Magali Dubosson

The travel agent : delivering more value by becoming an operational risk manager

Travelers have to handle with various risks and uncertainties by themselves or they can ask a travel agent to act on their behalf in order to minimize and/or to solve them. We believe that the new nature of the activities that could be offered by the travel agencies would rather be a risk management service than just the retailing of prepackaged services. To address this problem of service design, we have conceived a risk management service offer grounded on multidisciplinary approaches. The main idea is to apply cost-based valuation methods to manage the risks arising along the travel chain.

An Internet based distribution strategy of luxury products and services grounded on qualitative Web discourse analysis

Nowadays Internet userspsila behavior when using Web 2.0 technologies is mostly ignored in marketing research, and therefore is, in particular, absent in the luxury internet strategy literature. This paper contributes to answering the following research question: Can Netnography be used as a research method and how can it be used efficiently in order to design internet strategy such as online communication and distribution? Different blogs dedicated to luxury products were analyzed in order to test this research method in the luxury sector. What Internet users interested in luxury goods and services were saying and writing in different blogs dedicated to luxury products was analyzed with the netnography methodology. Postings discussing luxury watch brands, luxury cars, luxury travel and art objects were analyzed through the frequency of particular terms in order to give an idea of the most stated opinions and the perception of the products and services. Results showed that Web 2.0 can no longer be ignored and should be fully integrated in the communication and distribution strategy, even in the case of luxury products and services.

Wealth Management “Manufacturing”: Delivering More Value?

Academic literature on wealth management is often devoted to portfolio optimization. It is important to remember, however, that wealth management exists as a way for financial institutions to cater to wealthy clients. The discipline of services marketing teaches us that a service will generate a profit if clients perceive it as sufficiently valuable that they are willing to pay for it. The business model of wealth management has long been grounded on “hidden fees.” Increasingly stringent regulations have imposed greater transparency of these fees. Additionally, investors have become more sophisticated and expect sound expertise from wealth managers. This article conducts a thorough literature review related to the production aspects of wealth management. The authors then describe the investment process schematically as it has been adopted by most “industrialized”wealth management entities. They conclude with several arguments that could lead to new research directions in wealth management.

Video and course content discussion on Massive Open Online Courses: An exploratory research

This paper deals with the ways in which Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) participants use course related forums and the contribution of those forums to the learning experience of their virtual students. We focused on the comparison between, on one hand, video content provided by the course organizers and on the other hand, the content provided by user discussions in the forums. Our methodology frame is based on natural sociological inquiry. Video Lectures, as well as the most active forum threads and their posts were collected during a 6 weeks long xMOOC that took place in fall 2013 on a well-known MOOC platform. Content analysis was performed and the study concludes that the forum included a very high level of interactions involving mostly course related exchange of information amongst students, placing this course at the intersection between a constructivist MOOC (cMOOC) and a classical information transmission based MOOC (xMOOC).

Service design needs for luxury e-commerce: An empirical study

Nowadays, we are just in the launching phase of luxury e-business, it is not clear whether it should be served with a luxury service from a physical shop, or not. Do consumers especially wish a pre- and after-sales service which is taken in charge by a physical shop while buying on the official luxury website? After the opinion of luxury bloggers, we do know that there is a need for luxury service offer which comes with luxury e-commerce in general and specifically for pre- and after-sales services[1]. Our results are based on 168 questionnaires from international luxury e-shoppers. They show clearly that luxury consumers, who buy luxury goods via internet, do need a physical shop. Additionally this physical shop has to assume all pre- and after-sales issue. So, luxury e-commerce does not replace the physical independent wholesaler network, but has to be integrated in a complementary strategy with it.

Detecting Customer Queue “at-risk” Behaviors Based on Ethograms to Minimize Overall Service Dissatisfaction

Every service encounter corresponds to a “queue network” in which a system of waiting lines is connected to servers. We posit that each production service type (e.g., restaurant, airport) requires an adapted queue design in order to maximize attributes salient to customers (i.e., their primary elements of perceived value) in today’s globalized service environment. While the queues have been studied from many angles, a scientific contribution based on a human ethology approach proposing the early identification of “at-risk” behaviors to regulate queue dynamics seems to be novel. To remedy this shortcoming, the large-scale food distribution sector has been chosen for the application of a naturalistic observation approach to describe in detail the behavior of customer queues. Sixteen immersion episodes were conducted in the months between May and June 2016. Using RQDA, we analyzed the immersion transcripts and identified typical customer queue behavioral patterns. Then, we developed an ethogram containing what we considered to be “at-risk” queue behaviors. This ethogram can ultimately be used as an anticipatory indicator in the context of feedforward management controls. Feedforward control, as opposed to classical feedback controls, is based on the early detection of risks and the implementation of mitigation before damage occurs. While this approach requires human attention and expertise (which can be labor-intensive), there is also potential for human ethology to assist managers with supportive or complementary automation. Indeed, the factual description of behaviors contained in our ethogram can easily be coded with modern technology like facial expression and body recognition technologies.

Exploring occupational stress in the Swiss wealth management sector

Service processes rely on the well-being of employees to ensure proper value creation. The paper posits that the link between well-being and value creation can be studied from a risk management perspective (i.e. ill-being and value destruction). Using an exploratory approach, it surveys the Geneva wealth management service sector, which is in crisis. Based on this fieldwork we developed a model where human risks lead to ill-being and value destruction including a “human risk–value destruction loop”.

Perceived Risk Management: Applying the TEID Model to the Traveler Service Chain

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the theoretical work on service-perceived risk management of knowledge-based services (i.e., intangible and heterogeneous) and experience-based services and to suggest a framework that helps to formalize these risks and the value associated with their management, by arguing that this risk management relies on a sequence of risks (Threat, Event, Ignorance and Damage, called the TEID model) and on three categories of control measures (preventative, detective and protective). By categorizing customer-perceived risks, and by integrating control measures and assurances into their offer, providers can design new and valuable services. Service value-chains involve various providers (implicitly or otherwise) who may engender annoyance and damages as risks are a sequence of events. This paper holds the potential to contribute to extending an understanding and management capacity of customer-perceived risks of knowledge-based services. It brings into play a new framework and new risk management process. It also helps with formalizing and making tangible customer added-value.