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This study aims to examine decision factors for global sourcing, differentiated into transcontinental and continental sourcing to obtain insight into locational aspects of sourcing decisions and global trends. This study analyzed various country perceptions to reveal their influence on sourcing decisions. The country of origin (COO) theory explains why certain country perceptions and images influence purchasing experts in their selection of suppliers.

This study used a two-study approach. In Study 1, the authors conducted discrete choice card experiments with 71 purchasing experts located in Europe and the USA to examine the importance of essential decision factors for global sourcing. Given the clear evidence that location is a factor in sourcing decisions, in Study 2 the authors investigated purchasers’ perceptions and images of countries, adding country ranking experiments on various perceived characteristics such as quality, price and technology.

Study 1 provides evidence that the purchasers’ personal relationship with the supplier plays a decisive role in the supplier selection process. While product quality and location impact sourcing decisions, the attraction of the buying company and cultural barriers are less significant. Interestingly, however, these factors seem as important as price to respondents. This implies that a strong relationship with suppliers and good quality products are essential aspects of a reliable and robust supply chain in the post-COVID-19 era. Examining the locational aspect in detail, Study 2 linked the choice card experiments with country ranking experiments. In this study, the authors found that purchasing experts consider that transcontinental countries such as Japan and China offer significant advantages in terms of price and technology. China has enhanced its quality, which is recognizable in the country ranking experiments. Therefore, decisions on global sourcing are not just based on such high-impact factors as price and availability; country perceptions are also influential. Additionally, the significance of the locational aspect could be linked to certain country images of transcontinental suppliers, as the COO theory describes.

The new approach divides global sourcing into transcontinental and European sourcing to evaluate special decision factors and link these factors to the locational aspect of sourcing decisions. To deepen the clear evidence for the locational aspect and investigate the possible influence of country perceptions, the authors applied the COO theory. This approach enabled authors to show the strong influence of country perception on purchasing departments, which is represented by the locational effect. Hence, the success of transcontinental countries relies not only on factors such as their availability but also on the purchasers’ positive perceptions of these countries in terms of technology and price.

This paper reviews the current literature on theoretical and methodological issues in discrete choice experiments, which have been widely used in non-market value analysis, such as elicitation of residents' attitudes toward recreation or biodiversity conservation of forests.

We review the literature, and attribute the possible biases in choice experiments to theoretical and empirical aspects. Particularly, we introduce regret minimization as an alternative to random utility theory and sheds light on incentive compatibility, status quo, attributes non-attendance, cognitive load, experimental design, survey methods, estimation strategies and other issues.

The practitioners should pay attention to many issues when carrying out choice experiments in order to avoid possible biases. Many alternatives in theoretical foundations, experimental designs, estimation strategies and even explanations should be taken into account in practice in order to obtain robust results.

The paper summarizes the recent developments in methodological and empirical issues of choice experiments and points out the pitfalls and future directions both theoretically and empirically.

Ethical consumption is on the rise amidst concerns about the environmental and health impacts of industrial agriculture. In light of increasingly complex food choices, alternative food networks have emerged. However, their success depends on a deeper understanding of the product attributes that guide (ethical) consumer decisions. This study focuses on the preferences of consumers when choosing and buying fresh vegetables in Romania.

This study employs a discrete choice experiment to determine how consumers make trade-offs across a set of product attributes, such as local origin and production method.

The study analysis sheds light on the importance of food attributes relevant to ethical consumers. The main barrier to making an ethically driven choice is convenience. While local production remains of lower importance than the production method, the authors show that the Romanian consumers surveyed strongly prefer non-certified “traditional” vegetables over certified organic products.

This study is pioneering with a state-of-the-art discrete choice setting looking at a set of product attributes that reflect the demand of ethical consumers in an understudied transitional context. The authors go beyond the current debate on the trade-off between organic vs local food labels by introducing traditional small-scale production as a separate attribute level. The food attribute preferences of different consumer segments and a market simulation offer relevant insights how to market fresh vegetables to health- and environmentally-conscious urban people.

