Advances in Business Marketing and Purchasing – serie

This volume aims to help increase knowledge, skills and insights into making effective decisions in the 'bigger hall' of marketing management. It contains 17 case studies which are aimed at improving the reader's skills in making and carrying out effective decisions in industrial and business marketing. Each of the case studies provides an understanding of the culture of a particular firm in a particular industry. All are based on field research studies of actual firms. The topics included cover: setting strategic direction; product and customer portfolio analysis; product development; advertising; pricing; channel management; environmental scanning; measuring strengths and weaknesses; understanding competitors' behaviour; auditing marketing activities; and international marketing strategies. These case studies also provide a diversity of industry settings ranging from a small Japanese printing firm located to MacTec Control AB, a Swedish manufacturer of high-tech equipment and from Thomson Consumer Electronics to Cavity Oil Pumps.

This book deals with the process of improving our sensemaking capabilities into how to: scan environments actively to gather data that is relevant to pressing issues; interpret usefully what we see - including recognizing and framing problems/opportunities and skills in transforming data into information; make effective decisions - including creating useful rules for deciding how to decide, and how to talk with ourselves and others to receive and offer useful information, make wise choices, and implement decisions well; and evaluate well what we have done and what has occurred. These four topics are the activities of sensemaking - an ongoing conversation with yourself and others about what is really happening and why it is occurring. Sensemaking involves placing stimuli into some kind of framework that is understandable to ourselves. Usually sensemaking is done automatically - unconsciously - without thinking actively about the usefulness or accuracy of our frames, or the process being used in our framing. However, sensemaking can be done consciously, that is, using controlled thinking instead of the usual automatic thinking processes. The contributions in this volume offer skill-building case exercises that are written to help you improve your sensemaking abilities.

This work's 16 contributions fill the mind with knowledge, skills, and insights useful for improving the executive's ability to do what needs to be done: scan environments better to find the weak signals on breakthrough technologies; shifts in customers' attitudes and behaviors; changes in behaviors of suppliers, governments, and other stakeholder groups; frame problems/opportunities better by deepening understanding on how we go about making sense of what is happening and can be made to happen; deciding better by gaining deep knowledge on how decisions are actually made and can be improved (e.g., via systems thinking and simulating system operations to uncover powerful levers previously unrecognized); and, doing better by applying new tools to learn what is really happening when planned strategies are converted into realized strategies.

Written for marketing executives, new product/service managers, and marketing research professionals, "Designing Winning Products" (DWP) focuses on design and market testing issues/solutions for new business-to-business products and services. The first three chapters synthesize the product innovation literature; the objective of these chapters is to increase marketing and product managers' technical skills for testing customer acceptance of alternative new product/service designs. Detailed examples of applying these skills are described in seven later chapters - these chapters describe how to apply conjoint analysis and choice experiments with B-to-B customers in specific European and North American markets. A chapter is devoted to describing how superior new products sometimes fail to attract known customers - the nitty-gritty nuances behind the innovator's dilemma. More than 50 diagrams, tables and figures support the text; the chapter discussions and end-of-chapter references include more than 300 complete citations to additional sources.

This volume presents a collection of papers written by senior marketing scholars based on their presentations upon receiving the "Society for Marketing Advances Distinguished Marketing Scholar Award". Each paper reviews a stream of research in marketing and reflects the wisdom of authors highly cited in the literature - with citations of their work usually spanning several decades.

What's really happening? For an organization this question contains at least four sub issues: What actions are being done now help to increase the organization's performance? What actions are wasted motions - what are we doing that does not contribute and wastes our time? What actions harm the organization's performance - what actions are counterproductive in helping the organization achieve what really needs to be accomplished? What actions are we not doing now but really should be doing to increase the organization's performance? A fifth, related, sub issue is how to go about finding out what is really happening-what research methods should executives use, as well as avoid using, to go about finding this out. Executive thinking differs fundamentally from scientific thinking in fundamental ways. Scientists and academic researchers are able to choose the problem, whereas in organizations, the problems (and symptoms of problems) are often thrust upon the executive. Scientists focus on a limited number of problems at a time, whereas executives are confronted with a vast number of potential problems and a myriad of possible presentation problem frames. Scientists have the relative luxury of time to explore the problem at hand, whereas executives, particularly CEOs, do not. The intention is for this volume to be read by executives wanting to learn how to reduce overconfidence, and to become more mindful, in making decisions and in learning how to scientifically evaluate the quality of outcomes that follow from implementing decisions.

