This article explores the development of an e-business marketing model that capitalizes on customer participation and the likely consequences of such efforts, principally site brand loyalty. A conceptual model illustrates how consumers’ goals in visiting a website (task or experiential) affect their propensity to be site brand loyal and how characteristics of the site, including personalization and community, are related to brand loyalty. The model also shows that creating site brand loyalty leads to predictable affective, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes from customers, such as repeat visits to and patronage of the site, fewer intentions to defect to competitors, and more favorable attitudes toward the site. Case studies of corporate websites provide empirical evidence to support the model. The paper concludes by suggesting that customer participation in the e-business model fundamentally changes the way brands are developed. That is, producers no longer create an image for a brand and pass it on to the consumer; instead, the producer and consumer are interactively creating the e-business brand.
PurposeThis paper aims to extend understanding of the cues that customers with disabilities use to judge inclusion/welcome (or not) in interactions in retail stores.Design/methodology/approachCritical incident interviews were conducted with 115 informants who provided rich descriptions of 113 welcoming incidents and 105 unwelcoming incidents. Interview transcripts were content analyzed to determine inductively the cues customers with disabilities use to perceive welcoming.FindingsFour primary situational factors explain to what perceptions of welcome/inclusion are attributed: service personnel; store environmental factors; other customers; and product/service assortments. Further, a disability becomes salient only when there is an interaction between these situational factors and consumers' disabilities.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings suggest an extension to Bitner's servicescape conceptualization in that it specifies that the assessment of an environment as enabling or disabling is important for at least some customers in deciding whether they should stay, go, or return to a particular servicescape.Practical implicationsThe results reveal that consumers with disabilities should be viewed as customers first, and only as possessing a disability in particular interactions in the customer‐firm interface.Originality/valueThis research presents the views of a set of customers who are under‐represented in research samples. It discusses how not all people with disabilities are alike and begins to develop a deeper understanding of their behavior as consumers. The research is valuable for retail managers and service providers who need useful information for training employees, for designing servicescapes that are welcoming for consumers with disabilities, and for fulfilling the inclusive intent of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It will also be of interest to academics who are engaged in research that attempts to improve the quality of life for consumers.
This study tests whether critical-thinking skills can help explain the cross-sectional variation in student performance in principles of accounting. Prior research has used such measures as academic aptitude and demographic factors to explain performance in the principles of accounting class. We argue that success in principles of accounting also requires critical-thinking skills. We measured critical-thinking skills by using a holistic scoring process to evaluate student essays. Our results show that even after controlling for academic aptitude, our measure of critical-thinking skills contributes significantly to explaining the cross-sectional variation in student performance in an accounting principles class. Understanding the relationship between critical thinking and success in accounting may contribute not only to reducing the failure rate in principles of accounting, but also to encouraging an emphasis on critical thinking in the preparation of accounting professionals.
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