The relationship between legitimacy,reputation, sustainability and branding for companies and their supply chains

This paper aims at filling a gap that we perceive to exist in the scientific literature as to legitimacy, reputation and sustainability and their interrelationship to corporate and supply chain branding. A series of innovative theoretical frameworks are provided interrelating companies and their value (supply) chains with legitimacy, reputation, and branding which are essential conditions to achieve sustainability and competitive advantage based on dyadic and social context consonance to the benefit of society and all stakeholders involved. An urgently required better understanding of the concepts and their interrelations is enhanced by a synthesized explanatory basis entailing an eclectic mosaic of interdisciplinary theories (institutionalist, neo-institutionalist theories, the viable system approach, isomorphism and identity) to improve corporate and supply chain performance. To better inform managerial practice the theoretical considerations are spiced with case studies among which especially the currently debated supply chain case of the European horse meat scandal is illuminated suggesting concrete managerial cross-functional implications in the food industry. The paper culminates in the call for a newly to-be-established marketing stream we call ‘Sustainable and Curative Marketing’.     

The pot snack market – are today's consumers demanding health as well as convenience?

Identifying the target audience for hot pot snacks and which factors influence their buyer behaviour is vital information for product developers and manufacturers. The reported market research evaluated the effect of changing lifestyles on the growth of the pot snack market and investigated consumer opinion of pot snacks with particular regard to their nutritional status. This information is of particular interest to health professionals involved in improving the nation's health. A consumer questionnaire measured the opinion of pot snacks, frequency of consumption and influences on the growth of the pot snack market. The 150 consumers comprised 86 males and 64 females aged 11–74 years. The data was analysed using chi‐square (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). Results indicated that within the pot snack market, there are a variety of reasons determining the demand for pot snacks. The frequency of consumption is influenced by knowledge and opinion about the nutritional content of the pot snack product, suggest‐ing that consumers are now demanding health as well as convenience.     

Anticipatory algorithms for same-day courier dispatching

This paper describes anticipatory algorithms for the dynamic vehicle dispatching problem with pickups and deliveries, a problem faced by local area courier companies. These algorithms evaluate alternative solutions through a short-term demand sampling and a fully sequential procedure for indifference zone selection. They also exploit an unified and integrated approach in order to address all the issues involved in real-time fleet management, namely assigning requests to vehicles, routing the vehicles, scheduling the routes and relocating idle vehicles. Computational results show that the anticipatory algorithms provide consistently better solutions than their reactive counterparts.     

Obsolescence risk in advanced technologies for retailing: A management perspective

In recent years, a great deal of research focused on the introduction of advanced technologies for making traditional stores more appealing and attractive, with several benefits for the retail process. Since the introduction of these innovative systems involves several risks that can have a negative impact on business profitability, this paper aims at investigating to what extent it is possible to reduce these risks by proposing an explorative framework for a successful risk management strategies in retail context. Key results of this research concern the importance of the risk management also for retail sector, with emphasis on the introduction/adoption decision of innovative technologies in the points of sale, with consequences for retail-oriented industries. To achieve this task, the current study synthesizes findings from several fields such as management, marketing, and computer science.     

The Sunrise Economy: 24-hour Drinking Legislation in Leeds

ABSTRACT

As the growth of the public houses has become static within the UK the government has been looking at different ways in which they can strategically expand the market, of which one is the 24-hour drinking legislation.

The 24-hour drinking legislation has been operative in the United Kingdom for just over one year now and this article looks at how a chain of public houses has adopted this legislation into their day-to-day running of the business. The paper also discusses the types of consumer's who frequent the public houses at the new trading times and in particular, with the aid of consumer behaviour theory and in particular the PIECE model, discusses the process in which these consumer's go through.

The main conclusions denote that shift workers, the unemployed, and blue collar workers all use these premises at the new trading times.     

Profit sharing regulation and repeated bargaining with a shut-down option

We analyze the behavior of a firm where workers share profits with shareholders by using a model cast in an Aoki framework. There are two sorts of uncertainties: one relates to the market price, assumed to follow a random path in continuous time, while the other concerns internal organization, i.e. the share of profits to be distributed between workers and shareholders. In the institutional setting we adopt the firm is flexible, since it has the possibility of shutting down, by paying laid off workers a bonus, which represents a sunk cost. The distributive share is determined in the firm's internal labor market through a bargaining that takes place at two occasions: at the beginning of the firm's life and when profits reach a threshold level. The second bargaining is endogenized according to a procedure imposed upon shareholders and workers by a regulator who may use profit distribution as a way to intervene in the firm's internal labor market. Specificities make this market highly imperfect. Different share parameter patterns result, owing to a shut down option, according to whether (a) the regulator calls for renegotiation when profits are increasing or decreasing, (b) the regulator's rule is announced in advance or is discretionally set.     

What Drives Price Differentials of Consumables in Europe? Size? Affluence? Or Both?

Prices of many consumables differ substantially across the European Union (EU) due to natural segmentation and to the survival of residual man-made barriers. However, we do not know much about the direction and the cause of deviations among countries differing mainly in size and income of their citizens. Here, we wish to fill this gap. We go through some simple theoretical analysis and show that, in the presence of mild barriers to trade, as those persisting among EU countries, prices should be lower in large countries. On the contrary, prices will be higher where people enjoy better standards of living which translate into higher marginal willingness to pay by consumers. We perform a parallel empirical investigation to assess the relative weight of the two main forces driving prices apart across countries and we test our theoretical proposition through a simple econometric analysis of prices of consumables across the EU. Country size and affluence explain price differentials in a convincing manner. However, the relative importance of the two variables changes as we consider the EU after the establishment of the Single Market or when we analyse a subsample of fast growing EU members.

How can biases affect entrepreneurial decision making? toward a behavioral approach to unicorns

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - How can cognitive biases affect the birth and evolution of entrepreneurial ventures? In Entrepreneurial Decision Making (EDM), this lively...     

Roger B. Porter, Pierre Sauvé, Arvind Subramanian and Amerito B. Zampetti (eds) (2001) Efficiency, Equity, Legitimacy: The Multilateral Trading System at the Millennium

Book reviewed in this article:
Roger B. Porter, Pierre Sauvé, Arvind Subramanian and Amerito B. Zampetti (eds), Efficiency, Equity, Legitimacy: The Multilateral Trading System at the Millennium     

Liquid Applepie: Market Entry Strategy for a New Lifestyle Drink

ABSTRACT

This is a theoretical case which observes the path a small business needs to follow to be successful. It is hoped the company involved will take these conclusions into consideration for future development.

This case study has been conducted in order to understand the theoretical models of international marketing. It determines the key criteria that need to be considered when entering a foreign market. The idea was to develop a market entry strategy for a Polish Vodka manufacturer who wants to enter the Austrian market.

After an analysis of the market and consideration of the situational factors, which are very important for the development of a detailed SWOT analysis, the segmentation, targeting, positioning and finally the selection of the right entry method, including the customer specific marketing tools, have been identified.