Search results

Conjoint analysis has become an increasingly popular approach to estimate the benefits derived from the attributes of a product. This decompositional method provides information about the structure of consumers' preferences, as obtained from the overall judgement of a set of alternative products defined as a combination of levels of different attributes. A two‐Limit Tobit Model approach for conjoint analysis has been used to examine and compare wine attribute preferences within and between different retail outlets (wine shops, direct‐from‐producer and supermarkets) in two Spanish regions: Aragon and Navarre. Three attributes have been used in the conjoint design: price, origin and vintage year. Among these attributes, price is the principal aspect for consumers who buy in wine shops, origin is the most important attribute for supermarket buyers and grape vintage has more utility for buyers who obtain wine directly from the producer. Finally, three wine consumer segments have been identified and characterised in the two regions.

In this paper, market values for most of wine attributes are measured through the estimation of a hedonic price function, which relates the price of a wine to its various attributes. As more expensive wines are also associated with higher recognition of wine attributes, results also reflect consumers’ valuation of wine attributes. Data used in this paper comes from a wine catalogue in which only price categories are available. As independent variables, the following wine attributes have been considered: region of production, the year vintage, grape variety, alcoholic content and expert quality ratings. Due to the nature of available data, the hedonic price function has been estimated in the form of a Multinomial Logit model. Results indicate that the two first variables (region of production and the year vintage) are the main market price determinants while grape variety and the alcoholic contents are not significantly correlated with red wine prices.

This chapter aims to discuss the key issues of green entrepreneurship in tourism (GEiT), paying special attention to the environmental performance of green entrepreneurs and its relationship with strategy, brand reputation and long-term business growth.

Literature review is conducted on conceptual issues and several hotels first-hand experiences that were categorised to provide readers with business-world examples.

This chapter highlights how small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs are the agents who started green innovation initiatives and how larger corporations tested and validated them. A myriad of small green interventions awaits to be undercovered and implemented. Most of them can bring financial improvements to the entrepreneurs as the required initial investments are not necessarily high.

This chapter is explorative in nature, based on a literature review and interviews-based analysis of consolidated green initiatives, most of them being successful ones.

The forces driving green initiatives are identified and classified. Most important categories of green entrepreneurs are described and emphasis was placed on the managerial and marketing benefits linked to green initiatives and action plans.

This chapter presents models and concepts in an integrated way, facilitating a useful knowledge for prospective entrepreneurs wishing to acquire a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges related to eco-friendly business.

When acquiring advanced manufacturing technologies (AMT), the greatest caution should be taken regarding the performance measurement system to be used: the decision regarding new investments should not be conditioned by the excessive use of financial indicators to the detriment of the strategic objectives that motivated the investments. It is intended to analyze the aeronautical sector, for which the purchase of AMT is qualifying criteria, with two intentions: first, to identify the performance measurement systems that are used, and second, to test their correspondence with the objectives that motivated the investments.

A survey of the 20 plants in the population was conducted via a postal questionnaire plus a structured interview. The unit of analysis has been maintained through the triangulation of data sources.

The findings suggest that both financial and non‐financial indicators are used, with the latter gaining predominance over the former on some occasions, even though there is no clear correspondence between strategy and the measurement of performance. In the light of the findings, the question of what inspires a company's performance measurement system is still open, especially in those cases where there is no explicit strategy. With regard to practical implications, what seems to be indispensable is an improvement in the determination of the critical variables that should be used to measure performance.

Being valuable for academics and practitioners, this contribution relies, rather, on the possibility of a logical extrapolation to circumstances where the findings might apply, and researchers can judge whether the particular findings would be valid.

Provides new evidence on the adaptation of the make‐up and combination of the type of performance measures currently used by plants in the aeronautical industry, one of the sectors in which technological innovation is of the utmost importance.

This paper seeks to analyze consumer preferences toward fresh rabbit meat and obstacles and interest in consuming the product.

The paper uses the dual response choice experiment (DRCE) design which allows for analyzing forced and unforced options in choice experiments using the same sample. The heteroscedastic extreme‐value (HEV) model is used due to its relaxation of the restrictive assumption made in the multinomial logit model regarding the identically distributed error term across alternatives. The empirical analysis uses consumer‐level questionnaires to elicit information regarding consumer attitudes toward rabbit meat in Catalonia (Spain).

