Segmenting Consumers Of Professional Soccer: Identifying .........

Extant literature on the football association's (soccer) consumers tend to focus on supporters of top-tier teams, or on psychological or experiential factors. Contrastingly, this study was concerned with identifying customer segments based on consumer value and benefits sought, particularly to supporters of the lower-league clubs. Using survey data from the three tiers of English professional football, the English Premier League (the Championship, League 1, and League 2), we refine and update Tapp and Clowes (2002) framework of Premier League fans, exploring the behavior of supporters of lower-tier professional clubs.From our findings, we provide a segmentation framework that can be applied by marketers as part of the business and marketing planning process. We provide a detailed picture of the views and consumption habit of lowerleague soccer supporters, and identify an additional segment, the 'Enthusiast'. We believe that this is important because, much of the existing research has focused on the English Premier League (EPL) which we argue represents the a typical elite in comparison to the majority of other professional tiers of football in the UK or the rest of the European area. By focusing on lower-league football, we provide a more universal study.

The Employee's Perspective Of Customer Relationships: A ..........

Customer relationships have been examined in great depth over the last few decades and researchers have focused on various aspects such as their formation, evolution, customer benefits, positive outcomes of relationships, etc. However, a disproportionate number of these studies have captured the customer perspective of these relationships. Given the critical role of boundary spanning employees in the execution of a relational marketing strategy, the authors argue that it is equally important to examine relationships from the perspective of the employees as well. Taking a grounded theory perspective, 12 employees from a variety of occupations and employed in both B2B and B2C settings were interviewed and a total of 51 relationships were examined by the authors. The findings identified five categories of customer relationships as perceived by employees: Forced Relationships, Business Acquaintances, Business Friendships, True Friendships, and Family-like Relationships. Implications of the findings for customers, employees, and firms are discussed.

Study Of Internationalization Of Indian Engineering, Project ............

This is an exploratory qualitative study, focusing on internationalization of Indian Engineering, Project and Construction (EPC) firms in Africa and the Gulf countries. The author conducted 24 semi structured exploratory in-depth personal interviews with Indian EPC domain experts. The qualitative data was content analysed for thematic analysis. This was to uncover a comparative study of the nature of challenges Indian EPC firm managers comprehend, in foreign markets like Africa and the Gulf countries. The process of internationalization was also studied, and the strategic logic for the EPC firms' internationalization initiatives were examined. It was found, that the primary challenges faced in foreign markets include, cultural as well as project factor resource challenges. The preferred internationalized route is sought through strategic alliances. This study is one of the first comparative studies on internationalization, of an emerging economy firm in Africa and the Gulf countries.

User Search Satisfaction In Search Engine Optimization: An Empirical ..........

Today, searching is one of the primary ways to navigate the web; and it is one of the most used mechanisms to find information a user is looking for. Search engine as a search tool, brings more convenience to the users in web searching to uncover information. Meanwhile, it also leads to several problems and confuses the users. Search engine optimization has become a popular technology for optimizing website contents , to enhance the user experience. The purpose of this study is, to identify the best practices and guidelines for designing an effective and meaningful e-commerce website; so that the given site appears at the top in a search engine's search results. A research model for user search satisfaction is evolved from literature. The model is empirically tested and validated by obtaining survey inputs from 101 students from a Canadian University. The factors affecting users search satisfaction are, user characteristics, search characteristics, search engine characteristics, and the clicking behavior of advertisements. The analysis validates the impact of website features, search engine contents and search problems on the user's search satisfaction. The users search behavior includes the frequency of different data inputs, navigational search and the usage of different devices, all having a positive effect on their search satisfaction. Although, thehe advertisement's clicking has a direct negative impact on the user's satisfaction. The implications for the theory and practice are given, especially the best practices for search engine optimization and guidelines for website design.

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