Suchergebnisse

During the past 10 years, substantial relationship marketing disciplinary discussion has centred around the concepts of commitment and trust as the key mediating concepts of relationship perceptions. The models developed, however, have lacked the psychological basis from which each of us typically approach the above mentioned relationships. As the essential reflective feature of business interaction seems to be the dualism between calculative monetary considerations and the social elements of relationship considerations, the key to understanding relational behaviour within these parameters is to combine both the rational business decision elements with the psychological elements that enter into this process of decision-making. This study builds a model of socio-economic exchange based on work from both relationship marketing and social psychology. Thus, the model might be placed at the core of the `marketing as exchange' discussion, in that this model captures the processes that are happening within the individual who is involved in the marketing exchange. The results provide support for a two-dimensional mediating concept of relationship perceptions and an additional view on what constitutes relationship quality is provided.

The political project on bioeconomy strives to address multiple societal aspirations, namely combine economic growth with environmental sustainability in some socially acceptable manner. The contradictions between the goals and the concrete plans to increase production, processing, and consumption of forest biomass in Europe have however raised sustainability concerns within and beyond its borders. While political actors articulate such contradictions differently and compete for traction for their viewpoints in the public discourse, little is known about how citizens of urban areas perceive this discourse. Conceptualising perception as a multidimensional construct, data from eight European university cities (Bordeaux, Bratislava, Freiburg, Helsinki, Padua, St. Petersburg, Uppsala, Vienna) are statistically analysed to explore its dimensions, the communities of like-minded citizens forming across those dimensions, and the traits associating with membership in each such community. Five communities across six dimensions from biocentrism through distributional aspects to adherence to political goals are identified: adherent-environmentalist, adherent-governmentalist, critical-reformist, critical-agriculturalist, and indifferent. City of residence and perceived familiarity with bioeconomy clearly interact with perception. There is however considerable variation in communities within and across the eight cities, suggesting deeper social tension beyond the public discourse. Much of the within-community variation remains unexplained, though, calling for more work locally. Implications for forest policy are derived. ; Peer reviewed