1,720,993 research outputs found
BUMOLDS: Business Models for Local Delivery Platforms
No full textWith platform economy becoming a hegemonic model in market exchanges (Srnicek, 2017; VanDijck, Poell & De Waal, 2018), consumers are now getting used to the idea of receiving items ordered online in hours and not days, and companies are pressured to move toward an instant delivery-of-everything world. This trend, pushed by Covid-19, has created a new business environment in which large, global, multi-sided platforms are competing with local, small scale initiatives.
Even if large multi-sided platforms (e.g. Amazon, Deliveroo, Glovo) allow small and medium businesses to grow, they are criticized for the huge quantities of packaging used, undignified working conditions, impersonal standardized digital interface, increased transportation’s usage and emissions. Some platforms have recently started to change the last mile delivery toward more sustainable solutions. For instance, they use cargo-bikes and low impact solutions offered by express couriers (e.g. Bartolini, TNT), typically used by local platforms. Moreover, they are questioned for their disproportionated power as gatekeepers and for the exploitation and asymmetries they create against local suppliers (Khan, 2018).
Local delivery platforms may have the unprecedent opportunity to overcome these drawbacks. Nevertheless, an overall framework still lacks for guiding the design and management of local platforms in developing a new competitive positioning, in which local resources are protected and promoted in the interest of local stakeholders (suppliers, consumers and the local community) in order to compete with larger platforms.
The aim of the BUMOLDS project is to define a prototype of a local delivery platform that creates value by promoting and leveraging local resources while meeting local stakeholders’ needs. Local delivery platforms are poised to generate profits at scale as they actively integrate multiple impacts on the society and the environment and put consumers at the core of their business model. Thus, local platforms differentiate from large ones, as they focus on environmental and social value drivers, and purposefully distance themselves from logistics, convenience, and other operational value drivers.
Therefore, the BUMOLDS project addresses the following question: Which characteristics should a business model for local delivery platforms have to respect the environment and the society while putting the relationship with local stakeholders at its focus? BUMOLDS has at its core the ability to bring business and local society together while competing with big online platforms which drain resources from the local context. In doing so, it integrates suppliers’ determinants to adopt a local delivery platform; consumers’ willingness to use local delivery platforms and their expectations in terms of habits, attitudes, and product and services choices; the ability to integrate and promote relationships with consumers, suppliers, employees, and other local stakeholders
Feeling free: the effect of a hotel self-perceived gay-friendliness on its intention to escape from online travel booking agents
No full textThe goal of this study is to determine the effect of a hotel management’s involvement in the gay-friendly cause on its intention to escape from big online travel booking agents.
Since extant literature does not provide a scale to measure the self-perceived gay-friendliness of a business, we develop an original measurement scale of the self-perceived gay-friendliness, including the three dimensions of gay-friendly involvement, participation in the gay-friendly network, and gay-friendly welcome. Since traditionally the B2B literature focuses on the intention to continue or to strengthen the relationship, we investigate the unexpected possibility that non-economic beliefs, such as the perceived gay-friendliness of the business, may determine the decision of hotels to quit the relationship with online travel platforms. Our findings are supported by a unique set of more than two-hundred observation collected by interviewing hotels management
IL CASO VICTORIAʼS SECRET E LE STRATEGIE DI REBRANDING
No full textLo scopo di questo caso di studio è fornire approfondimenti sulle strategie di rebranding analizzando il caso di Victoria's Secret. Il caso analizza i periodi prima, durante e dopo la crisi reputazionale avvenuta intorno all’anno 2017-2018, e. misura il cambiamento della brand reputation prima, durante e dopo il lancio di una nuova collezione, denominata Love Cloud Collection, rilasciato il 17 febbraio 2020 come simbolo del processo di rebranding attuato dall’azienda per superare la crisi e per allinearsi alle mutevoli abitudini e valori dei consumatori in linea con il crescente trend del movimento Body Positivity.
