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Fair trade commonly focuses on the figure of the smallholding peasant producer. The effectiveness of this as a strategy lies in the widespread appeal of an economy based upon independent family producers trying to secure livelihoods in impersonal and exploitative global commodity markets. But the attempt by fair trade to personalise economic relationships between coffee producers and consumers diverts attention away from aspects of the political economy of production for the market. This chapter examines a rural Costa Rican coffee economy that has supplied fair trade markets since the 1980s. Documenting differences in landholdings, the range of activities farmers engage in, and the relationship between landowners and landless labourers, women, and migrant harvesters from Nicaragua reveals differentiation and tensions that are obscured in the “smallholder” model invoked by fair trade.

The purpose of this paper is to show the benefits of bridging the gap between supply chain management (SCM) and political philosophy to challenge the underlying assumptions about SCM concepts and open doors to novel theory building.

A thought experiment is conducted to illustrate how the two philosophers Niccolò Machiavelli and Jürgen Habermas would tackle sustainability issues in coffee supply chains from a research perspective. The thought experiment is carried out using data from 30 semi-structured interviews with actors from the coffee industry. Supplementing the thought experiment with empirical insights allows for a deeper understanding of supply chain dynamics and how these are impacted by the application of the philosophical viewpoints.

The research stresses the importance of SCM scholars being aware of the underlying assumptions of their research, as these have a remarkable impact on theory building. A combination of empirical insights and philosophical understandings makes it possible to reflect on the underlying concepts of SCM, providing suggestions for reimagining SCM.

The contribution of the research is twofold. First, the paper presents an original view on SCM, as the thought experiment is introduced as an approach to better understand SCM concepts. By challenging the underlying assumptions with political philosophy, researchers will be better equipped to address grand challenges in the twenty-first century. Second, this is exemplified by the case study of the coffee supply chain, which provides the reader with insight into the dynamics of supply chains with prevalent power differences.

The present study aims to examine consumers’ happiness experiences for speciality coffee consumption in Thailand by considering the role of consumers’ active participation, sharing of experience and consumer experience co-creation.

A purposive survey was conducted in speciality coffee shops located in the largest commercial city and industrial development centre in the Northeastern Region of Thailand, Khon Kaen City, which yielded 271 usable and valid responses. The proposed model was evaluated by using a structural equation analysis with a partial least squares technique.

The results confirmed that consumers’ active participation and sharing of experience affected their experience co-creation, which in turn contributed to the consumers’ happiness experience at the speciality coffee shops.

This study contributes to the consumer experience co-creation and social media literature by proposing a conceptual model for the speciality coffee consumption experience. Furthermore, the study findings contribute to the existing literature by investigating new linkages, such as the role of consumer experience co-creation in a speciality coffee context as a mediating variable of consumer active participation and the sharing of experience with consumers’ happiness experience.

Compares marketing approaches in 12 countries for wheat, coffee, cocoa, citrus and bananas, in some major product countries. Looks at Australia for wheat marketing along with Canada and the USA; coffee marketing is covered by Kenya, Uganda and Brazil; cocoa marketing is covered by Ghana, Nigeria and Brazil; citrus marketing involves Israel, South Africa and the USA; bananas are covered by Jamaica and Brazil. Explores all of these in depth and discusses them with breakdowns of figures.

The main pedagogical objectives of the case are: illustrate how Latin American companies dedicated to the production and harvesting of commodities can be vertically integrated to gain a larger share of the value created throughout the production chain. Understand how futures and options contracts in commodities can be used to hedge price risk on long and short positions in the underlying products. Understand how option contracts add value by hedging risk in those contexts where the counterparty has optionality. Discuss the implications of Fair Trade for commodity traders and producers.

In the case, Hernan Arosamena, CFO of The Specialty Coffee Trading Co. (TSCT), faces the challenge of designing an effective strategy to hedge the price risk caused by the increasing demand of the so-called Fair Trade coffee. Hernan Arosamena decides to review how the company has typically managed the price risk in its business transactions using future contracts to then incorporate the additional elements that trading Fair Trade coffee may entail. The typical price risk hedging strategy involves the use of coffee future contracts in long and short positions to ensure that the company obtains the desired margin in its coffee trading negotiations. To hedge the exposure to the risk of fluctuations in the price of coffee when the company sells Fair Trade coffee requires the additional use of put options.

The case is appropriate for students enrolled in courses or specialization programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 5: International Business.

This study aims to find empirical evidence on how video games can foster innovation skills and change perceptions about entrepreneurship and general aspects related to the industry in Colombia while innovative pedagogical processes in teaching entrepreneurship in higher education.

Based on design-based research, serious games (SGs), entrepreneurial education and the innovator DNA framework, the authors collected data from undergraduate students enrolled in two online entrepreneurship courses at a Colombian university. One course is used as a treatment group where students play a video game created for the purpose of this research while the other group is used as control where traditional learning activities are performed. A self-reported method was used on the perceptions of the students after participating in the activities through questionnaires to find differences between the mean scores reported by both groups.

