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This paper examines the possibility of disintermediation of residential real estate agents arising from increased customer access to property information on the Internet (e‐information). The transaction cost viewpoint suggests that since customers now have ready access to e‐information without an agent, customer‐perceived value of agents and agent usage will decline. The social embeddedness perspective, by contrast, suggests that these changes are unlikely because the added value of agents goes beyond mere information aggregation and includes essential transaction activities that are embedded in social networks. A survey of buyers and sellers of real estate in Alberta provides partial support for the transaction cost viewpoint. However, buyers and sellers respond differently to market conditions (slow versus hot markets) in their proclivities to use real estate agents. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The effectiveness of using instructor-and student-generated course summaries and a related synthesis task was considered in experiments involving 290 undergraduate students in four principles of marketing classes. Students were exposed to one of four conditions: control, instructor-provided course summaries, student-generated course summaries, and student-generated course summaries plus a synthesis task pertaining to the target materials. Student performance on the comprehensive multiple-choice and long answer final examination was significantly different in the conditions, and the student-generated summaries plus synthesis task condition showed the most significant positive effect on student examination performance. Implications for teaching strategies are discussed.

The effectiveness of using verbal repetition and first-letter acronyms to teach a common marketing framework was examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, 345 undergraduate students were exposed to the framework using one of four conditions: control, verbal repetition, acronym, and verbal repetition plus acronym in a traditional learning setting. Students were tested for unaided recall of the concepts as well as concept application and analysis. Results indicate that using acronyms increased student scores at 2 weeks and 3 months for both unaided recall and analysis, but verbal repetition had no significant effect, either alone or in conjunction with the acronym. Experiment 2 tested the impact of acronym use in an active learning setting. Here, 129 undergraduate students were exposed to the framework using only an active learning method or the active learning method plus an acronym. Students were tested for unaided recall and concept application and analysis at 2 weeks and 3 months after exposure. Use of the acronym increased scores for both unaided recall and concept application and analysis compared to the active learning method alone. Implications for teaching strategies are discussed.