Search results
1 – 10 of over 4000Attempts to explain the limitations and constraints of government policy makers in the regulation of street vending. Looks at ways that street vendors in Mexico City create…
Abstract
Attempts to explain the limitations and constraints of government policy makers in the regulation of street vending. Looks at ways that street vendors in Mexico City create alternative forms of regulation that complement and challenge the state’s attempt to impose a “one size fits all’ form of regulation for the national economy. Cites two distinct forms of regulation and how these resppond to the different needs of vendors depending on their ability to negotiate their status with the state. Covers the organizations which the vendors have formed to assist them and question the “Mafia” status applied to these by the establishment.
Details
Keywords
Today’s China has striven to exclude street vendors through political campaigns such as “National Sanitary City” and “National Civilized City.” Such campaigns pursue modernity and…
Abstract
Purpose
Today’s China has striven to exclude street vendors through political campaigns such as “National Sanitary City” and “National Civilized City.” Such campaigns pursue modernity and beautiful urban spaces by deeming street vendors to be disorderly, unsanitary, and obsolete. Taking a single Chinese city as a case study, this research analyzes why and how local bureaucratic apparatuses apply rapidly-changing and ambiguous political treatment to street vendors. This research also examines street vendors’ struggles and coping strategies with these ever-changing politics.
Methodology/approach
The data for this study were obtained during a total of ten months of fieldwork, beginning in 2013 and ending in 2016. In-depth interviews were conducted with fifty-one street vendors and six government officials; additionally, the researcher consulted newspaper reports, archives, and relevant official publications.
Findings
First, regarding the governance of street vendors, the local administration has shifted their stance between two distinct patterns – suppression and tolerance – depending on the timing of certain political campaigns. Second, the corruption and laziness of government officials has provided niches for the revival of street vending after campaigns are over, though with limitations. Third, street vendors in China tend to be passive recipients of government suppression, unable to forge effective resistance because of a lack of strong leadership and general organization.
Originality/value
This research will add to the general understanding of the government-vendor relationship by revealing the complexity, uncertainty, and flexibility inherent in interactions between these two groups.
Details
Keywords
This chapter discusses The Context of Street Vendors in India: A Tale of Invisible Visibility in August during the Executive Committee Meeting of National Alliance of Street…
Abstract
This chapter discusses The Context of Street Vendors in India: A Tale of Invisible Visibility in August during the Executive Committee Meeting of National Alliance of Street Vendors of India (NASVI). During the Mumbai workshop, a vendor talked about the idea of a Natural Market, as a place where buyers naturally congregated, such as at a temple or a hospital, as opposed to places where municipal authorities attempted to rehabilitate evicted vendors where buyers did not come automatically. The Street Vending Act states that no existing street vendor can be displaced until the local authorities conduct a census of street vendors in the concerned urban centre and prepare a City Vending Plan. Representatives of street vendors will constitute 40 per cent of its membership and women will comprise at least 33 per cent of the street vendors’ representatives. Another factor which brought vendors closer to NASVI is its holistic understanding of vendors’ needs.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to explore resilience strategies of Chinese street vendors in a shifted regulatory policy environment from a strength-based and entrepreneurial…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore resilience strategies of Chinese street vendors in a shifted regulatory policy environment from a strength-based and entrepreneurial perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing upon nine in-depth interviews and naturalistic observations in an urban village of Guangzhou, China, the study empirically investigates how unregulated sidewalk-based hawkers struggle to survive against socioeconomic adversities compared with regulated vendors’ operations in a legitimate transitional market.
Findings
Mirroring a sub-group of rural-to-urban migrants, street vendors espouse subtle strategies centering on purposefulness, resourcefulness and hardiness, which are instantiated through family obligation, sales tactics, merchandising techniques, technology application, trading flexibility, moral sentiment and assistance network. As such, street entrepreneurs are both enacting and constructing resilience in response to specific challenging contexts including impoverishment, operating cost inflation, contingent loss, fierce competition, market uncertainty, intensive workloads, municipal inspection and arbitrary governance practice of village cooperative organization.
Research limitations/implications
Notwithstanding its limited generalizability, the result sheds light on crystallization of street vendors’ resilience and informs social services and policy remedies.
