Michelle R. Alcorn, Daniel Vega, Ryan Irvin and Paola Paez
As exploratory research, this project aimed to develop and assess the effect of implementing a food waste reduction program at a restaurant on a university campus.
Abstract
Purpose
As exploratory research, this project aimed to develop and assess the effect of implementing a food waste reduction program at a restaurant on a university campus.
Design/methodology/approach
Data collection consisted of an audit of both pre and postconsumer food waste to determine the effectiveness of various reduction strategies and a survey to assess attitudes of employees toward food waste. As exploratory research, a personalized database was created to track current food waste amounts and reasons for waste in the restaurant operation to determine if the same method could be employed in future research.
Findings
Overall, the restaurant in this study implemented various effective food waste reduction practices that were inexpensive and simple, resulting in a weekly average reduction of 14.3 pounds of food waste. The top five food item products wasted by the kitchen were also identified for both pre and postintervention phases as well as the reasons for generating kitchen waste. Furthermore, data reported on postconsumer waste included weight quantities and product types.
Originality/value
The project resulted in evidence that a personalized food tracking system is useful for identifying and quantifying food waste in foodservice operations. Therefore, the research design and data collection methods used in this project can be used in future research on a larger scale.
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ChihChien Chen, Karen Xie and Shuo Wang
This paper aims to examine the joint influence of incidental affect and mood-changing prices on consumers’ hotel booking intention in an online purchase context.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the joint influence of incidental affect and mood-changing prices on consumers’ hotel booking intention in an online purchase context.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the integrative framework of affect evaluation and affect regulation, a 3 × 2 full factorial between-subject online experiment in an online booking scenario is developed to investigate how consumers’ booking intentions change by mood inductions (happy, neutral and sad) and price levels (below versus above reference price).
Findings
Results showed that when the observed price was a mood-threatening cue, participants who were induced to feel either happy or sad by a commercial had a higher booking intention than those who were induced to feel neutral. However, there were no significant differences in participants’ booking intentions across pre-purchase affective states when the observed price was a mood-lifting cue.
Research limitations/implications
The current study contributes to a better understanding and prediction of consumers’ action tendencies resulting from the interactions between specific incidental affects and mood-changing opportunities in an online hotel reservation environment.
Practical implications
Online booking companies and online travel agencies in general may wish to incorporate mood-changing components into their booking web pages to enhance potential bookers’ purchase intentions at any given price.
Originality/value
This research is one of the first empirical studies to instantiate the integrative affective mechanism in an online purchase setting. As e-commerce and online marketplaces are taking the place of traditional brick-and-mortar retailing, it is critical for hospitality industry marketers to fully understand how consumers’ pre-purchase emotions influence their purchase decisions.
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Ali Albada, Eimad Eldin Abusham, Chui Zi Ong and Khalid Al Qatiti
Empirical examinations of initial public offering (IPO) initial returns often rely heavily on linear regression models. However, these models can prove inefficient owing to their…
Abstract
Purpose
Empirical examinations of initial public offering (IPO) initial returns often rely heavily on linear regression models. However, these models can prove inefficient owing to their susceptibility to outliers, a common occurrence in IPO data. This study introduces a machine learning method, known as random forest, to address issues that linear regression may struggle to resolve.
Design/methodology/approach
The study’s sample comprises 352 fixed-priced IPOs from the year 2004 until 2021. A unique aspect of this research is its application of the random forest method. The accuracy of random forest in comparison to other methods is evaluated. The findings indicate that the random forest model significantly outperforms other methods in all of the evaluated aspects.
Findings
The variable importance measure indicates that investors’ demand, divergence of opinion among investors and offer price are the most crucial predictors of IPO initial returns. These determinants hold particular significance due to the widespread use of the fixed-price method in Malaysia, as this method amplifies the information asymmetry in the IPO market.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the pioneering works in Malaysian literature to apply the random forest method to address the constraints of conventional linear regression models. This is achieved by considering a more extensive array of factors and acknowledging the influence of outliers. Additionally, this study adds value to Malaysian literature by ranking and identifying the ex-ante information that best signals the issuing firm’s quality. This contribution facilitates prospective investors’ decision-making processes and provides issuing firms with effective means to communicate their value and quality to the IPO market.
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YouthBuild programs are uniquely designed to address the status of unemployed and uneducated young men and women who are disconnected from work and education. This study, on…
Abstract
Purpose
YouthBuild programs are uniquely designed to address the status of unemployed and uneducated young men and women who are disconnected from work and education. This study, on YouthBuild Las Vegas (YBLV), aims to fill the call for more research on transformative service research, specifically related to education, poverty and well-being. The program educates “opportunity youth” in construction skills while also encouraging progression toward a GED/HiSet or high school diploma. Service providers can better understand how to increase and support reconnection and well-being, especially among low-income individuals in communities with great needs for support services.
