Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experience design phenomenon in the cultural sector. Specifically, it purports to articulate a set of design characteristics that support the alignment between an organisation’s design intention (i.e. intended experience) and the actual experience of customers (i.e. realised experience).

A single case study approach is adopted to explore the phenomenon from both the provider and customer perspectives simultaneously. A range of qualitative data, including 42 interviews with managers and customers as well as voluminous documentary evidence, are collected. Provider and customer data are analysed independently using a rigorous inductive analytical process to generate experience design themes and to assess possible gaps between intended and realised experience.

The findings reveal the design characteristics of touchpoints and the overall customer journey, which constitute the core experience, as well as the design characteristics of the physical and social environment, which support the realisation of the core experience, in a cultural context.

Limitations include difficulties in generalising the findings from a single case and in claiming that the set of design characteristics identified is exhaustive.

The paper makes several recommendations that are useful and relevant for customer experience practitioners in the cultural sector.

The paper’s contribution is to provide novel empirical insights into the four experience design areas of touchpoints, journey, physical elements and social elements in an experience-centric cultural context. On that basis, a conceptual framework for experience design in the cultural context is proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the term branded marketing events (BMEs), and examine the role of its experiential components as a strategic tool for the facilitation of customer brand engagement. This study examines five experiential components of BMEs at events held in Australia and France to determine their respective impact on customer brand engagement.

Surveys were distributed to attendees of ten events by six wine brands in South Australia, and six events in five sub-regions of Bordeaux.

Findings suggest that BMEs influence customers’ brand engagement and brand purchase intention in both Australia and France. However, the experiential components within the events had differing effects. Australian customers were influenced by cognitive, sensorial, and relational experiences and their increased customer brand engagement strongly influenced brand purchase intention. French customers, however, required pragmatic event experiences to build brand engagement.

Recognizing their mutual experiential and interactive foundations, this study integrates the research domains of marketing events, customer experiences and customer brand engagement, and contributes to the strategic understanding of how branded event experiences facilitate customer brand engagement.

This paper explores how hub-firms in a regional industrial cluster orchestrate resources to enhance the innovation capabilities of member firms and how this role changes as innovation projects develop. The work advances our understanding of how innovation-oriented clusters can drive the collaboration process, support the development of member capabilities and achieve desired outcomes.

The research utilises exploratory case studies within an innovation cluster, where a hub-firm brings together different players for specific innovation projects. Using resource orchestration theory, the paper analyses six project cases to reveal the shifting roles and activities related to structuring, bundling and leveraging different resources for innovation capabilities particularly associated with improved quality and reputation for the firms and region.

The study reveals the important role played by the cluster hub-firm in structuring, bundling and leveraging resources to create and fund project teams. After project formation, a team member takes the role of an orchestrator to bundle further and then leverage the resources to achieve desired outcomes for the team and the region.

This work focuses on a wine industry but has implications for the success orchestration of other regional industrial clusters. Also, the lack of hub-firm interaction during the project process provides an opportunity to consider mechanisms for better guidance of the project team.

There are implications for practitioners for participating in and further improving the collaborative innovative process.

Policymakers can benefit from the study as the required practices for stimulating innovation capabilities and economic development in a region are discussed.

This research enhances understanding of the hub-firm's role in a regional cluster not only in orchestrating resources to create collaborative innovation projects but how the role shifts over time.

Extending research on cultural differences in aesthetic appreciation, the purpose of this paper is to show how a more interdependent self-construal, a cultural and individual difference variable related to one’s social self, impacts the influence of visual harmony on consumer evaluations of marketing artifacts’ attractiveness.

Data were obtained via three studies from a total of 1,498 consumers in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, and Italy. Marketing visuals included the design of products, packages, typefaces, and logos. Self-construal was both measured and manipulated.

The results indicate that a person’s self-construal moderates the effect of visual harmony on attractiveness. Specifically, the positive effect of visual harmony on attractiveness – through self-congruity – is more pronounced with consumers possessing a more interdependent self-construal, and with products that are more hedonic than utilitarian.

