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Chewy, Inc. is a direct-to-consumer seller of pet food and supplies. Their approach involves a deep understanding of pet owners’ needs and behaviors to provide personalized product recommendations and exceptional customer service. This case study aims to describe Chewy’s growth strategies and how the company can remain a market leader.

Using the customer value assessment tool, the authors examine Chewy’s value proposition, including service, quality, image and price strategies.

Chewy has built a loyal customer base that values the company’s commitment to their pets’ health and well-being. Future opportunities include focusing on pet wellness products and services, collaborating with veterinary providers in telemedicine and international expansion.

This work is largely conceptual and presents a descriptive case study which reviews Chewy’s marketing strategy based on industry research as well as a customer value assessment via the service-quality-image-price framework.

Corporate leaders must adapt to market change and create business strategies to deliver superior value for customers. This requires innovative products, services and processes. The strategic insights are applicable to retailers, service and technology firms and entrepreneurial companies seeking to scale their businesses.

Chewy’s highly competitive market includes Amazon, e-commerce pet supply companies and big-box pet stores. But it has dominated the online sector and has substantial growth prospects. This paper concludes with recommendations for management and questions for consideration.

This article aims to describe patterns of change in innovation networks and to clarify the roles of time and history in shaping network trajectories. The authors test seven predictor variables and their interactions to examine their influences on network performance over time.

A fuzzy simulation of innovation networks and investigations of different network types, using two classes of growth modeling techniques, help refine understanding of innovation as an interactive, developmental process.

Innovation network trajectories are influenced by self-reinforcing, contradictory and damaging forces. History affects network trajectory development, particularly with regard to financial resource access. The temporal processes reveal three contrasting classes of developmental trajectories for innovation networks.

The study methodology can account for theoretically derived factors leading to innovation, in and across types of networks and for changes over time; it moves beyond a cross-sectional approach. Although the model structure is generic, the parameters are based on a radical innovation, so the findings may not transfer directly.

Managers in innovation business networks can use the identified variables to improve network performance, by facilitating processes that inject financial capital and integrating heterogeneous skills that focus on a wider variety of skills that generate both exploratory and exploitative knowledge development.

This article contributes to discourses on network trajectories through an analysis of processes that influence the growth and decline of innovation business network performance. An original methodology generates and analyzes dynamic longitudinal network data.

We study a microfounded search model of exchange in the laboratory. Using a within-subjects design, we consider exchange behavior with and without an intrinsically worthless token object. While these tokens have no redemption value, like fiat money they may foster greater exchange and welfare via the coordinating role of having prices of goods in terms of tokens. We find that welfare is indeed improved by the presence of tokens provided that the economy starts out with a supply of such tokens. In economies that operate for some time without tokens, the later surprise introduction of tokens does not serve to improve welfare. We also explore the impact of announced changes in the economy-wide stock of tokens (fiat money) on prices. Consistent with the quantity theory of money, we find that increases in the stock of money (tokens) have no real effects and mainly result in proportionate changes to prices. However, the same finding does not hold for decreases in the stock of money.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

Digitalization is one of the most important phenomena that characterize the last decade – not only in business-to-consumer markets but also in business-to-business as well. The advent of digital technologies has multiplied the number and type of touchpoints between actors, thus generating new spaces of interaction where cross-boundary movements are frequent and traverse physical and digital contexts. All these elements, in turn, produce a higher need for coordination in business relationships. By using the concept of boundary objects, the purpose of this paper is to understand the main functions of boundary objects to coordinate business relationships across digital and physical contexts.

The empirical research is based on two case studies where the role of boundary objects is particularly emphasized: Salesforce.com and 3DiTALY. 27 qualitative interviews with key referents have been carried out. To analyze data, the authors applied a constructionist perspective based on Carlile’s (2004) framework of transferring, translating and transforming knowledge across boundaries.

The study will identify six functions that boundary objects play in coordinating business relationships across physical and digital contexts. It will also show the relevance of a mental network space of shared understanding to enable changes in the relational network space.

This study makes concrete the abstract idea of boundary objects. Therefore, it sheds light on the opportunity of managing strategically boundary objects in order to improve their effectiveness in digital environments.

The study will contribute to IMP research on b-to-b relationships by showing that, in digital contexts, boundary objects are key to coordinate interaction in space and cross-boundary movements. The study will show that once considering a digital context, the traditional functions of boundary objects in terms of transfer, translation, and transformation can be further declined into sub-functions. The study will also provide important managerial implications on how boundary objects can be strategically used by companies to increase the effectiveness of their business relationships.

