Davide Giacalone, Toke Reinholt Fosgaard, Ida Steen and Morten Münchow
Food quality is a multi-dimensional concept comprising both objective and subjective components. Quality as defined from an industry perspective usually relies on different…
Abstract
Purpose
Food quality is a multi-dimensional concept comprising both objective and subjective components. Quality as defined from an industry perspective usually relies on different instrumental assessment and on ratings of “experts” which may not necessarily align with consumers’ perception of quality. The purpose of this paper is to deal with consumers perceptions of intrinsic quality in coffee from a sensory scientific and behavioral economic perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
In a blind taste test (n=205), naïve consumers tasted two cups of coffee and decided which they preferred. The two coffees varied greatly in their “objective” quality (based on expert grading) and retail value. Consumers were then revealed that one of the cups contained a coffee that was much more expensive than the other, and that they could get a free cup of their preferred coffee if they could correctly identify the most expensive one.
Findings
The results showed that preferences were equally distributed among the high- and low-quality samples, and that consumers did not perform better than chance level in the identification task. These results suggest that current grading systems used in the industry may be poorly correlated with the way consumers actually experience coffee, and thus that quality inference in the marketplace is more likely influenced by external cues (e.g. brand, label and price) than to intrinsic product quality. Nevertheless, the results also show that consumers who correctly answered the identification task were also significantly more likely to prefer the high-quality sample. This tentatively suggests that better sensory expertise is correlated with a preference for higher quality, though future studies are needed to confirm the correctedness of this interpretation.
Originality/value
This work highlights the difficulty of objectively defining food quality, and the limited usefulness of experts’ ratings widely used in the industry. Managerial implications of these findings, as well as implications for consumer policy, are discussed.
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Pierre Koning, Gerard J. van den Berg, Geert Ridder and Kaxsten Albaek
Anne‐Mette Hjalager and Steen Andersen
The period 1980‐1995 saw the emergence of a more professional Danish tourist sector, with increasing numbers of both employees and entrepreneurs possessing a formal degree or…
Abstract
The period 1980‐1995 saw the emergence of a more professional Danish tourist sector, with increasing numbers of both employees and entrepreneurs possessing a formal degree or diploma of some kind. Investigates the profile of employees with dedicated training and finds that their educational background does not give them any particular advantages vis‐à‐vis employees with less relevant qualifications. The retention of employees is a critical problem in Danish tourism, but while turnover is extremely high among the unskilled, significantly better retention rates are found among those with a professional or vocational tourism education. Discusses the implications of the retention pattern, arguing that tourism shares its professional labour market with neighbouring sectors, and that the industry and educational support framework must therefore take account of this. However, there is a very real risk of losing the competition for the best‐qualified staff. Finally, it is postulated that tourism is a locus for new types of career concepts; however, we still lack a genuine understanding of the role of tourism for the contingent or boundaryless career.
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Asbjørn Følstad and Knut Kvale
Customer journeys have become an increasingly important topic in service management and design. The purpose of this paper is to review customer journey terminology and approaches…
Abstract
Purpose
Customer journeys have become an increasingly important topic in service management and design. The purpose of this paper is to review customer journey terminology and approaches within the research literature prior to 2013, mainly from the fields of design, management, and marketing.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was conducted as a systematic literature review. Searches in Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, ACM Digital Library, and ScienceDirect identified 45 papers for the analysis. The papers were analyzed with respect to customer journey terminology and approaches, the relation to customer experience, the referenced background, and the use of visualizations.
Findings
Across the reviewed literature, customer journeys are described not only as a means to take the viewpoint of the customer, but also to reach insight into their experiences. A rich and at times incoherent customer journey terminology is analyzed and discussed, as are two emerging customer journey approaches: customer journey mapping (analysis of a service process “as is”) and customer journey proposition (generative activities leading toward a possible service “to be”).
Research limitations/implications
The review is limited to analyzing and making claims on research papers that explicitly apply the term customer journey. In most of the reviewed papers, customer journeys are not the main object of interest but are discussed as one of several topics.
Practical implications
A nuanced discussion of customer journey terminology and approaches is provided, supporting the practical application of a customer journey perspective.
Originality/value
The review contributes a needed common basis for future customer journey research and practice.
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Timo Dietrich, Jakob Trischler, Lisa Schuster and Sharyn Rundle-Thiele
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how vulnerable consumers can be involved in transformative service design and how this approach may enhance the design of such…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how vulnerable consumers can be involved in transformative service design and how this approach may enhance the design of such services. The study also analyzes how co-design with vulnerable consumers differs from existing user involvement processes with the purpose of developing a co-design framework.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study approach was employed, with six high schools in Australia identified as sites to conduct co-design sessions for a school-based alcohol education program. Adolescents were invited to review and (re)design an existing alcohol education program.
