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Identifies a small market (flowers) in comparison with western Europe – one with growth potential and examines the particular problems of this commodity. Gives a realistic assessment of the possibilities for expansion. Highlights that flowers are costly to produce, fragile to handle, have a life of no more than a few days in most cases and are used mainly as expressions of sentiment and ornament rather than for more utilitarian purposes. Summarises that flowers have a special place in consumers' appreciation, but one that could easily be lost by the use of clumsy or over‐reaching tactics.

David Hartstein started KaBloom in 1998 with the goal of creating “the Starbucks of Flowers.” He successfully built brand recognition for the gardenlike shops, but problems plagued the young organization. Nearly three years and one recession later, KaBloom failed to live up to Hartsteinʼs forecast of exponential growth. This case has been designed for a graduate-level course in entrepreneurship/innovation. Students can compare franchising with other business models, examine the impact of organizational structure and leadership styles on business effectiveness, relate issues of supply chain management and logistics to environmental changes, and recognize the impact of innovation on business sustainability.

Integrating smallholders into high‐value global markets represents a unique opportunity to effect large‐scale poverty reduction in the countryside. The purpose of the paper is to add empirical evidence to the discussion of how to best incorporate smallholders into the formal economy sustainably and responsibly.

The paper first builds a theoretical framework around global value chain theory and literature on smallholder inclusion and Kenya's growing horticultural sector. It then moves to explore a Kenyan smallholder‐based business model that incorporates 4,000 flower producers through an efficient and transparent intermediary. The analysis focuses on the importance of governance, upgrading and strong intermediaries for including smallholders in horticultural value chains.

In conclusion, this paper finds that although smallholder inclusion is both favorable and feasible based on theory, literature and case study analysis, it remains limited. It proposes embracing innovative smallholder‐based business models as a viable path out of poverty in countries with low labor costs, suitable climatic conditions and basic infrastructural capacities.

Limitations include a reliance on largely qualitative research methods due to gaps in available data.

Policy implications include the necessity of promoting agricultural development through investments in extension services, the creation of research and development centers and improvements in the rule of law.

This paper is unique in its focus on business models and global value chains as mechanisms through which to include smallholders into the global economy.

This paper aims to question the capacity of firms embedded in global value chains to manage their natural resources in a sustainable way. Thus, it offers guidelines for more sustainable value chains.

While business strategies have focused on optimizing natural resource exploitation and on constructing global value chains to face sustainability issues, this study first explains why these strategies are not effective in preventing natural resource depletion. Second, it offers a model for anticipating resource depletion. The cut flower industry constitutes a central case to explain the model. Two other industry cases complement the demonstration.

To anticipate natural resource depletion and thus improve industry sustainability, firms must shift from the exploitation of endangered natural resources to the use of alternative local ones. This shift, however, encourages firms to reconstruct value chains and rethink how they create value within these new value chains. It also has an impact on firms’ growth strategy: they must replicate value chains on a local scale instead of taking part in global value chains.

The findings rely on illustrations from the cut flower, fishing and textile fiber industries. Generalization to other industries may strengthen the argument.

This study offers a model of sustainable growth for firms willing to anticipate natural resource depletion by offering a shift in value chains. It consists of exploiting alternative natural resources and of rethinking the value offered to consumers. Thus, it goes against current models that merely focus on optimizing natural resource exploitation within global value chains.

The newsvendor problem is fundamental to many operations management models. The problem focuses on the trade-off between the gains from satisfying demand and losses from unsold products. The newsvendor model and its extensions have been applied to various areas, such as production plan and supply chain management. This chapter examines the study about newsvendor problem. In this research, there is a review of the contributions for the multiproduct newsvendor problem. It focuses on the current literature concerning the mathematical models and the solution methods for the multiitem newsvendor problems with single or multiple constraints, as well as with the risks. The objective of this research is to go over the newsvendor problem and bring into comparison different newsvendor models applied to the flower industry. A few case studies are described addressing topics related to the newsvendor problem such as discounting and replenishment policies, inventory inaccuracies, or demand estimation. Three newsvendor models are put into practice in the field of flower selling. A full database of the flowers sold by an anonymous retailer is available for the study. Computational experiments for practical example have been conducted with use of the CPLEX solver with AMPL programming language. Models are solved, and an analysis of different circumstances and cases is accomplished.

This paper aims to investigate the marketing and consumption of flowers as a commodity from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century in the Ottoman context, a non-Western context, and to identify the specificities and similarities to the wider regional context with which it interacts.

Through utilising secondary historical data a two-level analysis is conducted. The first level provides information on the institutional actors such as flower merchants, the state, the flower research institutes, market channels and popular culture and their practices. The second level of analysis concerns the flower consumer.

The paper shows that flower consumption and marketing in an early modern non-Western context was not totally divergent from its “Western” counterparts which share the same regional context, i.e. the Mediterranean. As part of the late Renaissance Mediterranean world, the flower cultivator as a leisure-time consumer is reminiscent of the “Renaissance man”, characterised as someone who consumes science, aesthetics and writing in his leisure time. However, Ottoman markets diverge from their counterparts through the formation of an institution, similar to a modern-day accreditation institution, which had an active role in generating standards, brands and norms for the flower market.

The paper is mainly focussed on Istanbul, the capital of the empire and a large city by contemporary standards. Generalisation to the Ottoman context would require further studies.

The paper is original because marketing and consumption in non-Western histories, such as the Ottoman context, have been a neglected area, mainly because of a tendency to locate progress and modernisation in early modern west.

Companies are forging more intimate bonds with both suppliers and customers, to everyone's benefit.

The purpose of this paper is to propose PlaceMaker as a method of urban analysis and design which both detects elements that do not feature in traditional mapping and which constitute the contemporary identity of the places, and identifies appropriate project interventions. In order to illustrate the method's potential, the final results of experimentation carried out in the Ramblas in Barcelona are presented.

The proposed method gathers, processes and reconstructs the data deriving from nominal, perceptual, graphic, photographic and video surveys, and compares these data with those provided by an analysis of expectations, an analysis of traditional cartography and two questionnaires administered to local inhabitants. The information collected during the phases of analysis constitutes the basis for constructing guidelines for sustainable design and planning. Two final complex maps – the first of analysis and the second of design – respectively, represent the identity of places and project interventions.

The design orientations took into account liveability, place identity, safety of this place and user preferences in order to mitigate the impact of globalization and achieve sustainable urban development. The experiment shows that the urban identity emerging in the analysis phases is not entirely sustainable: many factors are contributing to transforming it not only through changes in places, but also in habits and perceptions of the huge flow of people who use the Ramblas. The actions proposed are thus designed to enhance the identity of places, albeit not crystallizing it.

PlaceMaker is an original method which is intended for use as a support tool in integrated sustainable project design targeting place identity and as a tool for dynamic and complex place knowledge. The main potential beneficiaries are administrators, urban planners and designers and, in simplified form, citizens, tourists and place users.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Marketing Intelligence & Planning is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing Strategy; Customer Service; Sales Management/Sundry; Promotion; Marketing Research/Customer Behaviour; Product Management; Logistics and Distribution.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management is split into eight sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Distribution and supply chain management; Logistics; Air/road/rail transport; Retail/wholesale; Freight and delivery services; International; Purchasing; Accounting.