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Definition of store image is argued to be useful if it predicts phenomena such as satisfaction, loyalty, customer retention and other attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Previous researches show that customers are affected by the store attributes and consider them to assess perceived benefits and attitudes. One of the biggest challenges for companies is to build a positive image. Knowing the alternatives which could be used to form a positive image is an important issue. A positive image which is created in the customer’s mind about store is seen to have a strong and positive influence on satisfaction. A satisfied customer is likely to be loyal to the store. Therefore, image and customer satisfaction gain importance in the stores which aim to survive. This study focuses on store image, customer satisfaction and the relationship between them. The study primarily explains these two concepts, and then provides a literature review on the researches related with them. The study presents researches in which store image and customer satisfaction are separately discussed, thus it also shows other variables which can be influential on these concepts. Implications for both store image theory and practices are discussed. The literature review reveals that store image plays an important role in customer satisfaction.  Since most of the studies in literature are based on retail industry, in this study ‘store’ concept mostly refers to ‘retail store’.

Turkey has experienced a series of crises in 1994, 1999 and 2001, which induced remarkable damage in Turkish economy. Thus crisis management has been the main topic in Turkish agenda so many years. Besides crisis management, organizational learning also has been focused as an affective crisis management mean. Crisis preparedness process which is a part of crisis management is vital for any organization’s existence because the emergence of crises is inevitable. Therefore the crisis preparedness has been a topic of increasing importance for organizations seeking an effective way to fight against potential crises. In this context, this research aim to investigate the relationship among the crisis preparedness capability, organizational learning capability and organizational performance.  This survey is conducted on 400 managers of 114 firms operating in the Marmara region.  SPSS 15.0 statistics package program was used to analyze the data obtained from 400 questionnaires. Factor analysis, and reliability analysis have been executed to reveal the reliability of scale, and correlation and regression analyses have been executed to reveal the relationship among the crisis preparedness capability, organizational learning capability, and organizational performance.

The link between stock market development and economic activity has always been the subject of considerable debate in the field of economics and it raises empirical question whether stock market development influences economic activity or whether it is a consequence of increased economic activity. This study attempts to investigate the direction of causality between stock market development and economic growth in the Indian context. Using the cointegration and causality tests for the period June 1991 to June 2013, the study confirms a well defined long-run equilibrium relationship between the stock market development indicators and economic growth in India. The empirical results show bidirectional causality between market capitalisation and economic growth and unidirectional causality from turnover ratio to economic growth in the long-run and short-run. By and large, it can be inferred that the stock market development indicators viz. market capitalisation and turnover ratio have a positive influence on economic growth in India.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is an optimal capital structure at which point firm is able to maximize its value. The author employ an advanced panel threshold regression estimation developed in 1999 by Hansen that will indicate whether there are positive and negative impacts of capital structure on firm value. The author has used data of among 90 unlisted Seafood Processing Enterprises in the South Central region of Vietnam (SEASCRs) during 2005–2011 period. The author has used book value of equity plus long- term debt (BVE) and return on equity (ROE) as surrogate for firm value and book value of total debt to total assets (TD/TA) as surrogate for capital structure and as the threshold variable. The empirical results strongly indicate that triple threshold effect exists between debt ratio and firm value when BVE is selected to proxy firm value. However, when ROE is selected to proxy firm value, the result shows that there exists double thresholds effect between debt ratio and firm value. From these results, the author  may conclude that the relationship between capital structure and firm value has a nonlinear relationship represents an convex Parapol shape. In addition, the findings suggest implications for SEASCRs on flexible usage of financial leverage. Specifically, SEASCRs should not use loans over 57.39%. To ensure and enhance the firm value, the scope of the optimal debt ratio should be less than 57.39%.

