Separate or Integrate? Assessing the Impact of Separation Between Product and Service Business on Service Performance in Product Manufacturing Firms

Purpose: Investigating how the separation of the product and service business mediates the effect of management's commitment to the service strategy on service performance in product manufacturing firms.

Methodology: The authors surveyed 216 European manufacturers in the high-value durable equipment industry moving into the service business. After assessing adequacy of measurement scales, the authors tested statistically for mediation. Their results hold when replicating the study using a structural equation modeling approach and while testing for common method biases.

Findings: The authors find evidence that the creation of a separate service organization, organized as a profit center, has a significant positive mediating effect between managerial commitment and the services' financial performance. Although separation also has a positive mediating effect between commitment and non-financial performance, organizing services as a profit center had a negative effect on the service's non-financial indicators.

Research Limitations: Research limitations include (a) a sample limited to German-speaking firms in the high-value durable equipment industry, (b) measurements based on self-reported managerial perceptions of service performance, and (c) conceptualization of service as a single strategic response.

Practical Implications: Although the complementarity between products and services is high in the market, the authors' research suggests few synergies to leverage their integration inside the organization. Accordingly, management should, at least in transition efforts similar to the ones included in this sample, look into creating a separate and distinct service organization.

Value/Contribution: This research was driven by practical concern on how to organize service operations in a manufacturing firm. Initial framing of the research through the creation of the construct of separation of product and service business was used.     

Service Business Development in Small- to Medium-Sized Equipment Manufacturers

Purpose: This article explores service business development by small- and medium-sized equipment manufacturers (SMEMs). It focuses on underlying dynamic and operational capabilities in service business development.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The research design is based on case study research with nine companies from Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Findings: The findings are twofold. First, the authors elaborate the phases and capabilities necessary for service business development. Second, they argue that these phases and capabilities depend on sales channels (direct sales versus indirect sales through distributors) and customer structures (a limited number of strategic customers versus many end-customers). SMEMs selling directly to a limited number of strategic customers develop organizational capabilities through four phases: (1) consolidation of service offerings, (2) job enlargements in organizational functions, (3) job enlargement in the key account teams, and (4) orchestration of partners to widen the solutions offered to customers. SMEMs selling indirectly through distributors to many customers develop organizational capabilities through the following four phases: (1) rearranging collaboration with distributors, (2) enlarging the service competencies of distributors, (3) modifying distributors into subsidiaries, and (4) enlarging jobs in the sales function of the subsidiaries.

Research Limitations/Implications: The research limitations are due mainly to the intrinsic nature of qualitative research.

Practical Implications: Managers can obtain guidance for service business development from the phases and capabilities described in the paper.

Originality/Value: The study offers a comprehensive framework for assisting researchers in conceptualizing service business development and operationalizing capabilities. The results provide testable propositions that can be used to guide future research.     

Issues of Competitiveness

Abstract

This article investigates the forces that constrain Taiwanese-based corporations from improving quality and introducing and marketing new products. A total of 182 executives from the service and manufacturing sectors participated in the study. The results indicate that Taiwanese-based firms are optimistic about their competitive market position and about their respective industries. Furthermore, executives of these firms prefer to compete in regional and global markets. Absence of pride in a job well done, ineffective performance evaluation systems, and excessive government regulations were found to be the most important factors that may prohibit improvement in product quality. The results also reveal that various factors may hinder the development and marketing of new products. They are inattentiveness to consumer needs, top management's lack of attention to world competition and global opportunities, deterioration of the competitive spirit among employees and managers, absence of a flexible manufacturing strategy, volatile business environment, and too much focus on immediate results.     

How Knowledge Management Capabilities Help Leverage Knowledge Resources and Strategic Orientation for New Product Advantages in B-to-B High-Technology Firms

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Current understanding of how new product development (NPD) teams use knowledge management capabilities to acquire, disseminate, and apply knowledge resources to achieve competitive advantages is limited by a lack of compelling theory supported by empirical evidence. This study provides a theoretical framework and empirical validation for how an NPD team manages knowledge resources and strategic orientation to enhance its knowledge management capabilities, which, in turn, lead to business-to-busienss (B-to-B) new product advantages.

Methodology/approach: A total of 100 sets of data was collected from B-to-B firms in U.S. high-tech industries. In order to validate the proposed hypotheses, we estimated the main effects using path analysis in AMOS, and tested for interaction effects using interaction term regressions.

