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Buying behavior has been significantly altered by technological developments as a result of the rise of the Internet. Online buying behavior is also inextricably linked to electronic payment systems, such as credit cards. This paper investigates how credit-card systems and online shopping increases compulsive buying of female and male consumers.

In the current study, the authors tested the influence of credit card possession and the role of Internet shopping on gender differences in compulsive buying in a representative German sample (n = 1,038). Binary logistic regression analysis and moderator analysis were applied.

As predicted, Internet shopping increased compulsive buying, but the association was the same for females and males. Further, credit card possession moderated the effect of gender on compulsive buying, with females showing a higher proneness to compulsive buying.

This research, which is based on a representative population study, contributes to the understanding of the role of credit cards and the one of online shopping in developing compulsive buying patterns among female and male consumers.

The purpose of this study is to find out how unconscious perception and conscious reactions differ when it comes to evaluate wine bottles in a shopping shelf. It was evaluated how attention is related to subjective evaluations of interest and value in the perception of wine bottle design choices.

The experiment combined implicit eye-tracking observations and a quantitative measurement on the assessment on wine bottle designs. In total, 37 participants rated eight different wine bottle designs based on their interest and assumed value, without any given information about the wines’ original price classification.

There is a significant difference between the perception of wine bottle designs. Eye-catchy designs do not automatically transform into a higher perception of value and interest towards the product. The unconscious perception of bottles and the conscious reaction differentiate.

The greatest limitation, as with many other implicit studies, is the limited number of subjects and the associated limited validity. In addition, eight bottles in four categories were studied, which is adequate, but does not fully reflect the complexity of the wine market supply.

Manufacturers and wine label designers should challenge existing pre-disposition towards certain wine bottle design choices.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first German consumer study that focusses on unconscious perception (measured by implicit eye movement behaviour) and conscious reactions in the context of explicit value and interest evaluation.

The sociological and socio-legal literatures on social movements have identified three main types of “legal framing” in contemporary social movement discourse: collective rights framing, individual rights framing, and nationalistic legal framing. However, it is unclear from the current research how movement actors decide which of these framing strategies to use, under what circumstances, and to what effect. In this article, I offer a model for future empirical research on legal framing, which (1) distinguishes legal framing by its argumentative structure, ideological content, and remedy; and (2) analyzes how a social movement’s internal culture and institutional environment constrain the symbolic utility of particular legal frames and shape the movement’s legal framing strategy. I argue that the alternative approach offered here will help theorize how social movements strike a balance between the institutional pressure to reproduce dominant ideologies and the internal pressure to reform those ideologies. This perspective thus helps build socio-legal theory on the relationship between legal framing and social subordination, and on the conditions under which movements will be able to inflect legal language with insurgent social movement values.

Purpose – This chapter aims to coin, unpack, and illustrate the concept and societal impact of informerphobia. This is the fear of people to report information on (threatening) violence and terrorism to the state agencies that are formally tasked to respond to these threats.

Methodology/approach – This chapter is a theoretical exercise, combining insights from general sociology, organization studies, military studies and the literature on good governance. The illustration pertaining to Afghanistan is based on previous fieldwork in the region.

Findings – The chapter points at the importance of having properly functioning state agencies that have to be flexible, decentralized, and truly bureaucratic in the Weberian sense of the word. In addition, a civic culture of ordinary people producing counterpressure is indispensable to make the state agencies more effective.

Originality/value of the paper – The concept is brand new as is its elaboration and application to Afghanistan.

Business rules are statements that aim to influence or guide behavior and information in the organization. They are the business policies, the business practices, and business definitions that should be well known and treated as a valuable asset to the organization. They are in essence how the actual business is run. Yet so often these business rules are implicit, assumed in the development of information systems in an organization. They have been buried in code, lived in the business experts’ heads and sporadically been documented in system manuals. In this paper we examine the value of business rules, compare the thinking of business rule experts and provide guidelines on how to derive and store an organization’s business rules.