Industrial Marketing Management最新文献

Knowledge, as one of the most important resources, has a strong impact on inter-organizational relationships, particularly in key account (KA) relationships where knowledge sharing is essential. Previous research has shown that customer-specific knowledge is often tied to the respective KA manager and that knowledge sharing is especially complex, which raises the challenge of how to foster knowledge sharing to increase KA performance. However, the current state of research lacks an integrative perspective that considers both organizational and individual factors as relevant for knowledge sharing and KA performance. The research approach is twofold: First, a qualitative study based on 88 semi-structured interviews investigates the role of organizational factors and the individuals' role in knowledge sharing. Second, a quantitative moderated mediation analysis reinforces these associations using survey data from 307 respondents. The results show that identification with the company positively influences knowledge sharing behavior and that high knowledge sharing behavior has a positive influence on KA performance, which is moderated by the degree of formalization. The results of the analyses contribute to the research of KA management and knowledge management and provide new insights by focusing on both, organizational and individual factors and by applying assumptions from social identity theory.

Corporate Foresight (CF) suggests a strategic capability that enables organisations to anticipate emerging market trends, customer needs, and competitive dynamics, providing a proactive approach to decision-making and value creation. This article explores the transformative potential of CF in key account management (KAM), shedding light on its role in shaping the future of customer engagement and organisational success. This study proposes a conceptual framework integrating CF practices into KAM processes and performance metrics. The findings emphasise the critical role of CF in driving innovation, fostering long-term customer relationships, and achieving competitive advantage. The paper extends the KAM research agenda, positioning the analysis of KAM in a broader organisational context, beyond the ‘boundaries’ of the sales/ marketing function. The article concludes by offering practical implications and recommendations for organisations seeking to embrace the power of foresight in their KAM strategies. Finally, we identify avenues for future research.

Companies are increasingly outsourcing their new product development (NPD) to their suppliers and jointly developing their new products with them. From the perspective of buyer firms, we study how these two types of supplier collaboration in NPD influence the buyer firms' new product performance. Using a strategic relational-institutional perspective, we study how knowledge sharing, as a relational factor, and organizational culture, as an institutional factor, can moderate these relationships. We surveyed 103 supply-chain practitioners from multinational firms operating in the consumer products industry. The results showed that both types of supplier collaboration in NPD were positively associated with new product performance. They further showed that while knowledge sharing did not moderate the relationship between outsourcing NPD to suppliers and new product performance, it positively moderated the relationship between co-developing new products with suppliers and new product performance. They also showed that while the relationship between outsourcing NPD to suppliers and new product performance was stronger when buyer firms emphasized the adhocracy dimension of organizational culture, the relationship between co-developing new products with suppliers and new product performance was stronger when they did not emphasize it. We acknowledge the limitations of our study and discuss its research and practical implications.

Purpose

This study proposes and tests the effectiveness of an integrated approach to community-based internal branding (CBIB) in a business-to-business setting. It integrates classical and contemporary views on internal branding, integrating community-building activities into the proposed internal branding framework ensuring a holistic model of co-creation of a corporate brand identity. It also examines the moderation effect of employee's personal, job, and community-related characteristics on the relationships in the proposed model.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents a detailed narrative review to propose a conceptual model and uses a quantitative research design to test a set of hypotheses using structural equation modeling on 400 responses collected through a survey.

Findings

This study finds that integrated CBIB is a viable approach for implementing internal branding. The effectiveness of building employee brand commitment is demonstrated through the testing of the model. We also find that employee's age, gender, organizational tenure, membership duration (in the brand community), education level, customer interaction, leadership status, and participation in brand fests moderate the proposed relationships in the CBIB model.

Research limitations/implications

One key limitation of this paper is that it lacks the multi-cultural and multi-industry perspective, which, given promising results in the current context, may be investigated in future studies.

Practical implications

The paper proposes a community mode of implementing internal branding in a B2B setting and suggests a way to create brand champions across the organization.

Originality/value

As per the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first quantitative investigation of integrated community-based internal branding.

As the supply chain becomes a key carrier of firms' operations, the relationship between suppliers and buyers increasingly influences their strategic decision-making effectiveness. Nevertheless, existing research exhibits inconsistent conclusions regarding the effect of supply chain relationships on suppliers' innovation performance. To address this challenge, we apply social exchange theory to categorize relationships into instrumental and expressive ties, aiming for a fine-grained elucidation of how supply chain relationships affect suppliers' innovation performance. Based on data collected from 226 Chinese companies, our study reveals the following findings: (a) instrumental ties between suppliers and their buyers lead to the suppliers' moral disengagement, subsequently diminishing their innovation performance; (b) expressive ties between suppliers and their buyers reduce the suppliers' moral disengagement, thereby enhancing their innovation performance; (c) the corporate reputation moderates the mediating effect of moral disengagement on the relationship between instrumental ties and suppliers' innovation performance, but does not exert an influence on the indirect effect between expressive ties and suppliers' innovation performance via moral disengagement. This study enriches the value effects of supply chain relationships on suppliers' innovation performance by dividing it into instrumental and expressive ties, and further reveals the path and boundary condition of the value effects.

