Examining U.S. Food Retailers’ Decisions to Procure Local and Organic Produce From Farmer Direct-to-Retail Supply Chains

U.S. food retailing is a competitive sector that has undergone rapid changes. The U.S. market for organic products has expanded rapidly over the last decade, while local foods have become a more visible marketing strategy. Studies focusing on the marketing of these products by retailers are sparse and generally qualitative. This article is the first quantitative examination of the connection between the local and organic retailing. A sample selection model is used with data from a 2008 national survey of organic retailers to study supplier interactions and company characteristics that influence a retailer’s decision to procure local organic produce directly from farmers, and the rate at which they procure these products. The results show that the number of years a store has sold organic products and the size of the company, as well as aspects prioritized in choosing suppliers and past problems interacting with local suppliers, affect the outcomes.     

The practicalities of a Learning Tourism Destination: a case study of the Ningaloo Coast

The complex and dynamic nature of tourism, and the need to address triple bottom line sustainability, has encouraged a search for adaptive tourism management approaches based on organisational learning. In this paper, the authors discuss a practical approach for the implementation of a Learning Tourism Destination (LTD), a new concept derived from the theory of learning organisations. Preliminary results from a case study undertaken at the Ningaloo Coast in Western Australia are discussed. The conducted surveys indicate that the LTD forms a useful framework for fostering consensus building, dialogue and collective learning processes among stakeholders. The proposed approach has the potential to improve decision‐making within the concept of sustainable tourism development by facilitating participative planning processes. The overall strategy of this paper is to explore the practicalities of the LTD implementation process, and to spark further conceptual and practical debate, based on the analysis of the Ningaloo case study. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sustainable Supply Chain Design in Social Businesses: Advancing the Theory of Supply Chain

A significant conceptual and practical challenge for companies is how to integrate triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability into their global supply chains. In supply chain research, the classic economic perspective—the business of business is to be profitable—still dominates, followed by coverage of the environmental dimension; the social dimension is underrepresented. Stakeholders, however, are calling for a TBL perspective that simultaneously includes environmental, social, and economic gains. While there have been recent theoretical advances on how to characterize supply chains in terms of their structure, how to connect these insights into supply chain design for TBL sustainability has not been studied. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to move the theory of supply chain forward into the sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) research agenda. Toward that purpose, the paper analyzes the sustainable supply chain design (SSCD) at social businesses, incorporating the physical chain and the information and financial support chains. Four social businesses located in Haiti are used as cases of innovative supply chain structures for TBL sustainability. By analyzing the supply chain structures and boundaries of these social businesses, three supply chain configurations combining physical and support chains are presented.     

Estimating the response effect of future events based on historical analogy: A methodology and illustration on generic substitution of brand-name drug sales following patent expiration

Managerial decisions often are made with considerable uncertainty about their possible effects. In assessing such problems, we often rely in an ad hoc fashion on analogous situations in the hope that they will shed light on the possible outcomes. This paper introduces a formal methodology for transferring information or data from one situation to another. A simple recursive least-squares approach to the Bayesian data transferability problem is discussed. Focus is on the method's applicability to commonly encountered marketing problems. Empirical testing and estimation issues are discussed and illustrated in the framework of generic substitution of brand-name drug sales following patent expiration.     

Choosing between precautions for nanoparticles in the workplace: complementing the precautionary principle with caring

Workers who develop and use nanoparticles are on the front line of exposure to the purported risks of nanoparticles. Employers have a legal duty to protect their employees against any work-related harm. However, it is difficult to perform the required risk assessment and management when dealing with uncertainty. Risk ethicists have therefore argued for using the precautionary principle to guide such decisions on uncertain risks. In this paper, I argue that if we want to make use of innovative products, such as nanomaterials, but lack the knowledge and shared standards for choosing between protective measures, the precautionary principle is underdetermined. For the use of nanoparticles in working environments, there are several guidelines that suggest different precautionary strategies for dealing with their purported risks, but choosing between these guidelines proves difficult in the absence of a clear, scientific, decision principle. I therefore explore the ethics of care to develop a complementary decision criterion for the precautionary principle. From this perspective, the caring qualities of working relationships are key in comparing precautions with each other. I propose three conditions for assessing risk management strategies based on (1) the existence of a mutual concern for employee health and safety, (2) the connectedness and continuity of the relationships between employer and employee, and (3) the responsiveness of employers to employee needs. Using these criteria will support choosing between precautions, by shifting attention from the acceptability of imposing a risk to creating a social context in which the imposition of the residual risks can be considered acceptable.     

Medical Tourism: Consumers’ Concerns Over Risk and Social Challenges

This paper studies factors that motivate an American’s decision to seek medical care outside the United States. Principal components analysis yielded three factors – risk, social-related, and vacation. We found that the middle-income earners and recipients of Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly, are more motivated by risk-related factors to travel for care, but the middle-aged and older, and the married are more motivated by social-related factors to travel for care. Medical tourism has the potential to ease the strain on the healthcare systems of developed countries. How well it does this will depend on how policy makers address these factors.     

Sustainability Indicators for Tourism Destinations: A Complex Adaptive Systems Approach Using Systemic Indicator Systems

This article discusses the necessity for complementing linear sustainability assessment tools, which disregard the complex and dynamic nature of tourism, with complex adaptive systems (CASs) approaches. A methodological framework for the selection and evaluation of sustainability indicators for tourism destinations, the systemic indicator system (SIS), is proposed; this framework takes the interrelatedness of sociocultural, economic and environmental issues into account. The SIS methodology is tested using a case study of a holiday eco-village project near Lamington National Park in Queensland, Australia. The results show that tourism destinations need to be viewed and studied as CASs, and that sustainability indicator systems need to be applied in the context of an adaptive management approach. Special attention is given to the capability of the SIS methodology as a decision aid for resort developers and planners to improve the effectiveness of measures for pollution prevention and mitigation.     

Barriers of purchasing departments' involvement in marketing service procurement

A considerable part of firms' marketing services are supplied by external providers, e.g. advertisement agencies, printing houses, trade fair exhibition builders. Although a large spend category, low involvement of purchasing departments prevails during the procurement decision process. This paper develops a conceptual model of purchasing departments' involvement in marketing service procurement along the dimensions “breadth along process” and “depth of integration”, thus contributing to the measurement of purchasing departments' involvement. Drawing on the findings of a case study, we further propose that the impact of purchasing departments' involvement on procurement success is moderated by procurement complexity, and the duration of the relationship between the purchasing and marketing employees. In addition, barriers to purchasing departments' involvement are conceptualized as lack of skills, lack of motivation, and lack of opportunity.