Given the pivotal role attractiveness has in influencing consumer behavior, understanding what differences, at the individual and cultural levels, impact the harmony-attractiveness relationship helps marketers to better match the visual design of marketing stimuli to target audiences.

This study is among the first to show how the social-self impacts consumer response to marketing visuals. Further, value stems from adopting a holistic perspective on design, clarifying the process mechanism, and identifying boundary conditions.

This study aims to investigate the interacting effect of two forms of psychic distance (business and cultural) on export relationship management. Specifically, this research examines the moderating role of cultural distance in the effect of business distance on different dimensions of relationship management and financial export performance.

This research builds on a sample of 174 French export executives who were asked to rate their views of their relationship with their Chinese business counterpart in the wine trade, and their related performance.

A first finding lies in the strong positive effects of relationship management, relationship investment and communication quality on financial export performance. A second and important finding relates to the different effects of the business and cultural dimensions of psychic distance, while the former positively affects relationship management, the latter negatively moderates the effect of business distance on relationship management.

One limitation pertains to the focus on France and China as the only countries involved in the current research. Future research could investigate whether the results replicate in different countries. Further studies would also be needed to enrich the relationship management dimensions and test whether the effects observed here replicate in relation to other dimensions.

For export managers, this research offers a better understanding of business and cultural distance, and their effects on relationship structuring. Specifically, the results indicate that cultural distance matters more than business distance, meaning that business distance can help relationship management only when cultural distance is low. In addition, the results indicate that wine producers might gain from communicating openly with their business counterparts, for instance, by clearly explaining the business objectives, or through continuous interactions and temporal and financial investments.

The originality of this research lies in identifying the interaction effect of the business and cultural dimensions of psychic distance, with cultural distance revealed as a boundary condition for the effects of business distance on relationship management. The inclusion of marketing and financial aspects constitutes a further original aspect.

Faced with major new challenges in a rapidly evolving world market, small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the wine sector in the Bordeaux region urgently need to reconsider their strategic options. This paper, through an analysis of the nature, role, and interaction of competencies in strategy‐making processes in the wine sector, aims to identify the main components of wine companies’ competencies in order to devise a tool to aid their strategic decision making.

The research methodology, which is based on a cognitive approach, employs critical incidences methodology, content analysis and causal mapping.

A competencies study founded on a series of interviews conducted with the personnel of six wine SMEs in the Bordeaux region reveals the importance of eight core competencies (production, labour, costs, quality, investment, market, competition, and clients/sales) in devising strategy. In addition, this paper demonstrates that core factors affecting the success of strategic development include: knowledge versus know‐how; investment, quality; labour difficulties, team issues, market positioning; customer relationship and trust. The implications of the practical implementation of these results are discussed.

Shows the future prospects for French wine companies not being taken for granted. On account of radical market changes the French wine sector needs to re‐evaluate the situation and investigate new strategic options that might permit it to regain a competitive advantage in a changing environment.

This paper aims to examine consumer preferences and perceptions of rosé wine with an ultimate purpose of constructing a perceived image of rosé in the cross-cultural context.

The study was conducted in four markets, comprising the USA, New Zealand, France and the UK. The data were collected via a structured questionnaire through a combination of survey administration modes (pen-and-paper and online). Descriptive statistics, chi-square, factor analysis and ANOVA were used for analysis.

One of the key findings revolves around the construction of the perceived image of rosé and how this image varies in different markets. Effectively, this study presents an overview of the perceived reputation of rosé in four different market structures, shaped by different cultural and image management issues.

The most crucial implication of this research is the cultural variation in consumer attitudes toward rosé wine and its impact on marketing strategies to effectively target rosé consumers in different markets.

The vast majority of studies on wine consumer behaviour focus on red or white wines, whereas research on consumption of rosé is virtually non-existent. However, recent market trends indicate a growing popularity of rosé wine around the world. The current study is the first to concentrate on rosé as the focal point of research investigation. The study not only offers insights on the perceived image of rosé based on empirical data, but also provides a broader cross-cultural perspective on how this image varies in different markets.