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In the last 15 years, online sales of second-hand products have grown substantially due to changes in the economy, increasing interest in sustainability and the new opportunities offered by the alternative markets. However, little is known about the antecedents of customer retention in this particular online market. To this effect, the aim of this research is to bring new insights about what retains shoppers and creates loyal behaviour in this market by presenting a loyalty model based on expectancy-value theory and building on Olsen's satisfaction-loyalty model.

To achieve the above-mentioned purpose, a survey comprised of 507 respondents who had purchased second-hand products via an online platform during 2020 was used to test the model.

The results validate both the satisfaction-loyalty model and the mediator role of the fulfilment of expectations between perceived quality and satisfaction. The results also indicate that customer fulfilment of expectations depends only on the perception of product quality. Perceived product quality was also the dimension that most influenced satisfaction, followed by perceived vendor quality. Last, the dimensions that contributed most to loyal behaviour were satisfaction with the vendor and with the website.

The originality of this research lies in the validation of the unique satisfaction-loyalty model for online second-hand purchases. The value of this research is that it adds knowledge about effective strategies for platform owners and sellers to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty in online second-hand markets.

The purpose of this paper is to identifying, discussing and analyzing the existing education and training programs related to quality management system (QMS) in Spain.

Exhaustive search of the education system database was used to map the multifaceted of Spanish education system and professional training in addition to their relationships with the labor market. Thereafter, a thorough scan of the existing training related to management system standards was used to classify them into different subgroups as well as identifying possible education and the professional trainings related to QMS.

The overall results showed that general education in Spain and in particular related to QMS can be classified into four different groups including: official university, unofficial university, official non-university and unofficial non-university. Moreover, this study observed that the general concern about the employment and earnings in Spain has led the local, autonomous communities and national government to launch specific measures designed to both continue to increase the quality of the workforce with the QMS backgrounds and to ease the difficulties encountered when entering the labor market.

This study is the first to analyze and map the multifaceted character of Spanish education system and professional training related to QMS. The findings of this study may be useful for organizations trying to evaluate their QMS efforts, thus, engage their people in order to face the competitive challenges that lie ahead.

This study aims to analyze the mediating role that green practices (GPs) and green technologies (GTs) play in the relationship between lean manufacturing (LM) and industrial performance (IP). It is suggested that GPs and GTs are crucial for transforming lean routines into enhanced performance that simultaneously meet current environmental requirements.

The hypotheses are tested using a mixed methodology, which includes a partial least squares structural equation modeling approach and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) applied to a multisectoral sample from three European countries (Spain, Sweden and Croatia).

The results confirm that GPs mediate the relationship between LM and IP; however, in the case of GTs, this mediation does not appear to occur, although GTs emerge as a peripheral condition in the subsequent fsQCA. These findings highlight the need to avoid an exclusively technocentric approach and underscore the importance of implementing green organizational practices alongside technology investments to achieve successful lean initiatives.

It seems clear that managers should apply GPs, combined with LM, to improve sustainability and efficiency and should apply GTs once a more mature lean-green culture has been established.

In recent years, the scientific community has increasingly focused on the impact of implementing GPs and GTs on IP within LM plants. However, to the authors’ knowledge, no study has yet analyzed the combined effect of both initiatives. This paper seeks to address this gap by examining, in aggregate, the moderating effect of GPs and GTs on IP in LM plants.

The survival of companies today hinges on their adaptability and flexibility, with digital transformation (DT) and organizational slack (OS) playing crucial roles. Despite their recognized importance, these factors are often studied separately. This study aims to explore how OS facilitates DT and evaluate their synergies and trade-offs to improve performance.

Using data from the European Manufacturing Survey, structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), we investigate causal relationships and possible combinations between different dimensions of OS and DT that contribute to business performance.

We confirmed the positive effect of OS and DT on business performance, highlighting the importance of organizational over technological factors. While not definitively establishing OS as a precursor to DT, our findings underscore the need for human and operational slack to improve performance, especially in less technology-intensive contexts.