Findings
The study indicates that co-design with vulnerable consumers cannot be approached in the same way as conventional user involvement processes. Based on the insights generated from six co-design sessions as well as the examination of user involvement and co-design literature, the authors propose a six-step co-design framework. The six steps comprise resourcing, planning, recruiting, sensitizing, facilitation and evaluation.
Research limitations/implications
The co-design framework illustrates important differences to conventional user involvement processes. However, the generalizability of the research findings is limited to a specific study setting and a narrowly defined sample. Future research in a different setting is needed to further validate the presented findings.
Practical implications
For service design practice, this study provides guidelines on how co-design activities with vulnerable consumers can be effectively resourced, planned, recruited, sensitized, facilitated and evaluated. The framework outlines how co-design may be applied so that vulnerable consumers can become empowered participants during the design process.
Originality/value
This research contributes to the knowledge in transformative service research – a priority in service research – and service design by extending the boundaries of our understanding of processes and tools for the involvement of vulnerable consumers in transformative service design.
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Jorun Solheim and Ragnhild Steen Jensen
The importance of family firms for the development of capitalism, both past and present, has in recent years become widely recognized. Today there is a fast increasing body of…
Abstract
The importance of family firms for the development of capitalism, both past and present, has in recent years become widely recognized. Today there is a fast increasing body of literature about forms of family business and variations in family capitalism. Despite this new interest, few of these studies have made the family itself the focus of enquiry – and how different types of family structures and cultural traditions may influence the strategies and development of the family firm. Such connections are explored by comparing and discussing two cases of family firms and their history, set in Norway and Italy, respectively. It is argued that these two cases may be seen as examples of quite different ‘modes of familism’, with different implications for the running of an economic enterprise. These differences concern, first and foremost, cultural conceptions of gender, forms of inheritance, and the role of marriage in constituting the family firm.
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Maria Klona, Jane Menzies and Ambika Zutshi
Terrorism is as old as humanity itself, but its new form in the twenty-first century is adversely affecting the performance of businesses in both developing and developed…
Abstract
Purpose
Terrorism is as old as humanity itself, but its new form in the twenty-first century is adversely affecting the performance of businesses in both developing and developed countries. The purpose of this study is to identify and analyse the evolution and diffusion of academic knowledge on the topic of terrorism in business-related literature.
Design/methodology/approach
Data was gathered from two databases, namely, the Scopus and Web of Science over 30 years (1990–2019). The search terms related to terrorism in titles, abstracts and authors’ keywords, which resulted in a total of 1,097 articles. Bibliometric methods, including a thematic and content analysis identifying main themes and using Gephi and VOSviewer software, were used to analyse the data.
Findings
The results reveal the productivity of the main actors, current thematic choices and future research opportunities. The main thematic areas of the research arising from the bibliometric analysis included the impact of terrorism on economic growth, Foreign Direct Investment, tourism, stock market reforms, security of multinational corporations as a result of terrorism and finally, the impact of political instability and terrorism on business. This study’s findings may guide the research of future academics and assist policy stakeholders in their strategic choices related to future business development.
Research limitations/implications
The study has certain limitations that are inherent to the bibliometric methods or to the choices related to data collection and processing.
Practical implications
This study recognised evolution and trends regarding the influence of terrorism on businesses, which is crucial information for the development of business and policy strategies in the future. These strategies should enhance the ability of businesses to cope with the negative effects of terrorism and make these effects less devastating. For academics, this study provides relevant insights on recent research trends in the field of terrorism in business and emerging future academic thematic opportunities.
Social implications
The findings of the study indicate that issues of terrorism in business have broader social implications, which both academia and policy stakeholders can attend with their work.
Originality/value
This bibliometric review offers new insights into terrorism from the business lens by identifying the common streams of research in the field, along with the key journals, articles, countries, institutions, authors, data sources and networks in this field. The future research directions in this field of knowledge are also articulated in the study.
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The purpose of this paper is to critically review the existing research on the intersection between war and international business (IB) and to map out a future research agenda.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critically review the existing research on the intersection between war and international business (IB) and to map out a future research agenda.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on corporate examples and extant literature within IB, political science and international relations, the paper provides an introduction to the main concepts of war, a review of the IB research on war and provides a critical future research agenda.
Findings
The review of the multiple strands of war-related research in IB generally reveals an understudied area. Among other biases, prior research has focused on inter-state wars and has relatively unexplored foreign direct investment (FDI) and non-FDI within civil wars. Furthermore, previous studies offer little attention to how IB and multinational companies contribute to the emergence and development of wars.
Originality/value
The paper develops an analytical and critical research agenda for future research to examine the relationship between war and IB. This includes a set of questions for each of the three major phases of war: pre-conflict, armed violence and post-conflict. To the best of my knowledge, this has not been done before in the context of IB research.