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1 – 10 of 219As the consumer experience literature broadens in scope – specifically, from dyads to ecosystems and from provider-centric to consumer-centric perspective – traditional data…
Abstract
Purpose
As the consumer experience literature broadens in scope – specifically, from dyads to ecosystems and from provider-centric to consumer-centric perspective – traditional data collection methods are no longer adequate. In that context, the paper aims to discuss three little-used data collection methods that can contribute to this broader view of consumer experience.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper identifies methodological requirements for exploring the broadened view of consumer experience and reviews data collection methods currently in use.
Findings
The paper elaborates tailored guidelines for the study of consumer experience through first-hand, systemic and processual perspectives for three promising and currently underused data collection methods: phenomenological interviews, event-based approaches and diary methods.
Research limitations/implications
Although the list of identified methods is not exhaustive, the methods and guidelines discussed here can be used to advance empirical investigation of consumer experience as more broadly understood.
Practical implications
Practitioners can apply these methods to gain a more complete view of consumers’ experiences and so offer value propositions compatible with those consumers’ lifeworlds.
Originality/value
The paper principally contributes to the literature in two ways: by defining the methodological requirements for investigating consumer experience from consumer-centric, systemic and processual perspectives, and by specifying a set of data collection methods that meet these requirements, along with tailored guidelines for their use.
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Caroline Marchant and Stephanie O’Donohoe
Young people’s attachment to their smartphones is well-documented, with smartphones often described as prostheses. While prior studies typically assume a clear human/machine…
Abstract
Purpose
Young people’s attachment to their smartphones is well-documented, with smartphones often described as prostheses. While prior studies typically assume a clear human/machine divide, this paper aims to build on posthuman perspectives, exploring intercorporeality, the blurring of human/technology boundaries, between emerging adults and their smartphones. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on assemblage theory, this interpretive study uses smartphone diaries and friendship pair/small group discussions with 27 British emerging adults.
Findings
Participants in this study are characterized as homo prostheticus, living with and through their phones, treating them as extensions of their mind and part of their selves as they navigated between their online and offline, private and social lives. Homo prostheticus was part of a broader assemblage or amalgamation of human and non-human components. As these components interacted with each other, the assemblage could be strengthened or weakened by various technological, personal and social factors.
Research limitations/implications
These qualitative findings are based on a particular sample at a particular point in time, within a particular culture. Further research could explore intercorporeality in human–smartphone relationships among other groups, in other cultures.
Originality/value
Although other studies have used prosthetic metaphors, this paper contributes to understanding of smartphones as a prostheses in the lives of emerging adults, highlighting intercorporeality as a key feature of homo prostheticus. It also uses assemblage theory to contextualize homo prostheticus and explores factors strengthening or weakening the broader human–smartphone assemblage.
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Bernat López and Lina Casadó-Marín
This study aims to analyze and assess 21 years of media coverage (2000–2020) of Flix, a small industrial village located in an rural area on north-eastern Spain, which has endured…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyze and assess 21 years of media coverage (2000–2020) of Flix, a small industrial village located in an rural area on north-eastern Spain, which has endured in these years a severe environmental and industrial crisis, with a strong potential for stigmatization of the place.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is conceptualized under the Social Amplification of Risk Framework, a theoretical/conceptual approach aimed at accounting for the huge gaps that often arise between public perception of technological or environmental risks of some technologies, products and places and the expert estimations of these risks. The authors studied the coverage on Flix by a local, a regional and a national newspaper through a content analysis where the corpus (1,524 news pieces) was coded for several variables, including tone, genre and thematic area.
Findings
The studied coverage was in general overwhelmingly negative and strongly focused on “bad news” relating to pollution and deindustrialization, although this was much less the case in the local newspaper than in the regional and, in particular, the national newspaper. Thus, a territorially escalated pattern clearly emerges from our research concerning the stigmatization potential of news media coverage for the specific case under scrutiny.
Originality/value
To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time such a longitudinal study of media coverage and its potential for place stigmatization is performed with this specific territorial perspective.