Design/methodology/approach
This yearlong qualitative research study intended to better understand transformative service within the context of former high school dropouts previously without a path to a productive future. YBLV was an ideal single-site case study because it was bound by space, people, organization and time. The study followed one YBLV class from admission through graduation; the qualitative work with the organization started prior to the students’ enrollment and continued after the students graduated. Primary data collections were interviews and observations. Additional data collection occurred in the forms of written documents, as well as photos and videos.
Findings
YBLV succeeded because of service providers’ attention to the funds of knowledge of the student population and adapting the format and structure of programs to adult learners, developing mentors for consumers and acknowledging the context and layers of knowledge that consumers brought to the program. The students were able to experience reconnection and increased well-being because of the service providers’ impact throughout the program.
Research limitations/implications
Transformative service research (TSR) research has focused on areas as diverse as health care and homelessness, whereas the lens of funds of knowledge has primarily been applied within educational settings. It would be worthwhile to apply funds of knowledge framework beyond education yet still within the TSR agenda. There are also opportunities to apply the theory to other vulnerable populations. Broadening the scope of reconnection and well-being TSR research far beyond YouthBuild may identify additional or other synergies between these areas.
Practical implications
The growing body of research on TSR suggested a gap in understanding how service providers can support consumers in poverty and a need for greater well-being. This study on YouthBuild highlighted the phenomenon among low-income, undereducated, urban young adults and while the goal of qualitative research is not to be generalizable, specific examples such as adapting programs and structures to low-income consumers, developing mentors to model wanted behavior and goal-setting and acknowledging the funds of knowledge that consumers bring to situations, can be generic ingredients for future transformative service projects.
Social implications
Research has demonstrated that public investment in programs that assist youth toward a positive trajectory and greater well-being is much more beneficial than disciplinary measures such as increased spending on policing and prisons. Employment and educational training programs have led to measurable success and when disconnected youth have greater vocational training and high school completion, they and the broader economy experience improved outcomes. Therefore, from a policy perspective, YouthBuild and programs like it emphasize growth, development and well-being for undereducated and low-income individuals.
Originality/value
The funds of knowledge theoretical framework are new to the Journal of Services Marketing (JSM). That framework coupled with the population of former high school dropouts in a second-chance school and a focus on service providers and well-being within a poverty context, all contribute to the paper’s originality. Reconnection is also a relatively new concept for readers of JSM. These three areas: funds of knowledge, reconnection and TSR are the backbone of this research.
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Cheri A. Young and David L. Corsun
The purpose of the study was to examine travelers’ attitudinal and behavioral loyalty to the product type of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodations (as opposed to a brand).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the study was to examine travelers’ attitudinal and behavioral loyalty to the product type of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodations (as opposed to a brand).
Design/methodology/approach
P2P accommodations’ hosts provided contact information for their guests from the prior two years who were contacted to participate in the study. Respondents answered questions about their travel party, trip purpose, factors leading to their P2P accommodation stay and attitudinal and behavioral loyalty around P2P lodging.
Findings
Autonomous motivators (dislike of big hotel chains and experience authenticity) and controlled motivators (location and cooking facilities) were positively related to attitudinal loyalty to P2P accommodations. Price predicted behavioral loyalty in the form of repeat purchase behavior and attitudinal loyalty did not.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations of this study include the representativeness and size of the sample, the generalizability of the results, cross-sectional nature of the data and respondents’ recall ability. Despite a favorable attitude toward P2P accommodations, only price accounted for travelers’ repeated choice of P2P accommodations over hotels.
Practical implications
While attitudinal loyalty was explained by the dislike of big hotel chains and experience authenticity in P2P accommodations, it did not translate into repeated purchase behavior. Behavioral loyalty to P2P seems all about price, which begs the question of whether price is the most meaningful competitive lever in the battle between conventional hotels and P2P.
Originality/value
Hotel brand loyalty refers to consumer choice of brand within the conventional hotel product type. This study presents the first effort to understand consumer loyalty to a lodging product type, specifically P2P accommodations, and not a particular brand.
