Silvia Ranfagni

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Florence

Purpose The study aims to propose a comprehensive overview of the Omnichannel phenomenon by identifying its theoretical foundations as well as future research directions. Design/methodology/approach In order to systematize Omnichannel-centered contributions and identify future research directions for post-Covid-19, this study adopted a mixed-metho...

This study investigates the complex interplay of semiotics and symbolic interactionism in shaping customer perceptions and buying behaviours on luxury fashion brands’ pages on Instagram. Existing research predominantly focuses on the quantitative aspects of social media influence, which leaves a research gap in understanding the qualitative nuances...

Purpose This study examined the links between user-generated content (UGC), dissatisfied customers and second-hand luxury fashion brands. A central premise of luxury fashion brands is the perceived status and privilege of those who own such items. Despite their marketing logic emphasising exclusivity and rarity, they have broadened their reach by i...

An increasing number of companies are introducing chatbot‐led contexts in service failure recovery. Existing studies are inconclusive on whether humanlike chatbot‐driven service failure recovery enhances customer loyalty. Grounding our work in phenomenological hermeneutics and utilizing frustration–aggression theory, we concentrate on the historica...

In the ethical consumption literature, the process of buying and selling luxury second-hand products on the online peer-to-peer platforms has recently captured the attention of scholars. The main motivations include empowering a financial transaction, the need to boost individual sustainable responsibility, and to be more authentic. In this researc...

The concept of saturation in qualitative research is a widely debated topic. Saturation refers to the point at which no new data or themes are emerging from the data set, which indicates that the data have been fully explored. It is considered an important concept as it helps to ensure that the findings are robust and that the data are being used t...

This study explores the affordances of “scan and go” apps and their influence on the flow experience of retail customers to provide a unique insight into user–technology interaction. Through a constructivist ethnographic approach, the research examines how users' socially constructed perceptions and interpretations shape these interactions, and it...

Thematic analysis is a highly popular technique among qualitative researchers for analyzing qualitative data, which usually comprises thick descriptive data. However, the application and use of thematic analysis has also involved complications due to confusion regarding the final outcome’s presentation as a conceptual model. This paper develops a s...

Purpose There is considerable interest in the value of user-generated content (UGC) and its antecedents. Despite its growing importance, existing studies have largely ignored the effects of UGC on customers’ responses to recovery efforts in the fashion industry. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which UGC influences customers’ respo...

Purpose Prior research has advanced several explanations for social media influencers' (SMIs’) success in the burgeoning computer-mediated marketing environments but leaves one key topic unexplored: the moderating role of SMIs in service failure and recovery strategies. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on a social constructivist perspective and...

Purpose User-generated content (UGC) and service failure have attracted considerable marketing inquiry over the last two decades. Previous studies primarily focused on the outcome of service failure and the impact of UGC on perceived failure severity. This article departs from previous studies as it examines the moderating role of UGC on the relati...

Abstract Purpose User-generated content and service failure have attracted considerable marketing inquiry over the last two decades. Given their importance, however, much less is known about the moderating role of user-generated content created by customers on the relationship between service failure recovery and customer–brand relationships. We...

Purpose The main purpose of this study is to analyze how consumers’ visual attention to wine label design correlates with their preferences. Accordingly, this study uses quantitative eye-tracking metrics to understand which design proposal has greater visual salience. A more specific objective was to assess which design proposal was preferred to be...

COVID-19 has changed the way people live, bank, shop, and work by moving them toward digitalization. It has also driven the trend toward a cashless society, and this change has taken place in an increasingly uncertain and fearful environment. This study explores the social practice of mobile banking (MB) adoption during the global COVID-19 pandemic...

Emerging technologies have the potential to create new industries and transform existing ones, particularly the promotion of sustainable transitions in the luxury fashion industry [...]

Nel lavoro si affronta il tema dell’imprenditore autentico attraverso lo studio di casi di aziende vitivinicole. L’autenticità è un tema che interessa le imprese ed i manager in quanto va a definire comportamenti che contribuiscono a differenziare in modo rilevante l’imprenditore e l’impresa che gestisce. L’intendimento è mettere a fuoco i comporta...

The paper develops a research approach that combines digital ethnography with text mining to explore consumers’ perception of a brand and the degree of alignment between brand identity and image. In particular, the paper investigates the alignment between the art museum’s brand identity and the brand image emerging from visitors’ narratives of thei...

While the debate on online service failure and recovery strategies has been given considerable attention in the marketing and information systems literature, the evolving Covid‐19 pandemic has brought about new challenges both theoretically and empirically in the consumption landscape. To fully understand customers' responses to service failure dur...

