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This paper aims to understand how young people manage the dramaturgical dilemmas related to drinking alcohol and performing multiple identities.

Drawing on qualitative data collected with 16-18-year olds, the authors adopt Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective to examine youth alcohol consumption in relation to multiple identities.

Young people continuously and skilfully juggle multiple identities across multiple contexts, where identities overflow and audiences and interactions overlap. Techniques of audience segregation, mystification and misrepresentation and justification are used to perform and manage multiple identities in a risky health behaviour context.

The approach may facilitate some over- and under-claiming. Future studies could observe young people’s performances of self across multiple contexts, paying particular attention to how alcohol features in these performances.

Social marketing campaigns should demonstrate an understanding of how alcohol relates to the contexts of youth lives beyond the “night out” and engage more directly with young peoples’ navigation between different identities, contexts and audiences. Campaigns could tap into the secretive nature of youth alcohol consumption and discourage youth from prioritising audience segregation and mystification above their own safety.

Extant work has argued that consumers find multiplicity unmanageable or manage multiple identities through internal dialogue. Instead, this paper demonstrates how young people manage multiple identities through interaction and performance. This study challenges the neat compartmentalisation of identities identified in prior literature and Goffman’s clear-cut division of performances into front and back stage.

Surveys multiple‐stage production planning literature to reveal that this sizeable body of research is largely inspired by single‐item production planning. Suggests several promising research opportunities, including the possible development of scheduling techniques not derived from older, single‐item procedures. Highlights the need for further comparative testing between existing “improved” techniques, as well as the wealth of work yet to be done in multiple‐stage production planning with limited resources and possible extensions to supply‐chain management.

Since 2008’s financial crisis, attention toward supply chain finance (SCF) has increased. However, most research investigates SCF considering single supply chain (SC) stages or buyer–supplier dyads and focuses on a single SCF solution. It is important to see how different solutions are adopted at different SC stages, by actors with different financing needs. This study aims to analyze SCF at different SC stages, to understand why different solutions are implemented at different SC stages and the contingency factors (regulation, SC stage, product category and size) influencing their adoption.

The paper is based on multiple exploratory case studies in the Italian agri-food industry, considering firms distributed at different SC stages and adopting multiple SCF solutions. The paper exploits a contingent approach (Sousa and Voss, 2008) to analyze how contingent factors influence SCF adoption at different SC stages.

Findings explain how and why different SC stages (producer, cooperative, processor and retailer) implement different SCF solutions (reverse factoring, dynamic discounting, inventory finance and Minibond), describing contingency variables’ impact on their adoption.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the research is original in its description of SCF at different SC stages, considering different SC actors’ drivers and barriers, and questioning the importance of a coordinated approach in SCF adoption along an entire SC. Moreover, the paper adopts a contingent approach, contributing to SCF research, seldomly based on theoretical lenses.

In the context of sequential multistage utilitarian service processes, the purpose of this study is to develop and validate propositions to study the impact of service quality (SQ) perceptions developed in intermediate stages, along with the impact of service gestalt characteristics, such as peak and end experiences, on quality perception at each stage and on overall service quality (OSQ) perception. The cascade phenomenon (interdependency between process stages) is considered in the evaluation of OSQ perception of customer, who experiences service through a series of planned, distinct and partitioned sequential stages.

In this paper, a conceptual framework is used to evolve the propositions. Subsequently, propositions are tested in three different utilitarian service contexts wherein customer survey was conducted for feedback on attributes at each stage, summary perception evaluations of each stage and OSQ evaluation of multistage process. Peak experiences, considered for OSQ evaluation, were defined by a suitable statistical technique. Ordinal logistic regression with nested models is the technique used for analyzing the data.

This work reveals significant cascade effect of summary evaluation of intermediate stages on the subsequent stage. Peak customer experience (negative or positive) is observed to be marginally significant on intermediate stage and OSQ evaluation. In addition, OSQ is observed to be influenced by summary perception evaluations of intermediate stages, which leads to better model adequacy. Finally, among all the stages, end stage performance is observed to have a significant impact on the overall multistage SQ.

