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The management and preservation of a corporate reputation is an ever-increasingly difficult proposition in today’s environment where organisations’ stakeholders have access to unprecedented levels of information at their fingertips. Advances in digital technologies, and microblogs such as Twitter, have influenced a massive shift in how stakeholders not only absorb information about products and services, but also how quickly they share their experiences of organisations with others. Managing and maintaining a consistent corporate reputation for today’s stakeholder has thus become an increasingly difficult challenge for organisations. Although the power of social network site users has been highlighted extensively within the literature, there is a surprising dearth with regard to the impact that shared positive and negative brand experiences within microblogs could potentially have on receivers. For example, it is not known whether any change of perception of an organisation’s reputation takes place once receivers have been exposed to a positive or negative brand experience within microblogs such as Twitter – termed Microblog Electronic Word-of-Mouth (MeWOM) brand image disruptions in this thesis. MeWOM brand image disruptions have been defined as eWOM in a microblog that either positively promotes the course, progress or transmission of a brand’s image, or eWOM in a microblog that interrupts the course, progress, or transmission of a brand’s image. Further, upon exposure to MeWOM brand image disruptions, the factors that influence a change in reputation remain unclear. It is important that we expand our knowledge and understanding and explore the potential risk that microblog users pose to reputations and the factors that could influence a change in a corporate reputation upon exposure to a MeWOM brand image disruption. The overall purpose of this study is to further existing empirical knowledge of the concepts of corporate image and corporate reputation in today’s microblog landscape. To achieve the objectives of this study, two phases of research were involved. Phase 1 comprised an exploratory qualitative study where 10 practitioners from various industries of type and size were interviewed. Phase 2 involved a two-stage explanatory study comprised of a quantitative study followed by a qualitative follow-up study. The quantitative study was comprised of an experiment where 372 Twitter users in the United States were exposed to positive and negative Twitter posts about airlines in an experiment setting. The experiment was designed to examine whether MeWOM brand image disruptions in Twitter had any impact on the participants’ perceptions of the airlines’ corporate reputations and the variables that influenced a change in corporate reputation if one took place. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling was employed to demonstrate the variables that predicted a change in corporate reputation from the receivers’ perspective. Stage two of the explanatory study was a qualitative study involving 14 participants who took part in 14 semi-structured interviews. This phase of the study focused on the provision of explanatory data for the significant variables found in the quantitative phase of the study. For the academic community, this research furthers existing understanding and knowledge of the theoretical concepts of corporate image and corporate reputation and provides new empirical data to enhance theoretical assertions made within the literature. For practitioners, the findings from this project deepen the understanding of receivers of MeWOM brand image disruptions and the factors that predict a change in corporate reputation upon exposure to a MeWOM brand image disruption.

The natural-resource-based view resonates with significance some twenty years after its conception. The theory features prominently in modern literature where it enjoys links with enhanced competitiveness, and responds to the need for innovative sustainable operations in modern business. However, literature argues that a lack of practical guidance has resulted in a theory-practice gap, which to some extent is typical of resource-based theory research. This study resolves this via definition of dynamic natural-resource-based view capabilities. Exploration of links between natural-resource-based view, sustainable supply chain management and innovation literature identifies implications for capabilities. Categorizing these capabilities according to the four natural-resource-based view resources of pollution prevention, product stewardship, clean technologies and base of the pyramid, dynamic capabilities activities of sensing, seizing and transforming and an internal versus external focus facilitates the creation of a conceptual framework of dynamic capabilities. Employing the UK agri-food sector as a contextual setting, an empirical study comprising of two phases is undertaken. Phase 1 involves seven in-depth interviews with agri-food experts to empirically validate links between the natural-resource-based view, sustainable supply chain management and innovation. Phase 2 involves twenty semi-structured interviews and six observations with UK agri-food companies to empirically define and explain dynamic natural-resource-based view capabilities. In its completion, this study demonstrates the existence of pollution prevention, product stewardship and clean technologies in UK agri-food, confirms their synergies with sustainable supply chain management and innovation and explicates and elucidates their dynamic capabilities. Whilst base of the pyramid did not feature in the empirical study, the resource is not falsified and further investigation is recommended. This study concluded with five contributions: empirical definition of dynamic natural-resource-based view capabilities; dynamic capability and internal-external categorization; the four-resource perspective of the natural-resource-based view; linking the natural-resource-based view, sustainable supply chain management and innovation; and conceptualisation of local philanthropy and proposal of the natural-resource-based view cycle.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This research aims to further our understanding about the influence of eWOM communication on consumers' decision-making process and its effects on the development of aesthetic product attitudes in an online social context. The growing number of studies that explore the influence of online WOM information on consumer decision-making still presents a lack of understanding in specific consumption contexts. This requires further theoretical development on the modality in which eWOM communication retrieved from social platforms alters the decision-processes in emotionally rich consumption contexts. Accordingly, given aesthetic product typology's recent market trends, and art in particular, which saw a shift from predominantly offline consumption towards online mediated channels, fine art has been chosen as the subject of the current study as the prototypical example of an aesthetic good. A mixed-method approach within a pragmatic philosophical stance was deemed most suitable to explore the research problem. The lack of research within the area called for an initial qualitative method of data collection in the form of in-depth interviews. A total of 28 in-depth interviews were carried out with different groups of stakeholders, such as commercial galleries, consumers, artists etc. This phase of the study helped pare down the number of variables to be included in the model and offered an indication of the experimental design requirements. The primary phrase of research consisted of a quantitative data collection in the form of an online administrated experiment. This stage sought to test the developed product attitude formation model, accounting for the influence of social eWOM information. A total of 426 responses were collected, and data were subjected to statistical analyses, specifically analyses of variance and SEM. The findings of this research highlight several contributions to theory, which advances our understanding of how consumers form product attitudes in an online social context, particularly attitudes towards aesthetic products. Firstly, this study found that the attitude a consumer develops about an aesthetic product in an information-rich context is not pre-determined by the product typology, but depends on consumer-specific factors. In this instance, eWOM information enters the process as cognitive input and induces a shift in product preferences that suppress the influence of affect that was previously considered of paramount importance. Secondly, the study highlights the importance of the purchase motivations of the consumer as, these act upon the extent of influence that eWOM information has on product attitude. Thirdly, the study identified the specific dimensions of eWOM that exhibit a differential impact upon product attitude development. Fourthly, a new theoretical model that accounts for the aesthetic product attitude formation process was developed and defined by the variables that exert an influence on the process in an online social context. The results of this study provide several managerial recommendations that help inform marketing practice, given the pervasive adoption of social media for following and purchasing aesthetic products.

