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This study aimed to understand coopetition in the context of Brazilian specialty coffee grower Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), based on the need to differentiate the beans in and outside the farm level, taking into account the stakeholders’ influence.

In this study twenty semistructured interviews were carried out with coffee growers and managers of cooperatives, associations and supporting institutions involving two Brazilian coffee geographical indications. Data were analyzed using a mixed grid composed of qualitative, semantic and categorical factors.

Strategic moves undertaken by coffee growers and stakeholders have shaped the pathway of coopetition among coffee growers, as determinants to frame it as a deliberate or emergent pattern (intentional or unplanned, respectively). Our findings provide evidence that coopetition development among firms is deliberate when influenced by firms’ or stakeholders’ cooperative moves and emergent when influenced by firms’ or stakeholders’ competitive moves.

Although the firm/stakeholder relationship is often approached as a joint wealth creation effort, stakes are not always fairly distributed, so one of the parties may be negatively affected, with consequences for the development of coopetition. Underpinned by a stakeholder-oriented resource-based theoretical lens, this investigation of the development patterns of coopetition linked to the strategic actions undertaken by firms and stakeholders has resonance on competitive advantages.

The pandemic had a huge negative impact globally on small and micro firms, particularly on cultural enterprises, making it imperative for them to create strategic solutions for sustainable business models and customer relationships. This chapter studies the digital interventions employed by the micro cultural enterprises in the Japanese Onsens (Hot baths) sector during the pandemic period in Japan. Using the theoretical lenses of service dominant logic and value creation, the study extracts four prominent value creation processes from the analysis of the employed secondary data. The study underlines the importance of collaboration between a firm's internal and external resources, their creative use of operant resources, and a robust customer orientation leading to creative digitalization. The results of the study show how cultural enterprises can rethink customer service in the cultural and creative sector. It also draws attention to the need for more robust policies and support systems that can encourage global cultural enterprises to develop sustainable business models.

The integration of social media and e-commerce has resulted in a rising phenomenon among individual content providers (ICPs), who used to offer free content, to provide consumers with paid content, such as online courses, Q&As or consultations. Despite the prevalence of ICPs’ content monetization, empirical research has rarely studied its underlying mechanism. This paper examines how the characteristics of free content contributed by ICPs on social media platforms influence their paid content sales, focusing on the perspective of human brand.

The empirical setting is an online knowledge exchange platform, where users are allowed to provide free content (e.g. answers) on the social media platform and launch paid content (e.g. lectures) on the e-commerce platform. A machine learning technique is employed to construct measures for the characteristics of free content, and fixed-effects estimation is presented to confirm which factors have a significant influence on the sales of paid content.

The empirical results show that the quality, diversity and expertness of free content have a significant positive impact on the sales of the ICP-paid content, with the brand popularity of ICP playing a mediating role.

This study is the first attempt to demystify the relationship between content contribution and ICPs’ content monetization from the perspective of human brand. The findings validate the effectiveness of the “Selling by Contribution” strategy and provide valuable insights for ICPs and social media platforms.

Suning Group launched Suning.com when its chain stores were developing at the highest speed, realizing the transformation to an Internet retailer. Suning continued to follow the growth strategy of “Technological transformation and Smart Services”, and was renamed Suning Commerce Co. Ltd. It launched a business model of “e-commerce + stores + retail service providers”. Riding on the brand new O2O business model, Suning is thinking and practicing from simple donation to actual implementation, from constructing public welfare network to extending CSR ecosystem in a bid to advance towards deeper and more extensive Internet economy, and to create greater social value.

This study investigates whether the visualization of agricultural products influences consumers’ purchase intentions in the context of farmer-assisted livestreaming in China. Moreover, it explores the moderating effect of packaging functionality and the mediating effect of consumer trust.

Consumers in China from multiple social media platforms participated in this survey, which yielded 333 valid responses for analysis.

The results revealed a positive relationship between the video presentation about the agricultural production process and consumers’ purchase intention, which is mediated by consumers’ trust. Meanwhile, packaging functionality moderates the relationship between agricultural product visualization and consumers’ purchase intentions as well as the indirect effect of consumers’ trust.

This study extends the application of the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model to the field of farmer-assisted livestreaming. By building a more detailed model, this study adds to knowledge on the influencing mechanisms of consumers’ purchase intentions in farmer-assisted livestreaming.

The case was developed from secondary sources and interviews with a security analyst. The secondary sources include company annual reports, news reports, analyst reports, industry reports, company websites, stock exchange websites and databases such as Bloomberg and CMIE Prowess.

Increasing competition in product and capital markets has put tremendous pressure on managers to become more cost competitive. To address their firms' uncompetitive cost structures, managers may have to consider dramatic restructuring of their businesses. During 2014–2017, Tata Steel Ltd (TSL) UK considered a series of divestitures and a merger plan to nurse the company back to health. The case considers the economics of the restructuring plan. The case is designed to help students analyze a corporate downsizing program undertaken by a large Indian company in the UK and to highlight the dynamic role of the CFO and governance issues in family firms. It introduces students to issues surrounding a typical restructuring and provides students a platform to practice the estimation of value creation in a restructuring exercise. While some cases on corporate restructuring in the context of developed economies are available, there are very few cases written in an emerging market context. This case bridges that gap. TSL presents a unique opportunity to study corporate restructuring necessitated by a failed cross-border acquisition. It illustrates the potential for value loss in large, cross-border acquisitions. It shows how managerial hubris can prompt family firm owners to overbid in acquisitions and create legacy hot spots. In addition, the case can be used to discuss the causes of governance failures such as weak institutional monitoring and poor legal enforcement in emerging markets that could potentially harm minority shareholders.