Marketing safeguards sustainability through supporting cooperative and collaborative interactions between businesses and stakeholders. Social media (SM) marketing can be described as an innovative and groundbreaking business practice. Adopting SM marketing is one of the vital strategic challenges facing the social enterprise (SE) sector to access t...

Today, consumers have real power: they describe their brand experiences on social media. They are a source of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) that can influence other consumers and have an impact on their brand choices. EWOM is often produced when consumers experience an online service failure. Providers have to manage this with adequate recovery s...

The growth of user-generated content (UGC) within fashion brands’ online platforms has increased consumers’ awareness of service failure and impacted their level of involvement and attitude towards recovery strategies. However, a limited number of studies have explored the value and antecedents of UGC on service failure and recovery strategies in t...

Being authentic implies maintaining a character of genuineness and honesty, while remaining coherent with oneself and one’s surrounding context over time. It can represent a critical asset to be preserved and exploited, especially in the case of family firms. This paper explores the role of authenticity as a driving force for foreign sales expansio...

This paper investigates the case of Luisaviaroma, an emblematic company that pioneered online business in the luxury fashion sector. Founded in Florence (Italy) as a physical retailer, it used its stores as a springboard to animate an e-commerce platform, transforming itself over time into a digital enterprise. Today its sales derive almost entirel...

This book explores omnichannel fashion and luxury retailing with a particular emphasis on the role of computer-mediated marketing environments in determining a consumer’s purchase and post-purchase trajectories. The fashion industry has evolved rapidly over the last few years with the diffusion of fast fashion and luxury democratization, not to men...

Abstract Online brand communities are gaining traction in the development of marketing strategy, but it is unclear how the dominant group of users, the millennials, is being targeted with the prevailing and varying customer loyalty programmes. Grounded in understanding that loyalty is seen and understood differently by people who participate in onl...

Purpose As conviviality can nurture community social capital, this paper aims to investigate how such capital can give rise to economic behaviour in terms of developing business relationships. Design/methodology/approach The empirical analysis was based on case studies of Italian businesses recognised as active communities that periodically organi...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a research approach to investigate brand alignment by exploiting textual data from online brand communities in the coffee industry. Specifically, consumer brand associations from UGC and company brand associations from FGC are explored to measure the alignment between brand identity and brand image....

There is much evidence that user-generated content (UGC) may lead to effective recovery efforts. Despite its growing importance, existing studies have largely ignored the value and antecedents of UGC as they relate to the speed of recovery efforts in the fashion industry. Drawing on multi-theoretical lenses, utilising actor–network and social influ...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the practice of conviviality as the right setting to explore how social capital interacts with business relationships and in particular how resources impacting business relationships take shape in social relations. Design/methodology/approach This paper has adopted the single case study method combining in-de...

The chapter investigates passion giving centrality to the entrepreneurs’ views. A mixed methodology (in-depth interviews and content analysis through text-mining techniques) is adopted. The chapter shows that entrepreneurs relate passion to the following dimensions: “as life companion”, “as targeted action”, “in practice”, “in organizational contex...

Conviviality is an interdisciplinary concept and a key phenomenon in entrepreneurial communities. Entrepreneurial communities are social units that share values, experiences, emotions, rituals and traditions. They give rise to personal contact networks that are sets of formal or informal individual relationships. Conviviality means sharing, opennes...

Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics and Business Law - 2020 - vol. 9 - Special Issue - pag. 112-131 - http://www.ijebl.co.uk/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The purpose of this paper is an attempt to give companies a possible framework to...

This paper proposes an innovative method for estimating brand association matching and strength. It is based on a dual analytical perspective as it compares consumer-perceived with company-defined brand associations, thereby filling a research gap in the offline and online brand studies. In order to build this method, we investigate online communit...

Purpose This article investigates the integration between online and offline channels in the internationalization of top luxury fashion brands. It aims at pointing out the main drivers of such integration, comparing the top international markets for the luxury goods sector. Design/methodology/approach The empirical investigation regards an analysi...

The paper proposes an analytical approach that explores brands in virtual environments by creating indicators of consumer brand alignment and comparing them with measurements of social engagement. In particular, it combines indicators that estimate the correspondence between brand identity and brand image with measurements of engagement that emerge...

In the last years, luxury has experienced a multiplicity of transformations from different perspectives. The opening up of the fast-growing economies to luxury has disrupted its essence and identity by bringing in a stratification of the levels in luxury, an expansion of customers’ segments and a new mode of operationalization for luxury brands: th...

This paper deals with the topic of brand authenticity in the internationalization of a company. It aims at addressing authenticity by proposing the consideration of this concept, its relationships with the one of "made in", the role of local heritage as well as the internal management of the 'process' that combines internationalization with authent...

