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We study how price dispersion varies with product characteristics at a popular online price comparison site – Shopper.com. Our primary finding suggests that price dispersion in online markets varies with product characteristics and firm behavior. We also find evidence that the level of dispersion varies with the percent of firms listing price information in multiple categories. When the percent of firms listing prices in multiple categories is relatively high (low), price dispersion is low (high).

This paper aims to draw on values theory, associative network theory and schema congruity theory to examine how consumers attribute human-like values to product categories and products, and how these attributions affect product evaluations.

Study 1 randomly assigned 925 respondents to one of three product categories (cars, mobile phones and vacations). They were asked about their values and to attribute values to an assigned product category. Study 2 randomly assigned 919 respondents to one of the four value-expressive car conditions. They were asked to attribute values to the car, and then about their attitudes and purchase intentions.

Respondents attributed human-like values to product categories and products that were distinct and reflected the motivational compatibilities and conflicts inherent in the circular structure of human values. Moreover, multifaceted value congruity effects were found to positively influence attitudes and intentions to purchase a car, including congruity with product category values-schema, consumers’ personal values-schema and the structure of human values.

The authors demonstrate how a cognitive memory-based view can be used to better understand the complexities of the attribution of human-like values to products and product categories. Moving beyond the attribution of brand personality, this study shows the importance of not only understanding the attributions of values to a product but also considering how these attributions interact with the more abstract product category values to influence evaluations.

The purpose of this article is to identify whether there is happiness in the consumption of brands and product categories and to clarify which provides more happiness: consuming the product itself or consuming the branded product.

The research was a survey with 528 Brazilian consumers. Data were analyzed and interpreted through content analysis and regressions: linear, quantile and logistic.

The results show that there is happiness in the consumption of brands and product categories, with culture being the category that most provides happiness; also confirming that individuals who consume branded products are happier than those who consume the product itself.

Studies confirm that there is happiness in consumption, but when we show that there is more happiness in the consumption of branded products than in not consuming the product itself, and when we identify which are the categories of products that bring the most happiness in an emerging country of Latin America, our article deepens and expands the previous literature.

We suggest that companies associate their brands with culture to balance profit with sustainable purpose. For this, we provide a framework as a tool for this association.

The topic of our article is relevant, timely and current, its originality lies in confirming that those who consume the branded product are happier and those who consume the product itself are less happy, and also by identifying which categories provide the most happiness.

El propósito de este artículo es identificar si hay felicidad en el consumo de marcas y categorías de productos y esclarecer cuál proporciona más felicidad: consumir el producto en sí o consumir el producto de marca.

La investigación fue una encuesta con 528 consumidores brasileños. Los datos fueron analizados e interpretados mediante análisis de contenido y regresiones: lineal, cuantil y logística.

Los resultados muestran que existe felicidad en el consumo de marcas y categorías de productos, siendo la cultura la categoría que más felicidad brinda; confirmando también que los individuos que consumen productos de marca son más felices que los que consumen el producto en sí.

Sugerimos que las empresas asocien sus marcas con la cultura para equilibrar las ganancias con un propósito sostenible. Para ello, proporcionamos un marco como herramienta para esta asociación.

Los estudios confirman que hay felicidad en el consumo, pero cuando demostramos que hay más felicidad en el consumo de productos de marca que en no consumir el producto en sí, y cuando identificamos cuáles son las categorías de productos que más felicidad aportan en un mundo emergente país de América Latina, nuestro artículo profundiza y amplía la literatura anterior.

El tema de nuestro artículo es relevante, oportuno y actual, su originalidad radica en constatar que quienes consumen el producto de marca son más felices y quienes consumen el producto en sí son menos felices, y también en identificar qué categorías aportan más felicidad.

EigenFactor service went through some changes in 2011 before issuing the most current edition (EF‐2010) following the release of the 2010 edition of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR‐2010) in mid‐2011. Ranking journals by the EigenFactor Score (EFS) and the Article Influence Score (AIS) offered an additional pair of bibliometric indicators to assess the impact of journals in the (sub)disciplinary fields of the sciences and social sciences. In evaluating the clout, importance, and impact of journals it is essential to compare apples to apples, i.e. limiting the assessments to journals belonging to the same (sub)disciplinary areas. This paper aims to examine the quality of the subject categories created for EF‐2010 and of the JCR‐2010 subject categories as implemented within the EigenFactor services.

The paper compares the adequacy of the subject categories in the JCR‐2010 and EF‐2010, examining the assignment of 77 information and library science journals and 50 business/marketing journals to the 64 subject categories used in EF‐2010.