Findings: Our findings show that the two dimensions of NPD knowledge management capabilities—acquisition and application—are important but differential drivers of product quality superiority and product differentiation. In testing whether NPD management capabilities matter for two product advantage constructs, we confirmed that product quality superiority can be enhanced by both NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities, whereas product differentiation can be increased strongly by NPD knowledge acquisition capabilities.

Research implications: Our research confirms the importance of strategic orientation as a driver of NPD knowledge management capabilities, which enhances understanding of how strategic factors operate under a resource-based view. Our results further provide direct empirical support for the knowledge-based view of firms, in that an NPD team’s abilities to manage and deploy knowledge-based resources by acquiring and applying NPD knowledge lead to competitive advantages, for outcomes of quality superiority and differentiation.

Practical implications: Our findings have relevance for managers in three ways. First, NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities have differential impacts on product quality superiority and differentiation. Second, in exploring NPD resource factors as antecedents, managers should manage levels of NPD market intelligence, resource tacitness, and NPD resource deployment differentially to directly improve NPD teams’ acquisition and application capabilities. Third, managers should not underestimate the importance of market and technological orientations in enhancing NPD knowledge management capabilities. Market orientation drives both NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities; technological orientation drives NPD knowledge application capabilities. Originality/value/contribution of the paper: An NPD team’s knowledge management capabilities generally, but differentially, mediate the relationships of knowledge resources and strategic orientation factors with new product competitive advantage. However, simply enhancing NPD knowledge management capabilities is not a panacea for developing product competitive advantage in B-to-B settings, because of their differential effects.     

How Strategic Purchasing Orientation and Transformational Leadership Impact Performance: The Mediating Role of Information and Communication Technologies

Purpose: Purchasing orientation (greater efficiency, use of information and communication technologies; ICT) is becoming an underlying part of company strategy in an increasing number of business organizations. Transformational leadership by purchasing managers is also emerging as a tool to generate more intense and effective use of ICT and as a means of enhancing performance. The present research pursues 2 goals: firstly to explore how the strategic nature of the purchasing function and transformational leadership of purchasing managers impacts ICT use intensity and purchase efficiency, and secondly to pinpoint how the use of ICT affects purchase performance.

Methodology/approach: The empirical work is based on an analysis of the information provided by a sample of 130 Spanish firms. Empirical verification of the proposed model was carried out through partial least squares analysis.

Findings: Findings show that the strategic importance which management attaches to the purchasing function impacts the intensive use of ICT. However, the transformational leadership exercised by purchasing managers proves relevant in achieving greater cost efficiency and coordination with suppliers.

Research implications: This work has sought to merge as determinants of efficiency both strategic aspects of the purchasing function in the firm as well as managerial aspects of said function (manager’s transformational leadership and the use of ICT). This research breaks new ground by empirically comparing the relationship between the strategic nature of the purchasing function in a firm and intensity of ICT use, a relation which has been the subject of very little inquiry and for which the mediating role of ICT in the link between strategic orientation and purchase performance is brought to light.

Originality/value/contribution: The study makes a twofold contribution. Firstly, the present research seeks to bring together strategic aspects of the purchasing function in the firm as well as other management factors involved in said function (managers’ transformational leadership and use of ICT) as drivers of efficiency. In this sense, the findings point to the important role played by the purchasing manager vis-à-vis the strategic vision of the purchasing function in achieving cost efficiency and coordination with suppliers. Secondly, this research breaks new ground by empirically verifying the link between the strategic nature of the purchasing function in a firm and intensity of ICT use, a link which has been the focus of scant attention and for which we underpin the mediating role of ICT in the relationship between strategic orientation and purchase performance.     

Guanxi,Communication, Power,and Conflict in Industrial Buyer-Seller Relationships: Mitigations Against the Cultural Background of Harmony in China

Purpose: This research aims to investigate how guanxi influences conflict occurrence and conflict-related behavior in transactions of equipment with state-owned enterprises (SOEs) against the cultural background of harmony in China. The influence of guanxi on conflict-avoidance behaviors is discussed, and a model is proposed depicting the relationship between guanxi, the selection of communication modality, the exercise of power, and manifest conflict.

Methodology/Approach: Data was collected from persons selling equipment in the oil industry. The partial least squares method is applied to analyze the collected data.

Findings: Guanxi at the individual level positively influences the use of informal communication and the exercise of non-coercive power and negatively influences the use of formal communication and the exercise of coercive power at the organizational level. The use of informal communication is inversely related to the intensity of conflict, whereas the use of formal communication and the exercise of coercive power are positively related to the intensity of conflict. The combination of these effects is that the guanxi between representatives of business partners is negatively related to manifest conflict at the organizational level.

