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The paper aims to examine the location of manufacturing for the major ski brands. The motivation is to explain, while there are no major manufacturers in the USA, the major European manufactures do produce locally even though their labor costs are even higher than those in the USA.

The paper first describes mid-volume, mid-complexity manufacturing. It then describes the ski industry and ski manufacturing. It then proposes several factors that could drive the choice of ski manufacturing location. It then reports interviews with several top managers at major manufacturers and suppliers.

The findings show that development time and innovation are major drivers in the European market. The desire to lead the market with innovative products precludes the use of manufacturing in Asia, where production and delivery times would be longer.

The findings give an example of the ability of manufacturing to remain in higher labor cost countries if development speed and innovation are significant market drivers.

The health of manufacturing in Western Europe and North America is currently of significant political interest. Companies and government entities may consider what actions they can take to encourage innovation-driven markets.

The paper provides an explanation for a significant portion of the manufacturing of a mid-volume and complexity product remaining in higher labor cost countries. As innovation and development speed are found to be major drivers, this can inform manufacturers in other segments where the products and market share characteristics with those found in higher-end downhill skis.

Different, alternative or complementary strategies have been advanced for the rejuvenation of the ski tourism product, thus favoring its economic and environmental sustainability. This paper aims to provide new suggestions by looking at the determinants of ski lift ticket prices in the Dolomites.

The paper uses a hedonic price model approach, which allows the identification of the relative importance of different attributes on the determination of a product price.

The model shows that a higher level of investment in modern lifts and snowmaking equipment undertaken by the resort pays off in terms of customers’ perceived value-for-money relationship. The same is not true for investments in the enlargement of the skiable surface or the introduction of night skiing options and illuminated slopes. The authors found evidence that non-participatory activities, such as different winter sports and on-slope entertainment, can improve the customer’s perception of resorts’ quality. Finally, reputation plays an important role in determining the customers’ perception of good value-for-money destinations and deals.

With respect to previous works, the research expands the range of attributes possibly impacting ski lift ticket prices. Identifying crucial elements consumers would be willing to pay for allows managers to re-think and adjust their products and prices accordingly, improving the economic sustainability of the ski tourism product.

The purpose of this study is to discover the extent to which the marketing practices of Greek ski centers take into consideration visitors' preferences and the interests of other stakeholders in order to improve their tourism product. The existing ski centers and destinations are crucial for the ongoing development of winter tourism in Greece.

The study is exploratory in nature and data were collected by carrying out semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with key managers in 14 ski centers in Greece.

The results revealed that the majority of ski centers do not have a marketing department and only a few receive consultation from consultants. Additionally many ski centers do not use specific planning or strategic tools, and about 20 percent of their directors are not in a position to identify and measure customer segments. Individuals who pursue recreation, skiers, and various associations are ski centers' most frequent customers. Finally, respondents have defined customer satisfaction to be of a high level in those ski centers that conduct customer research.

This is a limited exploratory study restricted to one country. Suggestions are presented for future studies and especially for generalization of the findings.

Today's business environment requires the application of a robust, enterprise‐wide plan at Greek ski centers and particular management practices should be explored as possible causes of the inadequate advancement of the tourism product at Greek ski centers.

This study offers empirical findings from ski centers in Greece, where studies are limited. It also broadly creates the need for future research about this particular area and in areas with similar tourism characteristics in the Mediterranean.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the growth of the early ski market and the marketing strategies that the Union Pacific Railroad took in promoting Sun Valley ski resort, one of the most popular early destination ski resorts in the USA.

The paper uses primary and secondary source material, including ski periodicals, national magazines and the manuscript collection of W. Averell Harriman, the Chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad during the creation of Sun Valley.

This paper finds that Sun Valley pioneered the western ski vacation by conducting careful market research into not only the snow and weather conditions of western mountains, but also into the habits and economic potential of skiers and winter tourists.

Scholarly work on skiing has primarily looked at the sport from the social and cultural perspective of skiers. Work on entrepreneurial objectives of ski resort designers has largely focused on the period after the Second World War. This is among the first works to analyze entrepreneurial activities and marketing strategies in the ski industry before the Second World War. As a result, the paper challenges the idea that big business only began to shape the ski industry during the Cold War. Instead, this paper shows that large corporations like the Union Pacific Railroad were influential in growing the ski market by building resorts that illustrated the importance of market segmentation to the success of ski areas. In this way, the paper challenges the popular idea that Sun Valley was merely a media sensation and shows that it was a carefully designed business that exhibited a nuanced approach to changes in the ski market.

This paper aims to examine tourists’ preferences for package holidays offering different bundles of activities at a winter mountain destination. A winter mountain destination is usually chosen for snow sports, particularly skiing, but increasingly more tourists want to fully exploit their holiday opportunity with an authentic and comprehensive experience of the place. After collecting qualitative data on how tourists spend their typical day, quantitative research is conducted to segment the demand on the basis of tourists’ preferences for bundles of activities undertaken during a winter mountain holiday.