The technology acceptance model (TAM) has been widely used to study user acceptance of new computer technologies. Previous studies claimed that future technology acceptance research should explore other additional explanatory variables, which may affect the originally proposed constructs of the TAM. The use of information technology in the health care sector and especially in hospitals offers great potential for improving the performance of physicians, increasing the quality of services and also reducing the organizational expenses. However, the main challenge that arises according to the literature is whether healthcare professionals are willing to adopt and use clinical information technology while performing their tasks. Although adoption of various information technologies has been studied using the technology acceptance model (TAM), the study of technology acceptance for professional groups (such as physicians) has been limited. Physician adoption of clinical information technology is important for its successful implementation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain a better insight about factors affecting physicians’ acceptance of clinical decision support systems (CDSS) in a hospital setting. The results reflect the importance of perceived threat to professional autonomy, perceived interactivity with clinical IT, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use in determining physicians’ intention to use CDSS.

Due to the issues brought about by the current Information Age, such as rapid development of technology, easy and fast access to information, increases in international relations and global market perception, companies were compelled to seek for sustainable competitive advantage, and in this sense, the concept of "corporate reputation", which is powered by unique and original values of a corporation and which cannot be "imitated", has started to draw attention. In our day when markets are gradually reaching the point of saturation and consumers are getting the chance to evaluate more and more options, the efforts to create a convincing difference in minds have become prominent, and subsequently, reputation management has become an important field which a company needs to effectively manage. Corporate reputation management and the communication types the company will adopt in this sense have gained importance in all areas related to strategic management elements, from market positioning of products to shaping of intellectual perception maps. Corporate reputation management, wherein integrated marketing communication and public relation activities extremely important roles, needs to be strategically managed. Management of the concept of corporate reputation, which is a product of tangible and intangible corporate components, have transformed into a strategic requirement and become an field of its own as "corporate reputation management" within modern business administration.  The fact that corporate reputation management, which has a relation with almost all activity fields of a company, is in contact with elements such as corporate social responsibility, management based on ethical principles, performance assessment studies in human resources management and the of phenomenon of governance, the recent agenda, which all affect the field of sustainable competition, indicates that this concept should be evaluated in terms of business management strategy.

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the factors having the most influence on the alleviation of poverty amongst the households adopting microfinance in Zambia. Ninety nine (n=99) respondents were randomly and purposively selected from amongst 340 microfinance adopters of the so-called Micro Bankers Trust programme operating a microfinance business in the Makululu Compound of Kabwe, Zambia. Socio-demographic primary data were collected through face-to-face interviews based on a semi-structured questionnaire instrument. The data were entered into an excel spreadsheet for analysis. The descriptive data were thereafter exported and fitted to an empirical model. The descriptive results revealed that the majority of the respondents were married, unemployed, fairly educated younger women from larger-sized poor households who drew their household income mainly from microfinance activities. The majority of the respondents thought microfinance had improved their well-being in some crucial areas. The results of the empirical model found that some respondents were indeed alleviated from poverty through microfinance. Conclusion drawn in this paper is that microfinance does alleviate poverty of the poor. 

The basic objective of this paper was to determine the importance and potential restoration of brownfield sites in terms of economic prosperity of a particular region or country. In addition, in a theoretical sense, this paper presents the methods used in the identification of brownfield sites such as Smart Growth Network model and Thomas GIS model, and methods for evaluation of brownfield sites or the indexing method, cost-benefit and multivariate analysis.

Banks had a large part in the developments taking place in the years after the outbreak of the crisis in 2007, as many banks had an excessively low capital base, involving too much risk in its businesses. In this study, the largest four banks in Sweden have been investigated. The financial crisis affected the banks differently, depending on the markets of expansion. Excessive risk-taking has been found, where one bank expanded aggressively into new markets and did not appreciate the risks on these new markets. CEO compensation and risk seeking boards are factors that might have caused such behaviour. All of the banks have made noticeable changes to their capital structure, increasing it annually, accompanied by a risk-reduction movement in their assets to improve the stability in most of the banks. The new regulation’s focus on both quality and quantity is in accordance with the views that are expressed in the framework. The banks have altered their goals to levels several per cent above the regulations, in contrast to before the crisis when they were often as close as possible. The impact of the new liquidity regulations has been limited, as the banks continue to work with their internal measures. The banks have all changed their view of capital ratio and liquidity, where many of the banks have doubled the amount of these posts and now find these measures to be both beneficial and a way to gain trust and stability.

