Nina Veflen Olsen

Market scanning for new service development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a theoretical model of narrow and broad market scanning in a service industry, including short‐ and long‐term outcomes.Design/methodology/approach – In a cross‐sectional survey, structural equation modeling is used to test the hypotheses on a sample of 126 hotel managers in Norway.Findings – Given that services often involve direct interaction between the customer and the provider, customers play a more active role in the service development process. This has ramifications for how service firms scan their environment and, in turn, for incremental and discontinuous innovation. It is found that narrow and broad scanning each affect the new service development process in a unique way. Narrow scanning has a strong positive effect on profitability through incremental service adaptation; broad scanning has a weak but significant effect on profitability through incremental service adaptation, and broad scanning positively influences spin‐off knowledge.Re...

Consumers’ Perceptions of HPP and PEF Food Products

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer attitudes towards apple juice produced by means of two new processing technologies, high‐pressure processing (HPP) and pulsed electric field processing (PEF).Design/methodology/approach – Means‐end chain approach is used. Laddering interviews are conducted with consumers in Norway, Denmark, Hungary and Slovakia.Findings – Consumers in this study did recognize and appreciate the benefits that HPP and PEF apple juice have to offer over a juice produced by pasteurization. The respondents in all four countries associated positive consequences with product attributes related to the nutritional value and the taste of the products produced by means of these novel technologies. Also the environmental benefits from processing foods by applying these technologies were seen as highly positive characteristics of the technologies. However, many respondents also expressed some scepticism, especially towards the PEF treated juice and were unsure about if there w...

Consumers liking of private labels. An evaluation of intrinsic and extrinsic orange juice cues

The objective of this article is to compare product quality and brand choice for private labels (PL) and national brands (NB). Over the past two decades, PL have gained larger and larger share of grocery sales, and nowadays PL play a crucial part in the European food retail sector. Since it is stated that most PL have moved on from being mostly low cost me-too products to become also premium products, we want to investigate if objective and perceived quality of PL fits the quality of NB. Four hypotheses are stated and tested on orange juice data from Norway. A trained sensory panel and consumers (n=105) evaluated six juice samples that vary according to three factors. These factors were (1) Brand (PL and NB), (2) Treatment (Gentle heat treatment and Pasteurized) and (3) Pulp (with and without). Principal component analysis, two-way ANOVA, and PLS regression were conducted, and the results indicate that variation in quality exists both among PL and NB, there is a large discrepancy between blind liking and brand choice, and that consumers with a positive attitude towards PL are more likely to choose a PL instead of a NB.

Processes and outcomes of distributor brand new product development: An exploratory examination

Purpose – Most new product development (NPD) studies focus on manufacturer brands; few consider distributor brands. The purpose of this paper to investigate whether NPD processes and outcomes differ between manufacturers and distributors.Design/methodology/approach – Interviews within the grocery industry in Norway and analysis of sales numbers from an AC Nielsen ScanTrack database illustrate that through different NPD processes manufacturers and distributors reach different outcomes.Findings – Distributors differ from manufacturers in the NPD process in several ways: more in‐store interaction resulting in very market‐driven products. They usually outsource technical development, and launch brands with substantially less market communication through fewer marketing channels. Distributors, who mostly develop copycat products of large volume manufacturer brands, have lower failure rates. More surprisingly, the paper reveals that distributor brands achieve faster growth in market share than manufacturer bran...

Ethics in Food Safety Management

There were series of food scandals and scares all over the world which staggered consumers’ confidence in food safety and in the food chain. Consumers worried about new technologies, any existing and perceived risks being out of their control. Food production is more complex than ever and several ethical issues are raised in relation to agricultural practices and the food supply chain. Making good ethical decisions requires a trained sensitivity to ethical issues and a practiced method for exploring the ethical aspects of a decision. The more novel and difficult the ethical choice we face, the more we need to rely on discussion and dialogue with others about the dilemma. A dialogue about the ethical implications of food production, processing, policy, supply and consumption may help involved partners making better decisions.

Dish composition: children’s mental representation and expected liking

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how vegetable side components (carrot and broccoli) influence children’s associations and expected liking of two common Norwegian dishes (meatballs and salmon). Design/methodology/approach – Children aged 11-12 years old were recruited to complete an adapted free association test (n=89). Each participant was exposed to four pictures of dishes that included combinations of the experimental food items served with potatoes and sauce. Participants stated their immediate associations and how much they liked each meal on a five-point smiley face scale for children. Evoked associations were coded and categorized before the relationship between the expected liking of the dishes and the associations were visualized based on correspondence analysis. Findings – The authors found that the expected liking of the dishes was significantly affected by the composition of the dish, that the associations related to the meal changed when the vegetable component changed, a...

Incremental innovation: a way to handle friction?

In this paper, friction is used as a tool to shed light on the manager’s role in organisational change. The concept of friction has recently been used as a metaphor to understand organisational action, and previous articles have highlighted how friction between organisational resources both restricts and facilitate change. Change and friction are interrelated, and the focal point to explore in this paper is the manager’s role in this interaction. The question emphasised is, “How do managers handle friction when developing incremental innovations?” Empirical observations of incremental changes in a simple saithe block product illustrate our theoretical discussion.

Comparing internal and alliance-based new product development processes: case studies in the food industry

This paper reports a comparative two-case design study of in-house NPD projects as well as alliance-based NPD projects in a food company. Two contradicting propositions of the efficiency of NPD in an alliance compared with NPD performed internally are stated, and the findings indicate that the alliance-based NPD solution creates a better context for NPD than the in-house solution. The observed pattern may be interpreted in terms of the framework developed by evolutionary economics, which states that what a firm can do is mainly determined by its organisationally embedded routines.