Search results

In the past decade, the development of the global economy, the change in organizational structures and the maturing of new technologies have led to considerable changes in business structures. Emergency situations, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic, have led many companies to declare bankruptcy. In this context, the present study aims to analyze strategic opinions of company executives in a declaration of bankruptcy.

To this end, an innovative approach is applied to strategic management and business. First, the authors conducted 14 interviews with executives, and the interview data were transcribed. Second, using textual analysis and data mining techniques, the transcripts were analyzed to understand the importance of indicators identified as relevant in companies in a declaration of bankruptcy.

This resulted in identification of 10 relevant indicators perceived by executives to avoid or anticipate a state of bankruptcy, including innovation, business adaptability, room for improvement in production processes, time to react to situations of alarm, layoffs, support from public institutions, suppliers, international and national regulations, impact on the industry, credits and debts.

The paper concludes with a discussion of important theoretical and practical implications of these findings for the industry. Also, strategic management decision-making strategies are presented as a result of the innovative textual analysis approach used.

The purpose of this study is twofold: to analyse the influence of both individual and environmental factors in order to explain alcoholic spending and to identify different groups of alcoholic beverage shoppers.

For the research, an online questionnaire was distributed among 1,023 Spanish participants of age more than 18 years. Multivariance techniques were used for analysis, and the results show significant influence of specific motivational domains, brand awareness, perceived culture, socio-demographic variables and purchasing environment. With these results, a cluster analysis was carried out identifying seven groups of alcoholic beverage shoppers.

This research confirmed the influence of both individual and environmental factors, and the authors have identified seven different groups of alcoholic beverage shoppers: prosperous, social, non-conformist, postmodern, communities, controllers and planners. This led to the consideration of various management implications, which would boost the success of the beverage industry.

The originality of this research focuses on identifying different cluster of shoppers who purchase alcoholic beverages and on revealing the characteristics of each identified cluster. Based on the exact profile proposed, the alcoholic beverage industry should design more appropriate marketing strategies to achieve competitive advantage and to reinforce purchasing because in today’s markets, there are fewer and fewer situations where a mass marketing approach is feasible.

The purpose of this paper is to extend existing research on stakeholder orientation (SO) on higher education institutions (HEIs) by segmenting Spanish public universities based on their perceived levels of SO and describing the profiles of the different segments identified. Given that being stakeholder-oriented, as well as being market-oriented, is a matter of degree and not an absolute condition, the authors expect to find heterogeneity among public universities in terms of their levels of SO.

The authors designed a mail survey that was e-mailed to all managers of Spanish public universities, resulting in 795 usable questionnaires. A latent segmentation methodology was used to define the segmentation and profiling of the individuals.

Through latent class segmentation analysis, two clusters were identified: high stakeholder-oriented universities (HSOs) and low stakeholder-oriented universities (LSOs). Interestingly, HSOs universities perceive themselves to have greater organisational complexity and a lower level of reputation than LSOs, but that they are more active in terms of resource acquisition. LSOs universities are larger than HSOs and have a superior ranking.

This study will help university managers by providing useful information that will enable them to be more sensitive to the wants and needs of their stakeholders. It will also assist policy-makers who wish to support strategic decisions to promote differentiation among public universities, avoiding the mimetic effect.

Latent class segmentation can be a very useful technique to segment public universities based on their SO. Wherever heterogeneity exists, the latent class analysis will facilitate identification of the clusters of public universities and the profile of these different clusters according to their level of SO (either responsive or proactive).