Historical research on firm-level innovation behavior results in the following main insight: firm-level decisions focusing on innovations are critical, difficult, and often result in failure to act. While acceptance is widespread among executives that firms must innovate radically as well as incrementally, success by firms mostly nurtures inertia and eventual failure rather than search and adoption of new superior technologies. What does it take to craft and maintain successful radical NPD programs? "Managing Product Innovation (MPI)" explains why both manufacturing and customer firms usually reject superior new technologies and how competitors new to the industry become successful (by focusing on previously unnoticed customers and offering higher performance with lower costs via the radically new technologies). MPI provides worthwhile answers on what specific actions executives in established and new firms can adopt to achieve successful radical NPD programs. Related to managing new NPD processes successfully and additional strategic marketing issues, the following few thoughts summarize the wisdom that Volume 13 elaborates upon: Leverage interfirm relationships Pay attention to products that can be co-created by interfirm networks Think and act globally via personal contacts Stay complex and be uncomfortable with success Evaluate NPD performance using a life cycle perspective Identify upstream as well as direct influences on NPD performance.

This volume provides in-depth understanding about business-to-business (B2B) and organizational relationships. Studies included identify real-life relationship paradoxes and explain how firms manage - not solve - these paradoxes. Two research reports are the result of three years of intensive face-to-face data collection of how interfirm relations form, operate, and change. They include unedited direct quotes from suppliers, focal firms, and customers on their interfirm relationships and provide a profound understanding of quality relationships. Additional articles include: Discourses in Organizational Culture; Organizational Innovation and Outcomes in SMEs; Anatomy of Relationship Significance; a review of Markets-as-Networks Theory; and Meta-theories in Research. The volume highlights that making mistakes is inherent in organizational innovations and understanding how organizations work through such mistakes is an important key to understanding success versus failure in innovation outcomes. It provides rich descriptions on how B2B networks form, function and develop and is for readers who want to delve into how B2B relationships actually work and, frequently, do not work.

Nearly all business-to-business firms interact and have contractual relationships with upstream, downstream and parallel operating enterprises. How firms design and implement these relationships effectively, overcome poorly performing network linkages, and manage change in interfirm networks are the major topics that Volume 17 covers. The three papers in Volume 17 report new theory and in-depth descriptions of interfirm network behavior. Each paper includes extensive reviews of the relevant literature on interfirm network behavior as well as data analysis using empirical positivistic and/or case study research methods. More than 150 figures and tables support the discussion of findings.

This book provides knowledge and skill-building training exercises in managing marketing decisions in business-to-business (B2B) contexts. The topic coverage is broad and deep. The intent is for the book to help answer four questions: (1) what questions should executives ask when crafting and implementing effective strategies in B2B contexts; (2) what tentative answers may be useful for executives to consider to these questions; (3) what skills in crafting strategies and decisions are necessary for executives to excel in for achieving effective outcomes consistently; and how should the B2B go about acquiring these skills?

"Visionary Pricing" is dedicated to Dan Nimer, pioneer of pricing and price management. The volume features leading edge thinking from today's preeminent pricing thought leaders from North America, Europe, and Asia who originally came together 30 years ago to encourage the development of pricing. They now assess the present and future destiny of pricing, pricing innovation, and pricing paradigms that are influencing the evolution of pricing throughout the world. The volume contains four sections: section 1 interviews Nimer and presents his views on the emergence of value-based pricing as an influential pricing paradigm of the 21st century; section 2 focuses on pricing strategy and competitive advantage; section 3 focuses on the difining role of value in pricing; and section 4 focuses on pricing capability and innovation.

Relationships of individual and groups among three-plus firms represent the cornerstone concept in business-to-business (B2B) contexts. The three-plus firms include manufacturer-supplier to manufacturer-customer to distributor-customer, and facilitators (e.g., transportation and management consulting firms). The common thread of the five papers in this volume is that making sense and achieving deep knowledge of three-plus B2B relationships are necessary antecedents for achieving high operating effectiveness, high (on-time) efficiency, and sustaining profits for each firm in these relationships. As the titles of the five papers imply, reading the volume provides deep insights into the specifics of how high performing three-plus B2B relationships influences these three major objectives of the firm: National Cultures? Impacts on Western Industrial Buyer-Seller Relational Process Models; Developing Guanxi Relations; Industrial Buyer-Seller Relations in a Chinese Context; Adaptation in Business Contexts; Working Triadic Relationships; How Do Managers See It? Capturing Practitioner Theories via Network Pictures.