The study finds that EF‐2010 uses a very broad categorisation system of merely 64 subject categories along with the much more specific subject categories originally developed and enhanced for the JCR database of the Institute for Scientific Information (now Thomson‐Reuters). JCR‐2010 has four times as many categories than the former, and would offer a far more realistic comparison of the impact of comparable journals in EF‐2010 if the developers of the EigenFactor database had retained the assignment of the journals to the JCR subject categories. The inconsistency, inaccuracy and incompleteness of the journal classification practice in EF‐2010 creates a highly distorted picture of the standing of journals in their (sub)disciplinary leagues, and makes it very difficult for the users to reproduce the far more refined league lists of journals.

The paper describes the most serious limitations and errors in the classification of journals in the EF‐2010 edition.

Discusses the research opportunities brought about by the adoption of category management in the food industry and suggests reasons why category management might be of interest to academics. Reviews contemporary research and proposes a multidisciplinary research agenda which crosses the academic‐industrial interface. Suggests four principal research themes: beneficiaries and benefits of category management; the process of organizational change; the management of categories; and the implications of category management adoption. Discusses these themes in the context of research already undertaken and details areas meriting closer investigation.

Within a competitiveness perspective, the main purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyze franchise categories and changing profiles and trends of the franchising industry.

Based on data from The Franchising Handbook, the study investigates 1,464 franchisors in 67 franchise categories that encompass 445,314 franchisees. The work uses content analysis in the investigation of franchise categories.

The study finds that franchise categories tend to be diverse regarding their category issues, franchising fees, capital requirements, and category franchisees. The work also provides meaningful implications and future research directions.

The author believes that fast‐growing mid‐sized and newly formed franchisors may need to be included in the survey from the USA and other countries. The study's implications are that the franchising industry requires new business models regarding franchising fees, capital, and sales that are critical in maintaining companies' competitiveness.

Franchisors should pay attention to those fast‐growing franchise categories that may become available in the coming years.

Within the areas of changing franchising and franchise categories, this work provides useful findings for researchers as well as practitioners.

A survey was mailed to the deans of AACSB accredited schools and 50 per cent of the non‐accredited AACSB affiliates, to determine their perceptions of how the changes in accreditation criteria might affect their curricula and what methods might be used to make these changes. The sample was classified according to the Porter‐McKibbin categories and significant differences were found among these categories for perceived ease of accreditation; changes in programme quality; resource allocation changes; use of mission statements in decision making; curriculum component emphasis, and curriculum evaluation methods. While the overall amount of change expected in the next five years seems modest, the nature of the changes expected could have significant effects on the curricula of US business schools.

In recent years, the field of comparative and international education (CIE) has experienced an outburst of self-reflective papers wherein comparativists study the nature of the field and map its content. This study contributes to this trend by drawing attention to a previously unstudied aspect of CIE: its purpose. Using Arnove’s dimensions as a starting point to create five new purpose categories, four prominent CIE journals are surveyed to test whether the pragmatic history of CIE is evident in its current body of research. In this process, a complete and clear genetic mapping of the journals is created, which explores their similarities and differences, as well as the changes in their content over time. Findings indicate that the pragmatic purpose of CIE dominates, though it is primarily emancipatory and transformative in its prescription. Furthermore, articles rooted in specific situational contexts were more prominent than expected considering the comparative and international nature of the field.

The authors explore how entrepreneurs with limited resources legitimated (or failed to legitimate) a new organizational category in different jurisdictions in Canada despite severe resistance. The authors identify three meso-level domains of institutional action (public, administrative, and legal), where actors intervene to change their macro-institutional environment. The findings suggest that these domains mediate the relationship between micro-level agency and macro-level institutions. The authors describe how macro-level consensus about the category legitimacy emerges through a competition between judgments embedded in different discourses and how a particular discourse attains validity, forcing other actors to change their initial unfavorable legitimacy judgments and recognize the category’s legitimacy.

When decision makers encounter new assurance services that can be customized for individual clients, they must include them in their pre-existing categorization of assurance, a cognitive task known as postclassification. This paper draws upon three literatures (classification research in accounting, theory of assurance, and cognitive psychology) in order to suggest how this task might be modeled and studied empirically, using the example of SysTrust™. The role of a necessary condition for successful postclassification called the category use effect (Ross, 2000), in which decision makers are reminded of pre-existing categories when they learn to use new categories, is explained.