Street vending is a widespread phenomenon in the cities of the so-called developing countries. However, city planning systems have responded to the situation in a limited way, among other factors, because street vending is inherently difficult to regulate, especially from current paradigms of ‘public space’ (Brown 2006, Bhowmik 2010, Cross and Morales 2007). Street vending is explored in this thesis as an evolving and complex system that has become capable of transforming space; this perspective represents an original contribution to knowledge. Street vendors, I argue, understand the commercial potential of the streets and are able to create attractive and vibrant marketplaces. However, their entrepreneurial activities might contribute to the increase in the land value of the streets, and to the establishment of new spatial relations, which tend to transform the public domain into a ‘commercial asset’ affecting the organisation of the neighbourhood. To support such argument, the thesis uses Systems Theory as a general approach, analysing how the interrelationships between ‘vendors’ and ‘space’ contribute to the transformation of space into a ‘product’. The ‘Production of Space’ Theory developed by Henri Lefebvre in 1974 is used to formulate the research problem. The case of the Tepito market in Mexico City was used to explore three hypotheses that might explain the capacity of street vending to produce space. The first concerns the relationship between the city authorities and the street vendors, and how their alliances have empowered the commercial system. The second analyses the capacity of the commercial system to create social and spatial structures at different territorial scales. Finally, the third explores the effects of the expansion of the commercial system in relation to the organisation of the Tepito neighbourhood.

The industrial economics and trade theory literatures of Chamberlinian monopolistic competition generally assume homogeneity of technologies between firms and countries. This assumption clashes with the evidence emerging from even a casual observation of the real world where industries including those exposed to international competition are characterized by persistent efficiency gaps both within and across countries.This thesis constructs a monopolistically competitive framework of non-localized competition where inter-firm and inter-country technical heterogeneity is explicitly allowed for and modelled as randomly determined and persistent efficiency gaps.The effects of inter-firm efficiency gaps on the long-run equilibrium of the monopolistic competition model are analyzed. In the presence of cost asymmetries free entry leads to the endogenization of the level of industry efficiency through a competitive selection process whereby more efficient entrants displace less efficient incumbents in the industry. Contrary to the standard model, entry will not drive profits to zero for intramarginal firms and the long-run equilibrium will be characterized by a dispersion of efficiencies, market shares and profits.The implications of technical heterogeneity for international trade have been analyzed by constructing a two country model where an efficiency gap between the two competitors takes the form of a difference in the mean of their efficiency distributions. The results stemming from the analysis differ significantly from the predictions of the standard homogeneous technology model and cast doubt on the widely acknowledged role of trade as a source of industry rationalization. Trade is shown to affect efficiency on two levels and with respect to both the two countries experience asymmetric effects. By unifying the competitive conditions in which firms operate, at the industry level trade modifies the efficiency structure of the population of firms which survive in steady-state.At the firm level, it affects the expected scale of production of firms. These asymmetric efficiency effects generate a pattern of international specialization characterized by asymmetric market shares. The welfare effects of trade are also asymmetrically distributed between the two countries and circumstances are identified in which at least one country experiences a net welfare loss from trade.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the role of art, architecture and design in the luxury sector of fashion retail, taking leading high-end fashion brands as case studies. This study addresses how art, architecture and design can be shaped for commercial purposes, to make brands appear exclusive and distinctive. In the first section, a review of existing literature on art, design, fashion and consumption establishes how this research subject fits within broader debates that centre in these different creative practices. This research investigates the purpose of displaying works of art in high-end fashion stores and shows how - together with architecture and design - it has transformed retail environments. This study sets out to demonstrate that the introduction of art, architecture and design has been a pretext for fashion retailers to ‘conceptualise’ their outlets, designing them as sites of experimentation to stimulate and rejuvenate the shopping experience. This study argues that these creative practices have been presented as symbols of a utopian luxury lifestyle, and have been employed as languages to communicate with brands’ target markets. Case studies trace instances of this in the context of globalisation; examples include the representation of French brands in Japan. This study also contends that through their involvement with art, architecture and design, retailers have been enabled to present, with credibility, their commodities as works of art, elevating the status of their brands and maintain the exclusive character of high-end fashion. This was part of a bigger cultural shift in the capitalist first world, which involved a commodification of culture. Finally, this thesis speculates on the place of art, architecture and design within the future of high-end fashion retail and concludes that, despite the fact that this phenomenon has escaped critical attention, their presence in retail environments plays a key role in shaping the image of contemporary commercial spaces and is characteristic of the growing significance of creativity in late capitalist societies.