The paper proposes an analytical approach that explores brands in virtual environments by combining indicators of consumer brand alignment with measurements of social engagement. The results illustrated can be useful to devise adjustments to brand communication. The analysis is applied to brands belonging to the fashion industry.

Social media have opened up a whole new era for fashion companies and brands, encouraging them to identify innovative relationship with consumer. In order to face these new challenges, understanding the combinatory mechanism of brand credibility and brand image in the formation of brand purchase intention is strategic for fashion brands practitione...

Celebrity endorsement has been traditionally considered as a strategic promotional tool by marketers. Actually, advertising scholars generally found a positive influence of celebrity endorsement on brand equity and, consequently, on consumer purchase intention. On the one hand, literature interprets celebrity source and endorsement factors as relat...

L’autore affronta il tema dell’autenticità che si presenta complesso e multidimensionale. Lo indaga nella sua dimensione oggettiva quale prospettiva che nella letteratura di marketing si esplica nell’individuazione delle proprietà che rendono una marca o un bene autentici. Si tratta di una dimensione a cui si è andata affiancando una dimensione rel...

The article explores passion as a connecting force between entrepreneurship and consumption. Although a rising interest within the academic debate, the issue of how passion can be interpreted as a bridge between consumption and entrepreneurship still needs to be investigated. Hence, the main purposes of this paper is to propose the concept of “conn...

Cette recherche a pour but d’étudier la construction du phénomène d’authenticité par des artistes au travers de leur processus de création et de construction de « soi ». Au moyen d’une méthodologie qualitative, les auteurs recueillent et analysent les propos d’artistes pratiquant différentes disciplines artistiques et mettent en évidence la relatio...

This chapter is about the international development of Italian luxury companies. It focuses on small–medium-sized family businesses, which characterize the Italian fashion industry. These businesses more than before have to manage internationalization processes by making stronger the relation between brand reputation and brand performance. Through...

This chapter investigates cultural sustainability in luxury. Seen as a path followed by luxury brands to increase the perception of sustainable luxury, the authors have identified its drivers, prerequisites and managerial implications. In doing so, they have studied the integration of cultural heritage and luxury through the representative case of...

Entrepreneurial communities are social units that share values, experiences, rituals and traditions. In these communities, conviviality represents a socialization tool, which can foster a sense of belonging through the development of social relations among its members. Since conviviality has a social impact, it can be related to the phenomenon of “...

Abstract The notion of sustainability has become increasingly pervasive. It is affecting even luxury sectors where companies attracted by the economic advantages of the green economy develop business models based on sustainable supply chains. Thus, sustainability and luxury, although apparently distant concepts, seem destined to coexist. Their comb...

Considerable research has been done on brand personality as a key factor in brand management, focusing mainly on how it is perceived by consumers, but without much attention to the managerial perspective. However, the latter is crucially important to ensure that the brand personality that consumers perceive actually corresponds to what a company in...

Considerable research has been done on brand personality as a key factor in brand management, focusing mainly on how it is perceived by consumers, but without much attention to the managerial perspective. However, the latter is crucially important to ensure that the brand personality that consumers perceive actually corresponds to what a company in...

This article addresses the topic of creativity at the geographic territory level from a network perspective. Its objective is to propose an innovative representational model of creative networks in geographical territories that is suitable for analyzing the process of the management of creativity. This model aims to go beyond the boundaries of the...

Il paper confronta indicatori di social engagement con indicatori di consumer brand matching. Nello specifico combina ratios emergenti da piattaforme di monitoraggio di social media (talkwalker, social mentions) con ratios espressione dell’allineamento tra identità ed immagine di marca elaborati impiegando una metodologia innovativa applicata alle...

This paper proposes a methodological approach to investigate the correspondence between brand personality as communicated by companies and brand personality as perceived by consumers. Applied to the online fashion community, it is based on linguistic techniques whose results find their synthesis in two ratios. The first one is Cbpa (Consumer Brand...

This article takes a step toward building of conviviality behavior in entrepreneurial communities and business networks. The actual experience of entrepreneurs suggests the importance of convivial events in entrepreneurial communities, especially to foster social and business networks in industrialmarkets. Yet little research effort has been devote...

New communication challenges for companies that use social media are: 1) the knowledge and control of the degree of alignment between communicated and perceived brand personality in order to measure the effectiveness of competitive positioning, and 2) the measurement of engagement among consumers who share comments about brands in online communitie...

Cette recherche a pour but d’étudier la construction du phénomène d’authenticité par des artistes-entrepreneurs au-travers de leur processus de création en allant plus loin que la révélation de leur « vrai soi ». Au moyen d’une méthodologie qualitative, les auteurs recueillent et analysent les propos d’artistes-entrepreneurs pratiquant différentes...