Contribution: This empirical research is among the earliest studies attempting to examine how guanxi influences interorganizational conflict occurrence and conflict-related behavior in industrial buyer-seller relationships in China, and it reveals a significant relationship between guanxi and the selection of communication modality, the exercise of power, and the occurrence of conflict in a guanxi-intensive market in China.

Practical Implications: First, our findings will help members of the seller's management team, especially foreign members, to better understand the behavior of their Chinese employees. Secondly, our findings should help sellers improve the effectiveness of their conflict management to increase good word-of-mouth and maximize reorders. Thirdly, our findings should help the purchasing managers of SOEs to better understand how to manage conflict to lower the project risk. Lastly, firms doing business with SOEs should take both cultural and political factors into account in their business activities.     

“Made in Italy”: The Italian Contribution to the Development of Business Marketing Discipline and Practices

Purpose: The authors analyze the main contributions of Italian literature in the business-to-business field as it relates to the characteristics of the Italian industrial manufacturing system. Even if not directly labeled as business-to-business marketing, Italian and other scholars who have studied Italian business experiences have largely faced the topic of business marketing management with innovative approaches and distinctive benchmark examples. In particular, the analysis of the Italian contribution to business marketing relies on the specific nature of the Italian industrial structure as recognized by the international literature. In this respect, the authors argue that three main areas of interest progressively arose from the peculiarities of the Italian industrial system: industrial districts, subcontractors/subcontracting relationships, and mid-sized manufacturing companies. These three research topics have been thoroughly investigated by both Italian and international scholars. They analyze the contributions that Italian researchers provided to advance business marketing discipline and practices.

Methodology/approach: The authors reviewed the literature of the main contributions developed in the three individual areas of research that have a strong focus on the Italian experience. The methodology was in three steps. First, the review planning process was guided by the three areas of research that were assumed to have a major contribution to business marketing discipline. Second, the SCOPUS database was used as a primary source for paper identification by using a keywords search method. Third, the dataset was refined by excluding non relevant contributions (not focused on business management and marketing or not specifically dealing with the three areas of interest) and validating/integrating the original dataset by using other complementary sources (e.g., Google Books, Google Scholar). Finally, a set of 268 products were taken into account in the analysis.

Findings: The results of the analysis suggest that the Italian contribution to the field of business marketing is valuable in light of the three chosen areas of research. These three empirical arenas—industrial districts, subcontractors, and mid-sized firms—contribute to providing a better understanding of business market structure and dynamics as well as the improvement of business marketing studies.

Originality/value: The article is an original and first attempt to elaborate and reflect on the contribution of the Italian business experience literature to the advances of business marketing discipline. The authors develop an original comprehensive review of “Made in Italy” business marketing and management research that has not been used in previous studies. The review will increase international knowledge of Italian practices and theoretical frameworks that can contribute to the reinforcement of the business-to-business marketing discipline.     

How professional service firms compete in the market: an exploratory study

Abstract

This study investigates how professional service firms (PSFs) compete in the market. Drawing on strategic marketing literature, a managerial rather than customer perspective is adopted. The study investigates the competitive positions sought by professional service providers and the specific marketing activities actually undertaken to achieve these positions. Thirty-seven depth interviews with senior management from a range of PSFs indicate that firms seek to differentiate themselves by developing long-term relationships, providing better service quality and greater value, and developing brands with strong reputations. Organisations typically seek such interrelated competitive positions simultaneously. A list of marketing activities used by the PSFs to achieve these competitive positions offers practical insights into the specific activities needed to achieve the various competitive positions sought.     

Exploring the Role of Product Development Capability for Transforming Marketing Intelligence into Firm Performance

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This study examines the role of product development capability for transforming marketing intelligence activities into firm performance on industrial markets.

Methodology/Approach: The authors apply structural equation modeling to analyze survey data from 342 industrial manufacturing companies.

Findings: Results reveal that sales integration and holistic macroeconomic view are particularly important features of the marketing intelligence capability on industrial markets to gain additional insights in order to develop products successfully. Results also reveal that product development capability transforms the marketing intelligence activities into firm performance on industrial markets.

Research Implications: This study offers new insights on marketing theory by extending and concretizing the concept of market orientation to a broader concept of the marketing intelligence capability for industrial markets. Further, this research reveals that the product development capability serves as a mediator to business performance.