The case was developed from secondary sources and interviews with a security analyst. The secondary sources include company annual reports, news reports, analyst reports, industry reports, company websites, stock exchange websites and databases such as Bloomberg and CMIE Prowess.

The digital economy is expected to revive the countryside and reduce the current level of urban–rural inequality. Nevertheless, whether rural e-commerce can narrow the urban–rural income gap still requires further analysis. The purpose of this paper is to clarify whether this goal is, in fact, being achieved.

Taobao villages have become the epitome of rural e-commerce development in China. Therefore, this paper matches the data of Taobao villages and the data of prefecture-level cities from 2014 to 2019, and employs a two-way fixed effect model, nonlinear model, instrumental variable model and interactive fixed effects model to explore the impact of rural e-commerce on the urban–rural income gap.

Firstly, the ability of urban residents to share rural e-commerce development is higher than that of rural residents, which actually widens the urban–rural income gap. Secondly, the migration to cities of rural families that have profited from e-commerce, and the return of working-class people to the countryside, are two factors that are contributing to the widening of the urban–rural income gap. Thirdly, the farther the distance from the urban area and the higher the spatial agglomeration of the rural e-commerce cluster is, the weaker the impact on widening the urban–rural income gap will be. Finally, while industrial-led rural e-commerce is responsible for widening the urban–rural income gap, agricultural-led rural e-commerce has no significant impact on the urban–rural income gap.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first to analyze the impact of rural e-commerce on the urban–rural income gap from the perspective of the coverage of Taobao villages. This empirical study will enrich existing theoretical perspectives on urban–rural integration under the backdrop of the digital economy.

This study aims to elucidate the process and internal mechanism of place identity construction in traditional villages under the impact of tourism by taking Cuandixia village as a case. The research methods comprise participatory observation and in-depth interviews with the residents. The main results are as follows: the impact of tourism on traditional villages is mainly reflected in space reconstruction, livelihood change, social relations restructuring and culture change; under the impact of tourism, the representation of residents’ identity construction shows complexity, with positive and negative effects; and the place identity construction of residents affects their perception of and attitudes toward tourism. Moreover, self-esteem and self-efficacy principles play a key role in their perception of tourism. This study provides some reference for further investigation of the tourism development model and the mental mechanism of residents in traditional villages.

Food not only satisfies the need and nourishes positive experiences but also enhances involvement with the cultural, social and environmental attributes of a destination. As urban tourism is embracing sustainable consumption practices (SCP), this study aims to explore tourist’s responsible behaviour by embracing traditional gastronomic delicacies. More specifically, it pinpoints the driving forces behind why people choose traditional gastronomic delights.

The study adopted the triangulation method involving the grounded theory approach (GTA) attained through a series of focus group discussions followed by the survey method taking an emerging economy’s perspective (India and Bangladesh). This study accords equal importance to both the demand and supply perspectives of gastronomic tourism and its stakeholders.

Critical dimensions such as travel motivation, tourist expectations, socio-economic perspectives, mindful consumption, sustainable marketing efforts and community awareness were identified as major influencers towards traditional gastronomic delicacies.

The present study bears significance to the urban developers, policymakers, marketers, regional tourism bodies and tour operators in promoting urban gastronomic cultures through marketing traditional delicacies for sustainable development of the evolving gastronomic industry in India and Bangladesh.

This study makes a novel attempt in exploring critical dimensions in an evolving gastronomic industry by blending an innovative qualitative research methodology like GTA supported by the empirical validation process (quantitative). It proposes a theoretical framework for further advancement of gastronomic and urban tourism towards a SCP.

The paper aims to understand the role of sensory quality scoring used at the competition auctions on pricing outcomes and how the auction process could be improved to increase sustainability in the specialty coffee market.

The authors build a conceptual model explaining the potential role of sensory quality scoring in generating inequitable outcomes in specialty coffee auctions. The authors' research is exploratory. The authors base the propositions on the findings of the extant literature and our analysis of data from 24 Best of Panama (BOP) Auctions that took place between 2017 and 2021.

A striking feature in recent BOP Auctions is a winner-takes-all (WTA) outcome. The authors also document the presence of significant price inversion. The authors attribute these outcomes to the interactions of information-poor producers, information-rich intermediaries and conspicuous consumers in competition auctions, where the product quality measurement is highly unreliable.

Data need to be gathered more broadly to enable the operationalization of the current propositions into testable hypotheses.

These strategies intend to provide guidelines for producers, consumers and other value chain participants on creating equitable solutions to a thriving industry where a WTA phenomenon occurs.

The current study is the first to argue that existing quality scoring practices, as well as conspicuous consumption, contribute to the inequities. Finally, the study proposes novel interventions to standardize the quality grading protocols and communicate them transparently to both producers and consumers.