Originality/value
The study provides a frame of reference to examine the interplay of resilience theory from psychology and entrepreneurship thesis from the field of business management by adding new evidence to the research on “entrepreneurial resilience” and potentially serves as a catalyst to enrich existing literature with an integrated perspective to comprehend the coping process of these necessity-driven micro-enterprise operators. The antagonistic understanding of informal economy is so predominating that it obscures structural oppression undermining social justice, whereas the spirit of self-reliance among street entrepreneurs is ought to be respected.
Details
Keywords
Farzad H. Alvi and Jorge Alberto Mendoza
The need for a firm’s business strategy to be responsive to the institutional contexts of emerging markets is well-established in the literature. Often, however, strategic…
Abstract
Purpose
The need for a firm’s business strategy to be responsive to the institutional contexts of emerging markets is well-established in the literature. Often, however, strategic responsiveness is impeded by defining institutional contexts as country-level aggregations (macro-level) and glossing over sub-national variations (micro-level). The purpose of this paper is to investigate micro-level contexts that can defy macro-level assumptions of economic rationality.
Design/methodology/approach
As a research site, the motivations of street vendors in Mexico City are analyzed in terms staying in one sub-national context, the informal sector, as opposed movement to another, the formal sector. Unanticipated reluctance to move from one context to another is defined as stickiness.
Findings
Sub-national institutional contexts are found to be sticky, with less movement between informal and formal sectors than would have been anticipated. Unexpectedly, it is found that a significant number of street vendors prefer the hardship of the informal sector to the relative security of the formal sector.
Research implications
International business research makes assumptions about the growth narrative of emerging markets, often characterizing a growing middle class as a rising tide that lifts all boats. In terms of further research on adapting strategy, however, assumptions of rational expectations ought to be tempered, as demonstrated by the stickiness of the informal sector.
Originality/value
A contribution is made to the international business literature by showing that macro-level assumptions about institutional context based on rational expectations of wealth-maximizing behavior in emerging markets may result in an incomplete view of institutional context. Ultimately, adaptation of strategy could be impaired as a result.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this study is to review the critical success factors (CSFs) of street food destinations, given the limited attention awarded to such research in the food and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to review the critical success factors (CSFs) of street food destinations, given the limited attention awarded to such research in the food and beverage sector.
Design/methodology/approach
An interpretivist approach was used to merge CSFs from street vending and culinary tourism perspectives, to develop a draft framework for analysing CSFs for street food destinations. In total, 64 cities that appeared in the first 20 webpage results of a Google search, using 4 keywords, formed the population. A purposive sample of seven destinations (Bangkok, Marrakesh, Mexico City, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Portland and Singapore City) was used. A content analysis method was used to review webpages, journal articles and government reports of the destinations, based on the modified list of CSFs.
Findings
The availability of diverse street food resources and cultures, coupled with rich historic city cores that sustain street food vending, in some destinations, are very important CSFs. The presence and extent of regulatory enforcement were also key in others. Empirical research is, however, required to corroborate the draft framework to create a body of knowledge for further research in the field.
Originality/value
The study examines how leading street food destinations have instituted the CSFs required for street food provision.
Details
Keywords
Mario Giraldo, Luis Garcia-Tello and Steven William Rayburn
This study aims to explore the lived experience of vendors as they enact street vending practice that emerges as transformative entrepreneurship and service where they live and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the lived experience of vendors as they enact street vending practice that emerges as transformative entrepreneurship and service where they live and work.
Design/methodology/approach
This research qualitatively explores street vending in a multi-cultural, multi-local study to understand how these businesses operate to positively impact individual, collective and societal well-being.
Findings
This research reveals street vending is a creative, transformative entrepreneurial activity that improves individual and collective well-being. The research exposes multiple forms of habitual and transformative value delivered by vendors, resulting in improved eudaimonic and hedonic well-being that ripples out from vendors to families, communities and society.
Research limitations/implications
A framework of street vending practice is provided to guide service designers and policymakers as they seek to support street vendors as they move from informal to formal and from survival to growth business modes.
Originality/value
This research extends existing conceptualizations of transformative entrepreneurship beyond prior focus on economic transformation and prior limitations of transformative entrepreneurship to business in growth modes.
