Deployment of Restaurants Websites’ Marketing Features: The Case of Spanish Michelin-Starred Restaurants

ABSTRACT

Websites have become a fundamental marketing tool for tourism businesses and have a special importance for highly rated restaurants. The aim of this article is to propose and apply a model to evaluate the deployment and adoption of website marketing features of restaurants from a specific category. The model is based on the application of an extended model of Internet commerce adoption (eMICA) technique for technical depth, combined with content analysis for breadth. This study analyzes the website features and capabilities for Spanish restaurants in the 2015 Michelin Red Guide. A total of 102 restaurants were analyzed. The results of the website evaluation model suggest that, despite the importance of the restaurant sector in the economy and in the tourism industry, the websites of high-quality restaurants require improvements to adapt to customers’ demands. Results further found that these websites are not tourist-orientated and are established at different stages of development.     

Book Review

Tourism and Postcolonialism: Contested Discourses, Identities and Representations. C. Michael Hall and Hazel Tucker (eds). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2004. 0-415-33102-1     

The futures of offshoring FDI in high-tech sectors

This paper examines what is still a relatively new phenomenon in the literature, the outsourcing/offshoring of high-technology manufacturing and services. This has become a concern for both policy makers and academics for two reasons. Firstly, policy makers have become concerned that the offshoring of high-technology sectors in the West will follow the more labour intensive sectors, and move to lower cost locations. Secondly, international business theory has tended to view low costs, and high levels of indigenous technological development as being the two main drivers of location advantage in the attraction of FDI. We show that this may not be the case for offshored high-technology manufacturing or services.     

Vector network equilibrium problems with capacity constraints of arcs

In this paper, we study a (weak) vector equilibrium principle with capacity constraints of arcs and common arcs in some different paths. We obtain some necessary and sufficient conditions for a (weak) vector minimum cost flow. By virtue of a (weak) Δ-equilibrium principle, we also derive some necessary and sufficient conditions for a weak vector equilibrium flow.     

Co-creation with clients of hotel services: the moderating role of top management support

Hotels can strengthen their competitiveness by expanding their innovation process beyond the boundaries of the firm to exploit the valuable knowledge and skills of their customers. This study examines the effects of new service (NS) co-creation with customers in the hotel industry on NS performance, as well as the moderating role of top management support. The research also explores the main barriers faced by hotels to co-create service innovations. Partial least squares structural equation modelling results indicate that Customer co-creation exerts a direct impact on NS market outcomes and NS development (NSD) speed, which in turn favours NS quality. NS quality translates into better NS customer-related outcomes as well as in improved NS market outcomes. Top management support enhances the effect of Customer co-creation on the NSD speed. The main barrier to NS co-creation in hotels is to find customers interested in devoting time to this activity or with the appropriate knowledge and experience.     

‘Never take pity’: an average French boxer’s ethnobiography

Based on a long-term ethnographic study of a group of French boxers, this article retraces the biography of one of its members. Éric was an average boxer who never truly mastered the art of dodging his opponents. He never left the ranks of amateur boxing either, although in fact he never truly hoped he would step into the limelight reserved for the very few champions who make it. His anonymous and relentless commitment to boxing was in fact filled with a different meaning that his ethnobiography brings to light. His commitment to boxing can be better understood in light of the trials he faced in “the poor life”, a life he described as flavorless, mired in unemployment and survival delinquency. Despite his repeated defeats in the ring, for him boxing was the only part of his identity that elevated his status and set him apart from those who only had the streets to hang out on. By revealing the meaning he gave to his pugilism, Éric’s ethnobiography offers a new perspective on the links between boxing, violence, and poverty. It also paves the way for exploring the dark side of a leisure activity and its struggles that extend far beyond the ring itself.     

Towards Normative Theories of Social Entrepreneurship. A Review of the Top Publications of the Field

Journal of Business Ethics - In this article, we apply deductive content analysis to the 100 most influential publications in the field of social entrepreneurship (SE) to identify...