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This case study outlines the strategic and organisational issues faced by an entrepreneurial firm operating in an emerging economy. This case study has been written to equip students with how entrepreneurs can overcome certain barriers and use technology to achieve product–market fit, taking the Indian laundry sector as an example. The following are the key learnings for the case: start-ups need to continuously assess the product–market fit to organise a highly unorganised sector; market entry and expansion modes require proper evaluation of available entry and expansion modes before pursual; franchising decisions require firm-specific and location-specific considerations; and careful consideration given to celebrity endorsement will result in increased sales.

The Indian laundry market was a highly unorganised market and presented an untapped opportunity. While the market opportunity was enormous, the existing solutions comprised local vendors that may not provide end-to-end services (washing, ironing, etc.). The case study described how a young entrepreneur, Arunabh Sinha, overcame certain challenges to achieve a product–market fit for metro cities and later expanded to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India as well. However, the challenges remained, as the firm expanded by using a franchise model, and other modes of business were required to be evaluated as well.

The case study is suitable for students pursuing MBA courses in marketing, service marketing and entrepreneurship development.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS3: Entrepreneurship.

In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after the revelations of large-scale corruption, the authors ask whether their case studies provide lessons for how public service institutions might re-make themselves, under circumstances of austerity.

A comparative qualitative case study approach, collecting data using a combination of interviews with managers, focus group discussions and interviews with shop stewards and staff was used.

Management in two hospitals relied on their financial power, divisions between unions and employees' loyalty. They lacked the insight to manage different actors, and their efforts to outsource services and draw on the Extended Public Works Program failed. They failed to support staff when working beyond their scope of practice, reducing employees' willingness to take on extra responsibilities. In the remaining hospital, while previous management had been removed due to protests by the unions, the new CEO provided stability and union–management relations were collaborative. Her legitimate power enabled unions and management to agree on appropriate cost cutting strategies.

Finding an appropriate balance between the new reality of reduced financial resources and the needs of staff and patients, requires competent unions and management, transparency and trust to develop legitimate power; managing in an authoritarian manner, without legitimate power, reduces organisational capacity. Ensuring a fair and orderly process to replace ineffective management is key, while South Africa grows cohorts of competent managers and builds managerial experience.

Based on the main studies presented in the literature, this work aims to examine the level of student satisfaction towards the on-campus accommodation service provided by an Italian university. Notably, the objectives of the study are twofold: (1) to examine the mediating role of student satisfaction on the relationship between university on-campus accommodation service quality and word-of-mouth and (2) to determine whether there is any significant difference in students' satisfaction towards on-campus accommodation in terms of gender and the halls of residence.

The study is based on the results of a survey carried out through an online questionnaire by 381 students living on campus at the University of Urbino.

The findings revealed that the quality perceived by university students in relation to individual services had a positive impact on their general satisfaction towards the halls of residence experience.

The study presents some limitations such as lack of temporal comparisons, a focus on specific service quality items and the fact that it refers to a single Italian university.

The findings of this study will help the management of public universities to improve the quality of services in their halls of residence for the satisfaction of their students.

To the authors' knowledge, there have been no previous studies about on-campus accommodation service quality conducted in Italy. The study contributes to enrich the service quality literature, confirming both that the sum of the quality of individual elements is not as the overall satisfaction and the outcome intention of positive WOM depends not only on service quality attributes, but also from an overall evaluation of satisfaction.

The adaptation of emerging building designs for single room occupancy in off-campus university student housing during the COVID-19 pandemic is evolving. However, assessing its effects on student satisfaction to compensate for COVID-19-associated impacts is missing. As a result, the study examines the satisfaction of students with emerging building designs in single-room off-campus student housing in Ghana.

The study is quantitatively based on positivist philosophical thinking. A purposive sample of 202 purpose-built student housing facilities was selected across public and private universities in Ghana. Using systematic stratified sampling, the study sampled 1,212 student residents through a survey. A principal component method (PCM) was used to assess the availability of 10 emerging building design and basic building services variables across the study location. Multiple regression was employed to determine the satisfaction and predict potential variables for policy formulation.

The analysis revealed that private space for social distancing, the availability of hands-free fittings in the toilet and bathroom, and the availability of hands-free fixtures in the kitchen unit was common single-room self-occupancy support systems. However, there is a huge gap in the availability of key emerging building designs and basic building services and their associated effects on students' satisfaction across the study locations. Therefore, relevant proposals to serve as fundamental requirements for developing an off-campus student housing model during pandemics were indicated.