The purpose of this paper is to focus its attention on the analysis of buyer-seller interactions in facility services. In particular it proposes to investigate the interactions Italian municipalities develop with sellers involved in facility services outsourcing and to evaluate how scientific contributions on business service (filtered through Serv...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the current role of qualitative research in the analysis of the relations between brands and consumers in new market spaces, with particular reference to how it can be enhanced with quantitative techniques to study interactions in online communities. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews k...

Purpose – The purpose of this exploratory study is to propose a new methodological approach to investigate brand associations. More specifically, the study aims to show how brand associations can be identified and analysed in an online community of international consumers of fashion to determine the degree of matching with company-defined brand ass...

The paper investigates authenticity in supply chain, applying the concept of self-authentication to analyse authentic productions resulting from an authentic supply chain. Adopting the method of action research, the authors accompany the planning and creation of an extended local textile and apparel supply chain based on the native wool produced by...

The issue of sustainability is becoming increasingly relevant to fashion, where firms invest in projects in a sustainable supply chain where it is possible to pass from the sheep to the finished garment. The paper analyses a case of innovation in the native wool produced in Italy (Tuscany) as a driver of a sustainable fashion supply chain; the aim...

This paper aims to analyze how guanxi-based business relations impact on distribution choices of foreign companies entering China. In particular, it investigates the influence of guanxi on decisions regarding both the organization of distribution channels and the management of distribution channels. It emerges that from an organizational point of v...

The article analyzes the role of time in business network interactions. Its main aim is to examine time issues and fill a research gap regarding different market models and different concepts of time. The methodology used is a case study to investigate a focal interaction in the fashion industry, between a firm considered to be the focal company, a...

This article addresses the topic of creativity at the geographic territory level from a network perspective. Its objective is to propose an innovative representational model of creative networks in geographical territories that is suitable for analyzing the process of the management of creativity.

Many sheep breeds are characteristic of several Italian rural areas and produce a significant amount of greasy wool that is not directed towards local textile supply chains but it is often thrown into landfill or even incorrectly destroyed in the environment. The consequences are: impacts on the environment, the loss of biodiversity and economic wo...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how companies entering the Chinese market integrate brand image and country image, how they redefine this integration in the corporate rebranding process adopted to develop the new market, and what impact they achieve in terms of commercial and economic results. Design/methodology/approach The re...

This paper aims to analyze how guanxi-based business relations impact on distribution choices of foreign companies entering China. In particular, it investigates the influence of guanxi on decisions regarding both the organization of distribution channels and the management of distribution channels. It emerges that from an organizational point of v...

La pubblicazione riportai risultati delle attivitàdel progettoMED Laine relative allo studio e alla valorizzazione di lane prodotte da razze ovine autoctone della provincia di Grosseto. Le attività sono state svolte nell’ambito del Programma transfrontaliero Italia-Francia Marittimo 2007-2013. Le ricerche sul campo chehanno seguito gli indirizzi de...

As is known, the concept of luxury is characterised by a multidimensional structure of meanings particularly difficult to define (see Brioschi 2000 [14], Aiello & Donvito 2006 [3]; Wiedmann et al 2009 [100]). Nevertheless, common elements in the various theoretical positions can be found in the concepts of heritage also linked to a specific territo...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the emergent role of market in cultural enterprises. Design/methodology/approach The authors consider market as network and identify the role of the interaction process with a special focus on theatre organizations. Findings The interactions are examined on the basis of relationship models, distingu...

The aim of this paper is to examine the bureaux de style as producers of fashion trends and their interactions with textile firms in order to analyze their contribution in terms of knowledge and of competence to textile innovation processes. The business relationships for innovation has considerable current importance in the textile sector. Althoug...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to analyze the role of market knowledge embodied in sales outlet management and in particular to investigate in a static way the role of cognitive sources in relation, to the structural characters of the retail enterprise and its sales outlet on the one hand (the latter understood as a commercial product), and to pe...

Il processo di decentramento produttivo in atto nel sistema moda ha portato a ridefinire i modelli di business ed a ricercare, sviluppare ed anche a trasformare le relazioni tra imprese. Nell'ambito della filiera tessile-abbigliamento tale processo caratterizza sempre più le logiche strategico-gestionali delle imprese di abbigliamento che si trovan...

This paper analyses the role of time in the interactions within business network. The main aim of the paper is to examine the relation between different concepts of time. To address this topic different time perspectives are investigated. Clock time and social time are reviewed in the literature. In this paper two concepts of time are proposed: tim...