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1 – 10 of 15Jørgen Dejgård Jensen, Sinne Smed, Morten Raun Mørkbak, Karl Vogt‐Nielsen and Marianne Malmgreen
The purpose of this paper is to investigate determinants for the viability of school lunch programs with a zero‐price start‐up period.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate determinants for the viability of school lunch programs with a zero‐price start‐up period.
Design/methodology/approach
Data sources include application material, questionnaire surveys among the pupils, parents, and staff at the participating schools, follow‐up telephone interviews with the staff, as well as interviews with suppliers. Data are analysed using principal components analysis and logistic regression.
Findings
An econometric analysis suggests that price, school size, demand‐stimulating activities related to the schools' support and the users' feeling of ownership, as well as internal professionalism and leadership in the implementation of the school lunch program are important for the viability of the program. These components may, to some extent, compensate for the gap between cost and users' willingness to pay for school lunches.
Social implications
The study contributes to increase awareness of the many determinants and barriers for the viability of school lunches. Experience from the study demonstrates a significant challenge in making user requirements for quality, product diversity and willingness to pay meet with the costs of supplying school lunches.
Originality/value
The focus on the economic viability on school lunches is a new approach to the topic compared to the literature, which mainly concentrates on the physical and environmental effects of providing food in schools
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Donald P. Addison, Tony Lingham, Can Uslay and Olivia F. Lee
The purpose of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurial practice of intellectual capital sharing (ICS) with client organizations and assess its potential for collaborative…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurial practice of intellectual capital sharing (ICS) with client organizations and assess its potential for collaborative business-to-business (B2B) relationship building. B2B collaborations within the traditional marketing paradigm are restricted due to perceived opportunism.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is based on the grounded theory approach and involves 22 semi-structured interviews with the employees of a focal organization and its five client organizations regarding 36 implemented projects. Interviews were transcribed, coded and analyzed via constant comparison to surface codes, categories, concepts and themes from which the authors developed propositions based on the particular context of this study.
Findings
ICS approach helps customers to reconstruct sellers’ identity from one characterized by opportunism and arm’s length relationships to one defined by openness and collaboration. Identified benefits of ICS include higher trust, commitment, social bonding, value co-creation, individual and organizational performance and learning. Eight propositions and a model of ICS consequences are presented.
Research limitations/implications
The context of the study is limited to a single industry – financial services – however, the findings should be highly relevant for other sales contexts characterized by low buyer trust.
Practical implications
Entrepreneurial marketers can engage in ICS approach quickly at minimal cost, as the capabilities and talent are typically already internal to the organization.
Originality/value
This paper examines a unique relational approach to serving clients called ICS that de-emphasizes the sale. Subject matter experts help buyers overcome challenges outside the scope of the traditional marketing paradigm.
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S. Balasubrahmanyam and Deepa Sethi
Gillette’s historically successful “razor and blade” business model (RBM) has been a promising benchmark for multiple businesses across diverse industries worldwide in the past…
Abstract
Purpose
Gillette’s historically successful “razor and blade” business model (RBM) has been a promising benchmark for multiple businesses across diverse industries worldwide in the past several decades. The extant literature deals with very few nuances of this business model notwithstanding the fact that there are several variants of this business model being put to practical use by firms in diverse industries in grossly metaphorically equivalent situations.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts the 2 × 2 truth table framework from the domains of mathematical logic and combinatorics in fleshing out all possible (four logical possibilities) variants of the razor and blade business model for further analysis. This application presents four mutually exclusive yet collectively exhaustive possibilities on any chosen dimension. Two major dimensions (viz., provision of subsidy and intra- or extra-firm involvement in the making of razors or blades or both) form part of the discussion in this paper. In addition, this study synthesizes and streamlines entrepreneurial wisdom from multiple intra-industry and inter-industry benchmarks in terms of real-time firms explicitly or implicitly adopting several variants of the RBM that suit their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of evolution in situations that are grossly reflective of the metaphorically equivalent scenario of razor and recurrent blades. Inductive method of research is carried out with real-time cases from diverse industries with a pivotally common pattern of razor and blade model in some form or the other.
Findings
Several new variants of the razor and blade model (much beyond what the extant literature explicitly projects) have been discovered from the multiple metaphorically equivalent cases of RBM across industries. All of these expand the portfolio of options that relevant entrepreneurial firms can explore and exploit the best possible option chosen from them, given their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of growth.
