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Pharmacists are health care professionals who have a lot more to offer to the public rather than just selling \ud pills. Pharmacists live a dichotomy role: health care consultants versus shop keepers. The aim of this research was \ud to assess how pharmacists intervene improving patient adherence to asthma medication and to see how \ud pharmacists perceived themselves. The research was conducted by means of a multiple choice \ud questionnaire that was completed by 551 pharmacists. The replies were analysed using Ordinal \ud Multidimensional Scaling and Cluster Analysis, with the routine PROXSCAL. Pharmacists revealed their \ud roles in terms of four dimensions: a community health orientation, theoretical-applied drug orientation, \ud the degree of involvement with the patient and the role of the pharmacist as a consultant. These \ud dimensions have different salience in each one of the countries.

To stay in touch with reality, universities need to adapt their courses to \ud the needs of employers. We analyse 510 job advertisements in the area \ud of supply chain management in order to understand the skills that \ud employers are seeking from employees, the type of jobs that these will be \ud conducting, and the personal characteristics that are preferred by \ud employers. The information contained in the advertisements was captured \ud by means of 132 keywords. The resulting data set was analysed using \ud multivariate statistical tools: Ordinal Multidimensional Scaling and Cluster \ud analysis. It was found that every advertisement can be described by \ud means of six dimensions: managing versus planning; analysis versus \ud applicability; experience required; a focus on the firm’s internal processes \ud versus a focus on the firm’s external stakeholders; the level of expertise \ud required; and the way in which employers reward employees according to \ud the skills, duties and job type. Advertisements fell into two categories, \ud those aimed at experienced individuals who were enticed to change jobs, \ud and those aimed at graduates. Skills required from graduates included \ud analytical skills, and ability to solve problems. The consequences for \ud designing university courses in supply chain management are explored.

Market orientation (MO) – which is the propensity of a firm to collect and utilise information from the market – is an important leverage of competitive advantage. This paper helps to better understand why some owner-managers engage with market intelligence why others simply do not. The relationship among the owner-manager’s personal characteristics, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and MO are explored, despite existing literature neglected testing these simple but important relationships. We adopt a resource-based view (RBV) of the firm perspective. This study aims to establish whether the personal characteristics of the entrepreneur impact the use of marketing information. More specifically, this study tests entrepreneurial attitude orientation, marketing expertise and demographic variables for an effect on the use of different types and sources of marketing information as well as the frequency of information usage. Data were collected through a regional survey of 296 small business owners and senior managers in SMEs in the Scottish food and drink industry. Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and regression analysis was used to test hypothesised relationships. Personal characteristics such as age (p.05). Implications for policy makers and practitioners involving small business subsidies and entrepreneurs’ marketing training are discussed.

SMEs present peculiar characteristics that make their marketing distinctive from\ud larger companies. We suggest the lack of resources in SMEs is a barrier to effective\ud marketing and therefore to business growth. SMEs marketing decision-making is\ud affected by whether the SME manages to acquire, analyse and utilise formalised\ud marketing information. This paper analyses the relationship between business\ud growth potential and the use of marketing information in food and drink SMES. The\ud analysis was conducted using multivariate data analysis techniques, specifically PCA\ud and binary logistic regression, on a sample of approximately 300 food and drink\ud SMEs. The logistic regression was significant for both a model (R2=0.18) using the\ud predictors direct effect on growth probability and a model (R2=0.30) using\ud interaction terms. The hypothesised relationships on business growth probability\ud and the use of information have been tested and significant effects have been\ud identified on the interaction amongst the predictors of growth (23% of correlations\ud were significant).\ud \ud Use of formalised marketing information was found to play an important role in\ud generating SME growth in food and drink SMEs. However, SME characteristics\ud played an important role in the way information was used and this affected\ud business growth. Better use of information by SMEs focused their marketing\ud activities. Therefore owner-mangers should be trained to make the best use out of\ud formalised marketing information.

All over the world there is a growing concern about increasing food prices and how this may affect access to and affordability of food. A key concern relates to the potential impact of price rises on an individual’s food choices and ultimately their health and wellbeing. We have sought examine this important relationship between price and food choices by focusing on key staples because of their importance in the diet. In this briefing we concentrate on bread and report recent research that sought to answer the following questions: has the rise in bread prices affected the purchase of bread in Scotland? Has the effect been different by socio-economic group or by region? Is there any indication that the rise in bread prices has generated substitutions amongst the bread types?