Details
Keywords
Provide a general contemporary overview of street vending around the world, focusing on the major issues underlying its permanence as a phenomenon, and the ambivalent attitudes…
Abstract
Provide a general contemporary overview of street vending around the world, focusing on the major issues underlying its permanence as a phenomenon, and the ambivalent attitudes displayed towards it by governments and off‐street business communities. Focuses on street vendors as an occupational group ad includes arguments for and against their existence, the impact of their geographical and economic location, and role of the government.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to build on both the theoretical work concerning the co-creation of experiences, and the need for micro-businesses to adopt a consumer-friendly…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to build on both the theoretical work concerning the co-creation of experiences, and the need for micro-businesses to adopt a consumer-friendly orientation. The researchers examined the compatibility of vendors’ views of their visitors’ perspectives and the visitors’ own assessments of two Hong Kong night markets. Using a large sample survey with over 1,900 tourists and 120 vendors, and examining the data through mean difference testing and factor analysis, the comparability of the views was examined. Key findings were that vendors consistently overestimated the positivity of the visitors’ views. Value for money, trustworthiness of the vendors and product variety were items indicating strong differences where vendors assumed visitors perceived night markets more favorably than did the visitors themselves. The work challenges some assumptions of service design logic and speculates that the durability of night markets is at risk without better vendor understanding of the visitors’ perspectives.
Design/methodology/approach
The study builds on both the theoretical work concerning the co-creation of experiences, and the need for micro-businesses to adopt a consumer-friendly orientation. The researchers examined the compatibility of vendors’ views of their visitors’ perspectives and the visitors’ own assessments of two Hong Kong night markets. Using a large sample survey with over 1,900 tourists and 120 vendors and examining the data through mean difference testing and factor analysis, the comparability of the views was examined.
Findings
Key findings were that vendors consistently overestimated the positivity of the visitors’ views. Value for money, trustworthiness of the vendors and product variety were items indicating strong differences where vendors assumed visitors perceived night markets more favorably than did the visitors themselves. The work challenges some assumptions of service design logic and speculates that the durability of night markets is at risk without better vendor understanding of the visitors’ perspectives.
Research limitations/implications
For the present work, it would be desirable to ascertain that the figures reported apply to other night markets in Hong Kong and China. Further, the generalizability of the results for different market types, those that offer food or cater to specific interests needs examination. The possibility exists that the general night market will fold as specific tailored options, such as craft, art, flower and homewares themed spaces replace the basic all-purpose format.
Practical implications
The implications from this work are that vendors may have to form new group alliances to understand and then deliver the overall atmosphere, quality of goods and service interactions prized by tourists. Vendors need to sustain their appeal and sales through maintenance of these overall night market characteristics. The vendors may be able to escape individual censure and rejection for a while due to the transient customer base, but broader destination and attraction image concerns are likely to be a longer-term force requiring attention.
Social implications
The implications from this work are that vendors may have to form new group alliances to understand and then deliver the overall atmosphere, quality of goods and service interactions prized by tourists. Vendors need to sustain their appeal and sales through maintenance of these overall night market characteristics. The vendors may be able to escape individual censure and rejection for a while due to the transient customer base, but broader destination and attraction image concerns are likely to be a longer-term force requiring attention.
Originality/value
The broad aim of the study can be identified as the desire to examine the compatibility of vendor and tourists’ views, and the more specific aims of this broad agenda will be articulated after reviewing the core conceptual ideas driving the work.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to report on research aimed at determining the nature of business strategies employed by micro small and medium-sized street vendors in a local market area in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to report on research aimed at determining the nature of business strategies employed by micro small and medium-sized street vendors in a local market area in Bangkok.
Design/methodology/approach
The research consisted of a longitudinal study of the defined research site, involving ethnographic interaction and observation mediated by the use of a research diary.
Findings
The research found that the use of business strategies was quite limited and varied in line with the street vendor's relationships with other actors and business practitioners.
Research limitations/implications
The research was deliberately limited in terms of space and is ongoing in terms of time. Additional areas of Bangkok will also be studied for comparative purposes.
Practical implications
Street vending and markets offer valuable opportunities for informal employment and for part-time employment to provide additional income generation for the working poor. Vendors also help sustain a decent standard of living for migrant workers.
Social implications
Street vending of this sort reflects the nature of underlying changes in urban life: the building of new mass transit routes, the opening of condominiums in place of shop houses and the flourishing of the frozen food industry. Many street vendors are mobile and flexible but not all of them.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature on street vending and urban micro-entrepreneurs and will be of interest not just to scholars of business but also in planning for social policy and urban management.
Details