The ability for students to work within a team environment has long been a skill set prized by most marketing educators and practitioners. What has not been altogether clear is how to best learn such skills. Some educators would argue that along with the “good,” there is truly some “bad” and “ugly” inherent in the framework many use to teach teamwork. The authors of this study focus on the use of group projects in the classroom. Results suggest that educators need to reexamine this issue to ensure that marketing students are developing both discipline-related and support skills.

Purpose -This study focuses on consumer choice behavior in the context of a new European Union (EU) member state by examining cognitive, affective and normative mechanisms in consumer preference formation for domestic vs imported products. Design/methodology/approach -Data is drawn from a survey of 714 adult consumers. The research instrument included construct measures adapted from previous studies. The measurement model of domestic consumption was tested via covariance analysis. Once the construct reliability and validities were established, the structural model was evaluated to test the hypothesized relationships. Findings -The findings suggest that affective and normative constructs (i.e. consumer ethnocentrism and patriotism) are stronger determinants of domestic consumption than rational considerations (the cognitive mechanism) such as perceptions of relative product quality of domestic vs imported products. The role of patriotism and cosmopolitanism as factors fuelling ethnocentric tendencies are confirmed. Practical implications -Our results, showing the considerable relative strength of patriotism and ethnocentrism on domestic consumption suggest that managers of local brands and domestic institutions should be able to enhance their communication programs and develop close bonds with their consumers. This finding is an important signal to international entrants in positioning their international offerings, particularly as strong local brands are gaining market share in many emerging consumer markets. Originality/value -In view of emerging transnational groupings such as the EU, this study examines possible consumer resistance to economic integration. It uses realistic data set drawn from adult consumers and focuses on a relatively homogeneous country with a small population allowing for a good external validity of findings.

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Abstract. Western wildfires have a major impact on air quality in the US. In the fall of 2016, 107 test fires were burned in the large-scale combustion facility at the US Forest Service Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory as part of the Fire Influence on Regional and Global Environments Experiment (FIREX). Canopy, litter, duff, dead wood, and other fuel components were 15 burned in combinations that represented realistic fuel complexes for several important western US coniferous and chaparral ecosystems including Ponderosa Pine, Douglas Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Lodgepole Pine, Subalpine Fire, Chamise, and Manzanita In addition, dung, Indonesian peat, and individual coniferous ecosystem fuel components were burned stand-alone to investigate the effects of individual components (e.g. "duff") and fuel chemistry on emissions. The smoke emissions were characterized by a large suite of state-of-the-art instruments. In this study we report emission factor (EF, g compound emitted per 20 kg fuel burned) measurements in fresh smoke of a diverse suite of critically-important trace gases measured by open-path Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (OP-FTIR). We also report aerosol optical properties (absorption EF, single scattering albedo (SSA), and Ångström absorption exponent (AAE)) as well as black carbon (BC) EF measured by photoacoustic extinctiometers (PAX) at 870 and 401 nm. The average trace gas emissions were similar across the coniferous ecosystems tested and most of the variability observed in emissions could be attributed to differences in the consumption of components such as duff and litter, 25 rather than the dominant tree species. Chaparral fuels produced lower EF than mixed coniferous fuels for most trace gases except for NO x and acetylene. A careful comparison with available field measurements of wildfires confirms that several methods can be used to extract data representative of real wildfires from the FIREX lab fire data. This is especially valuable for species not yet measured in the field. For instance, the OP-FTIR data alone show that ammonia (1.65 g kg -1 ), acetic acid (2.44 g kg -1 ), nitrous acid (HONO, 0.61 g kg -1 ) and other trace gases such as glycolaldehyde and formic acid are significant emissions not 30 previously measured for US wildfires. The PAX measurements show that the ratio of brown carbon (BrC) absorption to BC absorption is strongly dependent on modified combustion efficiency (MCE) and that BrC absorption is most dominant for combustion of duff (AAE 7.13) and rotten wood (AAE 4.60): fuels that are consumed in greater amounts during wildfires than prescribed fires. Coupling our lab data with field data suggests that fresh wildfire smoke typically has an EF for BC near 0.1 g kg -1 ), an SSA of ~0.91 and an AAE of ~3.50, with the latter implying that about 86% of the aerosol absorption at 401 nm is due 35 to BrC.

Although retail operations traditionally have been considered poor candidates for international expansion, firms in mature retail markets are increasingly turning to international markets as a means for strategic growth. In this study, the authors examine how internal determinants affect the international ventures of large U.S. retail chains, comparing internal characteristics of international and domestic firms. The authors use the behavioral internationalization paradigm to develop a model of international retail involvement, which serves as a conceptual framework for the study. Through a logistic regression model, the results support the relevance of six of eight explanatory determinants of international retail involvement. The findings highlight the powerful influence of the strategic management characteristics, competitive advantages related to retail concept and logistics, and a retailer's size. In contrast, neither previous experience in direct foreign sourcing nor competitive advantages related to retail merchandise were significant in this model.