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1 – 10 of over 67000This study aims to demonstrate how the process of quality function deployment (QFD) is used to identify the basic requirements of the customers in designing and executing the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to demonstrate how the process of quality function deployment (QFD) is used to identify the basic requirements of the customers in designing and executing the commercial business center.
Design/methodology/approach
This study was considered with the aim of determining the approach of QFD methodology used in the planning and designing of commercial business centers. The methodology used in the study is a customer-driven process that includes customer requirements in each and every aspect of the planning and designing of the project. The main focus of this study is to understand the requirements of the customers and to design and execute a commercial business project.
Findings
This study illustrates the quality requirements of the projects that benefit from the QFD process to obtain customer requirements for the planning and designing of commercial business centers. A case study is used to demonstrate the use of QFD process. This helps to explain the effective application of QFD in the planning and designing of business centers and similar constructions.
Research limitations/implications
The planning and designing of the commercial business center using the QFD process were challenging and hence it is limited to the design part. The strategic objectives are not taken into account while performing QFD in this case study and the risk of market research is lacking. House of quality (HOQ) can be too complicated at times; hence, the adaptability in the traditional QFD is lacking. Most of the work in the HOQ matrix is done through subjective evaluation. Therefore, this research is mostly useful for a single party responsible for all phases of the planning and designing of the project.
Originality/value
In the construction industry, the use of the QFD process for project performance analysis and application is restricted. As a result of the scarcity of studies on the planning and design of construction projects, this study on the planning and design of a construction project was inspired.
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Ivan De Noni, Luigi Orsi and Luca Zanderighi
To counter the proliferation of out-of-town shopping centres, a spontaneous or planned coalition loyalty programme (CLP), one involving most retailers in an urban network, may…
Abstract
Purpose
To counter the proliferation of out-of-town shopping centres, a spontaneous or planned coalition loyalty programme (CLP), one involving most retailers in an urban network, may positively affect a town centre's capacity to entice customers and may enhance its competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of CLP implementation in town-centre management (TCM) as a tool for enhancing urban commercial-system attractiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
The theoretical framework used in this study is supported by the evaluation methodologies of an empirical case study: the Savigliano Card project. CLP performance analysis uses a dynamic network-competitiveness index, an approach based on Laspeyres-type decomposition. The effects on each retailer's profitability are then tested by matching network and regression analyses.
Findings
The results suggest that CLPs implementation in a TCM scheme can produce benefits and positive externalities for customers, retailers and urban areas. CLPs can influence a town centre's revitalisation process, improve the attractiveness of the urban commercial network and increase the profitability of private retailers by enhancing cross-selling dynamics.
Practical implications
The paper provides a CLP performance-evaluation methodology and presents the benefits concerning CLP implementation in TCM strategies.
Originality/value
This type of CLP is weakly exploited in marketing theory and practice; therefore, the paper provides theoretical and empirical explanations for the measurement of CLP effectiveness in TCM. In addition, it has significant implications for both practitioners and academics.
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The excess of tourism in some destinations has led to the discussion of overtourism. One of the sectors that most interacts with tourism is retail, a key element in the experience…
Abstract
Purpose
The excess of tourism in some destinations has led to the discussion of overtourism. One of the sectors that most interacts with tourism is retail, a key element in the experience lived by tourists. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how retail evolves in a context of an overtourism city, how it relates with touristification and what are the elements that best characterise such evolution and relation.
Design/methodology/approach
This research is based on a case study, using the main historic city centre of Lisbon for that purpose. Fieldwork was developed by the author to collect information about the commercial fabric and its main characteristics.
Findings
The findings show a clear adaptation of the commercial fabric of the analysed area to the tourism industry. Furthermore, the author unfolded that the change of retail is towards a consumption environment based on leisure, involving the adaptation of the public space into terraces, and on the thematisation of stores, using elements seen as “authentically” Portuguese, which bestows on theses spaces a sort of certification of quality and authenticity.