The findings suggest that in view of the cascade effect of intermediate stages, managers need to allocate resources to ensure that all stages are performing at an adequate level instead of only focusing on improving peaks and end effects of customer experiences. The proposed approach is easy to implement and suitable for evaluating SQ and OSQ in varied multistage sequential utilitarian service environment.

An integrated approach for evaluation of SQ in sequential multistage utilitarian service processes is proposed from the perspective of cascade effect of intermediate stages and peak and end effects on OSQ perception.

This paper aims to investigate whether developers’ ask lower prices on homes in redevelopment sites than they do on similar units in smaller developments completed over a shorter time span. It also investigates whether developers price units differently at different stages of the redevelopment process. The development of designated redevelopment areas often consists of multiple projects spread across several years, some in parallel, some sequential. New units are put on the market in a piecemeal fashion, and infrastructure, shared green spaces and shared facilities are installed successively.

A hedonic price model is used to analyse sales prices of 7,000 new apartments in Oslo sold between 2011 and 2015, all else being equal. The paper distinguishes between infill as one-stage projects, and multi-staged competitive and multi-staged monopolistic redevelopments.

Dwellings in redevelopment projects sell at a lower price than similar dwellings in infill projects. In competitive redevelopments, those in charge of the last projects put a slightly higher price on apartments. In redevelopments involving only one developer, the last stages ask the lowest prices.

This research expands our understanding of developers’ pricing behaviour. Developers supplying housing for the private market through redevelopments land are willing to take risks particularly in the initial stage.

The findings indicate that credit institutions financing developers’ projects need to take into account the structure of selling prices, including lower prices and higher risk of pursuing redevelopment projects.

Gaining a better understanding of developers’ pricing behaviour deepens our insights into the dynamics of market-led urban brownfield developments; this knowledge may moreover inform policies on sustainable urban growth.

An original investigation of housing transactions in urban brownfield sites in Oslo provides fresh insights into developers’ pricing behaviour.

This study seeks to illustrate empirically how person‐situation variants influence customer assessments of service quality across multiple stages in the service drama.

Using surveys that were systematically distributed to 3,000 passengers boarding 30 different flights (with 432 complete responses), the effects of consumption motive (hedonic versus utilitarian) and service duration (shorter versus longer service encounters) were examined in relationship to perceived time pressure within a multiple‐sequence service encounter.

The results indicate that the consumption motives (utilitarian‐hedonic) of passengers do influence perceptions of service quality, as well as altering perceived time pressure resulting from service delays. Also, the length of the service duration moderates the negative effects of time pressure on perceived service quality.

Extrapolating the findings from this research to other service industries should be done with care given that consumption motives and perceived time pressures may vary greatly across different service industries.

This study suggests that managers must develop systemic solutions to service delays during early stages of the encounter as such delays may prompt a “domino effect” that transcends all subsequent stages in the service encounter. Service encounters that are longer in duration may also be more susceptible to critical service evaluations if these delays are not rectified.

This study demonstrates the critical issue of measuring service quality during each successive stage of a service encounter.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of identifying market segments in multistage markets and assessing whether their alignment could provide a useful managerial approach to find competitive advantage and better understand market opportunities.

Using data from a pilot project, need-based market segments from different market stages were identified and their potential alignment evaluated. The data were not designed to test hypotheses, nor were they originally intended to be used to align segments. Nevertheless, they provided a unique opportunity to explore multistage segmentation and segment alignment in a business-to-business (B2B) setting.

Overall, the findings of this exploratory study should encourage both academics and practitioners to continue to explore the possibility of studying and aligning multistage market segments. The possibility of aligning segments was demonstrated using visual alignment based on managerial judgment of data and alignment based on a combined cluster analysis of customers across the multistage markets.

First, the market research was not specifically designed to formulate and test hypotheses about the feasibility of aligning segments in multistage markets – it is an exploratory study. The research was based on a pilot project, and the survey-derived databases were conveniently available for analysis. While sample sizes were small, they are typical of many B2B markets. Second, to more effectively study complex relationships in multistage markets, it would have been desirable to include a more comprehensive set of needs. Each market stage has not only a set of their own perceived needs but also a set of perceptions of the needs of other stages. Third, as in many B2B studies, the data used in this pilot project were based on single informants.