This accessible field guide covers practical steps and contributes to behavioral theory by reporting intricate details on the strategies implemented by business-to-business firms within an inter-firm context. The coverage is deep, broad, and unique - the authors of the 14 papers all adopt the understanding that researchers need direct viewing - 'eyes-on-the-context' - that goes beyond the use of paper-and-pencil 5-pont and 7-point survey items to achieve accurate descriptions of how decisions are made and progress achieved. Following the customary introductory chapter, the titles of the 13 remaining chapters promise the reader new insights and tools to apply when studying B2B contexts. This new volume in the Advances in Business Marketing and Purchasing series is a must for B2B scholars and executives.

Volume 22 includes two main chapters in both Part A and B. It appears in two parts because all chapters offer great depth in coverage of core issues senior executives must address for long-term survival of the firm: business intelligence, knowledge management, and understanding of the systems dynamics of interfirm behavior. In the first main chapter of Part A Azizah Ahmad demonstrates that high-performing firms must achieve useful on-going business intelligence (BI). Ahmad shows how plans are designed and implemented for viable BI operations. The main contribution of the study is the identification of the firm's internal resources of BI governance that influences successful BI deployment. In the second chapter Md Nuruzzaman shows how country risk, different political actions from the government, and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply-chains in emerging markets. The outcomes of the study are useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

This volume serves to recognize the uniqueness of the moment; the number of new users of e-services worldwide will double during 2015-2018 (moving from 2 billion users mostly living in the developed nations to an additional 2 billion users mostly living in developing nations). This radical embrace of new e-service technologies will substantially improve the quality of lives for most residents globally. A profound happening occurring now! The new technologies combine rapidly delivering of a multitude of services at extremely low cost to adopters now having extremely low incomes relative to residents living in developed nations. Adoption of e-service among residents in developing nations ends the debate as to whether or not marketing to the "bottom of the pyramid" is possible. The more relevant issues focus on describing and explaining e-service adoption processes in developing nations. How are these processes being implemented? What obstacles had to be overcome in achieving these adoptions? How were these obstacles overcome? Read this volume for research providing useful answers to these questions.

The first chapter in this book examines the relationships between absorptive capacity and effective knowledge management through the analysis of quantitative data drawn from managers and employees in residential aged care organizations in Western Australia. The author, Michael Preece, defines absorptive capacity as the ability of an organization to use prior knowledge to recognize the value of new knowledge from external sources, assimilate this new knowledge, and apply it to the benefit of the organization. He provides valuable training in how service organizations go about transforming new knowledge into effective actionable business plans. The second chapter by Mohammad Shamsuddoha provides an application of system dynamics modelling in firms in the poultry industry in Bangladesh. This chapter offers deep knowledge of the "fifth discipline" and beyond. Shamsuddoha uses Vensim, a simulation-based software package, to build a simulation model with appropriate equations, formulae, and connectivity to replicate the real-life operation and outcome in a simulation environment. He also provides the in-depth knowledge necessary to learn to truly understand the fifth discipline.

Volume 23B includes two chapters covering problems and implementations of solutions in e-services adoption processes in developing nations. The first documents the unequal access and ICT usage, which is known as digital divide, to be one of the major obstacles to the implementation of e-government systems. This research investigates the digital divide and its direct impact on e-government system success of local governments in Indonesia as well as indirect impact through the mediation role of trust. To achieve a comprehensive understanding of digital divide, this study introduced a new type of digital divide, the innovativeness divide. It provides details for successful policy formulation to improve e-government readiness. The second explores what needs to be done to enable consumers to adopt e-services by airlines in developing nations. It includes new theory and empirical evidence from both qualitative and quantitative studies in response to this issue. Exciting and useful chapters for executives and researchers seeking knowledge and theory of how to influence e-service adoptions in developing nations!

Where do brilliant executive wisdom and actions come from? Making Tough Decisions Well and Badly (MTDWB) assesses the literature that examines executives’ conscious and non-conscious actions in decision making, implementation and assessment of outcomes. MTDWB includes anecdotal histories of good and bad decisions and the executives who made them. This volume uncovers the common threads in framing, forecasting, decision making and actions, looking at Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, Jr, Senator Wayne Morris, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Sam Walton, Mahatma Gandhi, and Bill Gates. Authors discuss how common threads could be useful for achieving superior competences MTDWB assesses ten valuable decision making tools such as checklists and coaches; and tools to avoid such as use of product portfolio paradigms and use of fit-only regression analysis, that appear often in the popular business and academic literature on making tough decisions. MTDWB closes with ten recommendations for those responsible for making tough decisions.

