Monica Fait

Purpose: This research aims to identify the main international marketing opportunities for rosé wines, in terms of Blue Ocean and Red Ocean Strategies, given the increasing relevance of this segment of the wine market. Design/methodology/approach: We adopt an exploratory approach by obtaining secondary data from an International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) study, classifying wine production and consumption by colour, with subsequent visualisations showing evidence of international markets, in terms of Blue and Red Ocean Strategies. Findings: Among the ten major countries producing and consuming rosé wines, France, the United States of America and Italy can be classified as Red Oceans, while the Netherlands, Belgium and (especially) the United Kingdom can be classified as Blue Oceans. Such evidence can support appropriate strategies, especially in terms of marketing mix, for wineries aiming to export rosé wines. Originality/value: This investigation offers two key contributions. First, the opportunity for conducting an exploratory analysis, starting from the secondary data of the OIV study by colours and adopting the Blue Ocean strategy, to construct an agile wine marketing intelligence tool (after detecting a scientific and/or managerial gap in wine marketing intelligence when specifically connected to the rosé wine business). Second, the evidence resulting from this approach can be used for subsequent applications to other segments and/or strategies in the wine business and not only about the current hypothesis of rosé wines. The evolution of the wine business will require continuous innovation, especially in terms of wine marketing mix (considering the impetuous dynamics of the wine sector at a global level).

Culinary tourism (CT) is a relevant part of the promotion of a tourist destination and its sustainability. It preserves and enhances the territorial heritage, ensures the authenticity of the place, and stimulates the sustainable development of the tourist destination. In the current pandemic context, there is a growing awareness of the need to implement sustainability practices. Several implementations are currently underway thanks to the high degree of digitisation in all aspects of communities and industries. Hence, the role of destinations’ official websites and social media in the competition between territories is even more relevant, as they promote their tangible and intangible resources to become attractive and competitive in CT. The academic literature in CT requires a deeper understanding of the technological transformations currently affecting it, considering the need for resilience due to the pandemic crisis, as well as the lack of knowledge of the digital marketing strategies implemented by tourist destinations. To shed light on these phenomena, the purpose of this research is to analyse the digital marketing strategies of international tourist destinations, in order to understand how the culinary profile, defined and conveyed by each destination’s official website regarding its cuisine and food culture, is experienced online and how it can contribute to the promotion and reinforcement of tourist destinations’ sustainability.

Purpose: The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate that “volunteer” employees’ perception of dimensions of intellectual capital (IC) – human, structural and relation capital – creates a motivational environment to enhance knowledge-sharing intention (KSI) and stimulates “volunteer” employee engagement (VEE). The model is applied on the non-profit organizations (NPOs) sector that base their path on sharing values with volunteers and employees in relation to which they have to implement engagement strategies that are beneficial to both developing and deploying individual and organizational human capital.Design/methodology/approach: To verify the existence of relationships between the constructs of IC, KSI and VEE a partial least squares structural equation model on a sample of 300 “volunteer” employees of NPOs was tested to verify the research hypotheses, as this could explain the causal relationships.Findings: The results confirm that KSI is positively and directly influenced by the favourable environment resulting from the motivations below the dimensions of IC. The improvement of KSI, determined by IC, has a positive effect on VEE.Research limitations/implications: Despite the limitation created by the peculiarities of NPOs and the role of volunteers, this paper suggests a strategic approach that the management could implement to create an environment based on the exchange of knowledge and to increase engagement in the value co-creation process.Originality/value: The ability of a company to adopt sharing strategies depends on the existence of an environment in which individuals are willing to exchange knowledge realizing mutual benefits. The work broadens this perspective by providing governance with a behavioural model that creates a direct relationship between IC, KSI and VEE.

Purpose: Building upon the insights of the resource-based view and internationalization theories, the purpose of this paper is to examine the role networks play in SMEs' readiness for internationalization. By investigating three different types of knowledge sharing, namely economic-setting, market-specific and customer-specific, the study analyzes their effect on SMEs' readiness for internationalization.Design/methodology/approach: The four research hypotheses derived by from the analysis of the literature have been investigated by applying the multiple regression technique. By means of an online survey, 300 valid questionnaires were collected and information from a sample of Italian SMEs belonging to 11 agro-food consortia have been analyzed.Findings: The results suggest that SMEs' readiness for internationalization could be supported by sharing customer-specific, market-specific and economic-setting knowledge with other firms operating within the same agro-food consortium. Additionally, data analysis highlights a negative relation between the risk perception in the process and readiness for internationalization, suggesting the importance of knowledge sharing in reducing the criticality issues of being a newcomer entering international markets.Originality/value: From a theoretical perspective, this study aims to fill the gap in knowledge management and international relationship marketing literature. Since proposes a combination of different kinds of knowledge that contribute to reducing the criticalities SMEs must face by identifying useful information to be conveyed within the network. From a managerial perspective, the study provides useful insights for the agro-food sector, highlighting how experiential and network knowledge constitutes a pre-condition for managing internationalization complexity and discovering opportunities on foreign markets.