The recent rise in food prices has increased the concern about the choice of a healthy food basket, especially in the context of the discussion around the formulation of a National Food Policy for Scotland. This concern has brought back the interest in the price and expenditure demand systems as they provide information about consumers’ food decisions. The paper focuses on the consumption of brown and white bread, as they are the most typical ways of cereals use in the UK and nutritionists recommend the consumption of wholemeal or brown bread in contraposition to white bread as part of an appropriate diet due to its health benefits. This paper aims to answer whether changes in bread prices affect the quantity and composition of the Scottish demand for bread, and whether the latter has been the same for different regions and socioeconomic groups. We used supermarket scanner data to estimate three demand systems and compute their elasticities. All the models showed statistically significant own price and expenditure elasticities and the Hicksian elasticities show that different types of bread are net substitutes. After simulating an increase in all the bread prices we found that brown bread consumption decreases more than white bread just the opposite to what is recommended by the nutritionists.

The recent rise in food prices has increased concern about the choice of a healthy food basket, especially in the context of the current formulation of a National Food Policy for Scotland. This concern has revived interest in food price and expenditure demand systems as they provide information about consumers’ food decisions. The paper focuses on the consumption of brown and white bread, as they are the most typical forms of cereals use in the UK. Moreover, nutritionists recommend the consumption of wholemeal or brown bread in contraposition to white bread as part of an appropriate diet due to its health benefits. The overall purpose of the paper is to measure the impact that the increase in the price of cereals during the period 2005 to 2008 would have had on the purchase of brown and white bread. This is undertaken in two stages: the first measures the effect of changes in milling wheat prices on brown and white bread prices, and the second measures the elasticities of the purchases of brown and white bread with respect to changes in their prices through the estimation of four demand systems. The results, excluding those from the static LA/AIDS that seem to high, indicate, ceteris paribus, that the increase by 72 per cent in the price of wheat produced a decrease in brown and white bread purchases in the range of 30 to 40 per cent; however, as regards the question what type of bread decreased more, the answer depends on the demand model used.

The relative recent rise in food prices has increased concern about the choice of a healthy food basket, especially in the context of the formulation of a National Food Policy for Scotland. This concern has revived interest in food price and expenditure demand systems as they provide information about consumers’ food decisions. The paper focuses on the consumption of brown and white bread, as they are the most typical forms of cereals use in the UK. Moreover, nutritionists recommend the consumption of wholemeal or brown bread in contraposition to white bread as part of an appropriate diet due to its health benefits. The overall purpose of the paper is to measure the impact that the increase in the price of cereals during the period 2005 to 2008 would have had on the purchase of brown and white bread. This is undertaken in two stages: the first measures the effect of changes in milling wheat prices on brown and white bread prices, and the second measures the elasticities of the purchases of brown and white bread with respect to changes in their prices through the estimation of two conditional demand systems for bread.

The purpose of this report is to present an analysis of the effect of the rise of\ud food prices on the purchasing power of Scottish consumers.

Given that a great deal of public policy and funding is directed at improving health, it is important to track changes in the diet of the population so that advice and interventions can be appropriately targeted. This tracking, which informs Food Standards Agency Scotland (FSAS) and Scottish Government policy in relation to food purchases/intakes in Scotland, is conventionally conducted using dietary surveys, but our research has explored the possibility of using supermarket purchases data to complement the existing dietary survey information.\ud \ud FSAS identified a policy need for information on red meat purchase and consumption, following the publication of a report by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF 2007) which recommended a limit on red and processed meat consumption. Therefore, this briefing reports recent research to explore whether a dataset of representative supermarket purchases could be used to provide information on patterns of red meat purchases in Scotland.

The Scottish red meat industry is a major part of the Scottish agricultural economy and is known for producing high quality beef and lamb. Beef and lamb which are produced and processed in Scotland and according to a quality assured production specification, carry the EU ‘Protected Geographical Indications’ (PGI) name of ‘Scotch’. In addition, red meat in Scotland has to compete with high quality imported products (e.g., from Brazil or Argentina) or with meat from elsewhere in the United Kingdom. This paper focuses on the situation of Scotch beef and how differentiated it is in the eyes of consumers. For this purpose we use two years’ retailing data for Scotland (and by socio-economic group) from a major supermarket to estimate the conditional demand for beef products from different origins. Results indicate that Scotch beef competes with the premium category and also with the supermarket own label product. The paper concludes by considering the marketing implications of these findings.