Selecting the best employees for customer contact jobs is critically important for customer satisfaction and, ultimately, an organization's success. One potential influence on satisfaction is the congruency between the characteristics of the employee and customer expectations. This research examines how customers respond to employees who are not of the typical, or expected, gender in gender‐typed jobs. Two experiments were conducted that used scenarios of service encounters to manipulate employee gender and gender dominance of the occupation in between‐subjects designs. The dependent variables were level of satisfaction with the service encounter (Experiment 1) and employee evaluation (Experiment 2). The results generally showed that respondents evaluated employees more positively when they performed congruent rather than incongruent jobs. In addition, gender and trait characteristics of the respondents influenced the way employee gender affected evaluations. The preference for congruent employees was strongest among male respondents and cross‐sex‐typed respondents. A different type of congruency was also found. That is, some respondents evaluated employees more positively if they were the same rather than the opposite gender as themselves. This effect was strongest for female and for gender‐aschematic respondents.

The chiropractic profession needs significantly greater business and practice management skills. The existing gap between needed business skills and existing skills suggests that current training and education programs are not providing adequate business skills training.

Population Ecology, as a dynamic model of competition, is applied to the study of franchise systems. The paper examines competition among populations of franchises, companyowned units, and independent operators, the relative responsiveness of each population to changes in its environment, and the impact of level of market demand and population density on each population. Census data from two sources, Franchising in the Economy and the Census of Retail Trade, are analyzed using Population Ecology methodologies. Directions for future research efforts are provided.

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Case analyses have been widely used in many different settings as a pedagogical tool that provides realistic analogs for encouraging students to develop managerially relevant skills. This article extends the traditional use of published cases and describes the development of Web-based cases for use in marketing courses. Web-based cases require the student to develop a current case by determining relevant company and industry material from Internet sources, identifying a problem, and providing analysis. Through this method, the student becomes more active in the learning process by being, in effect, both case writer and analyzer. This new type of case is compared with traditional cases, and feedback from the instructor and from students is provided. As an adjunct to traditional published cases, Web-based cases offer up-to-date, diverse case material that presents students with challenging, real-word experiences.