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This paper explores the strategy of a professional soccer team introducing a new brand for selling merchandise. After reviewing literature on brand management, brand equity and brand associations (with a special focus on their application in the sports industry), this paper examines the case of U.S. Lecce launching the Salento 12 brand and discusses characteristics and key success factors of the project. A model of brand equity drivers of consumers' behavioural intentions towards Salento 12 branded products is designed and tested on a sample of 150 customers. Brand loyalty, perceived value and brand associations with the territory are found to positively affect behavioural intentions.

Differently from traditional approaches that rely on the analysis of single dimensions of the tourism phenomenon, this study aims to experiment a systemic approach based on structured and unstructured data sources to elaborate a composite index to measure the tourist competitiveness of marginal areas, with the final aim to design and plan proper socio-economic development strategies.

The methodology adopted to carry out the study follows a four-step process and relies on indicators that are both relevant and accessible. The first step concerns the analysis of the literature about the existing approaches to calculate a tourism index. The second step concerns the definition of the indicators and the collection of data by using both structured and unstructured sources. The third step focuses on the population of the data set. Finally, the fourth step aims at calculating the tourism index through a composite-based methodology and using it for a pilot application in a Southern Italy province.

The study calculates a synthetic tourism index for each of the 97 municipalities of the Province of Lecce (a city located in the southeast of Italy). The proposed index combines administrative, institutional and open data sources to derive a single indicator for each municipality, thus supporting decision-makers in understanding the complex reality and competitiveness level of territories in the tourism industry.

The main elements of originality of the study are the breadth and typology of data sources considered to calculate the composite indicator of tourism competitiveness (both structured and unstructured); and the use of weighting and aggregation procedures in the methodological issues.

The purpose of this paper is to theorize and prioritize the main categories of risk sources for the European manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in accordance with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001:2015 requirement “risk based thinking.” Furthermore, the research analyses how these organizations intend to manage the risks and their effects.

A first exploratory interview with 28 experts from international certification bodies and manufacturing companies which revealed 11 risk sources has been performed. Then, quality managers from European manufacturing SMEs were surveyed to determine whether or not they intended to manage the risk sources suggested by the experts. A 95 percent confidence interval was performed to evaluate the range of plausible values for the population. The quality managers were also asked to comment on each category of risk source.

The research shows that the most taken into account categories of risk sources were the internal production of nonconforming products followed by poorly trained workers with a lack of skills and awareness, supplier nonconforming products and lack of risk-based assessment. The least taken into account category was nonconforming technical results in the design process. The quality managers’ qualitative comments also brought to light interesting issues which represented avenues for new research.

The limitations of this research lie in the first exploratory interview with the 28 experts. This process could be improved by means of a larger sample of experts. Furthermore, these experts could have included risk source categories which could fall outside of an ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS) scope and application.

Quality managers in SMEs can now address the new ISO 9001:2015 requirement knowing what the priorities from a statistical point of view are. This implication is also relevant to QMS consultants who are implementing ISO 9001:2015 QMS together with their customers.

The novelty of this research is that it has been tried for the first time to theorize what the main categories of risk sources in accordance with the risk-based thinking requirement are for European manufacturing SMEs.