Practical Implications: This study’s systematic and tangible outline of the dimensions of marketing intelligence and its link to the product development capability helps firms to better understand how to capitalize on market orientation’s potential values.

Originality/Value/Contribution: This research (a) reveals the relevant dimensions of marketing intelligence on industrial markets and (b) shows how the product development capability tranforms marketing intelligence activities into firm performance on industrial markets.     

Conceptualization and Integration of Marketing Intelligence: The Case of an Industrial Manufacturer

Purpose: The primary goal of this article was to conceptualize a systematic marketing intelligence process for industrial manufacturers because, up until now, such concepts have only been focused on consumer goods settings. Hence, this article investigates how marketing intelligence activities are developed and managed effectively in industrial markets.

Methodology/approach: The authors conducted a case study of Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen, a German based manufacturer of regulation technology for power transformers.

Findings: We found that a systematic marketing intelligence process should be based on the resource- and market-based view of strategy as well as on the market orientation construct. When implementing marketing intelligence, the integration of the sales force within the whole process is the crucial lever for an industrial company. The formalization of the process is necessary to ensure its continuity and acceptance; however, the varying intensity allows the necessary flexibility of the process.

Research implications: The constraints of the decisive process steps of marketing intelligence have to be further enhanced for industrial markets. It is important to find out how the integration of the sales force can best be designed to incorporate reward systems and motivation structures, and how to establish a corporate marketing-minded culture throughout the organization.

Practical implications: The important steps for a well implemented marketing intelligence process are a preparation phase, followed by the gathering, analysis, and dissemination of information. This article highlights the success factors for each process step. Above all, managerial and organizational commitment is necessary for the implementation of the whole process.

Originality/value/contribution: By focusing on the industrial manufacturing business, this study provides deep insights into a neglected area of research. Light needs to be shed on marketing intelligence in industrial markets, where the lack of traditional market research has to be compensated.     

Designing a Predictive Performance Measurement and Control System to Maximize Customer Relationship Management Success

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) performance measurement is reviewed with two main intentions: (a) to encourage theoretical and empirical research and (b) to provide a useful predictive measurement system that is easy to implement. Special emphasis is placed on Balanced Scorecard methodologies as measurement systems to both evaluate and predict CRM performance. The use of a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) methodology to design CRM predictive performance measurement and control systems (PMCS) may provide several benefits to firms since (a) it reduces the risk and the uncertainty associated with the decision-making processes related to a CRM strategy and (b) it provides a strategic resource to the development of competitive advantages. The article concludes by proposing an holistic measuring system in the CRM field, including accountable, leading, repeatable, and linked metrics over the following areas and dimensions: strategy (business orientation, business atmosphere, and competitive strategy); resources (financial, human, and technological), business processes (integration and innovation); products and services (superiority and product/company synergy), customers (prospective and current); and external factors (competition and market).     

Development and Growth of the Business Class

Abstract

Air travel is forecasted to be a strong growth market for the 90s. An annual growth rate of over 4% is being predicted until the end of the century. Comprising 20% of the seats and 40% of the overall revenues, the business travel segment had assumed an important strategic focus within the airline industry. This study looks at the competitive issues involved in meeting the demands of the business traveler, especially in the light of the changing relationships between those who supply the product, those who distribute, and those who use it. With corporate America along with the rest of the world continuing to do more business, but with less travel, this study looks at some of the changes that the airline industry can implement to lure business travelers back. Finally, a model is proposed, which the airlines can use to adopt to the changing needs of the market.     

Contractual Satisfaction: The Polish and Tanzanian Perspectives

Purpose: Interfirm satisfaction has been studied at the aggregate level, which has limited use in terms of understanding specific dimensions. Contractual satisfaction relates to the specific level of analyzing interfirm satisfaction. This study contributes towards understanding contractual satisfaction and the contextual nature of the concept. To achieve the latter, two heterogeneous emerging markets were used (Poland and Tanzania).

Methodology: The study was conducted in Poland and Tanzania, focusing on manufacturing firms. The sample included 201 Polish firms and 240 Tanzanian firms.

Findings: The major findings suggest that ex ante costs and ex post specifications have a significant positive effect on contractual satisfaction, with a stronger effect in Poland. Behavioral uncertainty has a significant moderating effect on these two constructs in Tanzania but not in Poland, whereas the moderating effect of trust is found to be significantly positive in Poland but negative in Tanzania.

