As they sow,so shall they reap: customers’ influence on customer satisfaction at the customer interface

Extant research provides valuable knowledge about how firms can satisfy their customers. However, it is unclear how customers themselves contribute to their satisfaction. From a basis in the job demands–resources model, the authors propose a customer demands–resources model. In this model, customer demands (negative customer behaviors) and customer resources (positive customer behaviors) affect customer satisfaction through frontline employees’ customer-oriented attitudes and customer-oriented behaviors. Using dyadic data from 141 frontline employees and 375 customers, this study identifies customer behaviors as an important source of customer satisfaction. Customer demands impede frontline employees’ customer-oriented attitudes and customer satisfaction through frontline employees’ emotional exhaustion, whereas customer resources indirectly increase customer satisfaction. Customer resources also buffer the negative effect of customer demands on frontline employees’ customer-oriented attitudes.     

Home or next door? Patenting by European food and beverage multinationals

We study the location of the inventive activity of 59 major European food and beverage multinationals and their 8432 subsidiaries worldwide, by analysing the geographical distribution of the inventors listed in the European Patent Office (EPO) applications, US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patents and triadic, international and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent families of the companies filed between 1978 and the early 2000s. The sampled companies tend to locate their R&D activities in the home country. EU-based companies, more specifically, deploy an intra-regional strategy in EU countries, especially with regard to the inventions most closely related to their core businesses (food), for which, however, they do not display a home-country preference. Inventions related to non-core business tend to be produced in extra-regional locations.     

An Exercise in Early Modern Branding

This article examines the marketing of an author through the integration of their persona into their text to form a brand that can then be purchased by the consuming reader with confidence. Thus a reader chooses a book by a writer known for a particular genre following the same instincts that might prompt them to choose a successful brand. The example used is an early modern woman writer, who developed agenre of scandal fiction that became synonymous with her. The article contextualises the writer giving some indication of the prevalent market conditions and her motivation in differentiating herself from her competitors.     

Addressing gender in agricultural research for development in the face of a changing climate: where are we and where should we be going?

Agricultural development efforts that do not address persistent gender gaps miss opportunities for greater impact. This synthesis reflects on key findings from integrated quantitative and qualitative analyses at the nexus of gender, agricultural development, and climate change. Linked farm household-, intrahousehold-, community-, and institutional-level data highlight significant and nuanced gender differences in adaptive capacity of individuals and communities to respond to climate change. The gender gap is also substantial in exposure to climate change and its impacts, and uptake of new practices that lower vulnerability. Women in agriculture will remain largely neglected by information and service providers unless their differing needs, access to, and control over resources are considered at policy and project design stage. Yet clear guidelines for addressing the needs of both men and women in different environments and agricultural systems are still lacking. Participatory ‘action research’ approaches with a focus on co-learning, and using innovative cell phone or social media-based approaches offer exciting new opportunities. Agricultural development decision-makers and project designers need to ‘design with gender in mind’. Equipping them with tools and knowledge of innovative gender-transformative practices and intervention options and creating accountability for serving women and men will be key.     

THE INFLUENCE OF PHILANTHROPIC FOUNDATIONS ON CITY GOVERNMENT INNOVATION

In this study I examine the role of philanthropic foundations in stimulating city government innovation. Reduced budgets and rising consumer demands are challenging organizational capacity in government, prompting government officials to recognize the need for innovation to improve policies, programmes and practices. This empirical study draws upon qualitative interviews and policy reports to generate comparative case studies on three city governments in England: Bristol, Manchester and Newcastle. It builds on work in urban studies and policy mobilities that reveals how foundations can influence urban agendas, finding that philanthropic foundations engage with city governments through three different types of collaboration: direct provision of financial resources, exchange of non-financial resources with city governments and indirect engagements. Philanthropic foundations are blending financial resources and less tangible provision of space and time to enable city governments to experiment with new ideas, policies and ways of working. The fusion of non-governmental resources provides city governments with the capacity to act, and city governments often use non-governmental funding for riskier projects and for projects that may not have taken place if public funding had been used. Through these different collaborations and by deploying a suite of interventions and methods, philanthropic foundations stimulate product, service, process, conceptual and governance innovation in city governments.     

Assessment of university campus café service: The students' perceptions

This paper presents the results of a study conducted to examine the important attributes in food service provision on a large Australian university campus. Ten café outlets (A to J to maintain anonymity of the café outlets) positioned across a large university campus located in an urban residential area were surveyed. A total of 410 students participated in the survey. Based on the frequency of patronage to the cafés results showed that five of the ten café outlets were more frequently visited in a given week. These were Café A, Café B, Café H, Café F, and Café I; however, the focus of this paper would be on Café A, which was just recently opened for business. Results indicated that students considered quality, price and service as the most important attributes in patronizing a particular café on campus. Results also indicated that students were most satisfied with important attributes such as convenience, ambience and quality during their visit to the café. Paired samples' t-test results showed statistically significant differences between the perceived importance and level of satisfaction with all attributes except the opening hours attribute. Results are discussed with possible implications and suggestions for further research.     

Is Boreout a Threat to Frontline Employees' Innovative Work Behavior?

With the recognition that innovation is the lifeblood of competitive firms, researchers have investigated multiple antecedents of employees' innovative work behaviors. Most studies focus on supportive work conditions, work requirements, or even high work challenges as drivers of innovative work behavior as the extent to which frontline employees (FLEs) generate new problem‐solving ideas and transform these into uses during the service encounter. This study focuses instead on a lack of resources at the service encounter. Specifically, boreout is a negative psychological state of low work‐related arousal, manifested in three main forms: a crisis of meaning at work, job boredom, and crisis of growth. According to the conservation of resources theory, these three dimensions of job boreout as lack of resources draw energy from FLEs and thus, likely affect innovative work behavior. Data from 142 FLEs and their customers confirm that these dimensions of boreout affect FLEs' innovative work behavior, though in varying ways. A crisis of meaning at work and crisis of growth both impede innovative work behavior, but job boredom has no effect. Furthermore, support provided by customers moderates the relationships of these three boreout dimensions with innovative work behavior in unique ways.     

Impacts of Hedonic and Utilitarian User Motives on the Innovativeness of User‐Developed Solutions

When individual consumers develop products for their own use, they in part expect to be rewarded by the use value of what they are creating (utilitarian user motives), and in part expect to be rewarded intrinsically by such things as the fun and learning experience derived from creating it (hedonic user motives). This paper shows a first‐of‐type study to understand the relationship between individual consumers' motives to innovate and the novelty and utility of the solutions they develop. The theoretical framework integrates self‐determination theory and goal‐setting theory. The major findings of this study are that utilitarian user motives positively affect the utility of user‐developed innovations. In contrast, hedonic user motives drive solution novelty; the more an innovator is “in it for fun,” the more novel the solution developed. However, hedonic user motives also have an inverted U‐shaped relationship with solution utility. When the dominant motive for developing an innovation is the joy of the creative process rather than use value, the utility of what is developed is negatively affected. These findings are of research interest, and can be of significant practical interest to producers hoping to benefit from user‐developed innovations. For the first time, it has been possible to show that the adjustment of hedonic rewards, for example by means such as gamification, can affect the nature and utility of solutions individuals create.