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Vera Amicarelli and Christian Bux
Given the importance of food waste in the economic, social, health and environmental dimensions, the purpose of this work is to detect, through a systematic and configurative…
Abstract
Purpose
Given the importance of food waste in the economic, social, health and environmental dimensions, the purpose of this work is to detect, through a systematic and configurative literature review on food-waste-measurement methodologies, the global approaches, characteristics, limitations, opportunities and results applied within the literature. The analysis of these papers provides useful information about how far we are from international action plans and, therefore, how we need to direct programs and policies to measure and reduce food waste and ensure food security and food safety.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors have conducted a systematic, configurative literature review on food waste measurement methodologies applied only within empirical studies published in academic peer-reviewed scientific journals. Based on the Commission Delegated Decision (EU) 2019/1597 of May 3, 2019 (OJEU, 2019) regarding common methodologies and minimum quality requirements for the homogeneous assessment of food waste quantities and composition, the authors investigated the issue on Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) from June 2000 to June 2020. The authors researched keywords within article titles, abstracts and author keywords by utilizing 34 different research strings.
Findings
The proposed review particularly refers to following topics: measurement methodologies applied according to the Commission Delegated Decision (EU) 2019/1597; editorial placement and publication timeline; geographical area; food supply-chain stage and publication journals; and the main features, limitations, opportunities and results for each measurement methodology as presented by authors. Among the first 48,000 results, only 58 academic articles are perfectly in line with the aim of the review, highlighting the lack of standardized methodologies, the limits of those proposed and the deficiency of comparable results to achieve sustainable international goals.
Originality/value
The proposed review is one of the few concerning food waste measurement methodologies. Food waste measurement is essential to rebalance the actual inadequate food system and to switch it toward a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly one, thereby (1) managing the human nutrition system paradox of hungry, undernourished and over-weight people; (2) reducing food insecurity; (3) ensuring each living being's access to healthy, nutritious and sustainable food; and (4) reducing environmental impacts (neutral or positive impact) and the loss of biodiversity and mitigating climate change.
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This paper determines how travel intentions can be predicted using self-disclosure behaviour, trust and intimacy. This case study focuses on Tinder users who utilised the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper determines how travel intentions can be predicted using self-disclosure behaviour, trust and intimacy. This case study focuses on Tinder users who utilised the application's Passport feature which allowed them to travel virtually and interact with other users around the globe amid global travel restrictions.
Design/methodology/approach
This quantitative research conveniently sampled 294 Tinder users who used the Passport feature during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Data were analysed using PLS-SEM.
Findings
This study revealed that self-disclosure had a significant influence towards future travel intentions. Findings show that the more users self-disclose, the more their intent to travel increase. Trust and intimacy also had significant relationship on travel intentions while intimacy had a mediating effect between self-disclosure and travel intentions.
Practical implications
Tourism-oriented establishments and destination marketers should consider Tinder users as a market segment of future tourists. These users have developed travel intentions through in-app interactions and thus comprise an untapped market of potential tourists seeking for meet-ups and niche experiences in a post-pandemic era.
Originality/value
This study provides novelty in showing the predictive relationship of self-disclosure, trust and intimacy towards travel intentions. A model consisting of these constructs in the context of online interactions was also empirically tested and found adequate to predict travel intentions.
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Sara Bartoloni, Beatrice Ietto and Federica Pascucci
The coffee industry has experienced two major trends: the development of connoisseur consumption of specialty coffee and the importance of sustainability. Despite the increasing…
Abstract
Purpose
The coffee industry has experienced two major trends: the development of connoisseur consumption of specialty coffee and the importance of sustainability. Despite the increasing concomitant relevance of both trends, literature on how sustainability has been interlacing with connoisseur consumption is rather limited. Therefore, this paper aims to analyse how connoisseur consumers (CC) integrate sustainability into their coffee consumption practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts a qualitative netnographic approach through an interpretive cultural analysis of specialty coffee bloggers narratives, conceived as a specific sub-group of CC that tend to be particularly active on social media.
Findings
Through the lens of social practice theories, the study reveals that CC are likely to implement and perceive sustainability very differently from the dominant mass market as subject to the influence of their shared rituals, values, norms and symbolic meanings. Such findings are relevant under a managerial perspective as they also generate insights on how to foster environmentally friendly practices in coffee consumers as well as on how to create more sustainable marketing strategies.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the literature on coffee consumption behaviour and sustainability. First, by analysing actual behaviours rather than intended, the study offers an alternative approach to the dominant paradigm of linear decisions models in the study of sustainable consumption. Second, because CC possess a unique consumption style, different from the mainstream market, the analysis has led towards the identification of alternative sustainable consumption patterns and enablers.