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José Carlos Sánchez de la Vega, José Daniel Buendía Azorín, Antonio Calvo-Flores Segura and Miguel Esteban Yago
The purpose of this paper is to provide a measure of competitiveness of the Spanish autonomous communities from a multidimensional and dynamic perspective for the period 2008-2016.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a measure of competitiveness of the Spanish autonomous communities from a multidimensional and dynamic perspective for the period 2008-2016.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopts a broad definition of competitiveness based on five key environments (productive capital, human capital, social and institutional capital, infrastructure and knowledge) and comprising 53 indicators. The method used to construct the competitiveness index is based on the P-distance proposed by Pena Trapero (1979), which objectively assigns weights to the indicators. There is an important advantage in the methodological proposal of this study, as it allows analyzing the behavior of partial and aggregated indicators from a dynamic perspective, taking the same value as a reference for the entire period. Therefore, not only a classification obtained for each year but also the variation that occurs in terms of the reference period can be analyzed.
Findings
The classification of the autonomous communities is established using common intervals based on the results obtained for the whole period, i.e. 2008-2016. The data point to the unequal situations of the autonomous communities. The results also reveal that the evolution of the regional competitiveness synthetic index is clearly cyclical and the drop recorded in the recessive period is less pronounced than the increase recorded in the growth phase.
Originality/value
The main innovation of the competitiveness index presented here lies in its allowing comparisons over time.
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Jaimi Garlington, Cass Shum, Gloria Wong-Padoongpatt and Laura Book
Racial code-switching is an impression management behavior for people to blend into social and professional situations by adhering to norms outside their own. Drawing on the…
Abstract
Purpose
Racial code-switching is an impression management behavior for people to blend into social and professional situations by adhering to norms outside their own. Drawing on the identity threat perspective, this study aims to examine the harmful effects of racial code-switching on employee psychological depression and hospitality industry turnover intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
The current study used a two-wave time-lagged survey of 286 restaurant frontline employees. Participants were asked to rate their racial code-switching, identity threat and shame in the first survey. Participants reported their depression and industry turnover intention in the second survey one week later.
Findings
The results showed that employees that engaged in racial code-switching had higher intentions to leave the hospitality industry via the sequential mediating roles of identity threat, shame and depression.
Practical implications
The findings provide practical implications on how hospitality practitioners can foster employee authenticity and tenure by evaluating impression management strategies. This paper provides a discussion, suggestions and future research directions on how to take sustainable actions toward diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and belonging.
Originality/value
Although racial code-switching is a common behavioral strategy for whites and people of color, research on racial code-switching in the hospitality industry is limited. This study is among the first to examine racial code-switching’s health and career consequences.
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Bill B. Francis, Iftekhar Hasan and Gokhan Yilmaz
This chapter investigates whether core competence of managers and their expansive (vs. specialized) managerial style affects firms' innovative ability, capacity, and efficiency…
Abstract
This chapter investigates whether core competence of managers and their expansive (vs. specialized) managerial style affects firms' innovative ability, capacity, and efficiency. Using exogenous CEO departures as a natural experiment, it establishes a causal link between managerial capability and innovation. Importantly, it reveals that firms with talented managers receive significantly more nonself citations; make significantly lower self-citations and lesser citations to the others, indicating novel and explorative innovation achievements. Also, managers with higher general (specialized) ability are cited more (less) by patents from a wider range of fields. Lastly, career concern is identified as a mechanism linking higher ability and innovation.
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Chun Guo, Jane K. Miller, Melissa S. Woodard, Daniel J. Miller, Kirk D. Silvernail, Mehmet Devrim Aydin, Ana Heloisa da Costa Lemos, Vilmante Kumpikaite-Valiuniene, Sudhir Nair, Paul F. Donnelly, Robert D. Marx and Linda M. Peters
The purpose of this paper is to test a mediated model of the relationship between self-concept orientation (individualist and collectivist) and organizational identification…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test a mediated model of the relationship between self-concept orientation (individualist and collectivist) and organizational identification (OrgID, Cooper and Thatcher, 2010), with proposed mediators including the need for organizational identification (nOID, Glynn, 1998) as well as self-presentation concerns of social adjustment (SA) and value expression (VE, Highhouse et al., 2007).
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 509 participants in seven countries. Direct and mediation effects were tested using structural equation modeling (AMOS 25.0).
Findings
Individualist self-concept orientation was positively related to VE and collectivist self-concept orientation was positively related to nOID, VE and SA. VE mediated the relationship between both self-concept orientations and OrgID. In addition, nOID mediated the relationship for collectivist self-concept orientation.
Practical implications
This study identifies underlying psychological needs as mediators of the relationship of self-concept orientation to OrgID. Understanding these linkages enables employers to develop practices that resonate with the self-concept orientations and associated psychological needs of their employees, thereby enhancing OrgID.
Originality/value
This study provides a significant contribution to the OrgID literature by proposing and testing for relationships between self-concept orientations and OrgID as mediated by underlying psychological needs. The results provide support for the mediated model as well as many of Cooper and Thatcher’s (2010) theoretical propositions, with notable exceptions.