This volume in the series has big objectives: describe the bad science practices now in use in most studies in business-to-business marketing strategy and describe a true paradigm shift to good science practices by replacing the variable-based linear-symmetric null hypothesis testing (NHST) approach in theory construction and testing—with case-based asymmetric models with somewhat precise outcome testing (SPOT). Whether the question refers to success or failure, wise executives ask, how did we get here? What’s in store for the next decade? Unfortunately, the majority of scholarly articles examining the causes of success and failure offers scant useful information that is accurate in forecasting success or failure strategy outcomes. The majority of studies on strategy performance outcomes focus on variable relationships and testing for the directionality (positive or negative relationships) and effect size of relationships—using multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling (MRA/SEM) using null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST). Research on the value of NHST indicates that such studies are worse than useless: such research does not focus on case-based outcomes and achieving a statistically significant relationship greatly depends on the sample size of firms in the studies. Researchers using NHST are answering the wrong questions in examining the net effects of independent variables on dependent variable of interest (e.g., net earnings per revenue). Here are the right questions to ask. What configurations of antecedent conditions combine to generate positive outcomes for our firm and similar firms? What configurations of antecedent conditions combine to generate negative outcomes for firms in our industry? Sound reasoning and empirical evidence supports the wisdom of business executives ignoring the scholarly empirical literature on forecasting successful and unsuccessful management strategies using the NHST of the size and directionality of relationships. Good science practice relies on the complexity theory tenets covered in the chapters in this volume. Good science practice includes matching case-focused theory with case-focused data analytic tools and using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT) of asymmetric models. Good science practice achieves requisite variety necessary for deep explanation, description, and accurate prediction. The fear of submission rejection is another reason for rejecting case-based asymmetric modeling and SPOT. Overcome such fear by learning to apply complexity theory tenets, constructing separate case-based, mid-range, models of successful versus unsuccessful outcomes, and testing for accuracy via SPOT. This volume provides tools necessary for you to accomplish this task.

Through the comprehensive consideration of alternative strategies and their highly accurate comparison from the perspective of quantitative characteristics, the game approach refines logic and increases the efficiency and expediency of making decisions on business integration. Game Strategies for Business Integration in the Digital Economy reveals the essence, features and benefits of various strategies for business integration in the digital economy.Presenting a general scientific idea of business integration from the perspective of the Game Theory, Game Strategies for Business Integration in the Digital Economy considers these game strategies for business integration in the digital economy: cluster strategy; public-private partnership; cooperation of universities and business entities; parks and innovation networks; the M&A strategy; foreign direct investment; the strategy for export development of international business integration.Advances in Business Marketing and Purchasing (ABM&P), offers leading edge theory, empirical research and practice on sensemaking, planning, implementing and evaluating of strategies in business-to-business marketing and purchasing.

Trust plays a crucial role in all societies, particularly within the Business-to-Business context where inter-firm relationships, impelled by globalization and the extended enterprise, require a much higher degree of trust to succeed. This 26th volume of Advances in Business Marketing and Purchasing examines the value of trust within the B2B context to provide a better understanding of its importance in organizations. New Insights on Trust in Business-to-Business Relationships: A Multi-Perspective Approach applies different theoretical and methodological perspectives to the mechanisms and processes that promote trust between customer and supplier in contexts such as e-commerce, high involvement relationships, industrial service and international cultures. The authors identify the consistencies and distinctions of antecedents, processes, and consequences of trust in various B2B contexts and offer alternative approaches that contribute to a better understanding of the subtleties and multi-faceted nature of trust and trust-related management. The book provides advanced original insights on trust for researchers and practitioners working within Management, Purchasing and B2B Marketing, and offers practical tools to build lasting and successful business relationships.

"Superior Customer Value" (SCV) advances theory and offers new tools useful for measuring value dimensions and strength. Achieving highly useful sense making about the value concept and value metrics is important because of the substantial evidence that: customer assessments of total value in a product/service offering strongly affects acceptance and initial purchase; customer evaluations of value experiences relate strongly with retaining them and growing the share-of-business these customers award specific suppliers; and increases in delivered-value implemented strategies relates positively to increases in profitability. "SCV" focuses on advancing value theory, research, and strategy in business-to-business contexts. Coverage includes in-depth case research findings for existing and disruptively new products and services and all papers in this volume embrace the proposition that context is a major force affecting planning and implementing strategy. "SCV" is relevant in particular to European and North American B-to-B contexts. However, the tools and theories in the volume are certainly relevant for research by scholars and decisions by executives working in Asia and Australia. "SCV" is essential reading for improving thinking, decisions, and actions relating to the creation, marketing, and purchasing of superior value in products and services - critical abilities for product-service executives.