Purpose: The purpose of this study is to gain a better conceptualization and measurement of smart shopping. The specific objectives are to: investigate consumers' perceptions of the term smart shopping; develop a measure of smart shopping; and validate the measure of smart shopping. Design/methodology/approach: The research includes a comprehensive literature review, focus group interviews, and in-depth interviews for initial item generation and instrument development. Scale development consists of a pilot test (n=100), a pretest (n=237), and main study (n=1,474). Findings: The findings indicate that smart shopping includes consumers seeking to minimize the expenditure of time, money, or energy to gain hedonic or utilitarian value from the experience. Research limitations/implications: In-store shopping was examined based on shopping for clothing, grocery, or electronics; therefore caution must be used when applying the smart shopping scale to other shopping contexts or product categories. Practical implications: Gaining a better understanding of the smart shopper will enable retailers to more accurately target this consumer group. Focus could be placed on saving time or saving energy in addition to the traditional emphasis on saving money. Retailers could also provide a combination of utilitarian and hedonic experiences for consumers. Originality/value: This study conceptualizes and tests the term smart shopping from a broader perspective than previous studies that primarily focused on monetary savings in the grocery shopping context. Smart shopping includes the desire for efficient shopping but emphases on the components of an efficient trip may differ from traditional theories.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore narratives in a new nonprofit arts center. It includes the macro-, meso-, and personal narratives that keep the center organized in the midst of the chaotic everyday activities. It advocates the explanatory force of narrative as an alternative to organizational life cycle theory for understanding organizational startups. Design/methodology/approach – This narrative ethnography involved participant observation, full participation, and narrative interviews over a three-year period. Using grounded theory, narratives were examined to discover how they engendered and maintained order. Findings – This paper contributes to the understanding narratives as a constitutional organizing and sensemaking process, including the narratives of “Do It Yourself,” and economic production, family and home, and personal narratives that constitute community, community boundaries, and identity, adding to our knowledge of organizing. Research limitations/implications – The research examined only one local nonprofit arts center, therefore the findings are specific to this site and the same types of narratives may not necessarily be found in other nonprofits. Originality/value – This paper examines a nonprofit during start-up. It validates support for the examination of organizations through narrative ethnography and narrative interviewing. It purports that narratives constitute social identity, rather than being the evidence of social identity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore narratives in a new nonprofit arts center. It includes the macro-, meso-, and personal narratives that keep the center organized in the midst of the chaotic everyday activities. It advocates the explanatory force of narrative as an alternative to organizational life cycle theory for understanding organizational startups. This narrative ethnography involved participant observation, full participation, and narrative interviews over a three-year period. Using grounded theory, narratives were examined to discover how they engendered and maintained order. This paper contributes to the understanding narratives as a constitutional organizing and sensemaking process, including the narratives of “do it yourself,” and economic production, family and home, and personal narratives that constitute community, community boundaries, and identity, adding to our knowledge of organizing. The research examined only one local nonprofit arts center, therefore the findings are specific to this site and the same types of narratives may not necessarily be found in other nonprofits. This paper examines a nonprofit during start-up. It validates support for the examination of organizations through narrative ethnography and narrative interviewing. It purports that narratives constitute social identity, rather than being the evidence of social identity.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine race, gender and language concordance in terms of importance to primary care. Design/methodology/approach - The 2003 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS) was used. Four distinguishing primary care attributes and selected measures were operationalized primarily from a sample subset that identified a usual source of care (USC): accessibility to USC; interface between primary care and specialist services; treatment decisions; and preventive services received from the USC. Bivariate and multivariate results are reported. Findings - Adjusting for covariates, the following items remained statistically significant: race -choosing primary care physician as USC, USC having office hours, and going to USC for new health problems; gender - choosing primary care physician as USC and USC having office hours; and language - lack of difficulty contacting the USC after hours. However, these items appear to be isolated cases rather than indicators that concordance plays a key role in determining primary care quality. Language barriers/communication issues are the only areas where improvement appears warranted, Research limitations/implications - While the study has strong accessibility and interpersonal relationship measures, service coordination and comprehensiveness indicators are limited. The analyses' cross-sectional nature also poses a problem in drawing causal relationships and conclusive findings. Finally, sample size limitations preclude stratified analyses across racial/ethnic groups, an important consideration as the relationships between concordance and quality may vary across groups. Practical implications - This study indicates that more research is needed in this area to determine future resource allocation and policy direction. Originality/value - The unique contribution of the study is to suggest that race and gender concordance may not accurately predict primary health care quality.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine if various measures of loyalty (satisfaction, continued patronage and share of wallet) converge or diverge. A related objective of the study is to examine the relative efficacies of merchandise quality, interaction quality, price and store environment in inducing store loyalty for two customer segments of a national automotive parts and accessories retailer in the USA. The two segments are the doityourself customers and the professional customers. Design/methodology/approach – Data for the study are collected via mail questionnaires. Usable responses are obtained from 17,034 customers. In operationalizing store loyalty, affective, conative and actionrelated measures are used. Findings – The results altogether suggest that merchandise quality is an effective predictor of loyalty but perhaps not as critical or dominant as interaction quality. Results also show that similar factors consistently exert like influence in generating loyalty for the two customer segments. Research limitations/implications – The efficacies of other antecedent variables (e.g. perceived value/value for money) as drivers of store loyalty should be examined. Also, it would be worthwhile to investigate the possible moderating role of demographic characteristics (e.g. gender) and situational characteristics (e.g. critical incident recovery) in attenuating the relationships between the antecedent variables and store loyalty. Practical implications – To reinforce loyalty among its both doityourself and professional customers, the focal retailer should continue to enhance the interaction skills of current and prospective employees via careful selection, training and motivation. Originality/value – The paper shows that the three measures of loyalty (satisfaction, continued patronage and share of wallet) converge. The strongest correlations are between affective and conative loyalty.

