Dr Beverly Wagner of Strathclyde's Department of Marketing was recently invited to visit Taiwan by Professor Lee, Tzong-Ru (Jiun-Shen), Department of Marketing, National Chung Hsing University (NCHU), Taiwan, to give four lectures to undergraduate and postgraduate students on various marketing related topics.
She also attended two conferences; one in the Chung Choux Institute for Technology where she undertook the role of track moderator, and another at the Overseas Chinese University, International Conference on Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility. She presented the keynote speech entitled, "Sustainable business cycles and empirical example", and presented a conference paper, "Shopping our way to sustainability! Can consumer purchasing behaviour influence sustainable supply chain practice?"
Also during this time she travelled the length of Taiwan visiting a number of SME businesses, such as a honey producer, mango grower, traditional wedding cake manufacturer, papaya juice producer, fish product producers and health products manufacturer. All of these businesses are part of a Taiwan-wide, government funded project, ICT747, the purpose of which is to develop SMEs by providing expert management advice on marketing, growth and internationalisation strategies.
These high quality micro-enterprises hold accredited quality assurance certifications, Euro-Gap and HACCP. The network is co-ordinated by the Supermarket of Taiwan Agriculture and Fishing Centre. The centre provides support and advice by helping SMEs to collaborate in new product development utilising local resources. Advice is provided by the Centre in association with NCHU, marketing department.