Research limitations/implications
This study has enriched the literature by presenting and analyzing a more inclusive or perhaps comprehensive palette of explicit choices in the form of several variants of the RBM for the relevant entrepreneurial firms to choose from. Future research can undertake the task of comparing these variants of RBM with those of upcoming servitization business models such as guaranteed availability, subscription and performance-based contracting and exploring the prospects of diverse combinations.
Practical implications
Smart entrepreneurial firms identify and adopt inspiring benchmarks (like razor and blade model whenever appropriate) duly tweaked and blended into a gestalt benchmark for optimal profits and attractive market shares. They target diverse market segments for tied-goods with different variants or combinations of the relevant benchmarks in the form of variegated customer value propositions (CVPs) that have unique and enticing appeal to the respective market segments.
Social implications
Value-sensitive customers on the rise globally choose the option that best suits them from among multiple alternatives offered by competing firms in the market. As long as the ratio of utility to price of such an offer is among the highest, even a no-frills CVP may be most appealing to one market segment while a plush CVP may be tempting to yet another market segment simultaneously. While professional business firms embrace resource leverage practices consciously, amateur customers do so subconsciously. Each party subliminally desires to have the maximum bang-to-buck ratio as the optimal return on investment, given their priorities ceteris paribus.
Originality/value
Prior studies on the RBM have explicitly captured only a few variants of the razor and blade model. This study is perhaps the first of its kind that ferrets out many other variants (more than ten) of the razor and blade model with due simplification and exemplification, justification and demystification.
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Paolo Neirotti and Danilo Pesce
Prior research highlights the vital role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for innovation in response to environmental conditions. However, there is a lack of…
Abstract
Purpose
Prior research highlights the vital role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for innovation in response to environmental conditions. However, there is a lack of studies that analyse the determinants of ICT investments on the innovation activities of firms in relation with their impacts on the industrial and competitive dynamics using large data sets. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the authors investigate the effects of ICT investments on the industrial and competitive dynamics for a large and representative panel data set. All the industries are included, and lagged effects of ICT investments are studied. The model is tested on a seven-year panel (2008–2014) of 231 Italian industries using two-stage least squares instrumental-variables estimators with industry time and fixed effects.
Findings
The results indicate that munificent industries and higher ICT spending are interrelated facts, showing that in sectors with more growth opportunities firms invest more in ICT and this leads to higher industry concentration, greater profit dispersion and higher competitive turbulence in the sector. Also, the paper shows that SMEs can rarely take advantage of their ICT-based innovation to start high-growth phenomena.
Practical implications
The results suggest that ICT-based innovation may create competitive advantages that are hard to sustain over the long-term raising important implications for managers involved in ICT-enabled innovations and policy-makers involved in building programs to foster innovation.
Originality/value
Against the backdrop of today’s digital transformation, the paper enriches our understanding on the disruptive effects exerted by the digitalization of the innovation process and provides a base to continue the investigation of industrial changes and competitive dynamics.
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Airtel, the leading mobile operator in India was going to launch the “Airtel Zero” platform that would charge service providers and OTT providers on the internet for mobile data…
Abstract
Airtel, the leading mobile operator in India was going to launch the “Airtel Zero” platform that would charge service providers and OTT providers on the internet for mobile data traffic but would allow end consumers free access to the web sites that were signed up for the platform. The case revolves around the questions of pricing these data services to the service providers in a market where the price to one set of customers (the end consumer) was not independent of the price to another set of customers (the OTT service providers) - typical of two sided markets. Issues of net neutrality and competition have been considered alongside.
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David J. Teece and Henry J. Kahwaty
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) calls for far-reaching changes to the way economic activity will occur in EU digital markets. Before its remedies are imposed, it is…
Abstract
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) calls for far-reaching changes to the way economic activity will occur in EU digital markets. Before its remedies are imposed, it is critical to assess their impacts on individual markets, the digital sector, and the overall European economy. The European Commission (EC) released an Impact Assessment in support of the DMA that purports to evaluate it using cost/benefit analysis.
An economic evaluation of the DMA should consider its full impacts on dynamic competition. The Impact Assessment neither assesses the DMA's impact on dynamic competition in the digital economy nor evaluates the impacts of specific DMA prohibitions and obligations. Instead, it considers benefits in general and largely ignores costs. We study its benefit assessments and find they are based on highly inappropriate methodologies and assumptions. A cost/benefit study using inappropriate methodologies and largely ignoring costs cannot provide a sound policy assessment.