The results demonstrate a higher preference for rabbit meat from “Catalan” origin followed by higher quality certification information. Convenience and “ready‐to‐eat” products made from rabbit meat may help bolster increased consumption. An effective communication campaign is needed to educate individuals regarding the health characteristics of rabbit compared to other types of meat. Furthermore, results demonstrate that the ordering of attributes is not significantly different from forced and non‐forced choices obtained from the DRCE design. However, significant differences on the magnitude of the preferences for some attributes' levels are found.

From a methodological point‐of‐view, the study follows a similar design to the dual response choice experiments. However, the study is differentiated by asking consumers whether they are willing to buy the product. More emphasis is made on the purchasing context of the task leading consumers to focus more on their budget constraints by considering the price. The study uses the DRCE design as an alternative of the traditional single stage choice experiments. Owing to budgets constraint, the study could be improved by comparing results from both designs. At the empirical level, it would be interesting to extend the study to other geographical parts in Spain.

The study can help policy makers in stimulating demand for rabbit meat. Rabbit meat farmers in Catalonia were forced to abandon their farms due to the lack of demand. Consumption has decreased dramatically. As recommended in the paper, high quality labelling of the meat, improving the carcass format and its presentation and the healthiest characteristic of the meat could be a good way to promote and stimulate demand.

From the empirical point‐of‐view, this study, to the authors' knowledge, is the first application of CE and CV to analyze consumers' preferences towards rabbit meat. Furthermore, it is the first paper that applies the HEV model in agro‐food economics and specifically towards rabbit meat.

Emerging markets in newly industrialised countries have caught the attention of managers of manufacturing companies facing heavy domestic and global pressure. Key barriers to the effective management of international manufacturing operations need to be identified. The same applies to the management of international service operations. The share of services in international trade, the amount of foreign direct investments made and the number of multinational service‐sector enterprises has been increasing rapidly in the last two decades. Existing studies on service internationalisation apply a fairly broad theoretical base. This paper contributes by examining the internationalisation behaviour of Spanish financial service‐sector companies in Latin America to find out if general internationalisation patterns are applicable or if the manufacturing sector influences their internationalisation behaviour.

This study aims to identify how Spanish consumers’ extrinsic preferences for food have evolved by examining the extant literature on food preferences in Spain, focusing on food-related attributes and food-related values.

This study is based on a synthetic review of the extant academic literature on Spanish consumer preferences for food-related attributes and food-related values from the mid-20th to the 21st century. This study uses key economic and social milestones that are most likely to influence food value chain actors to show how consumer preferences have evolved over the study period.

Spanish consumer food attribute preferences expanded as the food sector of the nation continued to grow, and value preferences showed a similar pattern from the mid-20th to the 21st century. The drivers of these preferences were trust, lifestyle, education (campaigns), sociodemographic factors and purchasing power.

Evaluating the extant literature’s contribution to consumer preferences for food-related attributes and values is important because it can aid in understanding the hierarchy and variety of consumers’ food preferences as well as the factors that drive these preferences. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore how Spanish consumer preferences evolved between the mid-20th and 21st centuries.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel method to analyse dynamic interactions of stakeholders to explain how a set of agents can act by considering the power/influence positions.

A novel mathematical application uses the importance of characteristics algorithm in combination with composition max-min to compare, group and order information according to the importance of its characteristics. The mathematical application is focused on a strategic analysis, evaluating stakeholder dynamics through power relationships.

The results show a comparison of the relationships among each of the stakeholders to obtain the relative intensity and importance of relationships between them, given by the fuzzy matrix FRInM and the fuzzy matrix FRIM, respectively. This application provides a useful tool for a dynamic analysis of stakeholders in a complex environment, where the best approach to performing a strategic analysis process is sought.

The main implication of the proposed approach is taking into account the importance of information to establish the boundaries and relationships of each characteristic according to its intensity. However, limitations are due to the nature of this research, based on theoretical assumptions regarding stakeholders and the use of a hypothetical example to show the operation of algorithms.

The primary advantage of this proposition is that it takes into account the importance of information to establish the relationships among the characteristics according to their intensity. In addition, it performs multiple comparisons among each characteristic of the information. The interests and opinions of decision makers can be parameterised. A mathematical application shows how each interest group could be classified and related according to subjective information.