Using a discrete choice experiment (DCE), this study aims to better understand the job preference of postgraduate students studying at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology-Institute of Distance Learning, Ghana and also rank the attributes of a job they deem important.

The research adopted a positivist epistemological design contextualised within a deductive approach and case study strategy. Primary survey data was collected from a stratified random sample of 128 postgraduate students with multi-sectorial career prospects. Sample students were subjected to a DCE in which their stated preferences were collected using closed-ended questionnaires with 28 pairs of hypothetical job profiles. Respondents’ preferences from the DCE data were then modelled using the conditional logit.

The research reveals that: salary in the range GHC 2,800.00 to GHC 3,400.00 ($1 = GHS 5.3); supportive management; very challenging jobs; and jobs located in the city were the top attributes that were significant and had the most impact in increasing the utility of selecting a particular job. Interestingly, jobs with no extra hours workload were not significant hence, had a negative impact upon student preferences.

This novel research is the first to use a DCE to better elicit preference and trade-offs of postgraduate students in a developing country towards varying job characteristics that have an impact on their future employment decisions. Knowledge advancements made provide invaluable insight to employers and policymakers on the key criteria that should be implemented to retain the best candidate.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) on the competencies of potential information technology (IT)-retrainees. The results give insights in the monetary value and relative returns to both soft and hard skills.

The authors apply a DCE in which the authors propose seven pairs of hypothetical candidates to employers based in the municipality of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. These hypothetical candidates differ on six observable skill attributes and have different starting wages. The authors use the inference from the DCE to calculate the marginal rates of substitution (MRS). The MRS gives an indication of the monetary value of each skill attribute.

Employers prefer a candidate who possesses a degree in an exact field over a similar candidate from another discipline. Programming experience from previous jobs is the most highly valued characteristic for an IT-retrainee. Employers would pay a candidate with basic programming experience a 53 percent higher starting wage. The most high-valued soft skill is listening skills, for which employers are willing to pay a 46 percent higher wage. The results of this paper show that both hard and soft skills are important, but not all soft skills are equally important.

The results on the returns to skills provide guidelines to tailor IT training and retraining programs to the needs of the business environment. A key strength of this paper is that the authors have information on the preference orderings for different skills and kinds of experience.

This study explains Indonesian consumers' choice of poultry meat attributes and the willingness to pay (WTP) for these attributes using a discrete choice experiment.

The survey was conducted for the traditional and modern channels and involved a sample of 440 respondents in the Greater Jakarta area. A discrete choice experiment was employed as the study framework and in designing the questionnaire. A multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate consumers' preference for poultry attributes in modern and traditional channels.

Consumers preferred warm poultry meat, government certification and product information labeling on poultry meat. The WTP for warm poultry meat was the highest, which is indicating that freshness is crucial for consumers to ensure quality. Moreover, consumers had more trust in government certification than private certification for food safety and were willing to pay more for product information labeling on poultry meat.

The government can use the model as a decision support to improve poultry meat quality at sales channels in Indonesia including to close sales channels where sick poultry are sold and thus address food safety concerns caused by the avian influenza outbreak.

This study shows that understanding the WTP for poultry meat attributes enables the government to control the poultry sales channels and stimulates producers to supply the market with a safer poultry meat quality using the price mechanism.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of sports sponsorship on brand equity using two managerially related outcomes: price premium and market share.

This study uses a best–worst discrete choice experiment (BWDCE) and compares the outcome with that of the purchase intention scale, an established probabilistic measure of purchase intention. The total sample consists of 409 fans of three soccer teams sponsored by three different competing brands: Nike, Adidas and Puma.

With sports sponsorship, fans were willing to pay more for the sponsor’s product, with the sponsoring brand obtaining the highest market share. Prominent brands generally performed better than less prominent brands. The best–worst scaling method was also 35% more accurate in predicting brand choice than a purchase intention scale.