Purpose: This study aims to examine the potential effect that business ethics (BE) in general and corporate social responsibility (CSR) more specifically can exert on the voluntary disclosure (VD) of intellectual capital (IC) for the ethically most engaged firms in the world.Design/methodology/approach: The research design is based on an inductive approach. As part of the global quantitative investigation, the authors have analyzed the impact of BE and CSR on the transparent communication of the IC. The data under analysis have been investigated using multiple linear regression.Findings: Based on a sample of 83 enterprises emerging as the most ethical companies in the world, the results have revealed that the adoption of ethical and socially responsible approach is positively associated with the extent of VD about IC. This finding may help attenuating the asymmetry of information and the conflict of interest potentially arising with corporate partners. Hence, IC-VD may stand as an evidence of ethical and socially responsible behaviors.Practical implications: Global and national regulators and policymakers can be involved by these results when setting social reporting standards because they suggest that institutional and/or cultural factors affect top management's social reporting behavior in the publication of the IC information.Social implications: Direct and indirect stakeholders, if supported by ethical and socially responsible behaviors of the company, could assess more in detail the quality of the disclosed information concerning the IC.Originality/value: Most of the studies that have been conducted in this field have examined the effect of BE and CSR on the firm's overall transparency, neglecting their potential effect on IC disclosure. This study is designed to fill in this gap through testing the impact of ethical and socially responsible approaches specifically on IC-VD.

Purpose: A profound managerial transformation approach is increasingly designed to unleash the energy and creativity of employees. The purpose of this paper is to observe as the organizations in this sector can use the knowledge sharing to derive maximum efficiency from such crucial volunteers, creating an environment suitable for stimulating the psychological well-being that is the basis of engagement.Design/methodology/approach: This exploratory study proposes a model to account the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to exchange knowledge related to factors that stimulate volunteer's engagement.Findings: The results of a survey of 301 volunteers operating in European organizations indicate that influencers of volunteers in a specific domain activated by knowledge sharing can act as sources of creation and can reinforce their identity, sense of belonging and trust in the organization.Research limitations/implications: Despite results cannot be generalized because of the samples of convenience, exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the elements for which nonprofit organizations should activate a knowledge-sharing strategy so that engaged volunteers feel like cocreators of values and therefore act as true competitive assets.Originality/value: This paper contributes to the expansion of engagement studies through framing the motivations of volunteers in knowledge sharing as a process of social interaction that involves knowledge, experience and expertise and which is able to create an environment suitable to feeding the psychological well-being that is the basis of engagement.

The paper aims to examine the moderating role of gender diversity within a corporate board on the relationship between tax aggressiveness and a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) approach. This analysis was conducted using a set of indicators of financial statements of 168 Italian listed firms between 2011 and 2018. In addition, the sustainability reports of the same companies were observed. To perform the analysis a logit regression model is used. This paper shows different empirical results. First, this study notes that there is not a direct relationship between tax aggressiveness and CSR reporting. Second, gender diversity in a board of directors increases the orientation of companies to CSR disclosure, but does not have an impact on the relationship between tax aggressiveness and CSR disclosure. Instead, CEO gender has a positive influence on the relationship between corporate tax planning and CSR reporting in accordance with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards. This study emphasizes the key role of gender diversity in the growth of the CSR approach and the reputation of companies. Therefore, governments and policymakers of major countries should promote gender diversity in corporate decision-making bodies, which contributes to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to observe how the motivational engagement system of the consumers should be established so that communities of practice became a driver to reducing the informative asymmetries of sustainability. Design/methodology/approach: The paper proposes a conceptual framework called connection, discussion and influence (CDI), along which the motivational dimensions to disclose sustainability can be formed. The framework has been tested on 200 firms in the Italian wine industry. A correlation analysis proved to be suitable for identifying groups of representative variables representing the engagement motivations that characterize participation in sustainability-oriented virtual communities. Findings: The findings of this paper suggest that the pro-social behavior represented by the exchange of knowledge oriented toward sustainability is enhanced by the engagement of online community members. This happens when the online community is structured so as to activate a virtuous circle between CDI. Research limitations/implications: The main limitation of this study is the interviewees do not actually participate in a virtual community, but have only been asked if they would be potentially interested in participating in one, and about the importance they give to specific motivations. Practical implications: The paper provides important reflections for companies operating in the wine industry that have been called to intervene in the disclosure of sustainability. Originality/value: The virtuous circle described here is the main contribution of the paper, as it can serve as a driver for managers of virtual communities that choose to disclose their idea of sustainability to reduce informative asymmetries and to engage consumers.

This paper investigates the role of a different composition of board of directors on firm’s performance. The study is based on the analysis of 149 Italian listed firms over the 2011-2017 period. Our regression results show that size board, gender diversity, independent directors and CEO gender have a significant effect on firm’s performance. This analysis uses as measure of firm’s performance two accounting-based measures ROE and ROA and one market-based measure TobinQ. The study shows that gender diversity, independent directors and CEO gender are associated positively respectively with ROE, ROA and TobinQ, while size board is negatively associated with ROE and TobinQ.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the distinctive elements of CSR communications that characterize the communications models of family businesses in the Italian wine industry, and to compare them with nonfamily businesses.Design/methodology/approach: Using a case study approach, a sample of large and medium companies practicing corporate social responsibility was identified. The content of their websites was examined using content analysis and text mining (correspondence analysis techniques and word association analysis using the T-Lab software).Findings: The analysis indicates that the ownership structure nature makes a difference in the online CSR communications process. The cultural identity in both family and nonfamily businesses is founded on intangible factors such as tradition; however, being a family business is a fundamental driver in the online CSR communications process, no longer forming a bond among players in the wine industry, but rather linking with other wine family businesses.Research limitations/implications: One limitation of this work is the small size of the investigated sample. An added value it contributes is its focus on the Italian wine industry. The paper provides the essential elements that family and nonfamily wine businesses should consider in customizing their CSR communications with the brand’s specific details.Originality/value: The authors highlighted the similarities and differences of family and nonfamily wine businesses in terms of their online CSR communications. The authors also observed how the family wine business identity, in its multidimensional construct, has common factors with what we call “familiness.” This research could establish a starting point for further work within this important sector.