To Western businesses, Eastern European countries (including the Commonwealth of Independent States) represent a significant and noteworthy market of over 400 million potential consumers with pent up demand for products. Of interest to manufacturers and retailers alike are the cues used by consumers to evaluate products for purchase. Consumer behaviour in these countries is undergoing a major transformation as economies move towards a market and politics move towards a democracy. Under the command economy, consumer preferences were not considered in the production and distribution of goods. Shopping was (and is) a time-consuming endeavour because of the shortage of desirable goods. It was often necessary for consumers to buy goods via the "second economy" (black market). As economic changes occur, consumer purchasing patterns are expected to shift dramatically as more products become available, channels of distribution improve and imported products, previously unavailable to the average consumer, increase in popularity. Nonetheless, knowledge of consumer behaviour remains limited and is largely anecdotal (Shama, 1992). Consumer ethnocentrismConsumer nationalism or patriotism, a construct that emerged from the country of origin literature in the late 1980s asserts that patriotic emotions affect attitudes about products and purchase intentions (Baughn and Yaprak, 1993;Han, 1988). Support for the patriotism construct is found in a study by Wall and Heslop (1986) where 44 per cent of the respondents indicated a willingness to purchase higher-priced domestic (Canadian) products over imports if the quality was equal to that of the imports. The construct of consumer nationalism may be integrated into country of origin research through the concept of With special appreciation to Nadezda Shvedova, Irina Pyarina, Theresa Palaszewska-Reindl, and Maria Pietras for their assistance in data collection.

The ability to work in teams is a skill that is often taught in universities to be applied in the business world. This study of junior and senior college students shows that project grades, perceived workload, time in class for project work, use of peer evaluations, and absence of a “free-rider” problem were significant predictors of attitudes toward teamwork. On the basis of their results, the authors suggest assigning a reasonable workload, allowing class time to work on projects, and using peer evaluations as strategies for improving student teamwork experiences.

Poland appears to be an attractive consumer market, based on strong demand for consumer products during the past several years. However, this may not be the case for Western marketers, because of the influence of strong feelings of national pride on behavior of Polish consumers. Measures of consumer ethnocentrism may provide Western marketers with the information necessary to target consumers who do not allow nationalistic feelings to influence product quality evaluation and purchase behavior. Also, the necessity of the product to consumers may provide marketers with clues on which products will be accepted in the Polish marketplace. The purpose of this study is to learn, for various consumer products, whether Polish consumers' perceptions of product quality differ based on consumer ethnocentric tendency, product necessity, and country of origin. A repeated measures ANOVA test provides empirical evidence that perceived quality differs by necessity, by product, by country, and consumer ethnocentrism influences quality perceptions of Polish consumers.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast customer perceptions related to satisfaction with conventional grocery stores as compared to specialty grocery stores. The study examines store attributes of product assortment, price, quality, and service in order to determine which attributes have the greatest impact on store satisfaction for each store format.Design/methodology/approachA mail survey was sent to a sample of specialty and conventional grocery store customers. The ten state sample was drawn from US households located in postal (ZIP) codes in areas where national specialty stores (e.g. whole foods) were located.FindingsPerception of satisfaction were higher among specialty grocery store customers compared to conventional grocery store customers. For both store formats, store price, product assortment, service and quality positively influenced satisfaction. Stepwise regression indicated that each store attribute contributed differently to store satisfaction for conventional and specialty store formats.Research limitations/implicationsThe results demonstrate that price, product assortment, quality, and employee service influence store satisfaction regardless of store type (conventional stores or specialty stores). However, the degree of influence of these attributes varied by store type. The results imply that while specialty store shopper satisfaction characteristics are clearly delineated, conventional store shopper characteristics are more difficult to pinpoint. Research limitations include a sample that is more highly educated and has higher incomes than the average American household.Originality/valueDespite the growth of new product categories and new industry players, few studies have investigated customer satisfaction within the retail food industry. Comparisons of specialty and conventional food stores are equally scarce.

Women entrepreneurs have recently been the subject of many studies which have revealed that though women possess some of the same resources as male entrepreneurs, success levels are not the same. The current study looks at the resources utilized by small business owners within downtown business districts. Using a sample of 467 small business owners, we test differences in entrepreneurial orientation and social capital between men and women entrepreneurs. Though women actually reported higher levels of entrepreneurial orientation and social capital, there were no differences in their abilities to utilize these two resources in achieving firm performance. We offer discussion of why these findings are relevant, as well as research implications.Keywords Small business . Entrepreneurship . Social capital . RBV Women small business ownersIn most industrialized countries, while great strides have been made by women in the workforce, significant disparities continue to exist between men's and women's salaries (MacRae, 2005). Reasons for these differences have been well documented,

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Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the role that visual measures of attention to product and information and price display signage have on purchase intention. The authors assessed the effect of visual attention to the product, information or price sign on purchase intention, as measured by likelihood to buy. Design/methodology/approach-The authors used eye-tracking technology to collect data from Australian and US garden centre customers, who viewed eight plant displays in which the signs had been altered to show either price or supplemental information (16 images total). The authors compared the role of visual attention to price and information sign, and the role of visual attention to the product when either sign was present on likelihood to buy. Findings-Overall, providing product information on a sign without price elicited higher likelihood to buy than providing a sign with price. The authors found a positive relationship between visual attention to price on the display sign and likelihood to buy, but an inverse relationship between visual attention to information and likelihood to buy. Research limitations/implications-An understanding of the attention-capturing power of merchandise display elements, especially signs, has practical significance. The findings will assist retailers in creating more effective and efficient display signage content, for example, featuring the product information more prominently than the price. The study was conducted on a minimally packaged product, live plants, which may reduce the ability to generalize findings to other product types. Practical implications-The findings will assist retailers in creating more effective and efficient display signage content. The study used only one product category (plants) which may reduce the ability to generalize findings to other product types. Originality/value-The study is one of the first to use eye-tracking in a macro-level, holistic investigation of the attention-capturing value of display signage information and its relationship to likelihood to buy. Researchers, for the first time, now have the ability to empirically test the degree to which attention and decision-making are linked.

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