Building on structural and cognitive social capital theories, cultural distance and immigrant manager literature, this study postulates a new conceptualization to demonstrate how interactions of inter-cultural B2B relationships with the customers and suppliers (top executives' interpersonal relationships with the counterparts of their host market's customers and suppliers), perceived cultural distance (PCD) and immigrant manager affect firms' export performance. By examining 230 Australasian firms exporting to Greater China region, we found out that customer relationships have a significant effect on export performance while supplier relationships do not have such effect. To better understand development of B2B relationships, we examined the role of immigrant manager in building of such relationships to confirm that the interaction of customer relationships and immigrant manager has a positive impact on export performance whereas the interaction of supplier relationships and immigrant manager does not have a positive effect on performance. We also included PCD into the conceptual model to explore its influence on the interaction between customer and supplier relationships and immigrant manager and how it affects the export performance. This inclusion demonstrated the importance of immigrant manager in developing customer relationships when PCD is high, however the interaction between supplier relationships, PCD and immigrant manager does not have any significant effect. The results of our study therefore have important implications of when and how immigrant managers can be employed to positively influence development of B2B relationships and improve export performance. This study also makes a significant theoretical contribution to B2B relationships and export performance literature by closing gaps in understanding of the role of PCD and immigrant manager in building of efficient inter-cultural B2B relationships and making a distinction between B2B relationships customer and supplier effects.

As mergers and acquisitions (M&A) increasingly become a staple in emerging markets, understanding the role of leadership in these activities is paramount. Despite the proliferation of research on M&A integration and leadership's impact on performance, there is a notable scarcity of studies that integrate these elements into a unified framework, particularly within non-Western contexts. Addressing this gap, this study constructs and empirically tests a framework that evaluates the influence of brand-specific transformational leadership (TFL) on M&A performance in China. Utilizing a sample of 295 respondents from B2B markets, the research confirms the significant role of brand-specific TFL in enhancing M&A integration. A direct correlation was established between the degree of integration and improved employee satisfaction and engagement, reduced top management team (TMT) turnover, and overall M&A success. However, the speed of integration did not show a significant impact on these outcomes. These findings underscore the critical role of transformational leadership in shaping successful M&A strategies, particularly in emerging markets. The study not only contributes to the theoretical understanding of how specific leadership styles influence M&A outcomes but also offers practical guidance for corporations in emerging economies to design more effective integration strategies by focusing on leadership development and branding alignment.

Digitalization unites marketing, sales and IT (M-S-I) actors in the context of customer interactions. However, currently, little is known about the dynamics underlying the interplay and the alignment of these three actors. Additionally, salespeople are increasingly challenged by customer success management (CSM) for remaining accountable to customers in the postpurchase phase of customers' journeys. This study examines the organizational alignment of M-S-I actors using a qualitative approach. Interviews were conducted in the context of a case study of four matched triads of M-S-I actors—including the executive directors of each company—throughout the customer journey to explore the dynamics underlying this trilateral alignment. The findings demonstrate six dimensions and twenty attributes of alignment, which are integrated into the COMPLY framework to provide guidance regarding how to adjust the alignment among M-S-I actors. This approach results in the discovery of novel key propositions for intradimensional alignment and ultimately interdimensional interventions, thereby revealing ways in which researchers and managers can analyze and adjust alignment among M-S-I actors, with the ultimate goal of facilitating CSM more effectively. This study contributes to existing models of alignment as well as to CSM research and provides guidance on how to analyze and adjust alignment for organizational M-S-I actors.

Relying on two embedded case studies of product development within IKEA's industrial network, this paper examines the role of Target Costing as an accounting tool that has the capacity to frame development efforts into either exploitative or explorative projects. Such a framing affects, in turn, the configuration of the relevant network of resources and mediates the behavior of the actors involved via specific types of controls. We contribute to the IMP-inspired literature on innovation and product development as we add nuances to how the concepts of exploitative and explorative innovation paths play out on a network level, especially in relation to the resource dimension. In addition, the notion of the mediating role of accounting adds to how we can understand control and its consequences in an interorganizational network context. Our data consists of several sources, about 70 interviews with individuals working at IKEA and its partners. We also had access to internal company material such as costing calculations. Our study has practical implications as it can help managers identify which types of control to use and how these can be matched with different innovations strategies on a network level.

Activities performed from the conception of the product to the delivery to support the business have been at the center of marketing. Crises like COVID-19 have brought pivotal changes and innovations in marketing functions and processes. This paper aims to curate and organize what firms did regarding innovation in marketing during the unprecedented crisis of COVID-19 and may do in crises-driven situations. Our analysis captured organizational responses collected from 957 respondents grouped into four drivers of innovations in marketing, namely marketing mix, process, technology, and strategy. The results revealed that, though marketing mix as a driver of innovation remained crucial as the backbone of marketing activity, it was followed by process and strategy, which became prominent in a crisis-driven environment. This study also shows that technology could be a facilitator of drivers and cannot be seen as a replacement for marketing processes. This can assist organizations in understanding how businesses on various fronts in marketing innovate, survive, and grow more vital during a crisis, further aiding managers in comprehending and creating marketing strategies in turbulent times.