The results indicate that students who participated in the video game reported a higher fostering of their innovation skills and a broader change in their perception of entrepreneurship and aspects related to the coffee industry, in contrast to the students of the control group.

Using a video game created by EAFIT University in Colombia, this study responds to an identified need for studying the adequate use of SGs in online class contexts and the need of fostering both innovation skills and positive perceptions on entrepreneurship among students.

In recent years there has been a push from policymakers and the broader development arena on women’s economic empowerment (WEE). The drive to mainstream gender and strengthen focus on WEE in market systems programming took force in 2003; however, the approach to systematically integrate WEE into implementation, monitoring and results measurement is fairly recent. The Market Development Facility (MDF) programme is one such programme that has developed a WEE framework that is integrated into all aspects of project development across a range of different socio-economic contexts. It not only looks at addressing WEE constraints as relevant but also seeks to draw out and align the incentives of the private sector to do so. The Fiji Bula Coffee case study demonstrates this and highlights the findings on WEE, specifically on women’s access, agency and their influence on social norms in rural Fijian communities.

Qualitative and quantitative data were collected over consecutive field studies conducted over a four-year period beginning in 2015. In-depth interviews and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were used to interview a total of 69 community members across five communities in the Sigatoka highlands. Findings reveal that women in rural coffee-supplying communities have equal access to income-generating activities and are able to make decisions on the income earned from coffee harvesting. Income is used for education and a portion is put aside as savings. ‘Women’s voice’ through collective action and decision-making is also discussed, where through a female champion, who in this case was the chief’s wife, women in the community were enabled to continue supplying coffee cherries and earning additional income for their families, despite the ban that was initially put in place by the chief.

Within the context of a sustainable supply chain, the purpose of this paper is to report on empirical longitudinal research on supply chain network evolution and dynamics of governance in a multi‐stakeholder supply chain sustainability initiative led by Nespresso, the speciality coffee division of Nestlé.

The paper proposes a framework to study the creation and evolution of governance mechanisms over a five‐year period. Data from 48 semi‐structured interviews and 15 recent and historic documents were also analysed. The interviews were conducted among current and past representatives of all the organisations concerned including coffee traders, NGOs and farmers.

In contrast with literature on the subject, governance mechanisms initially relied mostly on informal mechanisms. Formal governance mechanisms were incorporated into the relationships to enable the supply chain network to grow and to provide clarity to all actors. Relational quality processes that increased trust were critical elements in the early phase, and were explicitly built into a second phase of development.

Being a single case study, some caution needs to be applied to generalise findings beyond the specific context studied. An additional methodological limitation is the limited number of actors involved in the overall supply chain network.

The paper shows the importance of treating governance mechanisms within the supply chain not as a fixed variable to be determined once and for all in the beginning of a relationship, but rather to adapt the coordination mechanisms of the relationships.

The evolution of relationships over time has been “often called for but rarely chosen”. The case highlights the potential benefits of this type of research to develop an understanding of the evolution of relationships in a supply chain network.

The case integrates frameworks on business models, the business model canvas (BMC) and Porter’s generic strategies in the context of the coffee industry in China. The case enables students to construct a Business Model Canvas for competing companies, analyze the canvas to deduce the generic strategy they are pursuing, and formulate recommendations based on this analysis.

The case is derived from secondary sources, including publicly available reports and information about Starbucks and Luckin.

This case looks at Starbucks in China as it faces a fierce Chinese competitor and evolving consumer behavior. Luckin, a Chinese coffee store company, had seen explosive growth since its inception in Beijing in 2017. By late 2019, its number of brick-and-mortar locations surpassed the number of Starbucks’ coffee stores in China, which had entered the Chinese market two decades earlier in 1999. Luckin’s focused on convenience through leveraging technology and reducing costs by limiting physical stores. Although Luckin’s fortunes turned in March of 2020, after an accounting scandal came to light, Luckin’s success suggests that consumers were attracted to its positioning as a “fast coffee pickup and delivery” provider. The case describes Starbucks’ strategy in China, which it sees as an important long-term growth market. It also describes the strategic activities of fast-growing, Chinese coffee company Luckin and discusses Chinese culture and consumer behavior.

The case is written for undergraduate students enrolled in a business strategy or corporate entrepreneurship course. Given that the case centers on China, it could also be used in international entrepreneurship/business courses.

This paper aims to reconceptualise entrenched supply chains associated with coffee production and consumption to digital supply chains for sustainable development.

A case study of seven small businesses involved with Philippine coffee is employed to examine how coffee value chains should be envisioned following COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic reveals truncated barriers concerned with the lack of infrastructure, poverty cycles, sporadic workforce development policies and financial pressures that need to be redefined for coffee production and consumption to be more sustainable in the future.

The study is restricted to a single country and a small pool of respondents that may not reflect similar practices in other regions or contexts.

This paper illuminates the plight of coffee farmers in an emerging production landscape of the Philippines, and develops new propositions to envision a digital value chain post-COVID-19.