Let X be a real Banach space. The rectangular constant $\mu (X)$ and some generalisations of it, $\mu _p(X)$ for $p \geq 1$ , were introduced by Gastinel and Joly around half a century ago. In this paper we make precise some characterisations of inner product spaces by using $\mu _p(X)$ , correcting some statements appearing in the literature, and extend to $\mu _p(X)$ some characterisations of uniformly nonsquare spaces, known only for $\mu (X)$ . We also give a characterisation of two-dimensional spaces with hexagonal norms. Finally, we indicate some new upper estimates concerning $\mu (l_p)$ and $\mu _p(l_p)$ .