24 Jul 2013

Relationship between core curriculum and college preparedness [infographic]

An interesting infographic from the Best College Review site which argues that a "Common core curriculum is not the solution to closing the achievement gap".

Some politicians here in the UK believe that the educations standards here have gone down and that we should look at systems followed by other countries.

What do you think?

Is Core Curriculum Rotten?
Source: Best College Reviews

11 Jul 2013

Presentation at the Academy of Marketing Conference 2013

Just got back from Cardiff where I had gone to present a paper at the Academy of Marketing Annual Conference 2013. This year it was hosted by the University of South Wales in Cardiff. The venue of the conference was the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. The weather was really nice - warm and sunny. At first I did not notice anybody familiar but gradually over the day, got to meet some old friends and made some new ones as well.

WP_001766

The key note was delivered by Prof. Kozinets from York University in Canada and one of the leading experts on social media marketing. He is well known for Netnography, the research methodology which he developed. I found his key note address on marketing relevance really interesting and he highlighted the need for us, academics to engage with different audiences besides other academics, via social media and other resources. He also mentioned academics love of using jargon in our writings (which not a lot of people understand) and the need to be accessible. It's hard to change your ways but I sincerely hope that academics who are in love with what they think is "proper academic language", think and reflect on this.

I only attended for a day but there were some really interesting papers in the sessions which I attended. I wish I could have stayed for the whole duration of the conference but had prior engagements.

I was the first presenter in my session: 'Brand, Identity and Corporate Reputation 2', on Tuesday 9 July 2013 from 15.45 - 17.15 in the Rowe-Beddoe Studio. I was a bit nervous but the presentation went better than expected. There was some differences of opinion about the methodology, several questions and suggestions for further improvement.

Here is some information about the paper I presented. Click the title to download the whole paper.

0189: Brand Personality Dimensions and Traits in Malaysia

Mozard Mohtar 1, Azni Zarina Taha 1, Dilip Mutum 2, Ezlika Ghazali 1
1University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2 Coventry University, Coventry, West Midlands, UK

Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to investigate the dimensions and traits of brand personality scale in Malaysia. We also tested the generalizability of the new Brand Personality scale of Geuens et al., (2009), which consisted of 12-item scale used for cross-cultural studies. Using etic and emic approaches, items generated were cross-referenced with unique items from 10 published scales in top ranking journals. A total of 96 items were available for Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA).Principal Axis Factoring with Oblimin rotation revealed that there 12 factor structures existed in Malaysia. All factors showed strong Cronbach a values and corresponded more to Aaker’s (1997) western Brand Personality scale rather than those of Geuens’ et al. (2009).

NOTE: Noticed that there was a typo on the last line of the 3rd para. It should be "20 minutes" instead of 220 minutes.

If you are working on brand personality, I would love to hear your thoughts on our paper.

discussions

Paper on digital government service quality published in the Journal of Service Theory and Practice

Our paper, " Occupational stress as a mediator between organisational intelligence traits and digital government service quality: a tri...