Originality/value
The mere reference to the homogenisation of the retail fabric is too simple to explain the richness and variety of elements imbedded in the process of retail change in a context of excessive tourism and touristification. In this paper, the author produced novel knowledge by analysing the elements that embody the evolution of retail in such a context.
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Qiulin Ke and Wencan Wang
– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that affect the retail rent of shopping centres in Wuhan, an important city in central China.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that affect the retail rent of shopping centres in Wuhan, an important city in central China.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses a data set of 68 shopping centres in urban Wuhan. A regression model is constructed to estimate the impact on retail rent of a composite range of variables that would capture the physical characteristics, spatial characteristics, potential attractiveness of shopping centres and market condition.
Findings
The empirical findings suggest the ceiling height, closeness to metro line station, being situated in commercial central area, vacancy rate and income have significant impact on rental level. Unexpected, the retail mix has a significant negative impact on rent. The impact of the more determining factors found in Western research – size, age, parking space and anchor tenant – is not supported in the Wuhan study.
Practical implications
While 68 shopping centres are included in the test, the sample size is relatively small. The comparatively short history of retail market in Wuhan would not allow to test the rent adjustment process.
Originality/value
This is the first paper to investigate retail rent determinants in a second-tier city in China. The results of the study give designers, developers and investors critical insights into the determinants of retail rent in an emerging market.
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Hamid Moradlou, Samuel Roscoe, Hendrik Reefke and Rob Handfield
This paper aims to seek answers to the question: What are the relevant factors that allow not-for-profit innovation networks to successfully transition new technologies from…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to seek answers to the question: What are the relevant factors that allow not-for-profit innovation networks to successfully transition new technologies from proof-of-concept to commercialisation?
Design/methodology/approach
This question is examined using the knowledge-based view and network orchestration theory. Data are collected from 35 interviews with managers and engineers working within seven centres that comprise the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC). These centres constitute a not-for-profit innovation network where suppliers, customers and competitors collaborate to help transition new technologies across the “Valley of Death” (the gap between establishing a proof of concept and commercialisation).
Findings
Network orchestration theory suggests that a hub firm facilitates the exchange of knowledge amongst network members (knowledge mobility), to enable these members to profit from innovation (innovation appropriability). The hub firm ensures positive network growth, and also allows for the entry and exit of network members (network stability). This study of not-for-profit innovation networks suggests the role of a network orchestrator is to help ensure that intellectual property becomes a public resource that enhances the productivity of the domestic economy. The authors observed how network stability was achieved by the HVMC's seven centres employing a loosely-coupled hybrid network configuration. This configuration however ensured that new technology development teams, comprised of suppliers, customers and competitors, remained tightly-coupled to enable co-development of innovative technologies. Matching internal technical and sectoral expertise with complementary experience from network members allowed knowledge to flow across organisational boundaries and throughout the network. Matrix organisational structures and distributed decision-making authority created opportunities for knowledge integration to occur. Actively moving individuals and teams between centres also helped to diffuse knowledge to network members, while regular meetings between senior management ensured network coordination and removed resource redundancies.
Originality/value
The study contributes to knowledge-based theory by moving beyond existing understanding of knowledge integration in firms, and identified how knowledge is exchanged and aggregated within not-for-profit innovation networks. The findings contribute to network orchestration theory by challenging the notion that network orchestrators should enact and enforce appropriability regimes (patents, licences, copyrights) to allow members to profit from innovations. Instead, the authors find that not-for-profit innovation networks can overcome the frictions that appropriability regimes often create when exchanging knowledge during new technology development. This is achieved by pre-defining the terms of network membership/partnership and setting out clear pathways for innovation scaling, which embodies newly generated intellectual property as a public resource. The findings inform a framework that is useful for policy makers, academics and managers interested in using not-for-profit networks to transition new technologies across the Valley of Death.
