Professional Occupations,Knowledge-Driven Firms,and Entrepreneurship: A National and Regional Analysis

The worldwide dominance of Western nations in commercial knowledge-intensive services has declined between 1995 and 2010, but the slippage in revenue was only from 88 to 79 percent. The European Union and North America remain the two largest regions in consumption and in exporting. Four professional service sectors—accounting, law, engineering, and management consultancy—have shown stability or even growth in the past decade. Entry and expansion requirements in these fields, at home and abroad, constitute barriers for both individual professionals and companies. Entrepreneurship is evident in these sectors, as small and medium size enterprises have maintained their viability against large firms. Only accountancy shows a high degree of concentration, but competition in this sector, too, is expected from the emerging economies, especially China. Professional service firms of the West have forged strong linkages with both domestic and foreign clients via relationship marketing. Technology is an important factor via automation. Although each of the four sectors is facing both external and internal challenges, they continue to grow and appear to be meeting the challenges in part by more innovation and transparency.     

Cognition and Affect Interplay: A Framework for the Tourist Vacation Decision-Making Process

The article investigates traditional decision-making choice models and offers a new way of thinking about the tourist vacation-making intricacies. Specifically, this article examines the interrelationship between affect and cognition in the tourist vacation decision-making process and argues that consumers, during each vacation decision-making task, use both affect and cognitive processes in varying degrees depending on their valence and intensity. The traditional view of decision making posits that the consumer is a rational decision maker who proceeds through a series of prescribed steps before finding an optimal decision solution. However, with the growing prominence on the role of affect, “hot” aspects of cognition in psychology, and neuroscience investigations, much of the traditional cognitive-dominated theories are being reexamined. A tourist decision-making framework is presented demonstrating the proposed theory and provides understanding to the influences that affect and cognition have on the decision-making process. After delineating these concepts, propositions are presented followed by the Discussion and Conclusions section that summarizes and discusses challenges associated with studying affect.     

Brand management in small and medium-sized (SME) retailers: A future research agenda

Abstract

Recently, an emerging body of literature has advocated the importance of branding to small and medium-sized (SME) retailers. Nonetheless, this discourse has ignored the complexities and idiosyncrasies of retail branding. The aim of this paper is to provide a new theoretical understanding of brand management by SME retailers. In order to achieve this aim, the paper integrates the brand management, SME branding, and retail branding literature, and offers a conceptual framework for SME retail branding. A number of propositions are included that aid understanding of brand management in SME retail organisations. It is anticipated that these propositions will help shape future empirical research in this area. Further in-depth research into the application of branding within the SME retail context would address a significant gap in academic knowledge. In doing so, it would also provide important insights for management practice.     

A framework for SME retail branding

Abstract

It has become increasingly important for small to medium sized enterprise (SME) retailers to stand out in the current marketplace. Branding in SMEs is a growing area of academic interest, although the majority of studies have been based in the manufacturing sector. This study seeks to develop a framework of the characteristics, processes and dynamics of SME retailers. A qualitative research study was carried out with SME owner managers (OMs) over a period of 15 months. The findings extend the understanding of branding in SMEs in a number of ways. Firstly, it is found that SME retailers take a cautious approach to brand management, seeking to build loyalty, networks and relationships. Secondly, the holistic nature of SME retail branding presents a challenge to OMs who are resource-constrained. Thirdly, the soft, colloquial and intuitive approaches to brand equity appraisal are evident. Brand marketing is focused on word of mouth, which has implications for how OMs operationalise the brand around store experiences. Finally, the influence of the OM on branding decisions is clear. The key findings are discussed in relation to the retail context of the study, the centricity of the OMs in SME branding and entrepreneurial brand management.     

Interlocking directorates and the knowledge transfer of supermarket retail techniques from North America to Britain

Abstract

This paper considers the importance of interlocking directorates in knowledge transfer within the retail sector. In doing so it provides a discussion of the types of knowledge and more especially the importance of tacit knowledge. Such ideas are set against a more detailed review of the changing perspectives on the role of interlocking directorships. These discussions serve as a conceptual framework to a major case study of knowledge transfer between North America and British food retailers in terms of the innovation of self-service and the development of supermarkets in post-war Britain.     

Exploring supermarket loyalty card analysis to identify who buys fairtrade

The aim of this paper is to show how supermarket loyalty card data from a panel of over 1.7 million shoppers can be analysed to provide insights to profile the fairtrade shopper in order to enhance making targeted marketing decisions. The paper demonstrates the huge marketing potential that loyalty-card-based shopper segmentation can bring to objectively describe who buys fairtrade products, compared to profiling shoppers through a claimed/reported behaviour data-set. A paired-samples t-test is used to test the degree of appeal of fairtrade tea, coffee, chocolate, drinking chocolates, banana and sugar categories in Tesco to life-stage and lifestyle shopper segments in terms of their retail sales values over 104 weeks. The results show that analysing loyalty cards based on actual behaviour provides a more detailed picture of how specific fairtrade food product categories appeal to the various life-stage and lifestyle shopper segments.     

Potential of feed additives to improve the environmental impact of European livestock farming: a multi-issue analysis

Today, less than 3% of the 250,000 plant varieties available to agriculture are in use. Sources of (agricultural) biodiversity are under threat and disappearing in many regions. Increasing industrialisation of agriculture and top-down agricultural research have contributed to this dependence on a relatively few plant varieties. This article argues that new approaches to agricultural development research are needed to conserve agricultural diversity, improve crops, and produce food of quality for all. Such an approach should enable small farmers on marginal lands to participate as equal partners alongside agricultural scientists, fairly sharing their know-how, expertise and seeds. Three case studies illustrate how farmers and plant breeders are working together in a diversity of agro-ecological, socio-economic and political contexts to put these new approaches into practice. New forms of collaboration are producing an increase in diversity and a number of promising improved varieties in terms of yields, agronomic traits and taste. These varieties are showing better adaptation to the local environmental conditions without requiring extra external inputs. Long-term success requires that these efforts be backed up by supportive policies, by actions to ensure that policies are implemented, and where necessary by related legislation.     

Carbon accounting tools: are they fit for purpose in the context of arable cropping?

The agricultural sector contributes 9% towards total UK greenhouse gas emissions and so may offer significant potential as a sector to help meet national and international emission reduction targets. In order to help farmers manage their emissions and to encourage more sustainable farming, several carbon accounting tools are now available. This article describes a short study that selected five suitable tools and compared their performance on nine European arable farms, concentrating on the crop production components, to determine how useful they are for assisting in the development of site-specific mitigation strategies and how well they would perform within farm assurance or benchmarking schemes. The results were mixed, with some tools better designed for identifying mitigation opportunities than others. The results also showed that, quantitatively, the results are highly variable between tools and depended on the selected functional unit, this being highly important if the wider aspects of sustainability such as food security are to be considered. However, there is statistical consistency across the tools regarding the ranking order of the farms in terms of their emissions.