In questo caso studio esamineremo l’evoluzione del sentiment e delle opinioni in relazione al marchio Victoria ́s Secret e li metteremo in relazione con la gestione del marchio Victoria ́s Secret e gli indicatori finanziari. Utilizzeremo i dati degli utenti online del social network Twitter nel periodo dal 2015 al 2022, prestando particolare attenzione al periodo prima, durante e dopo la crisi reputazionale del 2018, ma anche prima, durante e dopo il lancio di una nuova collezione il 17 febbraio 2020, il culmine del processo di rebranding intrapreso, denominato Love Cloud
Taking millennials to the cinema: will they behave more responsibly?
No full textThis research aims at empirically assessing the influence of participating at cultural projects, namely a movie festival, on the intention to behave responsibly. By integrating the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) with the Construal Level Theory (CLT), we analyze the intention to behave responsibly by interviewing a sample of 163 millennials who participated to a movie festival. Results suggest that participating at cultural projects differently affects intentions depending on the level of abstractness of the behavior. In particular, the level of participation influences the responsible behavior in the case of high-level of construal (sustainable consumption) but not in the case of low-level of construal (recycling at home)
How Does Corporate Sociopolitical Activism (CSA) Affect Consumers' Purchase Intention? A Self-congruity Perspective
No full textAn increasing number of brands are publicly speaking up about critical issues such as immigration, gun control, LGBTQ rights, and abortion rights, as they understand silence is seen as negligence or condoning unjust sociopolitical dynamics. The present study develops and tests an entirely novel conceptual model to address the relationship between mis/aligned CSA and purchase intention through consumer-brand identification and self-enhancement by drawing on the theoretical perspective of self-congruity theory. Results advance current knowledge by revealing that consumers' alignment with the brand's CSA increased consumer-brand identification exclusively when the consumers perceived the brand's involvement in CSA as directed toward the betterment of the public rather than stemming from self-serving motives. Thus, it is imperative for companies and managers to carefully speak up about contentious sociopolitical issues to prevent any potential decrement in consumer purchasing behavior
Fashion industry: is it really walking and talking CSR?
No full textFashion companies are progressively implementing Corporate Social Responsibility (hereafter CSR) activities
as well as communicating their expectations and commitments, (Joy et al., 2012; Kozlowski, Searcy and
Bardecki, 2015) in line with the growing attention expressed by consumers of fashion products towards
social and environmental issues (e.g., Amatulli et al., 2018; Caniato et al., 2012; Kapferer and Michaut, 2015).
CSR implementation and CSR communication are the two dimensions of CSR engagement, defined as an
overarching concept of how firms combine “(1) the primarily externally facing documentation of corporate
responsibilities (‘CSRtalk’) and (2) the implementation of strategies, structures and procedures in core business
processes within and across divisions, functions, value chains, etc., that facilitate corporate responsibility
(‘CSRwalk’)” (Wickert et al., 2016, p. 1170). Unfortunately, most of the previous studies do not sufficiently
distinguish between the two dimensions of CSR engagement. Notably, there is an ongoing theoretical debate
about the role of the company size as a driver to explain the different combinations of CSR communication
and implementation (e.g. Baumann-Pauly et al., 2013; Morsing and Spence, 2019; Wickert et al., 2016).
Nevertheless, these effects have been discussed theoretically but not yet been empirically explored. Our study
aims to fill this gap by providing empirical evidence about the role of company size in the implementation
and communication of CSR activities. In addition we advance that company size alone cannot explain the
different combinations of CSR engagement of companies and, drawing from the two main perspectives on
CSR, economic and institutional, we propose a novel framework in which we suggest that the key to account
for possible differences can be found in the company’s type of business – a proxy of the way the company
creates value for the market through its product offer – and its served market – a proxy of the institutional
pressure that may come from the customers
Communicating sustainability on TikTok: does it really work?