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Niclas Sandström and Anne Nevgi
This paper aims to study a change process on a university campus from a pedagogical perspective. The aim of the process, as expressed by facilities management and faculty…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study a change process on a university campus from a pedagogical perspective. The aim of the process, as expressed by facilities management and faculty leadership, was to create campus learning landscapes that promote social encounters and learning between students and researchers, as well as other embedded groups. The paper addresses how pedagogical needs are or should be integrated in the design process.
Design/methodology/approach
The data of this case study regarding change on campus consist of semi-structured interviews of information-rich key stakeholders identified using snowball sampling method. The interviews were analysed to find common themes and reference to pedagogical needs and expectations.
Findings
Campus usability and reliability are improved when pedagogy informs the design, and needs such as sense of belonging (human) and connectivity (digital) are fulfilled. User-centred design should be followed through during the whole campus change process, and there should be sufficient communications between user groups.
Research limitations/implications
The discussion is based on one case. However, the recommendations are solid and also reflected in other related research literature regarding campus change initiatives.
Practical implications
The paper states recommendations for including pedagogical needs in campus learning landscape change and underlines the role of real user-centred processes in reaching this goal.
Originality/value
The study introduces the concept of campus reliability and highlights a missing link from many campus change cases – pedagogy – which is suggested to be essential in informing campus designs that produce usable and reliable future-ready outcomes.
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Blessing Chiparausha, Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha and Ifeanyi Jonas Ezema
This study aims to examine the use of social media by academic librarians at universities in Zimbabwe with particular focus on the application of the four key constructs of the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the use of social media by academic librarians at universities in Zimbabwe with particular focus on the application of the four key constructs of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model. This study assesses the degree to which academic librarians in Zimbabwe believe that using social media enhances service delivery, the extent to which academic librarians perceive social media as easy to use, the influence of peers on social media use among academic librarians and the extent to which facilitating conditions influence social media use.
Design/methodology/approach
A pragmatist worldview in which both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted, this multiple case study used face-to-face interviews, self-administered questionnaires and content analysis for collecting data.
Findings
Academic librarians in Zimbabwe perceive social media tools to be useful and easy to use in the provision of services. Social influence had a moderate effect on academic librarians’ use of social media for service delivery at universities in Zimbabwe, but they feel that their supervisors do not provide enough help for them to use social media.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no similar study has been done previously in Zimbabwe. This multiple case study presents useful findings on the acceptance and use of social media by academic librarians in Zimbabwe.
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Raoni Barros Bagno and Jonathan Simões Freitas
The purpose of this paper is to present an approach to start industry–university (I-U) collaboration through a stepped process aimed at building a portfolio of research and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present an approach to start industry–university (I-U) collaboration through a stepped process aimed at building a portfolio of research and development (R&D) projects.
Design/methodology/approach
It devises from an 18-month action-research program held between a multinational automotive manufacturer and the a top-ranked Brazilian university.
Findings
The three-stage R&D shared portfolio methodology results from a combined application of quality function deployment-like correlation matrices and roadmapping. A first matrix tackles industry interests and correlates product performance dimensions and components to reveal broad research areas of interest. A second matrix correlates research areas and engineering competences, highlighting the types of the required know-how from the university standpoint. Thirdly, academic experts help to fill a roadmap-like layer with possible collaborative R&D deliverables over time.
Research limitations/implications
Since the study lies on a single experience, extensions to other contexts should be made with care. However, the proposal offers robust rationale and a set of supporting tools to nurture new applications.
Practical implications
Theoretical and methodological reflections help managers tackling the long-standing problem of setting a shared R&D agenda.
Originality/value
Literature on I-U collaboration tends or to over-emphasize the role of technology transfer offices in promoting the partnerships or to seek implications for public policy. This research offers a valuable approach to build shared R&D project portfolio from a managerial viewpoint, filling an academic gap and offering guidance for managers in both sides.
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