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THE INFLUENCE OF BRAND IMAGE ON PURCHASE INTENTIONS: AN EXAMPLE FOR WATSONS DRUGSTORES IN TAIWAN

Yung-Chieh Chien
 Keng-Sheng Ting

As the awareness of health increases and the cosmetic industry rises in Taiwan, drugstores can now be seen on every street corner, making it an indispensable industry. The purpose of this study is to verify and understand the influence of brand image on purchase intentions, using perceived value as a mediator. The research population is the Watsons drugstores in Taiwan. The Convenience Sampling method is used to sample the population, while Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is adopted to verify the overall research model and the fitting effect of its Structural Model and Measurement Model. The Bayesian Estimation method is adopted to analyze the path coefficients between "implicit (unobservable) variables" of the Structural Model to determine the model’s path effect. The Sobel test is applied to test the significance of the structural model’s direct effect, mediating effect and total effect. The research findings show: (1) brand image has a significant positive effect on perceived value; (2) perceived value has a significant positive effect on purchase intentions; and (3) a good brand image has a significant positive effect on purchase intentions. As such, it is obvious that perceived value has a "partial" mediating effect. Furthermore, the research results of this study can serve as a reference for businesses to use to more effectively apply brand image and customer’s perceived value, so as to enhance customers’ purchase intentions

THE EFFECT OF TRAINING ON EMPLOYEES PERFOMANCE OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN JORDAN

Mahdi. J. M . Hasan, Dr.Samar.S.Altarawneh, Prof.Aktham.A.A sarayreh

This Study aimed to identify the training effects in its dimensions (preparing the training plan, implementing the training plan, evaluating the training plan), as an independent variable on the employees performance in its dimensions ( innovation, accuracy in work, commitment to work, and perseverance) all the relevant data of the study were collected through the field study represented by the employees performance in commercial banks in Jordan, the study population consists of all 21 commercial banks ( local and foreign) in Jordan.  Their employee number is (3989) employees, eventually we selected a final sample to study consists of (5) banks represented by (319) employees in the functional levels of: manager, head of department, accountant and auditor in the commercial banks in Jordan.
The importance of the study concentrated at some obstacles that some organizations will face in addition to keeping pace with the work requirements through the investment of the human resources in a perfect way to prepare staff with experience and skills which the organizations can use them as an important weapon against the different environmental challenges. Here the human resource has an active role through his training as well as qualifying it to have the knowledge, the skills, and the experiences as well as the required abilities in order to reach the excellent performance.

Training, employees performance, commercial banks.

THE USAGE OF PERSONAL CLOUD STORAGE BY ACADEMICIAN IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
(OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES)

Arwa Y. Aleryani,  Samah A. Alariki,  Halima Mofleh

Personal cloud storage has been started to be one of the most important tools for academic staff in the universities and educational institutes all over the world. In addition to store documents in the cloud, it gives the chance to share the documents with students and colleagues. Yemen is one of the least developed countries, suffering from many problems which can be challenging for efficient use of the internet and its tools and services. This paper attempts to investigate the opportunities and challenges when using personal cloud storage by academic staff of universities in Yemen and abroad. The impact of age, gender, graduated place, specialization and current living place on the usage of personal cloud storage has been also addressed in this paper. The results showed that personal cloud storage is still not well used among many Yemeni academic staff. More than (77.8%) of the respondents do not know about them, although some of them are thinking to use them in future. The opportunities of using personal cloud storage are still limited.

personal cloud storage, Yemeni academic staff, Opportunities, Challenges