A Typology of Mass Services: The Role of Service Delivery and Consumption Purpose In Classifying Service Experiences

Purpose — The purpose of this paper is to provide services marketers with a deeper understanding of the elements that characterize mass services. The paper shows that many studies have been conducted within the context of professional and retail services, knowledge of mass service contexts is limited despite the growth of services within this context. Design/methodology/approach — This paper provides a conceptual overview of mass services and develops a typology for mass services based on an extensive review of the services literature. Specifically, the typology developed classifies mass services on the basis of service delivery and purpose. The typology forwarded, therefore, classifies mass services using a two-by-two framework with individual and collective mass services classified as either utilitarian or hedonic in nature. Findings — The typology found in this paper provides a practical insight into the characteristics of services falling into the classification of mass services. The value of the classification is that managers can better understand the unique aspects of mass services, thus, allowing for a better utilization of limited resources. Moreover, the paper provides insights into a service classification that has received limited research emphasis, yet, is attracting increasing industry attention. Originality/value — This paper provides academics and practitioners with a framework that has both tactical and strategic implications. These implications include enhancing the customer experience and thus customer retention, resource management, employee training and service management. Given that such a framework has not been forwarded in the literature, the typology presented in the current paper makes an original contribution to the literature

Italian wine consumer behaviour and wineries responsive capacity

This paper analyzes habits and motivations behind wine consumption in Italy and focuses on the attributes affecting wine choice, through interviews and a choice experiment approach. We show that consumers are interested in a wide concept of quality, which covers the whole production process. Both the notoriety of the industrial brand and the designation of origin constitute important quality signals. However, the use of the designation of origin to assess quality at the moment of purchase requires a certain level of product knowledge and involvement. Supermarkets and stores play an increasing role in the commercialization of wine on the final market. Nevertheless, the appreciation of private label wines is relatively low. Finally, we provide some observations on how the Italian wineries are equipped toward market requirements, according to the typologies of vertical relationship between the vine growing and the grapevine processing stages, the quantity and quality strategies.wine consumer behaviour, choice experiment, wineries strategies, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Drinking wine at home: Hedonic analysis of sicilian wines using quantile regression

Abstract: In recent decades, the Sicilian wine industry has experienced a booming expansion because of the growing preferences of Italian consumers for Sicilian wines, especially in extra-regional markets. These consumers have been paying closer attention to Sicilian premium wines. For this reason, the objective of this study is to inform professional investors and wine managers about the consumer preferences with respect to the most important segment categories of domestically consumed Sicilian wines. Using the quantile regression technique, we analyzed the role of wine attributes and prices as an information tool in order to value for each wine segment the implicit price of the attributes affecting wine consumers\u2019 choices. The results indicate that Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Geographical Indication (PGI) certification is the main determinant in the wine price mechanisms and certified wines achieve premium prices that are progressively higher as the price level of the wine increases. Furthermore the effect of the brand on price formation seems to have a significant impact for low-end wines, whereas it has no specific impact on the price mechanism for high-end wines. Keywords: Consumer Scan Dataset, Geographic Origin, Hedonic Price, Robust Regression, Wine Consumptio

Protocols for spatial analysis to be implemented in the domain editor by WP5 - Allocation of farm types spatially including the new Member states

Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, Production Economics,

The research buyer\u27s perspective of market research effectiveness

This study examines the views of research buyers about the efficacy of market research used within their firms. A sample of research buyers from Australia's top 1000 companies was asked to evaluate the research outcomes of their most recent market research project in terms of their overall business strategy. Specialist market research buyers (insights managers) believed their commissioned research was very effective. This was in contrast to research buyers in generalist roles who did not believe in the effectiveness of the research outcomes to the same extent. The overarchlng strategic direction adopted by the buyer's firm did not make a difference to the type of research conducted (,action orientated' vs. 'knowledge enhancing'). However, entrepreneurial firms were more likely to rate their research as effective and to have dedicated research buyers generating insights into their markets. The results of this study are inconsistent with earlier studies and indicate that the market research function within Australian firms stili plays an ambiguous role

Intellectual capital communication: evidence from social and sustainability reporting

The purpose of this study is to investigate the level and quality of intellectual capital information communicated through social and sustainability report for a sample of 37 Italian listed company over two years (2005 and 2006). The study use the resource based theory to explain the relationship between corporate social responsibility and intellectual capital. Content analysis is applied through a multidimensional framework composed by three main disclosure profiles(time orientation, nature and type of information) which permits to analyse in depth the quality of intellectual capital information. The results highlight significant and increasing presence of intellectual capital information in CSR reports which is communicated principally in non financial, quantitative and non time specific terms. Human capital is the most reported category followed by relational and organisational capital. There are many similarities between the two typology of report contributing to the ongoing debate on corporate reporting practices.The results suggest that the integration between IC report and CSR report is a plausible issue and that could be useful to enhance the transparency and the understanding of company processes and activities both for internal and external stakeholders. Very few studies have analysed the intellectual capital in CSR report in atheoretical and mono-dimensional way. Moreover the resource base theory has been scarcely applied to explain the disclosure of intellectual capital even if there are several similarities between the two perspectives.intellectual capital, disclosure, social and sustainability reporting, resource based view, corporate social responsibility

Методика системно-ориентированного анализа городского ландшафта как инструмент планирования

The article discloses the analysis technique of a concept “townscape” based on universal properties of systems that makes it possible to examine such properties of the townscape as base categories, structural elements, and reference norms. The system-oriented analysis of various types of the townscape is also provided; their characteristic peculiarities and properties have been revealed in the article.Статья раскрывает методику анализа понятия «городской пейзаж» на основе универсальных свойств систем, что делает возможным исследование таких свойств городского пейзажа, как основные категории, структурные элементы и соответствие нормативным требованиям. Выполнен системно-ориентированный анализ различных типов городского ландшафта, его характерных особенностей и свойств