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<p>The Swedish population has the world’s largest percentage of shareholders either by direct or indirect owning. Due to the increasing interest of equity capital markets, private as well as institutional investors rely on forecasts from financial analysts. The reason for this is due to the lack of expertise among investors in this area. </p><p>Due to the fact that analysts influence the Swedish stock market immensely, it’s of great interest to explore whether an analyst can be seen as a rational participant. At the same time, we would like to see what impact psychological factors have on the analysts in their work and which these psychological factors are.</p><p>To battle these questions, we have chosen to take a qualitative approach in our research, basing it on interviews. In our opinion, interviewing a person gives a more balanced picture as the respondents have the possibility to have a dialog/discussion with the interviewer. The selection of interviewees was not random, instead we chose to interview nine different financial analysts working for big popular firms in Stockholm and Copenhagen. </p><p>Our research presents the psychological factors which affect financial analysts. We are convinced to have found strong enough indications to draw general conclusions for financial analysts, active on the Nordic stock market. </p><p>The study has shown a given relation between experience and psychological effects. The awareness of the psychological impact on the stock market exists among all financial analysts. But we have found that it’s more likely for an inexperienced financial analyst to be affected by these. The factors that have the largest effect on analysts are mostly trends, herding, overreaction and noise. </p><p>Finally our research shows a psychological position of dependence for the companies the analyst value. These are the providers of information for analysts, in practice a sale recommendation can lead to less information being shared with him or her. Further on, it’s generally seen to be more commercial correct publishing a buy recommendation as these generate more incomes and business connection for the analyst’s employer. The conclusions points out that an analyst often adopts over-optimism when analysing companies.</p>

Athletes who are deaf form a unique cultural group within sport. Many have competed at of the highest levels of competition from the Deaflympics to professional sport and the Olympic Games. Although deaf athletes have competed at these elite, world-class levels, there have been few attempts to recognize and understand the psychological characteristics of persons who are deaf in the sport context. Therefore, the purpose of the present research was to translate a commonly used inventory for measuring psychological coping in sport – the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory-28 (ACSI-28) - for use with a group of world-class deaf athletes at the 2007 Winter Deaflympics. In order to achieve this objective the study was divided into three stages: (a) adaptation and translation of the ASCI-28 for use with deaf athletes; (b) investigation of the preliminary psychometric properties of the adapted and translated inventory through pilot testing, and (c) collection of data from a group of world-class deaf athletes in order to describe the types of coping skills used in deaf sport and to further extend the initial psychometric properties of the inventory. Results of the pilot study indicated there was initial reliability and validity to warrant the use of this new measure – the Deaf Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (DACSI-36) - in the main study. Subsequent data collection using the DACSI-36 revealed that deaf athletes in some sports used various coping skills significantly more often than athletes in other sports. The results are discussed in light of previous research and implications for future research are presented.

This study was designed to examine “customer love,” a new customer-retailer relationship construct, within a comprehensive nomological net. The specific research objectives of this study were: (a) to investigate whether relationship-inducing factors (i.e., tangible rewards, interpersonal communication, preferential treatment, and service quality) have a differential impact on perceived relationship investment; (b) to investigate whether customer love is predicted by perceived relationship investment; (c) to analyze whether the effect of perceived relationship investment on customer love is contingent on two consumer characteristics (i.e., emotional intensity and need for variety); (d) to investigate whether customer love is predicted by two emotion-inducing factors (hedonic store experience and symbolic store experience); and (e) to investigate whether customer love affects four relational outcomes (i.e., self-disclosure, positive word-of-mouth, behavioral loyalty, and competitive insulation). This study was conducted in the context of apparel and grocery stores. An online self-administered, cross-sectional survey methodology was employed to collect the data. 604 completed responses (301 for apparel and 303 for grocery) were used for the data analysis. Regardless of retail category, the positive relationship between service quality and perceived relationship investment was confirmed. Also, perceived relationship investment, hedonic store experience, and symbolic store experience played an important role in predicting customer love. Across both samples, customer love was found to be a significant predictor of each of the four relational outcome variables. Managerial implications and suggestions for future research based on the findings were provided.