Future research could use the same method to study other types of sponsors, such as title sponsors or other product categories.

Sponsorship managers can use this methodology to assess the return on investment in sponsorship engagement.

Prior sponsorship studies on brand equity tend to ignore market share or fans’ willingness to pay a price premium for a sponsor’s goods and services. However, these two measures are crucial in assessing the effectiveness of sponsorship. This study demonstrates how to conduct such an assessment using the BWDCE method. It provides a clearer picture of sponsorship in terms of its economic value, which is more managerially useful.

Using a generic cheese as an anchor product, in this study consumers' preferences for different EU quality schemes have been investigated. Specifically, the study aims to understand whether “Protected Designation of Origin” (PDO), “Organic” and “Mountain Product” labels are independent or if there are some synergies existing between them, questioning – at the same time – whether this alleged exchange of value plays a positive or negative role in terms of consumers' willingness to pay.

A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted on 600 Italian consumers performing a random parameter logit model. The respondents were representative of the Italian population in terms of age, gender and geographical distribution. Consumers' preferences for the presence of “Organic” and “Mountain product” labels were assessed in the DCE, together with the effect of price, for both PDO and generic cheeses.

Consumers are willing to pay a premium in price for “Organic” and “Mountain Product” per se, for cheese with and without the PDO denomination. Considering the interaction effects, results showed that the combined use of “Organic” and “Mountain Product” labels do not decrease consumers' intention to buy. However, when applied on a PDO product, these attributes generate a lower consumers' willingness to pay in comparison with the generic ones, highlighting a possible overlapping between them.

Despite the abundant literature on EU quality schemes in many food categories, this study represents one of the first attempts to measure the interaction effect between different EU quality schemes.

This paper aims to examine employees’ evaluative repertoires of tourism and hospitality jobs and segments them based on a set of job attribute preferences. Understanding the social–cultural underpinnings of employees’ job preferences is vital if employers are to overcome the challenging task of finding and retaining talented employees in the tourism and hospitality industry.

A discrete-choice experiment with waiters, barkeepers, cooks and front-desk employees working in the Tyrolean tourism industry was conducted. Employees were categorized into distinct segments using a hierarchical Bayesian analysis and a cluster analysis.

Results show that flexible working hours and the ability to balance professional and private aspirations are the most important job attributes for employees. Overall, the evaluative repertoires of the “green” and “domestic (family)” conventions are most prevalent.

This study contributes to literature on talent management by providing insights into employees’ evaluations of jobs and their evaluative repertoires embedded in the broader social–cultural context.

Industry representatives and employers can adapt their recruiting and retention strategies based on employees’ job preferences.

Adapting job attributes according to employees’ evaluative repertoires helps to ensure the long-term sustainability of the industry workforce.

Applying the Economics of Convention (EC) perspective, combining organizational job attributes and socially embedded evaluative repertoires provides a new approach to analysing and understanding employees’ job preferences.

Applying the institutional logics perspective to applicant attraction, this study investigates the level of uniformity among preferences for consulting job attributes associated with the institutional logics of the corporation, the profession and the family, and tests for the influence of anticipatory socialization differences.

The study uses a discrete choice experiment with 232 business students. A hierarchical Bayes approach to conjoint analysis uncovers part-worth heterogeneity and allows for subsequent cluster and regression analysis of the choice data.

The findings identify a dominant job-oriented preference type and a minor career-oriented preference type. Anticipatory socialization through personal prior work experience and the occupation of friends decreases adherence to the logic of profession and increases the relevance of the family logic. The parents' occupation has only a minimal influence on preferences.

The study provides attribute-based recommendations on how professional service firms can effectively address the complex expectations of potential applicants in their job ads for an entry position and underlines the role of intra-generational reference groups as important anticipatory socializers.

By testing individual socialization effects at the pre-hire stage and beyond the organizational level, the study fills a void in both the recruitment and the institutional literature.