Our findings evidence that decision-makers should integrate OS with DT initiatives to improve the firm’s competitiveness. However, it is worth noting that while OS seems essential in low-tech shopfloors, its importance is lower in high-tech environments. Furthermore, within the possible combinations, managers should promote operational slack and digitalization, as it seems fundamental to improve business performance.

This article contributes to the management field in three ways. First, it clarifies controversies by providing evidence of the positive roles of DT and OS as drivers of competitiveness for manufacturing firms. Second, we verify that OS is not directly linked to DT, challenging existing assumptions. Third, it investigates the combinations of OS and DT that drive business performance improvement, emphasizing their synergies and trade-offs.

The purpose of this paper is to further research on the Kaplan and Norton (1996) balanced scorecard (BSC) model after having discerned that previous work has so far neglected to explore the interrelationships between the model’s dimensions and the influence contextual factors may have.

The data set used to meet this paper’s main objectives was collected using a structured online survey sent to the member companies of the Catalan Association of Accounting and Management (ACCID). Specifically, the surveys were directed to the heads of the finance departments. From the 3,500 mails sent, 336 companies decided to participate in the study. These figures represent an acceptable response rate of 9.6 per cent. As 83 of the companies declared that they would only use financial indicators, the final study sample totalled 253 firms.

The results demonstrate the mediating effects intermediate constructs have, and highlight how important leadership is in achieving success or high performance. These results follow on from previous empirical literature that analysed other management systems such as the Baldrige, the EFQM or the Deming models. In addition, some differences in the relationships as per the contextual factors studied have been detected. Therefore, the conclusions reached in this paper will be of interest to both academics and professionals in perceiving and understanding the logical flow of consequences any decision taken will produce.

The authors’ main contributions are: to have strictly followed the theoretical BSC model by combining both formative and reflective dimensions using the emerging partial least squares methodology; to have based the study on 253 firms and to have used 37 category indicators which, to our knowledge, are more than any other previous work; to have developed a mediation model designed to appreciate the interrelationships the dimensions in the BSC model have; to have analysed the possible differences there are in the interrelationships between the dimensions using two widely accepted influencing contextual factors in current literature, namely a firm’s size and its typology.

As part of the recent global financial crisis, Europe has experienced a double crisis (financial crisis and Euro crisis) leading to a double dip recession, meaning that the effects of the crisis have been longer and more severe. Tourism, specifically the hospitality industry, is important for the economy of Southern European countries, where the crisis has been the worst. Spain especially depends on tourism as important source of GDP. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify the contributing factors to better manage the crisis impacts and anticipate future impacts.

The authors examine the performance of a sample of 7,293 Spanish hospitality companies based on data from 2008 to 2011. With the aim of testing the hypotheses, a multivariate regression analysis was performed.

Results show the importance of a direct effect over both internal (workforce as well as hotel characteristics) and external factors (destination-related GDP spending) for growth, with varying influence across factors. Nevertheless, the most influenced are the moderated effects among the workforce and external variables.

This study contributes to the literature by providing a firm-level analysis (rather than an industry-level analysis) and offers an almost complete picture of a specific geographical area. Future research should address the performance of other tourism industries in times of crisis, such as restaurants and travel agencies, and the relationships between performances in different tourism industries. Regarding the limitations of the paper, the main limitation is associated with the use of panel data from an official database. These include problems in the design, data collection and data management of panel surveys.

These findings help the hospitality industry to understand the relevant drivers and coping strategies associated with the hospitality industry during a financial crisis.

This study is focused on the firm-level analysis instead of an industry-level analysis and can thus give advice to the strategic behaviour of companies.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and test an e-quality model for leisure products purchased online. Two dimensions are considered in order to configure the scale: functional quality and hedonic quality.

Based on a survey conducted on a sample of 1,109 online customers who had bought travel leisure products, the model and hypotheses were validated using structural equation modeling analysis.

The results reveal that both quality dimensions, through an e-quality second order dimension, are critical to obtaining loyalty through perceived value. In terms of functional quality, however, privacy is not significant for consumers because security programs have improved. Moreover, the e-quality – perceived value – loyalty service chain has been confirmed. In addition, a partial mediating effect of perceived value between e-quality and loyalty has been detected.

e-Service managers must be aware of the importance of hedonic quality in seeking to attract and retain customers on their web sites. On the other hand, it has to be considered not only direct effects for evaluating customer loyalty, but also the mediator effect of perceived value is needed.

