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This study aims to provide a contextualized look at the artisan sector in Zambia and asks: What factors contribute to scaling positive impact in artisan ventures in Zambia, and how can these factors be leveraged to promote positive economic, social and environmental outcomes for women and their communities.

This study uses an explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach to gain a multi-layered understanding of artisan craft social enterprises in Zambia.

Purpose is found to be the primary driver of social and environmental impact in artisan social enterprises in Zambia, with female leadership a critical factor. Access to finance, markets and resources are also essential to help these organizations achieve their social missions.

While this study provides valuable insights into the artisan sector, its scope was limited to the Zambian context, making the generalizability of the findings to other geographies uncertain.

This research makes a valuable contribution to the literature on social enterprises by highlighting the critical role of female leadership and purpose in driving positive impact in artisan businesses in Zambia. Additionally, the study underscores the importance of understanding the mechanisms through which artisan social enterprises create positive change. The study highlights the importance of artisan craft employment for women in Zambia and illustrates the impact of Zambian artisan ventures, both formal social enterprises and informal businesses, on creating positive social and environmental impacts in the country.

Investors often utilize brokers to assist them in property acquisitions. These brokers are compensated through a cooperative commission, or bonus, that is publicized on the listing service. The purpose of this paper is to determine the relationship between advertised compensation packages and selling price, time-on-market and listing characteristics.

To examine variables likely to influence earnings of the buyers' broker, this study utilizes multiple and logistic regressions. Given the range of prices found in the 196,276 listings, the data was sorted on listing price and then split into ten, approximately equal, deciles.

The explanatory power of models with cooperative commission as the dependent variable was highest in the lowest deciles with type of financing, size and distressed status being highly significant. When comparing list- to selling price the average was 96.1%. As cooperative commission increased, the higher priced parcels sold at a higher price relative to list price. This potentially justifies higher cooperative commissions or exemplifies the principal-agent problem where effort is based on potential earnings. Fixed bonuses were used predominately for parcels under $62,234, likely to provide a minimum earnings amount. However, surrounding the median, it seems they may differentiate a property.

This research provides insight for practitioners on the impact of different variables, including cooperative commissions, on sale price and time-on-market. For example, cooperative commission increased for properties in the outer deciles implying that agents may be compensating for suspected difficulty. Additionally, the seasonality findings imply that agents can determine when to list and when to provide a fixed bonus to solicit attention. Results also suggest that practitioners will find it beneficial to market at an appropriate price rather than list high to create negotiating room.

This paper follows only one paper that covered a similar topic. However, this paper uses twenty years of multi-unit property listings from a major US city from 1996 to 2015. The focus on multi-unit properties is an effort to focus on a more sophisticated group of buyers that may be more experienced and make decisions more rationally.

Human brands in the music industry use self-presentation tactics on social media to manage audience impressions. This practice has led to many posts asking followers to adopt behaviors favoring the human brand. However, its effectiveness in leveraging relevant performance metrics for musicians outside social media, such as popularity in specialized media, music sales and number of contracted concerts, needs further exploration. This study aims to reveal the effect of impression management tactics conveyed on social media on the market performance of musicians’ human brands.

Secondary data research classifies 5,940 social media posts from 11 music artists into self-presentation tactics (self-promotion, exemplification, supplication and ingratiation). It shows their predictions on three market performance metrics in an annual balanced panel study.

Impression management tactics via posts on social media are mostly self-promotion, improving the musicians’ market performance by increasing the number of contracted concerts. Conversely, ingratiation generated the most positive effect on the musician’s popularity but reduced music sales. Besides lowering the musicians’ popularity, exemplification also reduced the number of contracted concerts, while the supplication had no significant effect.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the research is the first to use social media postings of musicians’ official human brand profiles based on self-presentation typologies as a complete impression management tool. Furthermore, it is the first to test the effects of these posts on market performance metrics (i.e. outside of social media) in a longitudinal study.

After completion of the case study, the students will be able to identify and discuss competition using Porter’s five forces, analyse and understand the enablers and challenges that impacted Rocky Brands’ growth and recommend a solution in relation to Rocky Brands’ growth strategy.

This case study investigates Rocky Brands, a South African manufacturer and distributor of cleaning products in the retail market. The case was set in November 2022 and highlights the important events ranging from the company’s founding in 2011 up until 2022. This case aims to study strategy in the South African fast moving consumer goods industry. At the time of writing the case study, Rocky Brands was operating across South Africa, with their main manufacturing warehouse in Johannesburg and a subsidiary manufacturing warehouse in Durban. They were changing the Durban warehouse to a distribution warehouse, as they planned to manufacture primarily from a bigger warehouse in Johannesburg. Rishav Juglall, the main protagonist, is the founder and managing director of Rocky Brands. Rocky Brands imports and redistributes several of the brands that the company sells, including Weiman’s, Wright’s and Goo Gone. They also manufacture their own line of products in South Africa under the Oakmont brand. Juglall acknowledges that their sales and revenue have grown yearly, but they have recently saturated the market and reached a plateau. Juglall needs to determine whether he should diversify into Africa, expand his product range or enter the market for private label cleaning products.

The case study’s primary focus is on strategy in an emerging market. This case study is suited to undergraduate students studying Porter’s five competitive forces, SWOT analysis (see teaching note exhibit) or the Ansoff matrix in the fields of strategy, marketing or macroeconomics. This case study can be taught in courses such as decision-making, environment of business, leadership or strategic implementation. The case study will teach students how to apply the frameworks to a business and assist students in determining which option is best for the business.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The positioning of a tourism destination can easily change due to external uncontrolled factors, such as a pandemic. In this scene, the purpose of this study can be summerized in two main points: to investigate the main topics associated with a religious tourism destination (Vatican City) before and from the pandemic crisis, and to identify potential topics that could be highlighted to reposition this tourism destination more favorably.