Research Implications: The nature of markets and institutions has an influence on business to business relations.

Practical Implications: Contractual satisfaction is not homogeneous across markets; managers should pay attention to specific contextual factors such as institutions and the stage they are at in their transformation.

Originality: The study looks specifically at contractual satisfaction and extends the contractual governance literature by considering heterogeneous emerging markets.     

An Investigation on Incentive Strategies in Community Building in Business-to-Business Electronic Markets

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Community building is recognized as an important governance mechanism in business-to-business (B-to-B) electronic markets by enhancing firms’ participation in these platform markets. However, little research has been done regarding the role of incentive strategies in community building. The main purpose of this paper is to understand how to motivate merchants to participate in a merchant community with incentive strategies.

Methodology: Data were collected in a community of a large B-to-B electronic platform market in China. We randomly chose a sample of 605 participants from among all merchant firms registered in this community, and track their behaviors for 2 weeks. Their behaviors are recorded based on our research design.

Findings: With the empirical analysis from a community of a large B-to-B electronic platform market in China, our results show that (1) both platform and peer incentive strategies can significantly enhance community participation, while platform incentives is more effective in general; (2) platform incentive strategy is a more effective strategy as seller firm uncertainty increases; (3) peer incentive strategy is a more effective strategy as buyer firm uncertainty increases.

Originality: This paper is among the first to investigate two types of incentive strategies in community building, platform level and peer level. We also investigate the moderating role of market uncertainties due to market participants from seller and buyer when examining the effectiveness of these two incentive strategies.     

Operationalizing Trust,Reliance, and Dependence in Business Relationships: Responding to the Ongoing Naming and Cross-Level Problems

Purpose: This article is to test the proposition that the 3 conceptually related constructs of trust, reliance, and dependence are distinct from each other and to test the proposition that the quality of business relationships can be measured with a formative index incorporating trust and reliance.

Methodology/Approach: The authors' propositions are tested with a survey sample of 221 firms in the U.K. construction industry. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses are used to analyze the survey data.

Findings: The independence of the 3 focal constructs of trust, reliance, and dependence is confirmed. The formative index is found suitable for evaluating the level of relationship quality in which reliance carries more significant weight than trust.

Research Implications: The separation of the overall construct of “trust” into trust at interpersonal level and reliance at interorganizational level, as found in this study, overcomes the problem existing in past studies that researchers rarely specify at which level trust operates. The clear conceptual distinction between reliance and dependence as found in this study implies that although both operate at the organizational level, they do not have overlapping boundaries. The finding that reliance is a more important impact factor than trust in constructing the formative index supports the notions that reliance is a necessary and sufficient condition for developing sustainable business relationships, and trust is an insufficient condition to sustain an ongoing business relationship.

Practical Implications: Reliance sets the keynote of the business relationship. In contrast, trust as the interpersonal variable only acts as the facilitator to create a favorable social environment. Nevertheless, both trust and reliance have a significant and positive weight in the relationship quality index formed. This means that a business relationship with high levels of both trust and reliance is particularly resilient and stable and is the most successful and desirable one which is frequently oriented toward the long run.

Originality/Value/Contribution: The confirmation of the difference between trust and reliance makes an important contribution to the study of trust in business to business marketing by showing that what has traditionally been treated as theoverall construct of trust can and should be regarded as being made up of two separate constructs: interpersonal trust and interorganizational reliance. The difference between reliance and dependence as an additional finding makes another important contribution by providing conceptual clarity of the two constructs and confirming that there is no overlapping boundary between them. The formative index and the relative importance of its components are another important contribution of this study.     

Enhancing Export Performance for Business Markets: Effects of Interorganizational Relationships on Export Market Orientation (EMO)

Purpose: Drawing on the relationship marketing perspective, this study explores the effects of interorganizational relationship variables on export market orientation (EMO), in turn enhancing the export performance. Furthermore, firm internationalization was included as a moderator between export market-oriented behavior and export performance.

Methodology: The authors tested the hypotheses via a mail survey involving 235 exporting firms. LISREL and regression analysis were used to test the proposed model.

Findings: The results support the hypotheses, which posit that commitment, trust, and social interaction are positively related to EMO behavior, whereas power is negatively related to such behavior. Second, firm EMO behavior is positively related to export performance. Third, the degree of internationalization strengthens the effect of EMO on export performance.

Research implications: This study improves existing theoretical understanding by supporting the relationship marketing perspective and international channel research for performing export market-oriented behaviors.

