Search results

Discusses the restructuring of the food production, processing and retailing sectors in the USA. Describes different methods of vertical and horizontal integration that have occurred. Goes on to discuss the consolidation of business in retailing in particular. Refers to the relationships that are being formed between the supermarket chains, for example Wal‐Mart and Kroger, and dominant food‐chain clusters. Considers whether or not smaller retail chains and wholesalers should feel threatened by this consolidation. Takes the dairy sector in the USA as a case study in the restructuring of the retailing and processing sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to measure consumer‐based brand equity in the supermarket industry and to identify the strategy drivers associated with levels of brand equity for consumers' typically patronized supermarkets.

A nine state survey of consumers was conducted to provide brand equity ratings of 22 national, regional, and specialty supermarket brands.

Factor analysis yields two brand equity outcome dimensions and eight brand equity drivers. A large proportion of consumers clearly have strong feelings about the supermarkets they patronize, and that effort expended in keeping customers, service level, and product quality and assortment appear to be basic requirements for achieving high levels of consumer‐based brand equity. The top supermarket brands typically score highly on at least one other key driver of equity. Supermarket brands that use formal loyalty programs to drive patronage in general have lower levels of customer‐based brand equity.

Selection of designated supermarkets was limited by spatial distribution in the geographic area. The sample is more affluent and educated than the general US population.

As retailers search for ways to compete more effectively for consumer dollars and loyalty, they need to explore in more detail the customer‐based brand equity and the drivers of customer equity associated with their retail brands.

This paper is the first to link consumer‐based brand equity and the supermarket branding efforts that drive it for specific retail brands. In an industry with numerous choices in nearly all market areas and low switching costs, successful branding can translate into emotional commitment, shopping loyalty, and even person‐to‐person promotion of the brand to others.

Leaders are important social actors in organizations, centrally involved in establishing and maintaining institutional values, a view that was articulated by Philip Selznick (1957) nearly a half-century ago, but often overlooked in institutionalists’ accounts. Our objective is to build on Selznick’s seminal work to investigate the value proposition of leadership consistent with institutional theory. We examine public interview transcripts from 52 senior executives and discover that leaders’ conceptualizations of their entities align with the archetypes of organization (i.e., economic, hierarchical, and power oriented) and institution (i.e., ideological, creative and collectivist) and cohere around a set of relevant values. Extrapolating from this, we advance a theoretical framework of the process whereby leaders’ claims function as transformational mechanisms of value infusion in the institutionalization of organizations.

An examination of US telecommunications system and service provider AT&T′s moves to face the challenges brought about by deregulation in 1984 and the advent of competition from other US operators. Explains how the old ways of working brought problems, leading to crisis management in the wake of the changes and the adoption of quality processes. Examines the results of a 1986 study by AT&T quality managers on the uniquely American Quality Archetype and the need for a nurturing environment where failure is understood as part of achieving a goal, culminating in a model based on the archetype. Explores AT&T′s quality library series of books and courses to educate employees throughout the organisation. Concludes with an assessment of what still needs to be done within AT&T to become a world class organisation by 1994 and defining those remaining challenges.

Approximately 120 million children under the age of 14 labor full time, according to recent estimates by the International Labor Organization (ILO) (U.S. Department of Labor, 2002, 2001; UNICEF, 2000). If those for whom work is a secondary activity are included, the number of working children rises to 250 million. The majority of child laborers live in Asia, although Africa has a higher rate of child labor. The ILO estimates that 40% of African children between the ages of five and fourteen years of age, work. (U.S. Department of Labor, 2002, 2001) Although the majority of the 120 million full time working children labor in the commercial agricultural sector, child labor is not confined to any particular economic sector. Children work as domestic servants, in mining, as divers in deep-sea fishing, in construction, as prostitutes, in toy, shoe and garment factories, as cigarette makers, as rug weavers, in charcoal making, in glass and ceramics factories, as sports equipment and surgical instrument makers, in the match and fireworks industries and in many other jobs.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast customer perceptions related to satisfaction with conventional grocery stores as compared to specialty grocery stores. The study examines store attributes of product assortment, price, quality, and service in order to determine which attributes have the greatest impact on store satisfaction for each store format.

A mail survey was sent to a sample of specialty and conventional grocery store customers. The ten state sample was drawn from US households located in postal (ZIP) codes in areas where national specialty stores (e.g. whole foods) were located.

Perception of satisfaction were higher among specialty grocery store customers compared to conventional grocery store customers. For both store formats, store price, product assortment, service and quality positively influenced satisfaction. Stepwise regression indicated that each store attribute contributed differently to store satisfaction for conventional and specialty store formats.

The results demonstrate that price, product assortment, quality, and employee service influence store satisfaction regardless of store type (conventional stores or specialty stores). However, the degree of influence of these attributes varied by store type. The results imply that while specialty store shopper satisfaction characteristics are clearly delineated, conventional store shopper characteristics are more difficult to pinpoint. Research limitations include a sample that is more highly educated and has higher incomes than the average American household.

Despite the growth of new product categories and new industry players, few studies have investigated customer satisfaction within the retail food industry. Comparisons of specialty and conventional food stores are equally scarce.

At the center of its core, Health Care is the application of a general body of knowledge to the needs of a specific patient. For centuries, this knowledge was generally regarded as the property of the healing professions and the individual clinician, not necessarily of the health care delivery organization. Managerial practice also had a tendency to treat this knowledge as an attribute of the provider, thus focusing on the resources clinicians used as they provided care and on the hotel-type functions associated with inpatient institutions. That is, there was a deliberate differentiation between management practice, focused on business processes, and clinical practice, focused on the activities and decisions of diagnosis and treatment. Though often described as bureaucratic and incrementally changing, health care is also a very dynamic and innovative field. Around the globe, research scientists, private industries, academics, and governmental and nongovernmental agencies continue to work in innovating new ways to provide better care, find cures, and improve health. At the same time, health care delivery has been undergoing a gradual but important change. Patient care, once the domain of the individual practitioner, is becoming the domain of the care delivery organization. Additionally, the mission of these organizations is shifting. As science, technology, care processes, and care teams have become more complex and diverse, the way in which the activities of care are organized and the institutional context in which they occur have become an increasingly important determinant of the effectiveness and efficiency of that care. As a result, the object of management has changed. In response to these changes, health care managers have started focusing on the management of the care as well as the management of the institutions in which the care takes place, thereby creating a set of ‘Best Practices’ which are briefly described in this paper along with how the process of innovation is developing in the health care system.

Thorstein Veblen would certainly be stunned that less than 100 years after he coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption” there's been a sudden and conspicuous, global‐wide drop in consumer purchases.

Postcards have been sold by the billions over the past 100 years or so, but you never would recognize their popularity by checking library holdings. Most libraries ignore them, yet a reporter observed at the 1981 national poster and postcard show: “Postcard collection—a nostalgic pastime that has become a consuming passion for thousands of Americans—is more popular today than when picture postcards first caught on at the turn of the century.” Among the dealers of new cards, Kennard Harris says that “in the past five years there has been an explosion of museum postcard publishing and sales in this country.”