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The purpose of this paper is to identify consumer segments based on the importance of food quality and prestige benefits when buying food for a special occasion; dinner party with friends.

Using cluster analysis, the importance of food quality benefits (quality, taste and health) and prestige benefits (prestige quality, hedonic, uniqueness, price and social) were investigated. The consumer segments were profiled using individual consumer characteristics (involvement in luxury, willingness to pay and socio-demographics).

Food quality benefits are the most important benefits when buying food for a party with friends and the authors identified four distinct consumer segments based on 20 different food quality and prestige benefits: perfectionists, premium, luxury seeking and value focussed. Three of the four consumer segments (perfectionists, premium and luxury seeking) find conventional food quality benefits important but differ in the importance they attribute to the different prestige benefits. The value focussed segment is not driven by prestige consumption but wants high quality at an affordable price.

This study demonstrates that consumers are driven by different food and prestige benefits when buying food for a special occasion.

This study suggest some important differences between premium consumers, looking for food quality and hedonic benefits, and luxury seeking, with a relatively higher focus on prestige quality, uniqueness and social benefits. This study also identifies a significant distinction between perfectionists and value focussed consumers. Both segments are focussed on food quality benefits but differ in their focus on value and prestige benefits.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of the manner in which companies deal with key stakeholders in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR), focusing in particular on how companies can handle critical incidents related to CSR and utilize these experiences in enforcing their regular social responsibility.

The paper is based on a case study methodology.

CSR should be managed by a combination of handling unexpected episodes that threaten existing social responsibility (incident recovery) and the long‐term reduction of gaps between stakeholder expectations and the company performance (CSR enforcement). Furthermore, CSR implies building and maintaining relationships with society through interplay between actors, resources and activities.

The study contributes to managerial decision making by identifying seven types of implications and activities necessary to actively manage key aspects of social responsibility.

The paper integrates long‐term social responsibility enforcement with short‐term social responsibility recovery by means of a recent corporate case from the oil industry.

Examines whether advertising creates stereotyping effects, focusing on effects created in the target group, and not on the content of the advertising message as primarily emphasized in prior research on stereotyping in advertising. Conducts an experimental study using a rather unfamiliar travel destination – Norway – as the target object. The findings reveal that advertising may create changes in the target group′s evaluations of the target object, and result in more coherent and stereotyped knowledge structures.

Despite the fact that both reserchers and managers agree that consumer satisfactions is a key factor for the success of hotels, little research has been done to reveal what aspects of the hotel operation the guests consider as important when evaluating the hotel experience. Literature on total quality management often argue that all aspects of the operation should be focused on, in order to achieve high levels of consumer satisfaction. Based on a sample of business travellers, we found that most of the variance in overall satisfaction with a hotel experience is eXplained by two core factors in the hotel operation, namely intangible aspects of the reception and tangible aspects of the houskeeping department. This calls for a more focused approach to the management of guest satisfaction than generally recommended in the literature. Implications for managers and recommendations for future research are presented.

The concept of atmosphere is often considered vague and difficult to capture, which hampers adequate feedback on atmospheric investments. This paper aims to report a systematic effort to capture the concept and enhancing factors, making adequate feedback for efforts to improve atmosphere possible.

Owing to limited a priori insights, an exploratory, discovery‐oriented approach was chosen. Semi‐structured interviews, supplemented with secondary data, were conducted to gain insight into how managers and design experts think and cope to improve the atmosphere of establishments. The hospitality industry was selected as empirical context.

Investments to improve the atmosphere of establishments can bring significant benefits. However, the positive effects are associated with uncertainty and consequently the risks can be substantial. However, such risks were only recognized by hospitality managers, not by design experts.

This study is a first step and was therefore restricted to the supply side of the industry. For practical purposes, the empirical setting was limited to a single country.

Care should be taken not to overkill with atmosphere and thereby lose focus on the main service/product offering. Hospitality managers and owners need to be assertive to get the right balance between aesthetic elements and operational requirements because design experts tend to neglect the latter.

Given the considerable interest in, and consequently the presumed value of, atmosphere as an intangible asset, this paper provides important insights into an area where there is genuine need for empirical research.

The general purpose of this paper is to investigate how a newly developed burger made of seafood is perceived in different test situations. In addition, the influence of satisfaction with preparation on the evaluative outcome is explored.

Data were collected from two different test situations; a home use test, and a canteen test among young Spanish consumers. Multiple measures of the constructs were used to test for construct reliability, validity and measurement invariance in two different consumption situations. The data were analysed by LISREL and ANOVA.

