Now I can see: how brand interactions influence channel loyalty and purchase intention in optical physical stores

Purpose This study aims to analyse the effect of brand interactions such as personal interaction, problem-solving, reliability and store physical appearance on channel loyalty and purchase intention in optical physical stores. Design/methodology/approach The hypotheses are tested through quantitative research based on a questionnaire with a sample of 414 respondents. Researchers conduct multiple regressions to analyse the data. Findings The findings reveal that channel loyalty and purchase intention are positively influenced differently. Person-to-person interactions play a vital role in both constructs (dependent variables). This study also offers relevant managerial implications and future research avenues. Originality/value Despite the relevance of purchase intention in the literature, almost no studies have been published about the intention to buy glasses in the optical physical stores, a relevant contribution this paper offers to the literature. The finding that the store’s physical aspect did not prove to be influential for channel loyalty is also an innovative and relevant contribution of this research.

Charity and grace

This essay attempts to reconcile charity with grace, the central concepts of two thinkers whose views may seem irreconcilable to many: Donald Davidson, an analytical philosopher and the most distinguished follower of Quine; and Julian Pitt-Rivers, an Europeanist anthropologist, who wrote at length on Spain and Southern France. The latter's historicist exegesis of gracia points to basic aspects of human experience that are also salient in the reduction to basics that Davidson carried out concerning interpretation and truth. For Davidson, in the face of ultimate indeterminacy, interpretation is made possible due to the rational accommodation that charity sparks off. For Pitt-Rivers, gratuity highlights how processes of personal interaction depend on the drawing of shared trajectories: that is, not only do I have to grant others charity to make sense of them, I also have to frame others as subjects with a future by relation to myself as already in existence. The paper proposes that human interaction involves processes of sensemaking that integrate shared intentionality (i.e. the credit with which we respond to the indeterminacy of meaning) with shared experience (i.e. the debt implicit in the ultimate underdetermination of the world's entities). Thus, it brings both concepts together under the label of charis, their common etymological root, suggesting that the dynamic it represents is a broader feature of life itself.

“Shocked at my Levity”

Ezra Pound’s humor promotes unorthodox intimacies between readers and writers. His portraits in The Pisan Cantos catch Henry James and James Joyce laughing, emphasizing their human peculiarities and Pound’s personal knowledge of them. These scenes suggest how unsatisfactory he finds traditional notions of poetic immortality. Instead, his portraits of jesting writers make literary texts contain the artist as both heroic figure and human individual, doing the work of high art and personal interaction simultaneously. Pound loves the Romantic figure of the poet-hero, but his laughter emphasizes that artist’s fallible humanity, and highlights modernism’s concern with creating accurate models of imaginative sympathy. As Pound’s laughter becomes more intimate, however, it is also more troubling: humor in The Cantos seeks to enlist his reader not just in his poem but in his hierarchical vision of art and his fascist politics.

“Creating a joint life”: life path of the family of geologists

The autobiographical tale of geologists, the Negrutsa spouses, “The Path of Love” (2002) is an informative source on the history of Russian geology, the everyday life of field researchers, and the social history of the family. The main significance of the book is that it is a socio-anthropologically valuable autodescription of a married family belonging to the scientific intelligentsia and to a certain professional group. The work contributes to the study and understanding of the processes of the formation of Soviet urban families in the second half of the twentieth century. The content of the book is considere in the context of the problems of marriage choice, matrimonial relations, the organization of extended kinship communities, family crises and conflicts, the relationship between professional and family aspects of life. The Negrutsa family belonged to the type of married families, whose unity is based on the personal interaction of husband and wife and is supported by immanent values. At the same time, the married family is influenced by the traditions of parental families, which in this case differed significantly in socio-cultural properties.