A common complaint among firms is that B2B market segmentation does not really work that well for them. An unexplored reason for this may be that true market segmentation does not stop with one’s direct customer, but should also include the customer’s customer and so on, in a multistage market segmentation structure. One implication of the research presented here suggests that better understanding the segmentation structure in a multistage market can enlighten the opportunities and risks of implementing such a strategy. Multistage market segmentation alignment may lead to innovative positioning and message levers for the sales force to use as an argument to gain advantage according to common and unique aligned segment needs.

The process may be applied to social institutions in addition to commercial organizations.

While it is obvious that market segmentation can be applied to any single market of customers, the question of applying it to complex multistage markets needs additional exploration. The original idea in this paper is that the potential for strategically aligning multistage markets and segments can have both conceptual and managerial implications for establishing competitive advantage and more efficient and effective resource allocation. The paper shows that that such alignment is possible; however, research and research methods in this area are nascent and will require continued step-by-step learning about these complex market structures to build up to a more definitive understanding of the processes involved to guide future research and managerial thinking.

One strategy that can offer substantial transportation performance improvement is freight consolidation. Freight consolidation refers to the practice of aggregating customer orders over space and/or time until a specified minimum total shipment weight/volume is accumulated and/or a maximum holding time for the oldest customer order is reached. The aggregated customer orders are then shipped together.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the capital investment process, guided by concepts from cognitive and social psychology. The intention is to gauge the extent to which managerial judgement can be detected by applying a psychological lens to the process. Initial fieldwork is subsequently reported on the extent to which managerial judgement is managed. Discovery of variations suggest an alternative perspective on understanding capital investment decisions (CIDs) that may be potentially worthwhile in understanding the long‐term success and survival of modern commercial enterprises.

Following a systematic review, employing the psychological concepts of heuristics, framing and concensus to prior case and fieldwork studies, the CID process in three companies engaged in new market/site development projects is reported. The participants initially responded to a survey and subsequently agreed to be interviewed about their processes and involvement.

The psychological concepts provided a satisfactory gauge of managerial judgement. The fieldwork revealed variety in the management of the CID process and the influence of managerial judgement.

There is an increasing call to examine the CID by case or fieldwork but, to date, the role managerial judgement plays has not been directly addressed. Applying psychological concepts to the CID process offers an opportunity to focus enquiries and improve understanding of corporate practices.

The relative reliance companies place on heuristics, framing and consensus within their specific organizational contexts ultimately may provide insights to the long‐term survival of companies.

The paper provides useful information on the cognitive and social psychology in the capital investment process.

A real-time production scheduling method for semiconductor back-end manufacturing process becomes increasingly important in industry 4.0. Semiconductor back-end manufacturing process is always accompanied by order splitting and merging; besides, in each stage of the process, there are always multiple machine groups that have different production capabilities and capacities. This paper studies a multi-agent based scheduling architecture for the radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled semiconductor back-end shopfloor, which integrates not only manufacturing resources but also human factors.

The architecture includes a task management (TM) agent, a staff instruction (SI) agent, a task scheduling (TS) agent, an information management center (IMC), machine group (MG) agent and a production monitoring (PM) agent. Then, based on the architecture, the authors developed a scheduling method consisting of capability & capacity planning and machine configuration modules in the TS agent.

The authors used greedy policy to assign each order to the appropriate machine groups based on the real-time utilization ration of each MG in the capability & capacity (C&C) planning module, and used a partial swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to schedule each splitting job to the identified machine based on the C&C planning results. At last, we conducted a case study to demonstrate the proposed multi-agent based real-time production scheduling models and methods.

This paper proposes a multi-agent based real-time scheduling framework for semiconductor back-end industry. A C&C planning and a machine configuration algorithm are developed, respectively. The paper provides a feasible solution for semiconductor back-end manufacturing process to realize real-time scheduling.