The Last Minute Market model: an innovative service of efficient assortment management in a sustainability perspective

Purpose - This paper analyses the Last Minute Market (LMM) experience, an innovative service born in Italy as an academic spin off, in order to reduce the food waste problem at the local community level. Its main purpose is to discuss both its practical and theoretical implications. Methodology - The research approach is qualitative in nature and proposes LMM as a single case study. Findings - The paper highlights LMM as a completely new service model. As far as we know, it’s the first meta-organization specially developed to connect both profit and no profit realms. LMM provides services aiming at the daily recovery at a local level of excess food and non-food in favor of agencies and associations that assist needy people. It creates the infrastructural conditions to make the transformation of waste into resources possible. LMM may in a way be defined as an “intermediary of donation”: it makes a donation convenient, not due to the expectation of a future compensation, or the opportunity to “do some good”, but rather drawing on an economic rationale. Managerial and theoretical implications - The reasons for the LMM model success, the effects of its presence and the conditions for its diffusion are examined as managerial implications. At the theoretical level, LMM can provide insights dealing with some relevant topics such as sustainability, in services innovation, gift economy and re-intermediation. Originality/Value of paper - This paper focuses on an Italian new experience that has not been examined yet in the international service management literature