Research Picks – November 2016

Marketing wine
Smaller wineries are missing an important marketing trick well known to bigger outlets, according to French researchers. The colour and shape of the label on a bottle of wine affects the perceived quality of a wine, the team has demonstrated. This suggests that wine drinkers will perceive the aroma and quality of a wine as being higher if there is congruence between those characteristics of the front label. However, the team’s experiments on wine drinkers was with a labelled bottle of rose and so future studies must look at whether the effect is replicated with red and white wines.
Lunardo, R. and Livat, F. (2016) ‘Congruency between colour and shape of the front labels of wine: effects on fluency and aroma and quality perceptions’, Int. J. Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp.528–541

Speaking out loud for business
Innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit can be stymied in the corporate environment when employees fail to speak their minds, according to new research from Finland. The analysis of discourse could improve the relationship between employers and employees with potentially useful business ideas, the team’s case study suggests. It has been said before that creativity and innovation are fostered by allowing freedom and autonomy in the conduct of one’s work. The Finnish team says that managers and leaders should support participation in innovation activity on the frontline to improve business outcomes.
Hiltunen, E. and Henttonen, K. (2016) ‘“I have ideas but I don’t want to say them aloud.” Employee-driven innovation discourses at a retail chain store’, Int. J. Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, Vol. 20, Nos. 5/6, pp.349–359.

Power to the things
The wireless communication protocol known as Bluetooth and named for the powerful and unifying tenth-century king Harald Bluetooth, could be the answer to a twenty-first century problem of providing power and bringing together Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the home, according to research from Italy. The team has proposed a fuzzy-based solution that determines the sleeping time of field devices, in a home automation wireless network based on Bluetooth low energy, in order to improve overall energy efficiency of the system and ultimately extend battery life of these IoT devices.
Collotta, M. and Pau, G. (2016) ‘A power management solution for Bluetooth low energy in smart homes of internet of things’, Int. J. Internet Protocol Technology, Vol. 9, Nos. 2/3, pp.53–61.

The emergence of emerging economies
The developing world is just that, developing. However, different regions are making advances in commerce, technology, health, quality of life and other areas at different rates. One small, land-locked nation, Nepal, is developing at a slower rate than many nations. However, an area of commercial importance that might be exploited to boost the rate of economic growth is the cut flower trade, in particular for wedding, births, religious and other celebrations, according to research from a team in Thailand. As a case study of development, the growth of small-scale operations in this market is investigated and shown to represent an exposition of market development in the emerging nations.
Walsh, J. (2016) ‘From local gardens to the national market: the case of cut flowers in Kathmandu’, Int. J. Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, Vol. 20, Nos. 5/6, pp.320–329.


via Inderscience – Science Spot http://ift.tt/2f3mwaY