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The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities in which the firms are engaged are outlined to provide background information for the reader.

This paper analyzes county-level firm births across the United States using a spatial count model that permits spatial dependence, cross-correlation among different industry types, and over-dispersion commonly found in empirical count data. Results confirm the presence of spatial autocorrelation (which can arise from agglomeration effects and missing variables), industry-specific over-dispersion, and positive, significant cross-correlations. After controlling for existing-firm counts in 2008 (as an exposure term), parameter estimates and inference suggest that a younger work force and/or clientele (as quantified using each county’s median-age values) is associated with more firm births (in 2009). Higher population densities is associated with more new basic-sector firms, while reducing retail-firm starts. The modeling framework demonstrated here can be adopted for a variety of settings, harnessing very local, detailed data to evaluate the effectiveness of investments and policies, in terms of generating business establishments and promoting economic gains.

Purpose: To outline recent developments in digital service delivery in order to encourage researchers to pursue collaborations with computer science, operations research, and data science colleagues and to show how such collaborations can expand the scope of research on emotion in service delivery.

Design/methodology/approach: Uses archived resources available at http://LivePerson.com to extract data based in genuine service conversations between agents and customers. We refer to these as “digital traces” and analyze them using computational science models.

Findings: Although we do not test significance or causality, the data presented in this chapter provide a unique lens into the dynamics of emotions in service; results that are not obtainable using traditional research methods.

Research limitations/implications: This is a descriptive study where findings unravel new dynamics that should be followed up with more research, both research using traditional experimental methods, and digital traces research that allows inferences of causality.

Practical implications: The digital data and newly developed tools for sentiment analyses allow exploration of emotions in large samples of genuine customer service interactions. The research provides objective, unobtrusive views of customer emotions that draw directly from customer expressions, with no self-report intervention and biases.

Originality/value: This is the first objective and detailed depiction of the actual emotional encounters that customers express, and the first to analyze in detail the nature and content of customer service work.

Purpose – The aim of this study is to determine the impact of feeling bored on managers' decision-making in the digital age under conditions of increased uncertainty by examining the role of personality trait openness and empirically testing such relationships within the context of retail middle managers.

Design/methodology/approach – Feeling bored was defined within a broader Decision-Making Process Model, which included the personality trait openness. An empirical study with retail middle managers was conducted to examine the relationships between feeling bored and decision-making competence (DMC). Regression models were fit to test whether feeling bored affects DMC and whether the associations were moderated by personality trait openness.

Findings – In the relationship between feeling bored and DMC, the moderating role of the personality trait openness was established. Results showed that feeling bored has a significant negative association with middle managers' confidence levels and risk perceptions when making decisions. Results also provided evidence that the learning component of personality trait openness plays a moderating role in the relationship between feeling bored and DMC. Most notably, the learning component of personality trait openness neutralizes the negative effects of feeling bored on managers' ability to remain appropriately confident when making decisions. In addition, the learning and inquisitive components temper the positive association between mood excited and risk perceptions. Limitations to the study are outlined.

Practical implications – Since trait openness (specifically its learning component) benefits decision-making contexts, it makes trait openness a worthy criterion to include when screening aspirant retail middle managers. The benefits of trait openness (specifically its learning component) for middle managers and their teams (especially when they are feeling bored) are indicated, since learning neutralizes the negative effect feeling bored has on appropriate confidence levels in retail management decision-making contexts.

This chapter explores the strategic motives behind the decision of hotels to internationalize. It approaches the subject from the perspective of the soft-service sector and aims to develop an understanding of this phenomenon. The literature covers several different factors that stimulate the decision to expand operations abroad. The process requires a trigger that will initiate the process and control the assignment until completion. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with international hotel chains to develop an understanding of the process. The findings reveal factors that can be distinguished between proactive and reactive and also be categorized under the four major motives behind internationalization: seeking natural resources, markets, efficiency and strategic assets or capabilities. The international strategy of hotel chains provides a roadmap for expansion and often acts as a trigger. The findings also reveal the significant role of vice presidents (VPs) of international development, development directors, agents and networks in initiating the process of internationalization and stimulating the chains towards specific parts of the world. One of the main differences between manufacturing and soft services is the wide variety of entry modes that are at the disposal of services. The findings are consistent with the literature published and provide an insight into the initial steps towards internationalization by hotel chains, in the post-COVID era.