The study uses a mixed method. Two focus groups are included to understand how tourists spend their time at a winter destination; results are then used to identify the components of the holiday, which are then combined in eight packages using an orthogonal array. A questionnaire is administered to a sample of 273 tourists at a well-known mountain destination to measure their preference for different packages. Results are analyzed using factor analysis, conjoint analysis and cluster analysis.

The most significant findings are as follows: winter mountain holidaying is a highly segmented market. Even at a mountain destination strongly associated with skiing, there are many tourists who do not ski and spend their time doing something else; food and beverage, and all their related activities, are at the top of all tourists’ interests, and passionate skiers very highly rate the experience of tasting, eating, understanding and buying local food; and there are four segments of winter mountain holiday tourists who show very differentiated interests for the different activities that can be experienced at a mountain location.

This paper considers what lies beyond sport at winter mountain destinations, and it reveals new possibilities for configuring bundles of activities to attract different segments of tourists.

According to Christopher (2000), in a lot of sectors, the competition is a question of supply chain against supply chain. The winner in term of competitive advantage should be the one, who is able to obtain more than the competitor from the available resources. In strategic literature, Dyer and Singh (1998) are the first who introduced the concept of “relational competency” to explain why some companies gain their competitive advantage not directly from their internal resources but mainly because they are able better to combine external resources.

This paper is a case study.

The author describes the different phases and strategic decisions in the building of a real supplier eco-system.

It is a sole case study.

This study is a description of a success story.

This study is a description of an external resource management in action.

Delivery punctuality is essential in supply chain management, yet the cost of untimely delivery is usually assumed to be given or based on intuition and not quantified by facts.

The authors used a data set containing detailed transaction data for a nine-year period on orders and deliveries of sport goods. The methodology is based on applying a polynomial distributed lag model to longitudinal data on supply chain transactions.

The results indicate that small delivery delays up to two weeks decrease the sales by maximum 10% during a period of 3–4 weeks. Longer delays, up to 45 days, have a larger negative effect on sales, which can also last longer. For this case company, the estimated lost sales due to late deliveries (=5 days) were 5.1% of the delivery value. The longer delays got, the large the cost was: delays at least 45 days long were the most costly causing almost 40% of the estimated lost sales.

This study offers a methodology for quantifying lost sales due to delivery delays and estimating how long the poor delivery performance affects retailers' order behaviour.

The results give a quantitative decision-making tool for supply chain managers to estimate the profitability of investments in the supply chain performance, especially on improving punctuality.

The purpose of the study was to confirm the mediating effect of perceived quality in the relationship between two extrinsic cues (brand name and country of origin)and perceived value previously tested by Teas and Agarwal (2000) using more rigorous statistical techniques - regression analysis and structural equation modelling (SEM) - in a sports consumption context. Data were collected from 194 members of the Korea University Ski Team Association. Based on the results, the partially mediated model was selected as the best fitting model. From a marketing perspective, ski marketers need to understand that the two extrinsic cues had direct and indirect influences through perceived quality on perceived value of the ski product.

The paper aims to examine competitive strategies used by several small ski brands manufacturing in the USA. The motivation is to explain, while there are no major manufacturers in the USA, why many smaller manufacturers produce locally despite higher labor costs.

The paper first describes mid-volume, mid-complexity manufacturing. It then describes customization and innovation. Descriptions of the ski industry, ski manufacturing and customization and innovation, especially among smaller ski manufacturers, then follow. Publicly available information is the examined to understand the competitive strategy of firms in this sector. This is followed by interviews with principals at several smaller manufacturers.

The findings show that small firms do use innovation and customization strategies and are able to compete while producing their product within the USA.

The interview method limits the ability to perform rigorous statistical analysis. Results in this sector may not carry over to other sectors of similar size and complexity.

The findings give an example of the ability of manufacturing to remain in higher labor cost countries if customization and innovation are significant market drivers.

The health of manufacturing in Western Europe and North America is currently of significant political interest. Companies and government entities may consider what actions they can take to encourage innovation-driven markets.

The paper provides an explanation for the success of small firms manufacturing mid-volume and complexity products in higher labor cost countries. As innovation and customization are found to be major drivers, this can inform manufacturers in other segments where the products and market share characteristics with those found in higher-end downhill skis.

This article analyses how different configurations of stakeholders create opportunities for the production of popular TV sports contests. Based on qualitative methodologies, biathlon and cross-country skiing are used as contrasting cases. The paper concludes that the relative success of the International Biathlon Union is due to a favourable network position in relation to stakeholders. By comparison, the International Ski Federation suffers from a weak position within a dense stakeholder network.