Designing corporate brand experience in an online context: A qualitative insight

This study explores the dimensions and components of corporate brand experience in an Internet setting. Corporate brand experience (CBE), which is a source of a company's added value, could be an effective way to position a corporate brand in relation to the overall corporate marketing strategy. However, the concept of CBE has attracted very little attention from previous research, thereby our understanding of what the concept is and how to operationalize it is limited. Previous brand experience research is mainly focused on the conceptual understanding of brand experience itself, and/or the product brand level (rather than at corporation level). Understanding CBE is important because corporate brand equity (e.g. corporate image, brand loyalty) is dependent not only on how one is satisfied with the product (mostly addressed by functional/performance values of product), but also through the values of the corporation (corporate brand values). This study thus contributes theoretically to the corporate and online branding literature by proposing underlying new dimensions and components of CBE in an online environment. A series of focus group discussions (FGDs) with 32 online banking respondents informs the study. We identify five main themes and 26 sub-themes of corporate brand experience — corporate visual identity, functionality, emotional, lifestyle and corporate/self-identity. Financial service providers can address these dimensionalities during the process of brand positioning and when designing their corporate marketing in an online setting.     

Innovation in care services for the elderly

Ageing and innovation are usually considered to be contradictory phenomena. This article on innovation in care services for the elderly seeks to counter this established view. Taking as its starting point a definition of care services for the elderly that draws on the economics of services, the article advances a simple framework for analysing innovation in terms of ‘targets’. These targets, which make it possible to circumvent the usual economic categories (product and process innovation), are as follows: the various forms of assistance and residential provision for the elderly, the (tangible and intangible) technologies deployed, the services provided, the human environment (carers and relatives) and the institutional environment.     

Innovating for elderly people: the development of geront’innovations in the French silver economy

The objective of this paper is to study the supply side of the silver market, which is usually neglected by research on this topic. Adopting a systemic approach to innovation, our main goals are to identify the nature of the innovations developed, the way innovations are created, and the issues related to their emergence and diffusion. Our research is based on an empirical study of the French silver economy, which consists in an enquiry carried out in Silver Valley. The results of our study lead us to suggest a new term ‘geront’innovation’ to qualify the various forms of innovations developed to cater for the needs of elderly people. We also put forward the importance of networking and open innovation strategies. Finally, the identified barriers to emergence and diffusion as perceived by the supply side of the market lead us to suggest recommendations to support the diffusion of geront’innovations.     

Innovation and Employment Effects in Services: A Review of the Literature and an Agenda for Research

This article addresses the difficult question of the relationship between innovation and employment. Its main objective is to re-examine the literature on innovation in services in the light of the employment issue. In particular, it attempts to assess to what extent and in what way this question is implicitly or explicitly addressed in the literature or deserves to be introduced into it. In pursuit of these objectives, the national and international literature is reviewed and a research agenda proposed. The following three topics are explored in succession: 1) technologist approaches and the employment question; 2) the question of employment in service-based approaches; 3) innovation by services and employment.     

Projecting corporate brand image and behavioral response in business schools: Cognitive or affective brand attributes?

This paper considers corporate brand image, focusing on cognitive and affective brand attributes in the context of business schools. While previous research on university or institutional branding has studied these elements separately via cognitive (e.g., service or educational quality attributes) or affective criteria (personality traits of the corporate brand), this study investigates them jointly through behavioral responses (leading to positive recommendations about the corporate brand). This is important because brand equity such as positive word-of-mouth (or mouse) is derived from both attitudinal components, rather than being based on only one component. Drawing on an empirical survey of postgraduate (MBA) students from four business schools, the findings reveal that both cognitive and affective attitudinal components appear equally important in shaping corporate brand image. Further, when the mediating effect is investigated, interestingly, students' positive recommendations to schools depended largely on the affective (prestigious, adventurous, empathy and competence) rather than upon the cognitive brand attributes. This paper contributes theoretically to the corporate brand and consumer behavior literature by investigating both attitudinal components at a corporate brand level and investigates their effects on behavioral/conative response. The practical contribution of the paper and its managerial implications lie in the context of defining strategy in relation to positioning business schools in an increasingly competitive higher education market.     

Innovation trajectories and employment in the cleaning industry

The cleaning industry is a service industry which is currently undergoing major changes in scope and omplexity and increasing use of information technologies. This paper highlights the various innovation trajectories which apply to the cleaning industry and seeks to link these to the employment structure in the sector.     

Economic growth,business cycles and products variety: exploring the role of demand satiety

The paper presents a model of economic growth based on a population of heterogeneous and interacting agents. This model succeeds to generate - in a single framework - GDP growth and cycles as well as product life cycles. Contrary to the existing literature, we find that an increasing variety of consumer goods is not a necessary condition for sustaining the economic growth when consumers are subject to satiation. Indeed, intensive creative-destruction - that is an intensive process of sectors births and deaths - appears to be a more powerful growth engine. We also find that changing consumers’ satiety thresholds is likely to affect the nature of the correlation between the cyclical components of macroeconomic time series.