Research question: What are the strategic motives behind the decision of hotels to internationalize?

Internationalisation leads to a radical process of change through which an organisation modifies the focus of its operations, value system and cognitive framework so as to achieve a more internationally responsive structure (Whitehead, 1992). Earlier studies have investigated the internationalisation process considering the internal and external factors of the company and its market (Cavusgil et al., 2002; McGoldrick, 1998, 2002; McGoldrick & Davies, 1995; Treadgold & Davies, 1988). The internationalisation literature based on Uppsala studies about the internationalisation process of Swedish firms, (Johanson & Wiedersheim-Paul, 1975; Johanson & Vahlne, 1977) identified four different internationalisation stages called the “establishment chain”, which also applied to the retail context (Davies & Fergusson, 1995, p. 99). The results show that different stages demand different resource commitment from the company (Johanson & Vahlne, 1977). It is assumed that a company initially lacks knowledge of the local market. The level of local market knowledge affects the company's commitment decisions and its activities. The network approach (Johanson & Mattsson, 1988) could be applied to the study of vertical international relationships. It is, therefore, useful for the international sourcing activities of retailers (Dawson, 1994, p. 270) and provides a competitive advantage as well as flexibility, in which each of the organisations in the network is working towards a common objective (McGoldrick, 2002, p. 571). In the past 20 years, many researchers have paid more attention to network relationships, which have become the main marketing strategy. They agree that the study of network relationships between companies, suppliers and customers is more important than the marketing mix (Ghauri, 1999).

Marketers' sustainability is highly dependent on providing their customers with a memorable experience. This experience manifests the care taken by marketers while interacting at every stage of customer's journey from need recognition to post-purchase behaviour. Customer experience's (CX) significance demands that it be measured succinctly to monitor it at various levels, beginning at the customer level and extending to the financial outcome of this interaction(s). This study has attempted to conduct the same, by measuring Net Promoter Score of the customers and the financial ramifications of good/bad CX. Evidence of financial implications of good/bad CX has been presented through secondary research. Customer level study was empirically conducted at two well-known retailers of India, one in the footwear category and the other in general merchandise. Finally, some successful examples from the Indian retail sector have been added to highlight the significance and impact of Indian retailers' measures to enhance their customers' experience.

In this chapter, using a dual approach based on managerial and legal perspectives, we examine franchisee attitudes regarding online sales in franchise networks to better understand their views of the costs and benefits of e-commerce in a franchise network. We thus explore the following research questions from a franchisee perspective: What are franchisees’ attitudes regarding online sales?; Are online sales viewed as complementary or competing sales for physical stores?; What about the opening of a franchisor’s website?; and What about the opening of a franchisee’s website? We also analyze how several different e-commerce options available to franchisors impact franchisee incentives and how they would be treated under European Union competition law.

The empirical research is based on the conduction and analysis of 46 in-depth interviews with franchisees in the retail and service industries in the French market.

We find that online sales in franchise networks raise important questions for the franchisees, and for the franchisors as well. E-commerce has to be integrated into the development strategies of franchise networks. Franchisors should facilitate the online sales practices of their franchisees in order to avoid potential conflicts with them or among the franchisees themselves, thereby maintaining the control necessary to ensure healthy network growth. Moreover, franchisors should pay attention to the sharing of Internet sales with its franchisees.

Our chapter contributes to the stream of franchising literature dealing with the use of Internet in franchise networks. Moreover, it can be viewed by franchisors, franchise experts, franchisees, and franchisee candidates as an overview of issues linked to online sales in franchise networks. It also highlights best practices when having a multichannel strategy.

The UK food retailing sector has undergone a radical transformation over the last 70 or so years. It has become a sector dominated by very large businesses with considerable power over both the upstream and downstream supply chain. The scale and power of those leading retailers has attracted considerable academic focus and political attention. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, global concern has emerged via a number of grand challenges including sustainability. Retailers have increasingly sought to address issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability, both to stave off criticism and for reasons of operational efficiency. The scale of the UK’s leading food retailers thus becomes a two-edged sword; should these retailers be co-opted in the fight for global sustainability or radically challenged as the cause of many of the problems? This chapter reviews the changing roles of food retailers, their steps in CSR and then poses the question as the future role of retailers in this changing environmental landscape.