It is seen that emerging building designs across the housing sector are equally evolving among off-campus student housing. The study helped to understand that student satisfaction with emerging building designs and basic services is a motivational need for students. However, the preparedness of student housing owners to adopt and satisfy the requirements of these design require further studies.

While COVID-19 and its associated effect keep evolving in building design requirements, it is equally relevant to assess the students' satisfaction with these designs and services among single room occupancy-made off-campus student housing. This research is limited to Africa.

This study aims to use big data analysis and sheds light on key hotel features that play a role in the revisit intention of customers. In addition, this study endeavors to highlight hotel features for different customer segments.

This study uses a machine learning method and analyzes around 100,000 reviews of customers of 100 selected hotels around the world where they had indicated on Trip Advisor their intention to return to a particular hotel. The important features of the hotels are then extracted in terms of the 7Ps of the marketing mix. This study has then segmented customers intending to revisit hotels, based on the similarities in their reviews.

In total, 71 important hotel features are extracted using text analysis of comments. The most important features are the room, staff, food and accessibility. Also, customers are segmented into 15 groups, and key hotel features important for each segment are highlighted.

In this research, the number of repetitions of words was used to identify key hotel features, whereas sentence-based analysis or group analysis of adjacent words can be used.

This study highlights key hotel features that are crucial for customers’ revisit intention and identifies related market segments that can support managers in better designing their strategies and allocating their resources.

By using text mining analysis, this study identifies and classifies important hotel features that are crucial for the revisit intention of customers based on the 7Ps. Methodologically, the authors suggest a comprehensive method to describe the revisit intention of hotel customers based on customer reviews.

Circular economy (CE) is receiving increasing worldwide attention as a manner to overcome the challenges linked to current trends of unsustainable energy and resource consumption. This paper aims to fill this gap and analyze the adherence to sustainable, access-based and collaborative consumption practices by exploring the role of CE awareness, specifically in the context of Porto, the second-largest city of Portugal.

The methodology of choice is quantitative, based on partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The result shows that there is an influence of CE awareness on subsequent sustainable consumption models.

Present research contributes to the theory on CE awareness and sustainable consumption. It proposes a model that could be applied in other countries. As this research is developed within the city of Porto, it may limit generalizations of obtained results.

As CE practices are embodied into national and local policies, this research contributes to understanding local contexts of CE practices dissemination, providing practical suggestions for businesses and policymakers aiming the transition to the CE.

An original approach to measuring the awareness of CE economy is proposed, that is analyzed not only from the familiarity perspective but in six dimensions of its construction: familiarity, importance, perception or interpretation, advantages, social impact and barriers in this process. Further, the conceptual model of the impact that these dimensions have on the adoption of sustainable consumption models (purchase of sustainable products, access-based and collaborative consumption) is proposed.

Hotels are considered one of the keys to tourism industry, without which it is impossible to visualize this industry. Setting the proper price for hotels has always been a nuisance for the decision makers because of its direct relationship with the demand for hotels. Thus, in the current study a Stackelberg game between the government (leader) and the hotels (follower) has been presented to determine the optimal price under competitive conditions. The selected hotels are different with respect to energy consumption and the environmental impact. Thus, the government makes efforts to control their prices with incentives and tariffs.

The fuzzy inference system (FIS) has also been applied to forecast the hotel demand. Therefore, first off, the demand forecast criteria have been chosen by the experts and in the continuation, it has been screened by fuzzy Delphi approach. Finally, the quantity of hotel demand is computed by the Mamdani inference system. A mathematical model has been presented for determining the optimal sequencing of hotels and minimizing the searches to find a hotel.

A case study based on the data extracted from online travel agencies (OTAs) has been presented to validate the proposed model. The results demonstrate that by the ranking position increase, the number of the tourists decreases and the higher the star number of a hotel, the lower its ranking position.

Considering the energy saving and environmental impacts in hotel pricing and considering the government's intervention in hotel revenues regarding the incentives and tariffs are the innovations of the present study.

Assess the realistic impacts of implementing an Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)/Internet of Things (IoT) uniforms’ distribution system for managing medical personnel’s scrubs in operating rooms. The authors use a hybrid simulation framework to address the following objectives and challenges: a) reduce and control operating rooms’ level of inventory; b) stabilize scrubs’ demand and c) improve infection control and prevention of cross-contamination (through scrubs over manipulation and hoarding).