Barriers Faced by Agripreneurs in Starting and Operating Agriventures under ACABC Scheme: An Analysis

The ACABC (Agri Clinics and Agri Business Centres) scheme is being implemented by Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India, with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) (“NABARD-National Bank For Agriculture And Rural Development” n.d.) acting as subsidy channelizing agency and National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE) will be responsible for providing training to eligible candidates, through Nodal Training Institutes (NTIs) and motivating them for setting up of Agri-Clinics and Agri-Business Centres. Whereas the Nodal Training Institute (NTI) is desirous of undertaking to implement the training and handholding component of the said Scheme with MANAGE (“MoU-ACABC” n.d.). JNKVV, Jabalpur is a Nodal Training Institute (NTI) of MANAGE, Hyderabad for providing training on Agripreneurship under the Agri-Clinic and Agri. Business Centre scheme 2010 (www.agriclinics.net) of Govt. of India, Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation. (“Revised Guideline ACABC-2010” 2011). The present study was conducted in Jabalpur district of Madhya Pradesh state during 2014 to 2020 and based on the primary data collected through field survey by personal interaction, telephonic interaction, pre-tested questionnaires from 60 sample agri-graduates of NTI. Used statistical methods such as frequency, score and percentage to find this out the problems of agripreneurs in establishing and operating agriventures after successful completion of training programme. In the results, it was found that lack of own fund to start venture, status of confusion between job or entrepreneurship, lack of proper handholding support from NTIs, lack of family support, lack of business and field experience (Managerial and technical), high rate of interest on loan and a difficulty bank documentation process in getting bank loans were the major problems in establishing agriventure, while heavy competition from existing market players, marketing and infrastructural problems, perishability and seasonability of products, fluctuation in demand and prices of products, illiteracy and lack of knowledge of the farmers and insufficient working capital to run the business were the major problems faced by agripreneurs in operating agriventure (Lal et al. 2015). Thus, the present study mainly focused on the major problems faced by agripreneurs in starting and operation of agriventures under the agriclinic and agribusiness centre (ACABCs) scheme.

Power in Value Cocreation Process: The Emergence of a New Dimension

There are different scales to measure value cocreation, but it still has no consensus about its uses. In this way, the aims to validate a multidimensional scale with seven factors related to individual characteristics and consumer behaviour included a new emerging dimension inside individual characteristics that are relevant to analyse value cocreation: power importance. The measurement instrument was developed, validated and tested using 1,300 Colombian and Vietnam consumers. For the final analysis, a confirmatory factor analysis was used, resulting in an adjusted and reliable multidimensional model. The results suggest seven dimensions (personal interaction, feedback, helping, tolerance, learning, personalization and power importance). Regarding the power importance that includes items that are related to the way in which consumers develop emotions at the moment of influencing others (authority, social recognized, wellness and monetary retribution). Finally, the present study contributes to the literature on value cocreation through the identification of a key aspect in the interaction between the company and the consumer. This term has recently attracted the attention of scholars and that has been little explored in the field of consumer behaviour.

"Beautiful External Life to Watch and Ponder": Katherine Mansfield Confronting the Material

<p>Throughout her famously short, disrupted career, Katherine Mansfield chased the idea of "warm, eager living life,"attempting to translate this vivid experience of being in the world into fiction. This passage, written in late 1922, shows the author focusing on her fascination with vivid, personal interaction with the material world. Mansfield convinces herself that the pursuit of "warm, eager living life" and the experience of submerging herself in it - "to be rooted in life" - is what she must strive for once she regains her health. Unfortunately, Mansfield's health declined steadily after this passage was written, and she died at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Fontainebleau on the 9th of January, 1923. In addition to various personal possessions, Mansfield left behind a host of written material: personal letters, journal entries and jottings, drafts of stories and poems, and published volumes, which document her attempts at submerging herself in a vividly experienced life. Her stories full of characters self-consciously attempting to anchor their vague and variable identities in the material world, graphic sensory detail, and ambiguous imagery register Mansfield's determination to describe exquisite, sensible life. Throughout the writing, she displays a keen interest in and fixation on the material world. Mansfield's colonial childhood, her preference for luxury, her feelings of disunity and dividedness, and the fleetingness of her life made more poignant by various levels and types of consumption inform her piercing awareness of the material world. Critical attention to the materiality of Mansfield's writing highlights that this writer, so determined to be "rooted in life," documents everywhere the frail but persistent efforts of characters to find substance in the ephemeral and attach changeable selves to things.</p>

