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The paper aims to define a model for rural development, able to stimulate collaborations between actors involved in the agrifood chain and based on digital technologies as enabling factors for such collaborations.

An exploratory research, based on a qualitative approach, is conducted, using both constructivist grounded theory and Gioia methodology. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and roundtables administered to Italian key players.

The authors identify five actions (definition of territorial identity, involvement of internal and external supply chain actors, definition of quality standards, cooperation intra and infra supply chains, communication through technology) for collaboration in the development of rural areas that policymakers should encourage and actors in the supply chains must implement. The paper also entails both theoretical and practical implications. From the theoretical point of view, this study contributes to the literature on the relationship between agrifood, local development and the role of technologies. From the managerial point of view, this paper provides insights for policymakers to define strategies and actions aimed at developing collaborations between actors involved in the agrifood chain and leveraging digital technologies to support rural development.

The paper proposes a framework for the collaboration of the actors of the agrifood sector and related food tourism that could be the basis for the development of a digital platform able to connect all the subjects involved in rural development.

In recent years, the topic of women's entrepreneurship has gained increasing attention from researchers and policymakers. Its role in economic growth and development has been widely recognized in several studies. However, the relationship between gender in entrepreneurship and innovation is an underexplored aspect in particular at a country-level perspective. This paper aims to answer the following question: Does female entrepreneurship impact innovation at a national level?

Using a panel dataset of 35 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries over the period 2002–2019, the authors carried out a comprehensive econometric analysis, based on the fixed-effect model, the random-effect model and the feasible generalized least squares estimator, as well as a battery of tests to prevent problems of multicollinearity, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation of the error terms. In doing so, the authors found consistent and robust results on the linear and nonlinear relationship between women's entrepreneurship and innovation, using selected country indicators from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) consortium, the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) and the World Development Indicators (WDI), including female self-employment, female nascent entrepreneurship and R&D investment and controlling for the same relationships in the case of men's entrepreneurship.

This study shows that the level of R&D investment, which according to the literature can be considered as a proxy of innovation, is higher when the level of women's entrepreneurship is low. However, exploring more in depth this relationship and the relationship between male entrepreneurship and innovation, the authors found two important and new results. The first one involves the different impact on R&D investment of female self-employment and female nascent entrepreneurship. In particular, female self-employment appears to have a linear negative impact on the R&D, while the impact of female nascent entrepreneurship is statistically nonsignificant. The second one affects the nonlinearity of the negative effect, suggesting that very different challenges are possible at different levels of women's entrepreneurship. In addition, analyzing the role of human capital in the relationship between R&D investment and women entrepreneurship, it emerges that higher education (as the main component of human capital) makes early-stage women's entrepreneurship more technologically consuming, which promotes R&D investment. A higher level of education lessens the significance of the negative relationship between the simplest type of women entrepreneurship (female self-employment) and R&D investment.

The originality of the study is that it provides new evidence regarding the link between women's entrepreneurship and innovation at the macro level, with a specific focus on self-employed women entrepreneurs and early-stage women entrepreneurship. In this sense, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is among the few showing a nonlinear relationship between women's entrepreneurship and country-level innovation and a negative impact only in the case of female self-employment. Moreover, this study has relevant implications from a policymaking perspective, in terms of promoting more productive women's entrepreneurship.

This study aims to develop an all-encompassing model to analyse various aspects of atmospherics, including components of the museum space and its physical surroundings. Moreover, it evaluates whether the identified attributes of the “museumscape” affect the positive word of mouth of museum visitors.

This exploratory study adopts a quantitative methodology. Data were collected through direct interviews with visitors at three Italian art museums and through a structured questionnaire. All dimensions were measured with multiple items on a five-point Likert scale. To assess the influence of the museumscape attributes on positive word of mouth, a structural equation model is performed adopting the two-stage testing procedure estimating the measurement model in the first stage and running a confirmatory factor analysis to assess reliability and demonstrate convergent and discriminant validity for all multi-item measures.

Six attributes of the museumscape are delineated (ambient conditions; facilities and convenience; signs and signage; staff behaviour; art gallery quality; exhibition space aesthetics). The latter three positively influence visitors' positive word of mouth.

The study expands frameworks from previous service museum marketing research in general and service museum research on atmospherics in particular. The framework developed here identifies the direct predictive power of museumscape cues on positive museum visitor's word of mouth, thus increasing knowledge of the customer service experience and service quality and atmospherics management.

The constructs discovered here may help museum managers to carefully design and manage the museumscape to enhance visitors' satisfaction and loyalty.

This study is the first application of servicescape theory in the museum context; previous applications focus on for-profit sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical study which examines the relationships among design-driven innovation, quality and customer value in manufacturing companies.

A research project was carried out in 193 Italian manufacturing companies, using the questionnaire method. An exploratory research study was conducted with hierarchical cluster analysis and regression analysis.

The analysis shows the existence of four clusters of manufacturing companies which differ by firm size, expenditure in innovation and type of innovation. Furthermore, the elements of a quality product and a design product have a significant impact on customer value, and the importance of these elements changes within the different cluster.

The small size of the sample and the geographic origin of companies imply limited generalizability and further research on the topic is recommended.

The study suggests that companies should simultaneously pursue quality and innovation to increase customer value. To achieve high levels of innovation, and thus increase their quality standards, manufacturing companies should consider the importance of the elements related to design which have impact on customer value.

