Mario Tani

Click and drive: Consumer attitude to product development: Towards future transformations of the driving experience

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to supply indications that may be useful in the process of development of new products that fully exploit the value potential of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in the automotive industry. To this aim, the authors investigate how applications of the IoT to smart vehicles are perceived by consumers and describe different ways to increase their satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – After a literature review focused on IoT and consumer behaviour in the automotive industry, the authors apply the Kano model to find the drivers for achieving customer satisfaction with new product developments in smartcars. Findings – Automotive companies need to consider what is attractive to drivers and what consumers consider to be “driver-friendly”. Using an empirical analysis, the authors highlight the motivations for developing a smartcar to fits the expectation of Italian drivers. Research limitations/implications – While the global framework given by this paper can be us...

Marketing Archetypes: Applying Jungian Psychology to Marketing Research

In the current situation of growing information overload, individuals are gradually becoming less sensitive to traditional marketing communications. For this reason, traditional marketing research models are no longer capable of giving useful insights to management. This calls for new approaches that can grasp the inner meaning of consumer behaviors and evaluate their relevance. To this end, a new multidisciplinary approach is needed to interpret complex behavioral patterns so as to gain deeper and more effective insights into customers and to understand their behavioral patterns. In this paper, following a short introduction to the basic concepts of Jungs analytical psychology and their relevance for marketing, we propose the use of the Jungian archetypes to implement a market research model, considering the case of an Italian research companys development of the Archetipus® model.

Sustainability and stakeholder approach in Olivetti from 1943 to 1960: a lesson from the past

Purpose of the paper : The sustainable enterprise focuses on its stakeholders’ interests. Today this perspective is a central one in the dialogue on enterprise goals and on the nature of the firm but it was already clear in the past history of some enlightened entrepreneurs like Adriano Olivetti. This important entrepreneur was able to balance economic responsibility and social ones in his managerial model and he showed that the pillars of sustainability, as we call them today, were internally coherent. Methodology : We apply an interpretative framework (Carroll’s pyramid) to analyze the entrepreneurial choices by Adriano Olivetti according to the various perspectives of Corporate Social Responsibility. Our analysis is based upon Adriano Olivetti’s texts and the transcriptions of his speeches, his biographies, and on interviews to managers that were active during the years of Adriano Olivetti’s administration of the Olivetti Group or later experienced the values left in the company after his untimely death. Findings : This article highlights how their extraordinary experience has demonstrated the full compatibility between social and economic responsibilities. Moreover, the article proves that the various dimensions of corporate social responsibility are tightly connected. Finally, it shows how good stakeholder management practices are a successful strategy. Research Limits : The article’s main limitation is that it is mostly based on anecdotal evidence and secondary sources. Practical implications : The analytical framework we employ can be useful in driving responsible management processes for modern managers and entrepreneurs. Originality of the paper : This article proposes two modified versions of a classic model on corporate social responsibility.

Mediating Service Recovery Satisfaction in the Relationship between Internet Service Recovery and Customer Loyalty

This current study purposes to identify the relationships between service recovery strategies, service recovery satisfaction, and both dimensions of customer loyalty in regard to Internet providers using the partial least squares (PLS-SEM) approach on a sample of 430 internet customers in Egypt.This study contributes insights into how seven service recovery strategies affected customer loyalty with its both attitudinal and behavioral dimensions directly and indirectly via service recovery satisfaction. These insights are helpful for service managers faced with service failure and academicians interested in how service providers respond to service failures and customer dissatisfaction in the B2C context.The results of this study show that some SR strategies positively influence both service recovery satisfaction and customer loyalty toward internet providers. Furthermore, service recovery satisfaction positively influencing the customer loyalty. In addition, SRS plays a mediating role in the relationship between SR strategies and customer loyalty. The results highlight that internet service providers should implement SR strategies quickly and with an empathetic manner to satisfy customers and to encourage customers loyalty. Finally, some implications and further research directions were presented.

Entrepreneurs’ Experiences, Motivations, and Sustainability of Tourism

Tourism is today seen as an entrepreneurial industry where success is tightly linked to each actor’s capability to create a stable network of relationships to market a specific tourism product (Della Corte, 2009), and its operators have to constantly change the products they are marketing in order to achieve competitive advantage (Foxall, 1993; Storey, 1995).

Ricostruire le risorse locali per competere nel turismo. Alcune evidenze dal caso di Sextantio Hotel / The rediscovery of local assets for tourism competition. Some evidence from the case of Sextantio Hotel

In questo paper si vuole mostrare come un prodotto turistico non mainstream possa portare alla “riscoperta” di risorse, tradizioni e conoscenze caratteristiche di un’area locale quando si coinvolgano attori all’esterno del comparto turistico. La ricerca si avvale del metodo del case study con lo scopo di illustrare le modalita con cui si e avviato un progetto imprenditoriale che ha portato ad un processo di sviluppo sostenibile. Il lavoro non si focalizza sui risultati economici, ma indaga le motivazioni e le modalita che hanno portato allo sviluppo del progetto imprenditoriale. Il processo di ricerca ha mostrato come un progetto imprenditoriale, in seguito premiato dall’Unione Europea, possa generare benefici per il borgo, come agglomerato urbano, e per la valorizzazione delle sue specifiche risorse culturali quando esso sia strutturato in modo da trarre vantaggio dalla valorizzazione degli elementi di autenticita. Il caso, che rappresenta chiaramente una best practice , mostra una possibile modalita di utilizzare lo stesso processo di avvio come modalita per sostenere economicamente il restauro dei borghi minori. Il caso ha evidenti implicazioni sia per la pubblica amministrazione che per il privato. In this paper we have shown that a no mainstream tourism product can lead to “rediscover” the local area’s typical resources, traditions and knowledge when the entrepreneur engages players outside the tourism industry. In this research we have used the case study methodology to show how an entrepreneurial project has led to a sustainable development process. This work does not focus on the economic results of the enterprise but on the motivations and on the choices that have led to its specific design. The research process shows that an entrepreneurial project, that has been awarded by a European Union Commission, can have positive effects on the village, as a human settlement, and it can appreciate village-specific cultural resources when the product has been designed to leverage on authenticity. This case, that is clearly a single best-practice, shows one way to exploit the very same start-up process as a way to sustain the restoration processes needed in these projects. Its practical implications are useful for the public and private sectors as well.

Alliances and Sustainability in Agricultural Small and Medium Enterprises

The relevant role of agricultural enterprises in sustainable development processes has been broadly studied; in developed countries these firms are subject to several forces driving them towards an intense, less sustainable, way of growing crops. One answer by small farmers, the most common agricultural organization in Europe, has been to aggregate in order to increase their negotiation power and get access to more efficient production techniques.In this theoretical paper we have focused on sustainable development processes and the strong relationship between their “three pillars”, or circles, and alliances by agricultural firms; we have used the lens of Resource-Based Theory (Barney, 1996) with a Market-Driven Management (Day, 1994) approach to understand how these various classes of alliances succeed, or hinder, each single agricultural enterprise in developing the needed capabilities to create and sustain a competitive advantage without endangering none of the two other perspectives.In order to assess sustainable development potential in alliances involving agricultural enterprises we have later developed an interpretative model that will be applied to several alliances types whose main characteristics will be discussed referring to some examples from Italian agricultural alliances.