"Beautiful External Life to Watch and Ponder": Katherine Mansfield Confronting the Material

<p>Throughout her famously short, disrupted career, Katherine Mansfield chased the idea of "warm, eager living life,"attempting to translate this vivid experience of being in the world into fiction. This passage, written in late 1922, shows the author focusing on her fascination with vivid, personal interaction with the material world. Mansfield convinces herself that the pursuit of "warm, eager living life" and the experience of submerging herself in it - "to be rooted in life" - is what she must strive for once she regains her health. Unfortunately, Mansfield's health declined steadily after this passage was written, and she died at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Fontainebleau on the 9th of January, 1923. In addition to various personal possessions, Mansfield left behind a host of written material: personal letters, journal entries and jottings, drafts of stories and poems, and published volumes, which document her attempts at submerging herself in a vividly experienced life. Her stories full of characters self-consciously attempting to anchor their vague and variable identities in the material world, graphic sensory detail, and ambiguous imagery register Mansfield's determination to describe exquisite, sensible life. Throughout the writing, she displays a keen interest in and fixation on the material world. Mansfield's colonial childhood, her preference for luxury, her feelings of disunity and dividedness, and the fleetingness of her life made more poignant by various levels and types of consumption inform her piercing awareness of the material world. Critical attention to the materiality of Mansfield's writing highlights that this writer, so determined to be "rooted in life," documents everywhere the frail but persistent efforts of characters to find substance in the ephemeral and attach changeable selves to things.</p>

Honesty in the Digital Age

Modern communication technologies enable efficient exchange of information but often sacrifice direct human interaction inherent in more traditional forms of communication. This raises the question of whether the lack of personal interaction induces individuals to exploit informational asymmetries. We conducted two experiments with a total of 848 subjects to examine how human versus machine interaction influences cheating for financial gain. We find that individuals cheat about three times more when they interact with a machine rather than a person, regardless of whether the machine is equipped with human features. When interacting with a human, individuals are particularly reluctant to report unlikely and therefore, suspicious outcomes, which is consistent with social image concerns. The second experiment shows that dishonest individuals prefer to interact with a machine when facing an opportunity to cheat. Our results suggest that human presence is key to mitigating dishonest behavior and that self-selection into communication channels can be used to screen for dishonest people. This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, decision analysis.

Caring from behind the face mask in healthcare: Learning from the dramatic arts

The COVID-19 pandemic has made its impact across the globe with great voracity. New routines have displaced older more established ones with ruthless efficiency—no more so than in healthcare. In meeting these challenges, many healthcare workers have had to prepare for and enact many new ways of working. Regardless of their speciality or stage of training, health professions educators (HPEs) have helped train our healthcare workforce in developing new skills with great tempo. Throughout all of these efforts one constant has guided our endeavours—the humane connection with those that provide and those that seek healthcare.However, with COVID-19 we have had to distance ourselves from our patients, and colleagues, and clad ourselves in various items of personal protection equipment (PPE). The protective barrier also acts as a barrier to personal interaction and therefore presents challenges in how we connect with each other on a humane level. Few disciplines have engaged with the complexities of verbal and gestural communication as thoroughly and consistently as the dramatic arts. Actors in Ancient Greece would perform wearing masks and used oratory as well as gestural communication to enrapture the audience.Drawing upon the dramatic arts, we aim to explore the relationship between face and mask and thereby provide reflective insights for HPEs to help guide healthcare workers in their communication from behind the face mask.