Unexpected events and brand loyalty. The case of Crusaders Rugby Club

<p>Prompted by the Christchurch mosque massacres of March 2019, considerable concern was expressed by society around the world, and New Zealand in particular, about anything that might provoke further attacks on Muslims. Consequently, the branding of the Crusaders rugby club in Christchurch came under scrutiny - and became the topic of this research. The research questions were: which brand elements of a sports team would have the greatest impact on attitude to that brand and consequently the brand loyalty; and how will time and an unexpected event change attitudes to a brand, especially the influence of brand elements? Although indications are that sports related brand elements should influence brand attitude and in turn positively influence brand loyalty, this has never been researched against the backdrop of an unexpected event. Adopting a post-positivist approach, a quantitative study was undertaken to answer the research questions. An anonymous online survey yielded 361 usable responses, of which 103 were from Crusaders fans. The analysis was conducted as two studies: (1) the whole participant group and (2) only the Crusaders fans. Study one provided demographic data and consumer views on sports brand elements influencing brand attitudes, either side of an unexpected event. For study two, factor analysis and structural equation modelling provided an indication of the hypothesized relationships between certain brand elements (name, logo, characters, pageantry) and past success on attitude to the brand and thence to brand loyalty. Findings indicate that before such an event, only name and characters exerted a positive influence on attitude towards the brand, whereas after the event, name, characters, logo and past success all exerted an influence on attitude. In neither situation did pageantry exert a significant influence on brand attitude. In both situations, attitude influenced brand loyalty positively. This study seeks to contribute empirical evidence for academics and practitioners alike, that supports the identification of relevant brand elements influencing brand attitudes and brand loyalty, in a sports setting. Since loyalty is longitudinal in nature, further unique temporally orientated insights into potential societal attitude shifts, are also contributed.</p>

Unexpected events and brand loyalty. The case of Crusaders Rugby Club

<p>Prompted by the Christchurch mosque massacres of March 2019, considerable concern was expressed by society around the world, and New Zealand in particular, about anything that might provoke further attacks on Muslims. Consequently, the branding of the Crusaders rugby club in Christchurch came under scrutiny - and became the topic of this research. The research questions were: which brand elements of a sports team would have the greatest impact on attitude to that brand and consequently the brand loyalty; and how will time and an unexpected event change attitudes to a brand, especially the influence of brand elements? Although indications are that sports related brand elements should influence brand attitude and in turn positively influence brand loyalty, this has never been researched against the backdrop of an unexpected event. Adopting a post-positivist approach, a quantitative study was undertaken to answer the research questions. An anonymous online survey yielded 361 usable responses, of which 103 were from Crusaders fans. The analysis was conducted as two studies: (1) the whole participant group and (2) only the Crusaders fans. Study one provided demographic data and consumer views on sports brand elements influencing brand attitudes, either side of an unexpected event. For study two, factor analysis and structural equation modelling provided an indication of the hypothesized relationships between certain brand elements (name, logo, characters, pageantry) and past success on attitude to the brand and thence to brand loyalty. Findings indicate that before such an event, only name and characters exerted a positive influence on attitude towards the brand, whereas after the event, name, characters, logo and past success all exerted an influence on attitude. In neither situation did pageantry exert a significant influence on brand attitude. In both situations, attitude influenced brand loyalty positively. This study seeks to contribute empirical evidence for academics and practitioners alike, that supports the identification of relevant brand elements influencing brand attitudes and brand loyalty, in a sports setting. Since loyalty is longitudinal in nature, further unique temporally orientated insights into potential societal attitude shifts, are also contributed.</p>

The Future as a Scenario of Hospitality in Ali Smith’s There But For The

The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how Ali Smith’s novel There But For The (2011) foregrounds a temporality in which the scenario of hospitality is encoded into the characters’ perception of the future, while the welcoming scenarios in which they engage are themselves marked by the awareness of futurity. To this end, I rework Levinas’s equation of the future as the Other, as well as Derrida’s notions of conditional and unconditional hospitality, of the future as the expected/unexpected event, and of “choratic space.” The subsequent analysis of the novel proves how these notions are thematized both through the characters’ inner and intersubjective discourse, and via the authorial construction of imagery and the deictics of the spaces they inhabit. As such, the characters’ conversations bear the marks of an uncertain causality springing from the welcoming scenario; attitudes towards futurity are faced with the disquieting awareness of the conflict between the expected and the unexpected event; while the choratic space acts as the possibility of an ethical reaction to the strangers’ singularity, through a linguistic reorientation which employs the contingency of the linguistic sign as a site for hospitality.

Time Series Modeling Analysis of the Development and Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Spa Tourism in Slovakia

Natural healing resources in the form of mineral and thermal waters and climatic conditions, together with a rich history and modern medical procedures, rank Slovakia among the important European countries in the field of spas. At the same time, spa tourism has a significant economic benefit for the country. This study examined the impact of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on spa tourism in Slovakia. The Box-Jenkins methodology was used to model and forecast the time series for selected indicators. The analysis used monthly data on the capacity and performance of spa facilities for 2006–2019 and compared the forecast development for 2020–2021 with the reality as affected by the pandemic. Despite the high quality of the models, the methodology used did not take into account an unexpected event such as a pandemic. Therefore, the models were quite inaccurate and had little predictive value. At the same time, it is clear that the pandemic significantly affected spa tourism.

