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The purpose of the paper is to investigate the marketing and communication activities carried out by small management consulting firms and how they relate to customers.

After the framing of the literature on the subject, the study is based on the results of a survey carried out through an online questionnaire. The sample under investigation is represented by 914 small consulting firms located in central Italy.

Results show that half of the sample carried out marketing and communication activities, mainly through the website and social media, while others participating in events as speakers at conferences. It also emerges that management consulting firms carry out activities aimed at maintaining relationship with customers even if they do not invest time in market research in order to find potential and new clients.

The study suggests that management consulting firms should adopt a systematic and strategic approach to communication and should develop a complete and integrated digital communication strategy, as well as to rethink the consulting business model.

There are no previous studies that provide insight into the everyday practice of marketing and communication of small management consulting services in today's dynamic and changing economic environment.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether the qualitative variables regarding the territory and the firm–territory relationship can improve the accuracy rates of small business default prediction models.

The authors apply a logistic regression to a sample of 141 small Italian enterprises located in the Marche region, and the authors build two different default prediction models: one using only financial ratios and one using jointly financial ratios and variables related to the relationship between firm and territory.

Including variables regarding the relationships between firms and their territory, the accuracy rates of the default prediction model are significantly improved.

The qualitative variables data collected are affected by subjective judgments of respondents of the firms studied. In addition, neither other qualitative variables (such as those regarding competitive strategies, or managerial skills) are included nor those variables regarding the relationships between firms and financial institutions are included.

The study suggests that financial institutions should include territory qualitative variables, and, above all, qualitative variables regarding the firm–territory relationship, when constructing business default prediction models. Including this type of variables, it could be able to reduce the tendency to place unnecessary restrictions on credit.

The field of business failure prediction modeling using variables regarding the relationship between firm–territory is a unexplored area as it count of a very few studies.

Based on the main studies presented in the literature, this work aims to examine the level of student satisfaction towards the on-campus accommodation service provided by an Italian university. Notably, the objectives of the study are twofold: (1) to examine the mediating role of student satisfaction on the relationship between university on-campus accommodation service quality and word-of-mouth and (2) to determine whether there is any significant difference in students' satisfaction towards on-campus accommodation in terms of gender and the halls of residence.

The study is based on the results of a survey carried out through an online questionnaire by 381 students living on campus at the University of Urbino.

The findings revealed that the quality perceived by university students in relation to individual services had a positive impact on their general satisfaction towards the halls of residence experience.

The study presents some limitations such as lack of temporal comparisons, a focus on specific service quality items and the fact that it refers to a single Italian university.

The findings of this study will help the management of public universities to improve the quality of services in their halls of residence for the satisfaction of their students.

To the authors' knowledge, there have been no previous studies about on-campus accommodation service quality conducted in Italy. The study contributes to enrich the service quality literature, confirming both that the sum of the quality of individual elements is not as the overall satisfaction and the outcome intention of positive WOM depends not only on service quality attributes, but also from an overall evaluation of satisfaction.