Focusing on the relationship between design-driven innovation and quality which has not yet been investigated, the present study reveals many common elements of product design and quality product and their positive influence on the perception of customer value.

The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize Total Quality Management (TQM) in the light of service ecosystem view through the identification of dimensions underlying both the approaches and a clarification of the relationship between the two theories.

An overview on service ecosystems and on TQM is conducted, with particular focus on the main dimensions of the two frameworks derived from extant research. Consequently, an assessment of the key features of both theories is performed.

The work identifies four recurring dimensions in TQM, suggesting their rereading in the light of the assessed five recurring dimensions of service ecosystem. Moreover, a reconceptualization of TQM in the light of service ecosystem view is proposed.

This paper compares and proposes an integration between TQM and service ecosystem view. Such a reinterpretation of “traditional” view of quality management in the light of current trend of Service-Dominant (S-D) logic can represent a starting point for further research aimed at analysing the mechanisms underlying joint production of value in service delivery.

This paper aims to analyse the quality of experience in the Italian art museum context and to understand the mediating role of satisfaction between museum experiences and visitors' word-of-mouth (WOM) behavioural intentions.

This exploratory study adopted a quantitative methodology. Visitors to Italian art museums were interviewed, and the results were examined using exploratory factor analysis and regression analysis.

The analysis shows that the following museum experience dimensions were present in the Italian art museum context: aesthetics, escapism and “edumotion”. Further, these dimensions positively affected visitors' overall satisfaction which mediates on WOM behavioural intentions.

The small sample limits the generalisability of findings, and further research on the topic is recommended.

Museums should allocate resources to improve visitor experience, visitor satisfaction and museum attractions. Specifically, museum managers should invest in the three dimensions that emerged from this study.

This study enriches the empirical evidence on experiential marketing in the museum context by focussing on the mediating role of overall satisfaction in the relationship between museum experience and WOM behaviours. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study investigating this phenomenon in Italian museums.

In line with the precepts of service-dominant logic (SDL), the purpose of this paper is to devise a measurement framework of customer value co-creation practices during the service process.

Answering the call of McColl-Kennedy et al. (2012), the present study develops a general conceptual model for the measurement of customer value co-creation behavior, in line with the procedure elaborated by Churchill (1979). In particular, the paper focuses on the first stage of the protocol, corresponding to the specification of the domain of the construct.

The study shows that the scale for measuring behavioral processes in customer value co-creation has an implicit hierarchical structure based on eight activities to ensure adequate semantic coverage of the concept: cerebral activities, cooperation, information research and collation, the combination of complementary activities, changes in habits, co-production, co-learning, and connection. Moreover, the work highlights that the analysis of customer value co-creation behavior leads to three diverse steps of value co-creation and various levels of interaction.

By systematizing the construct of customer value co-creation behavior within a comprehensive framework, the conceptual model attempts to fill a gap evidenced by previous research in order to show that actions performed by users during the value co-creation process strictly conform to SDL assumptions. Moreover, the framework underpinning the practical application of SDL principles could benefit future practitioners and suggest interesting implications for future research.

Humane entrepreneurship (HumEnt) has been theoretically proposed as a new model of entrepreneurship supporting the idea of an enlarged entrepreneurial strategic posture. The aim of paper is to frame humane entrepreneurial orientation’s (HEO) characteristics by showing how firms apply the HumEnt approach, and to offer suggestions to build an HEO measurement scale.

The study adopts a case study approach, focusing on five Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The study (1) identifies which are the characteristics of HEO strategic posture in the enterprises under examination; (2) shows that entrepreneurs' personal values and credos are fundamental to having an HEO strategic posture adopted; (3) provides indications on the development of a measurement scale through a discussion of emerging HEO themes.

The value of the study is that emerging themes of HEO strategic posture was derived from the analysis of five Italian SMEs. Entrepreneur's personal values have been proven to be relevant in the implementation of HEO. Based on the emerging HEO themes, the study contributes to the literature opening the way toward the building of an all-encompassing HEO measurement scale.

This chapter is part of a strand of studies dedicated to tourism events and territorial marketing strategies and focuses on the role of communication in an event-based strategy. Events can attract tourist flows, spread the territorial image, stimulate investment, and contribute to the territorial brand. Therefore, their role becomes increasingly important for an effective territorial and tourism marketing strategy. In the events sector, communication plays a key role in shaping marketing policies, which increasingly involve interaction between actors and the use of technology. To build and communicate an event is essential to implement social media marketing strategies that foster sharing of content that significantly influences user behavior. However, the academic literature on the role of social media in event management is limited. Therefore, this study has a twofold objective: to conduct a review of the literature to systematize and contextualize existing knowledge and to identify the main benefits and risks involved in the use of social networks in events.

Community-run festivals are an emerging giant in the tourism industry. Nowadays many local festivals have emerged with the specific objectives of celebrating local culinary traditions, establishing business and trade of local products and developing sustainable destinations. Local events can influence the destination image, enabling the growth of tourist flows and stimulate destination marketing organizations to differentiate their own destination products from those of competitors. Two main aspects are analyzed: the main characteristics of local events and the influence of local festival on destination image. Moreover, the economic impact of festivals on the community and the main tourism management strategies adopted by managers are investigated. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications deriving from the chapter are discussed.