From now on, the paper forecasts that “hedonics” will be present in future scales designed to assess e-quality, although what is really valued as important is still functional quality.

The purpose of this paper is to understand whether the innovative effort of organizations increases or decreases over time, especially when the competitive environment is changing, as has been the case in the current economic downturn. For this reason, the objective of this article is to gauge the possible differences in innovative behaviour between family firms (FFs) and non‐family firms (NFFs) when the business environment becomes increasingly hostile.

The approach is a natural experiment study, which the authors use to analyse the possible differential behaviour of FFs in the recession context in contrast to the previous growth context. The empirical data for the present study were compiled through the Spanish sub‐sample of the European Manufacturing Survey's (EMS) 2006 and 2009 editions. To test the hypothesis the paper uses a matched‐pairs method that increases the comparability of the available data.

Family firms have a significant higher reduction of R&D in comparison to nonfamily firms. But contrary to some of the hypotheses, the other innovation dimensions have no significant differences, although most results indicate that family firms systematically and generally reduce their innovation more than NFFs.

This research contains two original features. First, the authors have been able to analyse the change in innovation behaviour of a comparable set of FFs and NFFs. The second relevant feature is the analysis of the specific interaction of FFs’ differential traits with the different types of innovation. The availability of detailed empirical data on innovation adoption enabled this study and is also one of its contributions. This research has also value since the results can be read as a challenge to existing approaches on the preferences and nature of FFs that have either a positive or negative effect on innovation.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to test the role of the managerial team’s commitment to quality deployment, quality performance and firm performance; second, to shed light on the effects of a certified quality management system on this chain; and third, to analyze the effects of changes in this chain on different management team attitudes, namely, innovativeness.

Based on a survey conducted in a sample of 370 hotels from the region of Madrid (Spain), the model and hypotheses were validated using structural equation modeling analysis.

The results reveal the importance of a commitment to quality for quality deployment. In addition, quality deployment has a strong impact on operations and employee and customer performance. However, only impacts derived from customers’ perceptions of service quality affect firm performance. In addition, a contextual analysis was performed to verify whether various contextual factors (certification in a quality management standard and the innovative attitude of the management team) could modify the previously obtained results for the full sample.

The management team should understand that its attitude toward quality management could affect the company’s overall performance. On the one hand, the team should be aware that the cost of implementing quality practices could be a burden for employees in the performance of their daily activities. On the other hand, there is a positive relationship between involvement in addressing customers’ requirements and financial performance. Therefore, a balance between the efforts to maintain a certain level of quality by the firm’s employees and the service quality offered to the customers is crucial to achieving better financial performance.

The impact of the implementation of quality management practices on performance has been widely studied; however, the role of intangible factors has not been commonly discussed in service industries in general and even less so in the hospitality sector. This paper analyses the influence of the quality management team’s attitudes toward innovativeness and the implementation of a quality management standard.

This study aims to examine the development of dynamic capabilities and their effect on the competitive advantage of restaurants in 2009, one year after the beginning of the global financial crisis.

The restaurants were personally surveyed to discern the importance of proactive and reactive strategies for the organization. The resulting two organizational effects – cost cutting and the development of dynamic capabilities – were tested for their influence on competitive advantage.

The findings show that both proactive and reactive strategies reduce costs; however, only proactive strategies develop dynamic capabilities that improve competitive advantage.

The conclusions are drawn from a small sample of restaurants in Madrid, the capital of Spain. Given that Madrid enjoys a higher standard of living and greater business expenditures than other cities, the results may not be generalizable to the rest of the country or to other southern European capitals.

Managers must use proactive strategies for companies to survive during times of crisis. A focus on proactive strategies will improve a company’s competitive position.

Policy makers should support the development of proactive strategies and provide an adequate infrastructure of counseling and network creation.

To the best of our knowledge, no previous research specifically analyzes both the type of strategy deployed and its subsequent effect on dynamic capabilities and the consequences of the strategy on competitive advantage during a financial crisis.