Digitalisation, pandemics and current world (2019-2021)

The new millennium saw the collapse of the real estate bubble in the United States and, together with other variables such as the high price of raw materials, a major global economic crisis began in October 2008. In 2011, as a result of the confluence of technologies and connected objects (Internet of Things) sparked thoughts that, we began to speak the Fourth Industrial Revolution. On 31 December 2019, pneumonia of unknown origin was discovered in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, P.R. China. This unexpected event is being a driver of the great digital transformation of the world that began after the 2008 crisis.

What triggers explicit awareness in implicit sequence learning? Implications from theories of consciousness

This article aims to continue the debate on how explicit, conscious knowledge can arise in an implicit learning situation. We review hitherto existing theoretical views and evaluate their compatibility with two current, successful scientific concepts of consciousness: The Global Workspace Theory and Higher-Order Thought Theories. In this context, we introduce the Unexpected Event Hypothesis (Frensch et al., Attention and implicit learning, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003) in an elaborated form and discuss its advantage in explaining the emergence of conscious knowledge in an implicit learning situation.

Evidence for the irrelevance of irrelevant events

The expectation that voters behave rationally has been challenged through studies suggesting that “irrelevant events” like natural disasters and sports results change voting behavior. We test the effect of irrelevant events by matching candidate-level election results from Irish general (1922–2020) and local elections (1942–2019) with games in the men's Gaelic football and hurling championships, the most popular sports in Ireland. Although Irish citizens care deeply about sports, we fail to find any relationship between match results and support for incumbents or politicians of government parties. These findings hold when applying an “unexpected event during survey design” to two representative surveys. Our results contribute to the literature on political accountability and point to conditional effects of irrelevant events.

On the effect of COVID-19 pandemic in the excess of human mortality. The case of Brazil and Spain

Excess of deaths is a technique used in epidemiology to assess the deaths caused by an unexpected event. For the present COVID–19 pandemic, we discuss the performance of some linear and nonlinear time series forecasting techniques widely used for modeling the actual pandemic and provide estimates for this metric from January 2020 to April 2021. We apply the results obtained to evaluate the evolution of the present pandemic in Brazil and Spain, which allows in particular to compare how well (or bad) these countries have managed the pandemic. For Brazil, our calculations refute the claim made by some officials that the present pandemic is “a little flu”. Some studies suggest that the virus could be lying dormant across the world before been detected for the first time. In that regard, our results show that there is no evidence of deaths by the virus in 2019.

Impact of COVID-19 on Lifestyle, Personal Attitudes, and Mental Health Among Korean Medical Students: Network Analysis of Associated Patterns

The current COVID-19 pandemic have affected our daily lifestyle, pressed us with fear of infection, and thereby changed life satisfaction and mental health. The current study investigated influencing cascade of changes during the COVID-19 among the lifestyle, personal attitudes, and life (dis)satisfaction for medical students, using network-based approaches. This cross-sectional survey used self-reports of 454 medical students during June and July of 2020. Depressive mood, anxiety, and intention to drop out of school were observed in 11.9, 18.5, and 38.3% of medical students, respectively. Directed acyclic graph that estimated directional propagation of the COVID-19 in medical students' daily lives initiated from the perception of unexpected event, propagated to nervous and stressed feeling, trouble relaxing, feeling like a failure, and were followed by trouble concentrating, feeling loss of control for situation, and fear of infecting colleagues. These six features were also principal mediators within the intra-individual covariance networks comprised of changed lifestyle, personal attitude, and mental health at COVID-19 pandemic. Psychosocial supports targeting nervousness, trouble relaxing and concentrating, fear of spreading infection to colleagues, feelings of a failure or loss of situational control are required for better mental health of medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amygdala connectivity as a predisposing neural feature of stress-induced behaviour during the COVID-2019 outbreak in Hubei

The amygdala plays an important role in the regulation of stress and anxiety. However, little is known about the relationship between amygdala connectivity and subsequent stress-induced behavior. The current study investigated whether amygdala connectivity measured before experiencing stress is a predisposing neural feature of subsequent stress-induced behavior while individuals face an emergent and unexpected event like the COVID-19 outbreak. Using an fMRI cohort established before the pandemic in Wuhan, Hubei, we found that resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the right amygdala with the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) was negatively correlated with the stress-induced behavior of these volunteers during the COVID-2019 outbreak in Hubei. Furthermore, the self-connection of the right amygdala, inferred using dynamic causal modeling, was negatively correlated with stress-induced behavior in this cohort. A significant correlation between the right amygdala-dmPFC rsFC and self-connection of the right amygdala was found. Additionally, after three months of the COVID-19 outbreak in Hubei when the stressor weakened - and in another cohort collected in regions outside Hubei where the individuals experienced a lower level of stress - the relationship between the amygdala-dmPFC rsFC and the stress-induced behavior disappeared. Our findings support that amygdala connectivity is a predisposing neural feature of stress-induced behavior in the COVID-19 outbreak in Hubei, suggesting the amygdala connectivity before stress predicts subsequent behavior while facing an emergent and unexpected event. And thus our findings provide an avenue for identifying individuals vulnerable to stress using intrinsic brain function before stress as an indicator.