Future Issues in Sales,Marketing, and Revenue Management in Greater China: What Keeps You Up at Night?

ABSTRACT

“Recognizing the current global economic crisis, what do you feel are the key impacts it will have on (sales, marketing, or revenue management) in the hospitality industry in the next 5 years within the Greater China region?” This was the question asked in a Delphi study with 37 hotel industry leaders in Greater China and a follow-up Thought Leaders Roundtable. The results identified the top five impacts in each of the disciplines and the Roundtable provided insights into how to address them. Additionally, how long these impacts will affect the region was determined.     

Values and Poetic Organizations: Beyond Value Fit Toward Values Through Conversation

In the midst of greed, corruption, the economic crash and the general disillusionment of business, current conceptions of leadership, organizational values, and authenticity are being questioned. In this article, we fill a prior research gap by directly exploring the intersection of these three concepts. We begin by delving into the relationship between individual values and organizational values. This analysis reveals that the “value fit” approach to creating authenticity is limited, and also indicates that a deeper exploration of the nature of values and the role of leadership is necessary. More specifically, we propose that organizational values should be viewed as an opportunity for ongoing conversations about who we are and how we connect. Through this type of dialogue which we define as “value through conversation”, we can create what we call poetic organizations. A typology of four interconnected values each of which forms a foundation for the critical questioning and inquiry that might be found in poetic organizations is developed. We suggest that this conceptualization offers a new and dynamic approach for thinking about the relationships between leadership, values, and authenticity and has important implications for both research and practice.     

The Face of the Brand: How Art Directors Understand Visual Brand Identity

This study interviewed 15 art directors to explore their understanding of visual brand identity. Art directors define visual brand identity as the holistic look and feel of a brand, manifest as consistency among the brand, its strategy, and all its individual visual elements, ongoing over time. Art directors search for “ownable” visual elements within the competitive space and rely on examples of previous brand advertising to start ideation. We identified four possible routes that visual brand identity construction can take, corresponding to whether existing visual brand identity is strong or weak, and whether many or few client mandatories are imposed. The interviews also indicated that conflicts with clients may arise because elements that contribute to a brand's visual identity may be selected, in part, based on art directors’ personal taste preferences and felt emotion. Implications for managing visual branding and for future research on brand identity are discussed.     

To Drop or Add: Market Timing and Supermarket Decisions on Irradiated Ground Beef

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the sequential nature of supermarkets' decisions regarding irradiated ground beef using data collected from two separate supermarket surveys. We identify four mutually exclusive groups of supermarkets: those that adopted irradiated ground beef early and subsequently either continued or ceased offering the product–Early Adopters or Droppers, and those that at first chose not to adopt and subsequently either added or continued not offering the product–Adders or Never Adopters. We find that one set of store-level factors plays an important role in separating Early Adopters from Droppers, while a separate set of factors is important in separating Adders from Never Adopters.     

Using Video to Build an Organization's Identity and Brand: A Content Analysis of Nonprofit Organizations' YouTube Videos

Organizational scholarship has increasingly focused its attention to how nonprofit, for-profit, and government agencies develop their unique organizational identity through their strategic communication efforts. As social media continues to become more prominent in communication campaigns due to the high levels of public usage and public involvement with organizations on social media sites, it is important to examine these social media messages as they relate to organizational identity. YouTube videos increasingly are being used by organizations to educate and inform just as much as they are to entertain. Through a content analysis of the most viewed videos on the top 100 official nonprofit YouTube channels, this study found that nonprofit organizations primarily use their YouTube videos to inform and educate viewers about their missions, programs, and services. While the videos also occasionally discuss the organizations' advocacy, volunteering, and fundraising efforts, nonprofit organizations were not living up to their potential in terms of engagement through direct appeals for involvement. Additionally, the organizations were more likely to use outsiders' words and stories to build the videos' narratives rather than using internal stakeholders. The benchmark numbers provided by this study reiterate key rules that are stressed in practitioner-oriented work on video production for branding and identity-building efforts.     

Playing at the queer edges

Through autoethnography, queer theory and edgework, I examine Wild Ginger Witchcamp, an annual five‐day event where one hundred or so people gather to celebrate shared politics, spirituality and environmental concerns. I include narratives of lived experience, woven and layered into the text to illuminate the complex realities of leisure that extends beyond resisting the normative to one of the nurturing alternatives. The social health of a community depends on the community’s ability to publicly affirm itself, and it is critical that a community find a way to transmit and transform its culture. Queer theory, the related constructs of heteronormativity and counterpublics, along with edgework, can help us understand the importance of communal and culturally relevant leisure particularly for individuals and communities that do not see themselves reflected in the dominant culture.     

Mapping research on legacy of mega sporting events: structural changes,consequences, and stakeholder evaluations in empirical studies

ABSTRACT

Findings from empirical studies on the legacy of hosting a mega sporting event are inconclusive. This paper considers empirical studies published in English language peer-reviewed journals between 1997 and 2016 to identify trends and gaps in current knowledge related to event-attributed changes in structures, consequences, and stakeholder evaluations. Following systematic literature search guidelines, 233 articles (238 studies) were coded. The authors assessed structural changes, consequences, and stakeholder evaluations. Contextual factors, such as type of event, timeframe, and geographical location were also considered, as well as research design, methods, and a risk of bias assessment. Most studies considered structural changes per se, without further specification (such as the urban and human level). Economic and social consequences were the two most often considered consequences. The range of stakeholders considered in the studies was diverse, although host city residents received the most research attention. The mapping helps scholars better understand dominant themes, critically appraise studies as well as identify gaps in existing research. The authors discuss managerial implications and propose research directions that address concerns: unclear definition and biased selection of relevant stakeholder groups, short legacy timeframes, and the low-level evidence for cause-effect relationships in the legacy production process.