The authors adopt a Design Science approach. This methodological approach is used to design, develop, create and evaluate information technology “artifacts” (e.g. constructs, models, methods and instantiations) intended to solve organizational problems and make research contributions (Peffers et al., 2007). More specifically, the authors follow the Design Science Research Methodology process model which includes six steps: problem identification and motivation, definition of the objectives for a solution, design and development, demonstration, evaluation, and communication.

To assess the realistic impacts of implementing an RFID-IoT uniforms’ distribution system for managing medical personnel’s scrubs in operating rooms, the authors adopted a design science approach and initiated the research by documenting the business case and reviewed the existing literature to build a comparative analysis of existing uniforms’ distribution systems. The authors used a hybrid simulation model to assess the impact of three business cases: present mode of operation, implementing smart shelves or the smart distributors. The authors show that smart dispensers allow a greater control on scrubs’ utilization while eliminating the cross-contamination of the medical personnel.

Through this research study, the authors provide hospitals’ managers a scientific support for uniforms’ (scrubs) distribution process improvement. The authors use a hybrid simulation model to compare innovative solutions for uniforms’ distribution systems in the form of “smart cabinets” supported by Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)/Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and choose the most appropriate design for the hospital to meet two main challenges: a) inefficiency of uniform replenishment-distribution system and b) noncompliancy with infection control regulations caused by the distribution system.

From a methodological perspective, this paper addresses concerns from researchers calling quantitative research methods and using case-based research strategy to address IoT issues and assess the system in practice. From a broader point of view, this work confirms the predominant interest of RFID-IoT research work in the arena of supply chain management and logistics as the technology is used for tracking purpose and for monitoring applications. It is also one response to the research community suggesting that “hospitals should evaluate the medical effectiveness of the new technologies as well as the cost before adoption”.

Due to e-commerce growth, technological advancements and environmental concerns, developing a more nuanced service portfolio has become a critical issue for last-mile logistics service providers. Concurrently, consumers are adopting new modes of consumption. This paper aims to investigate the potential for last-mile logistics service providers to act as intermediaries in access-based consumption and to revitalise their service offerings through product-service systems – a pioneering strategy not executed in the market yet.

This strategic customer foresight study uses a quantitative survey of 1,000 respondents and an online focus group comprising 10 early adopter consumers to investigate emerging last-mile service models. Potential service concepts were identified through the survey, and two distinct concepts were subsequently selected for evaluation and co-development within the focus group. The research was conducted in partnership with an SME logistics company in Finland.

The consumers expressed selective interest in access-based consumption related to the proposed offering of essential household goods. Young adults and consumers in early middle age living in the city centre emerged as the most potential user groups. Economic reasons and short-term needs were the primary motivations for adopting access-based consumption.

The study showed that engaging consumers in a customer foresight process is viable for SMEs innovating their offerings and demonstrates how the process works in practice.

Documented cases of customer integration into foresight processes are rare in earlier research, and this paper extends the knowledge base through a multidisciplinary examination of future consumer behaviour in the last-mile logistics domain. The paper also expands the limited literature on the role of logistics in access-based consumption.

Social housing offers occupants comfort, safety and protection against extreme weather conditions. However, social housing occupants in various regions of Nigeria face various challenges. This paper aims to use a quantitative approach to examine the factors that contribute to the challenges faced by occupants in social housing within a semi-arid climate of Nigeria.

An exploratory cross-sectional survey was used to administer 1,032 copies of structured questionnaires to occupants of social housing in Maiduguri, one of the largest urban centers of the semi-arid climate in Nigeria. A total of 955 responses were retrieved, giving a response rate of 92.5%. The statistical model used in analyzing data was relative importance indices and factor analysis.

The results show that poor quality of FM services provided, poor maintenance of building components, damage to materials and valuables in the Harmattan period and housekeeping problems due to dust deposition in doors, while the poor response to occupants’ complaints/reports is the least among the occupants’ challenges in order of importance. Moreover, the results of the factor analysis further established that inadequate FM services and poor environmental conditions are the two factors contributing to the occupants’ challenges in social housing within the semi-arid climate of Nigeria.

This paper seeks to examine the factors contributing to social housing occupants’ challenges in the semi-arid climate of Nigeria. The paper should inform policymakers, academics and professionals.