Practical implications: The leverage of interorganizational relationships appears a solid strategy for performing export market-oriented behaviors. Exporters can focus not only on export market-oriented behaviors being performed but also on expansion to new markets.

Originality/value: This study contributes to the marketing and international business literature and provides insights to exporters by examining the relationships among interorganizational relationship variables, EMO, and export performance. This study also introduces the degree of internationalization from a contingency-based view and demonstrates that internationalization complements EMO, and thus facilitates export performance.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Purpose: Companies engage in business relationships for a variety of reasons, including specialization, product development, and building competitive networks. Research has demonstrated that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) may challenge ongoing business relationships. The purpose of this article is to investigate whether and how competition authorities consider business relationships when evaluating M&As.

Methodology: The article uses the documentation from 450 M&As reported to the Swedish competition authority to capture the way in which an authority evaluates M&As. The Swedish competition authority evaluation corresponds to other national and international evaluation procedures.

Findings: The findings indicate that the competition authorities neglect an important aspect of business life, namely companies forming business relationships. The competition authorities evaluate M&As on the basis of risk for price increases, and consequently disregard such issues as heterogeneity in demand and offerings, and values built into existing business relationships.

Originality/Value/Contribution: The article contributes to research on business relationships through exploring how a public authority deals with such relationships. It also contributes to research on mergers and acquisitions through examining how these activities are evaluated by competition authorities. Furthermore, the article contributes to competition research by reflecting on competition law concerning M&A regulations in relation to business relationships.     

Service Business Markets: Relationship Development in the Maritime Industry

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Prior literature has acknowledged the growing importance of service business markets (SBMs). However, relatively little research has examined the relationships and the motives for relationship development in SBMs. The aim of this paper is to investigate the nature of relationships and the various motives for relationship development between service provider and customers.

Methodology: This paper adopts a qualitative research strategy and a case study approach. The context is the maritime industry. One of the largest container terminals in China represents a unique and revelatory case study, wherein nine container terminal-shipping line dyads are the units of analysis. The data were mostly collected via 34 semistructured interviews with maritime industry professionals. The data were triangulated by including archival records and industry reports.

Findings: The interdependence and nonidentical nature of service delivery episodes are identified and considered to add to the knowledge on SBMs. This research provides evidence of the applicability of three groups of motives—economic, strategic, and social—for relationship development to SBMs. The motives are found to coexist and to have greater or lesser weight in the actors’ decision making depending on external factors, such as industry and company development stage, and internal factors, including the companies’ common vision and desire to collaborate.

Contribution: Academic papers have usually focused on specific types of motives, associated with a particular theoretical framework (e.g. transaction cost theory). Motives have rarely been discussed from multiple theoretical lenses. When motives are identified it is not clear what they really imply in different contexts, and what factors cause them to appear. This paper provides a number of contributions. First, it integrates several theoretical perspectives and specifies three groups of motives for relationship development in SBMs: economic, strategic, and social. Second, through the analysis of empirical findings the paper provides a deeper understanding of each group of motives, proposing an integrated framework of motives and the factors affecting their appearance. Subsequently, the research is carried out through a dyadic perspective, which is relatively rare in SBM research. A dyadic perspective allows similarities and differences in actors’ perceptions and actions to be illuminated. Finally, the research brings in a relatively new and important context—the Chinese maritime industry.

Practical implications: Knowing the needs and motives of counterparts can greatly assist SBM actors in formulating their strategies and planning their investments. It is also important that actors realize that the extent to which the other side is open to collaboration depends on the interplay of various motives. In general, business professionals should realize that end users increasingly perceive various service delivery stages within a supply chain as interdependent. Thus, to deliver a more integrated and flawless service to the end user, service providers and customers in SBMs should develop communication and collaboration beyond the operational level.     

Liquid Applepie: Market Entry Strategy for a New Lifestyle Drink

ABSTRACT

This is a theoretical case which observes the path a small business needs to follow to be successful. It is hoped the company involved will take these conclusions into consideration for future development.

This case study has been conducted in order to understand the theoretical models of international marketing. It determines the key criteria that need to be considered when entering a foreign market. The idea was to develop a market entry strategy for a Polish Vodka manufacturer who wants to enter the Austrian market.

After an analysis of the market and consideration of the situational factors, which are very important for the development of a detailed SWOT analysis, the segmentation, targeting, positioning and finally the selection of the right entry method, including the customer specific marketing tools, have been identified.