Looks at the eighth published year of the ITCRR and the research, from far and near, involved in this. Muses on the fact that, though all the usual processes are to the fore, the downside part of the industry is garment making which is the least developed side. Posits that the manufacture of clothing needs to become more technologically advanced as does retailing. Closes by emphasising support for the community in all its efforts.

Discusses the 6th ITCRR, its breadth of textile and clothing research activity, plus the encouragement given to workers in this field and its related areas. States that, within the newer research areas under the microscope of the community involved, technical textiles focuses on new, ‘smart’ garments and the initiatives in this field in both the UK and the international community at large. Covers this subject at length.

This paper aims to identify the importance of authenticity of the tourist experience, based on the main conclusions of the International Tourism Forum Round Table, attended by representatives of the main entities of the tourism sector in Portugal.

The main conclusions resulting from the International Tourism Forum Round Table are presented and discussed. The event was organised by the Institute for Tourism Planning and Development, under the theme “Tourism in 2017: trends and opportunities for businesses and destinations”.

The International Tourism Forum Round Table concluded that the tourism industry worldwide and in Portugal in particular, is facing major challenges that call for innovative ways of managing the tourist experience. Several questions regarding the negative impacts of tourism have been discussed, with authenticity being one of the major concerns.

The profiling of the current state of Portuguese tourism, its opportunities and challenges allows the design of more effective strategies to improve the Portuguese tourist offer and the experience of tourists visiting Portugal.

The aim of this paper is to explore the role of actors’ heterogeneity and the context of interaction on collective innovation.

By using the six sources of heterogeneity identified by Corsaro et al. (2012) – goals, competences and skills, knowledge bases, power/position, perceptions and cultures – the authors describe the cases of two consecutive projects – ESASIM and NeWTeC – developed within Kilometro Rosso Science Park. The collaborative innovative outcome (simulation software) developed in the first phase was subsequently applied by each actor in its specific context. At the macro level, the authors define the processes that describe the role of actors’ heterogeneity in both the contexts of innovation development and application; at the micro level, the authors shed some light on the role of the single actor acting simultaneously as a provider and as a user with respect to different contexts.

In this paper, the processes through which actors’ heterogeneity and the context of interaction influence the development of innovation (collective/macro-network level) and contribute a better understanding of collective innovation from a perspective that involves each individual actor (single-actor/micro level) are determined. These two phases are labeled in terms of “decontextualizing” and “recontextualizing”, through which it will be recognized how the process of innovation depends on the social context and by the business activities that take place between the organizations. In the paper, term actor is used to refer to organizations taking part in the innovation networks as represented by their key referents.

Further research on this topic could explore not only the single sources of actors’ heterogeneity but also patterns of them and their effects in the different contexts. In addition, looking at the micro level, it would be interesting to understand if, in certain specific phases of innovation development and implementation, one of the roles – provider or user – prevails over the other and which effects it generates.

This case study has important managerial implications. First, by better understanding the role of actors in innovation networks, companies could improve their networking strategies and, consequently, increase the likelihood of their solutions satisfying the needs of the different stakeholders. Second, the management of actors’ heterogeneity seems strictly related to communication practices. As a result, it would be interesting to develop communication training programs addressing companies located in science parks, built around the profiles of the actors’ features, characterizing a certain project and envisioning potential contexts for the development and application of the project outcome. Due to the variety of actors involved and the changing nature of the contexts in which they operate, standardizing communication practices could, in fact, be less effective. Finally, we also see implications for the management company of the science and technology park, which should think in a more comprehensive way about the different sources of actors’ heterogeneity and their potential consequences once they build interorganizational collaborations and thus interdisciplinary teams.

Using the Intellimech case, the role of actors’ heterogeneity and the context interaction in innovation networks, with respect to two different levels of analysis, is explored. On the collective-macro level, the set of actors in the network was considered; on the micro level, each single business actor as part of the wider network is concentrated upon.

This paper positions in this debate and, in particular, attempts to understand if and how actors’ heterogeneity and the context of interaction influence innovation networks. In effect, while the literature includes sporadic references to the role of the two elements, they have not yet been jointly considered. To reach this goal, two levels of analysis were adopted: a macro network level considering the set of business actors collectively and a micro level looking at the single actor as part of the wider network. Empirically, this paper will describe the case of two projects developed within Intellimech, an innovation network located at Kilometro Rosso Science Park, an aggregation node of relationships and connections around innovation purposes.