Instead of promoting dynamic competition between platforms, the DMA will likely reinforce existing market structures, ossify market boundaries, and stunt European innovation. The DMA is likely to chill R&D by encouraging free riding on the investments of others, which discourages making those investments. Avoiding harm to innovation is critical because innovation delivers large, positive spillover benefits, driving increases in productivity, employment, wages, and prosperity.
The DMA prioritizes static over dynamic competition, with the potential to harm the European economy. Given this, the Impact Assessment does not demonstrate that the DMA will be beneficial overall, and its implementation must be carefully tailored to alleviate or lessen its potential to harm Europe’s economic performance.
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Merlin Stone, Eleni Aravopoulou, Gherardo Gerardi, Emanuela Todeva, Luisa Weinzierl, Paul Laughlin and Ryan Stott
The purpose of this paper is to explain how ecosystems and platforms have evolved to manage customer information and to identify the management, research and teaching implications…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explain how ecosystems and platforms have evolved to manage customer information and to identify the management, research and teaching implications of this evolution.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on research and industrial experience of two of the co-authors in customer relationship management, further developed with other co-authors in the field of business models, the research and teaching experience of the university authors and cross-functional literature reviews in the areas of strategy, marketing, economics, organizational behaviour and information management.
Findings
This paper shows that digitalization, cloud computing and new information-based platforms are beginning to change how customer information is being managed, creating new opportunities for improving marketing, customer relationship management and business strategy.
Research limitations/implications
The impact of platforms on the management of customer information needs to be confirmed by primary empirical research.
Practical implications
This paper identifies the need for senior marketing management to examine closely how internal and external/public customer information platforms may enhance their capability for managing customers and setting new strategic directions.
Social implications
The emergence of giant multi-sided platforms has clear implications for data protection and privacy, which need to be explored more in research.
Originality/value
This paper highlights the move to customer information platforms and identifies how senior managers should consider them as an option for better customer information management and as a basis for new business strategies.
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Mark E. Haskins, Lou Centini and George R. Shaffer
The purpose of this paper is to codify a comprehensive array of executive education (EE) revenue growth ideas that are implementable in their own right or that spark other…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to codify a comprehensive array of executive education (EE) revenue growth ideas that are implementable in their own right or that spark other, related growth ideas.
Design/methodology/approach
The EE revenue growth ideas presented are an outgrowth of: a collective and personal “reflections from practice” process that embraced nearly a century of combined years in the talent management and EE sales, design, and delivery arena; and a focused “ideation” process sparked by the contemporary business literature devoted to profitable growth models.
Findings
In total, a robust list and description of 90 EE revenue growth ideas are succinctly chronicled.
Research limitations/implications
The 90 ideas presented here, although rooted in nearly a century of the authors’ combined EE experience, are nonetheless limited by their experience. The array of ideas, and variants of those presented, are constrained only by the unique experience and creativity of other conscientious EE program designers and stewards. The inventory of 90 ideas is a robust start that can be extended, modified, and used as a catalyst for ongoing EE revenue growth discussions and research.
Practical implications
The growth ideas presented are immediately actionable and potentially galvanizing for EE providers. In addition, EE clients whose interest is piqued by any of the ideas, can approach their own providers to initiate a tailored talent development process rooted in one or more of the ideas. Of note, the extensive list has been crafted to have a long shelf life and thus this paper can effectively serve as a reference for ongoing use.
Originality/value
The authors are not aware of any prior articles presenting such a myriad of ideas for EE providers (and clients) to potentially renew and expand their portfolio of activities with the aim of revenue growth. Moreover, the paper is both an inventory of ready ideas as well as an array of catalysts for specific providers (and clients) to pursue their own related, or parallel, ideas.
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Focuses on three management developments for improving organizational performance, with specific reference to fire services. Claims to have applications for most organizations…
Abstract
Focuses on three management developments for improving organizational performance, with specific reference to fire services. Claims to have applications for most organizations, including rescue services, emergency and disaster planning units. Suggests that opening minds and accepting new information will enable these services to access the benefits of benchmarking and teaming. Provides a literary review, and considers the subject areas as part of an individual vocational study of 15 organizations in three countries (the UK, the USA and Denmark).
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