This article reports a study which compared current donors, lapsed donors, and nondonors to the American Cancer Society in terms of their demographic characteristics, donation motives, likelihood with which these motives would be satisfied as a result of donating to a charitable organization, and the level of concern expressed regarding a variety of health issues. Results and implications of the study are discussed.

Purpose - There has been a considerable effort over the last decade to increase awareness of the tsunami risk in coastal Washington, USA. However, contemporary research on warning systems spawned by the recent Indian Ocean tsunami tragedy highlights the need for development of an effective tsunami warning system for both residents and transient populations, including visitors and tourists. This study sets out evaluate staff training for emergencies, emergency management exercises (including drills and evacuation), and hazard signage within motels and hotels in Ocean Shores, Washington, USA. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected from interviews with reception staff and managers at 18 hotels, motels, and other accommodation establishments. Findings - Levels of staff training and preparedness for tsunami and other hazards were found to be generally very low, although examples of "best practice" were found at a select few establishments. Larger hotels already had orientation or general training programmes set up which had the potential to incorporate future tsunami and hazard training, while smaller "owner-operator" businesses did not. Research limitations/implications - Suggestions on how to improve preparedness are discussed, including undertaking training needs analyses and conducting workshops, simulations and employee training to empower both businesses and employees. Originality/value - This case study provides an insight into the challenges faced by emergency managers and the tourism sector in improving the effectiveness of warning systems in areas with high transient populations.

Purpose - This paper aims to introduces a measure to assess the perceived effectiveness of multi-hospital organizations (MOs). Design/methodology/approach - A sample of top managers of non-profit hospitals serves as the study setting. Data were collected via mail surveys. Usable responses were obtained from 189 hospitals. The measure was developed by considering the instrumentality and effect components of a set of relevant motives for joining an MO. During the course of the study, three alternative formulations were examined. Findings - Results show that the measures based on effect alone and a multiplicative combination of effect and instrumentality demonstrate sound psychometric properties. The recommendation here is to adopt the latter measure. Research limitations/implications - The study was limited to a particular sample. Replications among other samples are needed to validate the current findings. Also, because the exact content of the objective function of a hospital for joining an MO is not necessarily constant over time, there is a need to conduct similar studies on a periodic basis. Practical implications - The measure recommended here uses multiplicative/weighted instrumentality and effect scores as opposed to only the instrumentality or effect scores. This makes it possible to go beyond the mere "why" or "how" questions. Simultaneous consideration of instrumentality and effect dimensions affords a richer and more relevant understanding. Originality/value - Valid and reliable measures of performance are critical for both managerial and research purposes. The measure proposed in the current study could be used in structural equation models to investigate the effect of individual actions on performance and the impact of performance on other outcome measures (e.g. intentions to stay in an MO).

The study proposes and tests a model of consumer bank choice behavior in a south eastern city in the USA, based on the economics of information theory. The model expands the domain of inquiry beyond the initial level attributes to the first-order latent construct and the second-order (composite) levels. Results suggest that consumer bank choice behavior can be represented as a global construct with three viable components (search, credence and experience) and provide implications for bank managers.

No / Concepts of residential and logistic mobility are applied to survey assemblages from multiple decades of research along the interior drainages of central lower Michigan. Drawing on the ethnographic record of boreal hunter-gatherers and archaeological interpretations of long-distance logistic mobility from the Mesolithic of northern England and continental Europe, it is argued that the importance of logistic mobility is underrepresented in summaries of northern hemisphere hunter-gatherers. Reconstruction of Middle Holocene environments suggests that the resource structure of the central Michigan uplands was one that fostered use of logistic mobility, and that interior Middle Archaic assemblages and site structures reveal special function activities systemically tied to residential and other special function sites at lower coastal elevations, as well as currently submerged under Lake Huron. We conclude that rising levels of Lake Huron ca. 4500 B.P. resulted in decreased land area, population packing, and a consequent shift to residential mobility by the Late Archaic. Further, the results of this analysis can serve as a comparative framework for recognizing the role of logistic mobility in the evolution of hunter-gatherer adaptive strategies in other regions.