No full textCombining the recent calls for research on multimodal communication with
the need to effectively communicating sustainable messages, this research analyzes
whether and how the combination of visual, verbal and audial cues in branded sustainable
messages on social media can increase engagement. It analyzes 387 videos on
TikTok from top European companies selected from Fortune 500 list. Preliminary results
suggest that consumers prefer to see more concrete examples of sustainability (energy
and mobility content) rather than abstract ones such as the educational videos.
Moreover, companies should not rely on influencers to deliver sustainable content and
should vary the content to increase engagement. We provide future research directions
Brand competition on social media: investigating direct and indirect effects of FGC on sales
No full textWe empirically estimate the direct and indirect effects of firm-generated content (FGC) on
sales accounting for the effects of user-generated content (UGC), marketing mix, competitor
strategies, and situational variables. This is the first study that employs FGC and UGC from
multiple social media platforms in a competitive marketplace. We calibrate a VAR model
with exogenous variables (VARX). The full dynamic VARX model accounts for
interrelations, feedback effects, direct and indirect effects between three sets of variables: (1)
traditional marketing mix, (2) multiple dimensions of UGC and (3) brand sales. We use a
unique dataset covering 13 brands in 3 FMCG categories in the Italian market spanning over
3 years
Theories and methods in CSR communication studies. A systematic review
No full textPurpose
The aim of this paper is to provide a review about Corporate Social Responsibility Communication (CSRC) from a methodological point of view. Scholars have increasingly shown interest in this topic, however, there has been no review of how different methodologies have contributed to advancing knowledge in this field.
Design/methodology/approach
We searched title, abstract, and related keywords through a sets of terms related to CSR (e.g. cor- porate ethical; corporate environmental; social responsibility; corporate accountability) and Com- munication (e.g. communica*; reporting; disclosure*; dialogue*; sensemaking). We narrowed down the amount of 3173 papers resulted by the search by considering only papers published on top and field-related journals. Then we classify papers into conceptual versus empirical papers. The final dataset is made by 556 empirical papers.
Findings
We coded each empirical paper by: 1) the research design (qualitative, quantitative and mixed me- thods), 2) the research method in terms of type of data collection and data analysis, 4) the unit of analysis, 5) the sample and 6) the context in which the study has been conducted.
Research limitations/implications
Future research will delve deeper into four main areas: 1) identify the main research domains of CSR Communication literature; 2) match research domains of CSR communication literature with me- thodological approaches; 3) provide a comprehensive framework of the theories and methods avai- lable in CSRC research; 4) employ co-citation analysis and content analysis on the collected papers.
Originality/value
The present paper systematically reviews methods and techniques employed in the CSR Commu- nication literature
Creating Shared Value Meets Human Rights: A Sense-Making Perspective in Small-Scale Firms
Full text linkHow do firms make sense of creating shared value (CSV) projects? In their sense-making processes, do they extend the meaning spectrum to include human rights? What are the dominant cognitive frames through which firms make sense of CSV projects, and are some frames more likely to have transformative power? We pose these questions in the context of small-scale firms in a low-to-middle income country—a context where CSV policies have been promoted extensively over the last decade in the expectation of improved economic competitiveness, growth, and sustainable development processes. We employ a grounded theory approach to identify three dominant cognitive frames used by our respondents to make sense of CSV. The most prevalent frame (growth first) prioritizes economic over social and environmental goals, and considers social, environmental, and human rights benefits to trickle down from economic growth and wealth generation. In the second frame (green-win), economic actors follow a win–win logic according to which environmental sustainability is pursued only if there are clear and foreseeable economic payoffs. The third frame (humanizing the business) is a niche that emphasizes the attainment of certain human rights goals, despite a perceived lack of immediate economic returns. Our work casts doubt on the capacity of CSV projects to stimulate sustainable development processes without radically changing entrepreneurs’ cognitive frames from growth first to humanizing the business
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