No differences in attitudes and intention to consume the fish burger are found for the different test situations. However, satisfaction with preparation did have a significant impact on evaluation and intention in the home situation, even though perceived preparation skill is the same.

This paper contributes to the existing literature on how different test locations influence product evaluation. First, methodologically, it uses multiple measures of the key dependent variables, attitude and intention, and tests for validity, reliability, and measurement invariance to approach survey context effects in different test situations. Second, theoretically, the paper also shows how the impact of satisfaction with the preparation can influence evaluation and intention to consume a new product in a home test situation.

The aims of this study were: to identify consumer segments in France, based on their use of and trust in information sources regarding the freshness of fish, to examine differences between the segments regarding use of and interest in information cues and objective and subjective knowledge, to compare the consumer segments regarding their fish consumption and fish storage behaviour and to discover how different consumer segments reacted to labels regarding the processing of cod fillet products.

This paper describes how French consumers (n=485) of fish were clustered in three segments based on their use of and trust in information sources regarding the freshness of fish and then compared by means of use of and interest in various information cues, knowledge, fish consumption behaviour, age and parenthood.

Information regarding thawed cod fillet products should be carefully communicated. Fresh fish remains at the top of consumers' aspirations, regarding fish. However, a short label indicating that fish was frozen directly after catch and thawed directly before they were put on the retailers' displays may lead to an improvement of the image of previously frozen cod fillet products.

This survey based study could be confirmed in a real-life experimental setting.

The results can be direct advice for the development of communication strategies for the successful launching of fresh and thawed cod fillet products in the market.

This manuscript expands the segmentation presented by Pieniak et al. to France. Using this segmentation as a starting point, this study demonstrates the benefits of its use in the development of directed communication strategies.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of information on English consumers' evaluation of fresh and thawed cod fillets which in English retail stores is referred to as “chilled” seafood.

After the exploration of consumers' impressions of thawed fish, this study followed a pair‐wise comparison approach in a central location consumer test. Fish fillets were evaluated on liking, smell and texture by means of a questionnaire with additional behavioural and attitudinal questions.

This study showed that consumers in England may prefer thawed over fresh cod fillets without information. However, consumers' evaluations increased for labelled fresh cod fillets and decreased for thawed. Finally, consumers reported positive expectations about fillets labelled “fresh” or “frozen at sea”.

This study involved testing cod fillets in a central location test. Consumers do not usually evaluate cod fillets in this way in their daily life. The quality of the two types of fillets made especially for this test may vary compared to the ones usually sold and consumed.

This study can inform producers and retailers about what to expect by means of sales of fresh and thawed cod products with or without information.

It was shown that consumers are positively influenced by information and are willing to consume more fish if they know that the fish is fresh or thawed properly.

This is the first paper to present English consumers' evaluations of thawed cod.

This review article aims to develop an integrating overview of the present status of the theory of corporate social responsibility (CSR) applied in the marketing context and asks whether, to what extent and how the discipline of marketing has addressed CSR.

After clarifying core concepts and proposing a new definition of CSR, 54 articles in leading marketing journals between 1995 and 2005 are analyzed in terms of publication characteristics, research design, variables, sampling, level of analysis, issues raised, and key findings.

Recommendations include a broadened perspective in empirical research to address CSR in its entirety, expand the focus beyond consumers, include a broader range of samples and conduct more inductive, exploratory empirical studies. These steps will contribute to a multidimensional view of the future customer.

The number and specific choice of journals was subject to a compromise between comprehensiveness and the availability of space for a review.

The way the scholarly marketing literature treats CSR impacts what our students and other constituencies learn.

Given the veritable explosion in CSR research in the recent years, there is a genuine need for the field to take stock of what has been learned so far and what that implies in terms of where researchers should be headed.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and the extent to which they are prepared to meet SCM challenges through the use of modern planning and control methods.

The study is based on a cross‐sectional survey of 200 Norwegian companies with informants mainly related to the SCM function and from top management.

The findings clearly indicate that SMEs give less attention to planning and control methods than LEs. SMEs are less satisfied with the methods applied; less concerned with methods supporting SCM on product quality, rationalisation of operations and capital cost rationalisation; less focused on system integration with other actors in the supply chain; and less focused on EDI and e‐based solutions.

The study focuses primarily on managerial components and excluded logistics structures and business processes that are more or less inter‐related.

Horizontal cooperation or vertical integration can reduce the information technology gap by sharing planning and control systems. The suppliers of support systems should consider delivering complete “turn‐key” solutions for revitalising the supply chain functions, specifically targeted towards SMEs.

The strength of this study is that it has been able to identify systematic differences between LEs and SMEs across sectors with respect to how SCM challenges are met.