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Diana Simona Damian, José Dias Curto and José Castro Pinto
The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of anchor stores on the performance and results of shopping centres and on the prices practiced by other stores. It analyses…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of anchor stores on the performance and results of shopping centres and on the prices practiced by other stores. It analyses the customer spill‐over effect of the anchor stores on the Sonae Sierra shopping centres. Incorporated in Portugal in 1989, Sonae Sierra is an international corporation specializing in shopping centres. It is co‐owned by Sonae (Portugal) and Grosvenor (UK) who each own 50 per cent.
Design/methodology/approach
The data collection targeted 35 shopping centres in Portugal and Spain with 1,200,000 square feet (or more), for three consecutive years (2005‐2007). The anchor stores provide about 41 per cent of the total gross lettable area and on average pay only 18 per cent of the total rent collected by the developer. The ordinary least squares and Kruskal‐Wallis statistic (in order to avoid ANOVA assumption violations) are used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The empirical analysis shows that a greater presence of anchors in a mall directly increases the sales, and consequently the rents of non‐anchor stores in a mall. The authors demonstrate that externalities are internalized by efficient allocation of space and incentives across stores, and also show that the anchor stores increased the malls' customer drawing power, measured as the number of people who visited the mall at a given time, although lately they have had less impact on the sales per person visiting the centres.
Research limitations/implications
This study is limited in that it surveyed only Sonae Sierra shopping centres, hence the results can only be generalized using this model as a basis. Other limitations were an inability to gather data on customer purchasing power in the areas surrounding the Sonae Sierra shopping centres, and the need to safeguard the confidentiality of the information, which did not allow the use of more independent variables for the models.
Practical implications
It is demonstrated that the total sales of the shopping malls are directly influenced by the number of anchors, and that the area allocated to them is a strategic tool.
Originality/value
The paper uses unique data consisting of mall store contracts to study the complex economic issues that arise when stores co‐occupy a large shopping centre.
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Following recent initiatives from HM Treasury, Departmental Records Officers are beginning to think of themselves as part of an information management function. This is not to say…
Abstract
Following recent initiatives from HM Treasury, Departmental Records Officers are beginning to think of themselves as part of an information management function. This is not to say that records management has disappeared, or even been absorbed into the new function. Rather, it is one of four aspects of information services — the others being archives administration, libraries and information technology.
The aim of the chapter is to analyze the attitudes of young city inhabitants toward the traditional urban space (city center, neighborhood) and commercial space (the mall). When…
Abstract
The aim of the chapter is to analyze the attitudes of young city inhabitants toward the traditional urban space (city center, neighborhood) and commercial space (the mall). When they spend their time, where are the places important for their individual activity and group identities? What role is played in their lives by the urban center and what by the mall? I searched for the answers to these questions using studies carried out on teenagers from two Polish cities: Krakow and Katowice (qualitative research: expert interviews and observations; followed by questionnaires on two samples: the first comprised 838 teenagers aged 13–16 attending secondary schools from the cities). The empirical research indicates two models of the urban spaces of young city inhabitants: the first one with strong meaning of the city center (which does not correlate with the everyday practices) and the second with “absent” traditional center and relatively strong neighborhoods. The neighborhood has the biggest potential for socializing young people as the citizens; the city center and the mall are – for teenagers – rather the spaces for “consuming.” It is vital to understand the developing typical relations of young people with urban spaces to see what the “city is becoming.”
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Hassan Alzubaidi, Claudio Vignali, Barry J. Davies and Ruth A. Schmidt
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s the debate surrounding the comparative costs and benefits of town centre and out‐of‐town retail developments for consumers and to the…
Abstract
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s the debate surrounding the comparative costs and benefits of town centre and out‐of‐town retail developments for consumers and to the environment has been a heated one. Informed by a largely puritanical view of consumerism, current Government policy tends towards the preservation of the traditional town centre. However, the actual evidence is far from conclusive and there is limited consumer research supporting this stance. Based on an interviewer‐administered survey conducted during 1994 and 1995 to assess shoppers’ opinions in both types of location in Preston, presents an examination of consumer perspectives and examines differences in perceptions and behaviour patterns among town centre and out‐of‐town shoppers.
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