an empirical analysis

There is a distinct gap in research in marketing in relation to understanding the role of marketing employees in organisational marketing performance, in contrast to the usual focus on identifying the contribution of successfully completing marketing tasks in the pursuit of organisational marketing objectives. The major exception to this has been research related to sales personnel, as a subset of all marketing personnel, but even this has usually been from a sales management perspective and not principally from the viewpoint of individual employees. The current study explored the career orientations of marketing employees in relation to the demographic profile and other work-related characteristics of marketing employees. Operationalised by Schein's (1990) Career Orientations Inventory, the 'internal career' of 78 marketing employees at the Australian headquarters of a major multinational manufacturing firm was examined. Sample means indicated that 'Lifestyle', 'Technical Functionality', and 'Pure Challenge' were the dominant career orientations, but a 'General Managerial' orientation also emerged as important, when individual 'Career Anchors' were examined. An 'Entrepreneurial' anchor was found to be the least dominant of the eight anchors measured, which may be seen as somewhat surprising for Marketing employees. Significant relationships were found between some demographic variables and the dominant career orientations, but overall, career orientation tended to be unrelated to the demographic variables. Future research will examine the relationships between employee career orientation and individual position, and marketing productivity.

Brand value in the context of Australian Football League clubs

This conceptual paper focuses on brand value for non-traditional products, and particularly, brand value in relation to Australian Football League Clubs, and its measurement. The concept of brand value has been addressed by a plethora of definitions and models in the literature, many of which focus on the measurement of brand value within traditional product industries. These models are often contingent on the intrinsic utility of the product itself, yet within non-traditional product areas, the product and the brand may be two distinct entities which should be differentiated in order to facilitate an accurate measurement of consumer-based brand value. To date, there has been limited research in this area and the general aim of this paper is to reveal the gaps in the current literature by providing an extension of traditional brand valuation theory to a non-traditional field. This paper illustrates its points with reference to a relevant model associated with “traditional” brand theories, and shows how it can be applied to the area of Australian Football League Clubs. This paper argues for the configuration of a more holistic model of brand value, including the antecedents and consequences of the value ascribed to brands by consumers, in order to encourage future research in brand equity based on the total utility derived from Australian Football League Clubs’ brands.

Employer requirements of economics graduates and the implications for undergraduate economics programs

In recent years there has been considerable debate about the general decline in the number of students undertaking bachelor degrees and majors in economics. The discussion has stemmed mainly from a supply-side perspective of the economics education market. The goal of this paper is to add another dimension to the debate and report the results of a survey of employers of economics graduates. Drawing on the extensive customer services literature it is argued that a market oriented, or demand-side analysis is also an important component in redressing low student enrolments and retention. A first step in adopting a market oriented approach is to determine the skills required of the economics graduates entering the jobs market. With the support of The Economics Society of Au~tralia, twenty-nine public and private sector employers were surveyed in 2002. The aim of the survey was to establish the demand for economics graduates with bachelor and honours degrees, the skills and knowledge required of these graduates, and the performance of such graduates. The study found that economic knowledge and skill were important to employers. However, the skills rated most important by employers were the more general or 'generic' skills of clear writing, data analysis, interpersonal skills and a practical problem-solving orientation. While graduates generally performed satisfactorily in relation to the economic skills required by employers, this was not the case for generic skills. The result of the survey findings have some significant implications for the content and teaching of undergraduate economics programs. This paper outlines these implications and also discusses areas for future research It is argued that such research should aim to utilize both the demand and supplyside perspectives with the development of more precise definitions and measurement of the economic skills required by the various stakeholders in the economics education market.

Influence of stakeholder communication on consensus making in requirements negotiation

Consensus building is essential in aligning multiple stakeholder viewpoints which are commonly emerging during the process of requirements elicitation, analysis and validation [15]. In fact, agreement among diverse groups of stakeholders is deemed prerequisite to establishing project cooperation and collaboration. While individuals frequently rank the importance of their personal goals over the goals of an organisation, having an appropriate strategy for finding common ground among individuals is crucial to any project's success. This paper therefore explores factors that influence the consensus making process and develops a model that helps with understanding the role of consensus specifically during the elicitation phase of the Requirements Engineering process.