The proactively evolved banking regulations in the Indian Banking sector under the authorative directive of the Reserve bank of India (RBI) has often brought about a change in the business strategy, capital structure and operations of the banks in the Indian banking sector. During these events of continuous change and adoption of Basel norms, we analyse the efficiency of the Indian banking sector with using Data Envelopment Analysis across three economic eras andacross the different ownership structures. The determinants of efficiency are selected on the basis of intermediation approach. We also attempt to identify whether the inefficiency arises from managerial incompetence or improper size and resource allocation. From our analysis, we identify the main cause of inefficiency in the Indian Banking sector to be arising out of improper size allocation.

The paper concentrates on the value premium across countries and contributes to the investment and asset pricing literature in three ways. First, I provide fresh evidence that the high-value countries perform significantly better than the low-value countries. Additionally, this phenomenon is indifferent to the choice of the computational currency, representative index or value indicator. Second, I demonstrate that the value effect can be successfully amplified by combining with country-level size and momentum effects. Third, I show that returns to the high-value countries deteriorate in financial crisis conditions, because the country-level value premium is negatively correlated with the credit spreads, TED spread and expected volatility. I examine data from 66 markets between years 2000 and 2013.

The market for environmentally friendly products in Turkey is growing, and marketing experts are trying to understand the behavior of the consumers in this market with the help of variables such as demographic factors, information, attitudes, values and life styles. This study analyzes the effects of environmental activism, environmental knowledge and the perceived seriousness of environmental problems on green buying behavior. The study involved 516 Turkish consumers, over eighteen years of age. The results show that environmental activism, environmental knowledge and the perceived seriousness of environmental problems are all meaningful factors in environmentally friendly buying behavior. It was found that the most explanatory variables are environmental activism for proactive environmentally friendly buying behavior and the perceived seriousness of environmental problems for optional environmentally friendly buying behavior. The study is significant since it will offer insights for green marketing experts who especially target specific segments as activists, voluntary simplifiers or green consumers in Turkey.

The study’s research model suggests that store design and ease of shopping are associated with customer retention through a mediated pathway in which store design and ease of shopping influence perceived store satisfaction, which in turn, influences customer retention. This survey was administered to two separate clothing stores offered to either females or males (in total, 533 participants). Using structural equation modelling methodology, data was analysed to explain the interrelations among the variables in the model. The results of an empirical study of a sample of store shoppers revealed that store design and ease of shopping influence customer retention in an indirect way through customer perception of satisfaction with the store. In building store satisfaction that is centred on customer retention, store design and shopping ease differ in their relative influences. This difference is high for females, but for men as low as to be considered negligible in males. As a result, improving customers’ perceptions of store design and ease of shopping is a way to ensure store satisfaction support customer retention. The results of the study provide a new insight into the relationships by suggesting indirect effects of shopping ease and store design on consumer retention by their impacts on store satisfaction, rather than direct effects.

An individual’s attitude toward financial risk tolerance (FRT) is an important preference that influences financial decision-making under uncertainty. FRT involves inter-temporal resource allocation. Accurate and reliable measures of FRT are essential for professionals advising consumers as well as researchers who are trying to predict, and understand consumer behavior. This study explores cross-cultural risk tolerance by comparing random samples from Turkey, and the United States. Similar and distinctive attitudes and patterns regarding FRT are identified. Three subjective measures of FRT are employed in this study: Grable and Lytton (1999), Hanna, Gutter and Fan’s (2001) improved version of Barsky, Juster, Kimball and Shapiro (1997), and the Survey of Consumer Finance’s item on risk tolerance. Data was collected via an online survey that used the above-mentioned FRT measures. There were two versions: the original American English version, and a culturally translated Turkish version. To explore the correlation of FRT among measures, we use bivariate analysis by individually employing Pearson Chi-square test of independence, and cross tabulations analysis to each sample. In addition, by pooling both samples, we conduct cumulative logistic regression. We delineate FRT differences and consistencies between countries across subjective financial risk tolerance measures.