The information was extracted from Trip Advisor, specifically from the web Vatican City (7,152 reviews). This information was analyzed using text mining software applied to English text data.

The results show that the image of Vatican City has evolved, from a larger cultural, artistic and historical destination to a destination with a strong religious orientation, probably due to the growing influence of tourists and pilgrims in search of spiritual consolation in a global health crisis. New comments have emerged in the pandemic on topics such as Pope, Catholicism and love.

The authors recommend repositioning this tourism destination under what they have dubbed the umbrella of the three “Rs”: religion, renaissance and relaxation. Also, two outstanding attractions are frequently mentioned by tourists in this more spiritual scenario: Saint Peter’s Basilica and Sistine Chapel.

Studies about religious tourism are scarce, and those considering an urban city as a key religious tourism destination even more.

The data for this case were obtained primarily through a series of in-person interviews in Penang between the authors and Pete Browning (a pseudonym) from 2017 to early 2019. The authors also consulted secondary data sources, including publicly available material on BMax and “Company B”.

This case examines a key decision, or set of decisions, in the life of a small- to medium-sized management consultancy group, namely, whether they might expand their operations in Southeast Asia, and if so, where. These key decisions came in the wake of their having already established a very modest scale presence there, with an operating base on the island of Penang just off the north western coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The initial establishment of a Southeast Asian branch had been somewhat spontaneous in nature – a former colleague of one of the two managing partners in the USA was on the ground in Malaysia and available: he became the local partner in the firm. But the firm had now been eyeing expansion within the region, with three markets under particular consideration (Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand) and a further two (Vietnam and China) also seen as possible targets, though at a more peripheral level. The questions facing the decision makers were “was it time they expand beyond Malaysia?” and “if so, where?”

This case could be used effectively in undergraduate courses in international business. The key concepts on which the case focuses are the factors affecting market entry, particularly the choice of market and the assessment of potential attractiveness such markets offer.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between capabilities and renewal of organizational and business know-how in franchise networks.

This work uses a comparative case study of adaptive, absorptive and innovative capabilities to investigate knowledge renewal in 16 franchise networks.

The findings show that adaptive and innovative capabilities complement each other to foster know-how renewal. Furthermore, networks without internal R&D need to mobilize adaptive, absorptive and innovative capabilities to renew both organizational and business know-how. The findings also highlight that the three capabilities are interconnected.

The results of this research could provide insights for franchise networks to regenerate their knowledge base and ensure their long-term survival.

The underlying capabilities that explain organizational and business know-how renewal in franchises have not been investigated.

This study aims to answer two significant questions: What are the relative consumer and firm-level effects of marketing through metaverse compared to conventional marketing endeavours? What are the current trends in utilizing the metaverse as reported in the recent literature?

This study uses a systematic literature review methodology, using a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses flowchart to synthesize existing research. A total of 35 articles written in English were selected and analysed from two databases, Web of Science and EBSCO Host.

The findings indicate that consumer-level effects of the metaverse include consumer loyalty and brand attachment. The firm-level benefits are decentralization and cost reductions. The paper proposes a framework indicating variables that could attenuate or enhance the association between immersive components of the metaverse and their resultant effects.

This study contributes to understanding the role of metaverse in marketing practices related to the marketing mix components. The study conceptualizes a novel framework for the metaverse and its resultant effects.

This paper aims to study the motives that led to conflict between two groups – Employees of state-owned power distribution companies and the Government – over permitting parallel licensing to a private company for power distribution services in selected areas of the Maharashtra state in India. The study also seeks to comprehend the reconciliation process and the role of leadership in thwarting the strike that could have impacted common citizens.

The research is built on a case-based approach to analyze the pre- and poststrike environment along with the impact of the power shortage during the few hours of the strike. A semi-structured interview method wherein government and employee union representatives were interviewed to understand their version of the incident is used. Related literature, reports and news were reviewed to realize the impacts and consequences of similar situations in the past.

The strike was called off within a few hours with the intervention of state government to resolve the issue, promising the union the government’s intention not to privatize but to invest INR 500bn in the three government companies. The parallel licensing may impact government-owned power distribution companies as well as customers in the future.

It will pave the way for lessons related to such incidence where the Government and the Unions are at loggerheads over issues like privatization or ownership of the company and help the involved and other parties to seek a viable solution. The role of resilient leadership demonstrated by both parties led to a win-win solution within a few hours of the strike.

The paper is a case study on an issue that is very contemporary; the role of leadership and its swiftness in decision-making that led to a solution to a very complex situation is something that was not done earlier in the context of the State vs Union issue.

This paper aims to explore how music festival organisers negotiate diversity and inclusion in marketing and promotion practices through symbolic and social boundaries.

Based on semi-structured interviews with 18 festival organisers in Rotterdam and participant observation with six festival photographers I show that symbolic and social boundaries are employed in three areas: (1) boundaries in festival format (i.e. [partially] free or ticketed), (2) boundaries in distribution partners and technologies and (3) boundaries in promotional content.

Symbolic and social boundaries are intentionally used by festival organisers to build and delineate festival audiences. Implications are drawn on current understandings of the accessibility of music festival spaces, arguing that festival research should move beyond within-space dynamics to grasp the negotiation of diversity and inclusion at festivals more fully.

While music festivals are often marketed as celebratory spaces that are “welcoming to everyone”, few studies have investigated diversity and inclusion nor marketing and promotion practices at music festivals. This study shows how festival audiences are shaped through marketing and promotion practices.