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THE BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL
Call for Papers

Special Issue on: Value in Food and Agriculture

The British Food Journal announces the call for papers for a special issue on Value in Food and Agriculture. The deadline for submission is 1 July, 2011. The journal is included in the ISI Citation Index.

This is a repeat announcement of one made earlier on this website. There is important information about changes in submission address.

Purpose of the special issue

In food and agriculture, upstream and downstream alike, the creation of value is paramount to any company’s survival (Kotler and Keller, 2008), and even more so at a time where dramatic changes in business and industrial marketing’s context are leading to fundamental changes in what companies should be analyzing, creating, and delivering (Doyle, 2000; Hunt, 2000).

Despite the considerable amount of literature on the topic, there is a general feeling among academics and practitioners that we have only just begun to understand what is meant by ‘value’ (Anderson & Narus, 1998). Many different angles of value have been investigated (cf. British Food Journal, Vol. 100, No. 1, 2008). Two more or less distinct research streams are identified in literature (Lindgreen & Wynstra, 2005): one focusing on the value of the object of exchange (goods and services) and one focusing on the value of the process of exchange (the relationships, networks, and interactions that the company is embedded in). However, holes remain to be filled, and new fields need to be explored (Lindgreen and Hingley, 2008).

The overall objective of the special issue is to provide a comprehensive collection of cutting-edge theories and research on ‘value’ as analyzed, created, and delivered by business and industrial marketing organizations and as perceived and experienced by their customers, suppliers, and other important stakeholders (cf. Lindgreen et al., 2009). When we combine these themes (i.e., analysis, creation, delivery, and experience) with the ‘goods and services’ and ‘relationships, networks, and interactions’ themes, we obtain eight potential areas for future research. On that basis, specific topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

• The interaction of food retailers’ value appraisals and food suppliers’ value propositions; and how this interaction triggers the development of new food products or services.
• The biases, if any, of different business functions in what the food or agricultural entity needs to analyze, create, and deliver in terms of food and agricultural product offerings.
• The qualities of relationships and interactions vis-à-vis different relationship phases in food and agriculture.
• The interaction processes, and interfaces, between suppliers and customers and the creation of value in an agri-food supply chain and network context.
• Applications of value chain analysis (VCA) to local, national, and international food and agricultural contexts.
• The critical supplier and retailer capabilities in developing new or improved food products and managing the supplier-retailer interaction.
• The value outcomes (purchasing, marketing, performance) of different marketing and purchasing orientations in food and agriculture.
• The contribution of intrafirm coordination (of various business functions) and interfirm co-ordination (between the company and various stakeholders) to value; and how value is delivered through said co-ordinations in food and agriculture.
• The involvement of supplier, customer, and network stakeholders in co-creation of value.
• The value proposition and how it develops along the product life cycle.
• The value of corporate responsibility and sustainability in a business-to-business/wider stakeholder context.
• The way in which value in, and of, experiential marketing is developed in retailer-to-consumer food markets.
• The role of viral marketing / word-of-marketing in value creation and delivery.
• The ideal portfolio configuration in terms of services and products as categories and also service and product as strategies for designing market offerings that are of value to customers in food.
• The importance of processes in designing new food and agricultural product and service offerings that customers are really willing to pay for.
• The successful versus unsuccessful de-commoditization initiatives and transition paths to facilitate the introduction of extra service-based value to the business offering in the food market.
• The costs and benefits of customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives that require the cooperation of multiple functions within a company.
• The analysis, creation, and delivery of value in a local versus global context, or how, local, national, and global value may be created in cohesive network arrangements
• Cases of successful value creation—and failures.
• Value analysis, creation, and delivery in particular settings.

Preference will be given to empirical papers (both qualitative and quantitative), although theoretical papers that offer comprehensive frameworks of value in food and agriculture are also welcomed. As the British Food Journal is widely read by an academic and business audience, all submissions should include implications for practitioners. Papers must deal with their chosen topic in the setting of food and agriculture.

References

Anderson, J.C. & Narus, J.A. (1998), “Business marketing: understand what customers value”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 76, No. 6, pp. 53-65.

Doyle, P. (2000), Value-Based Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Corporate Growth and Shareholder Value, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.

Hunt, S. D. (2000), A General Theory of Competition, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Kotler P. & Keller K.L. (2008), Marketing Management, 13th international edition, Prentice Hall, London.

Lindgreen, A. and Hingley, M.K. (2008), “Value analysis, creation, and delivery in food and agriculture business-to-business marketing and purchasing”, British Food Journal, Vol. 110, No. 1, pp. 5-10.

Lindgreen, A., Vanhamme, J., & Beverland, M.B. (Eds.) (2009), Memorable Customer Experiences: A Research Anthology, Gower Publishing, Aldershot.

Lindgreen, A. & Wynstra, F. (2005), “Value in business markets: What do we know? Where are we going?” Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 34, No. 7, pp. 732-748.

Processes for the submission of papers

Papers submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submissions should be between 4,000 and 6,000 words in length. Copies should be submitted via e-mail in a single Word attachment (including all figures and tables) to the guest editor (mhingley@lincoln.ac.uk). Please do not submit your manuscript via the journal’s homepage. The first page must contain the paper title, the author name(s), and the contact information for all authors. For additional guidelines including the requirement for a structured abstract, please see the “Notes for Contributors” from a recent issue of the British Food Journal or visit

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/journals/bfj/jourinfo.jsp.

Authors should not identify themselves in the body of their paper.

Please address questions to the guest editor:

Professor Martin Hingley
Lincoln University Business School
Lincoln University, the U.K.
E-mail: mhingley@lincoln.ac.uk

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