The first 50 years of the annual endowed accounting research lecture series at the University of Melbourne

Carnegie and Edwards (2001) suggest that the formation of an organisational body is just one of the 'signals of movement' within the dynamic process of professionalisation of an occupation and they list the sponsoring of professorial posts and research activities at universities as further examples. While the literature on this process in Australia does refer to the sponsorship of chairs of accounting (Carnegie & Williams, 2001), little has been written identifying the range of other areas of sponsorship by the organised accounting bodies. This paper presents details of the first fifty years presentations of the Annual Accounting Research Lectures held at The University of Melbourne, Australia. They have been presented continuously since 1940, when they were inaugurated with sponsorship from the Commonwealth Institute of Accountants. The paper presents the first complete listing of details relating to the presenter (including name, gender, residency and occupational area), title of the paper, date of presentation (where known) and details of publication (where appropriate). The initial and subsequent motivation for the presentation of the series and the influence of the lectures in promoting research and fostering relations between the professional bodies and the university, during a period of great significance in the development of accounting education and the professionalisation of accounting in Australia, is also discussed.

The slow wheels of requirements engineering research: responding to the challenge of societal change

Despite the significant Requirements Engineering (RE) research efforts over the past decade the research--industry gap still remains persistent.
Recent attempts by the RE research community to address this issue include cumulative knowledge studies to describe the current state of RE research and the establishment of a new conference dedicated to the comparative evaluation of RE.
This paper reports the state of RE research from 2001 to 2005. A taxonomy of RE literature is presented and a conceptual framework for
understanding the current state of RE is also described. The ensuing analysis shows that during the period 2001-2005 there was only an incremental development of RE research without any radical theoretical contributions to its body of knowledge. The paper also poses a challenge for the RE research community to respond to the dramatic changes in the
social and business world.

Students` performance and perception linked to the use of group and audience response systems (GARS) in large classes

This paper reports an investigation into the impact of Group and Audience Response Systems (GARS) on students’ learning outcomes, and perceptions of learning in large classes. Performance is compared between students who used the technology, and students who did not, based on progressive assignment and exam results. Perception is assessed based on an online survey questionnaire. The key findings of this study indicate that students who used the technology achieved, on average, 6.70% higher grades compared to those who did not. Further, use of the technology improved the overall achievement of students, on average, regardless of their perception of whether or not it would provide
an academic advantage. Key findings and future use of the technology are discussed.

The impact of enterprise resource planning systems on management accounting : an Australian study

Information technology is significantly changing the operating practices of an increasing number of companies globally. These developments have important implications for the accounting profession and in particular accounting practices in the twenty-first century. This study examines the development of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems as a means of illustrating how changes in information technology allows all systems in a company to be linked to manage operations holistically.

The study investigates the change in accounting systems using a sample of Australian companies with emphasis on the adoption of ERP systems including the potential impact of ERP on capital budgeting processes. The results show that ERP systems are changing management accounting practices, although at this stage, the impact on capital budgeting techniques appears to be limited. The findings contribute to the emerging body of literature on the development of ERP systems and its impact on management accounting teaching and research.

The importance of IS stakeholder perspectives and perceptions to requirements negotiation

Project managers and developers need to acknowledge the influence of IS stakeholders’ perspectives and perceptions on the outcome of requirements negotiation - the essential component of requirements elicitation. This paper describes a conceptual study, which demonstrates such an influence and asserts that stakeholder perspectives, goals and issues are the key to negotiators’ perceptions of the system requirements. Analysis of two seminal IS case studies further supports this assertion and indicates that goals, perspectives and prior experience with negotiation techniques can guide stakeholders bargaining behaviour during requirements negotiation. Our findings also show that to achieve consensus on requirements, stakeholder perspectives must be aligned or accepted by negotiating parties. Achieving alignment of perspectives, however, is quite difficult because during requirements elicitation stakeholders’ goals continually alter due to their acquisition of technical and business knowledge, development of inter-personal relationships and creation of new perceptions of issues relevant to requirements negotiation.