The role of renqing in mediating customer relationship investment and relationship commitment in China

There is a growing research interest in guanxi marketing, which has been considered the Chinese version of relationship marketing. However, very little empirical research has investigated the implicit nature of renqing, the underlying mechanism that explains the cultivation and maintenance of guanxi. This study examines the role of renqing in mediating customer relationship investment and relationship commitment in the insurance industry. The authors surveyed 245 car insurance policyholders in China. The findings confirm the mediating role of renqing in such relationships and show that renqing explains a very high proportion of the variance in levels of customer relationship commitment. This result offers valuable insights and suggestions as to how to increase levels of customer relationship commitment in China.     

The effects of environmental focus and program timing on green marketing performance and the moderating role of resource commitment

Should firms adopt sustainable marketing policy and develop green products? Most popular press says yes, but industry remains slow to act upon such initiatives. Drawing upon recent research in the Industrial Marketing Management Sustainability Special Issue, this research investigates the impact of green initiatives on firm performance and how the related commitment of resources impacts the effectiveness of those initiatives. The goal of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of green marketing on firm performance, in terms of financial performance, market performance, and service quality. Further, resource commitment is examined as a possible boundary condition of these relationships. Using multi-source data, the findings suggest that the commitment of proper resources is critical to the success of any green initiative. This study also supports the notion that being the first firm in an industry to initiate a green program provides few tangible benefits. More importantly, even firms with an environmental focus neglect to realize superior performance unless the specific strategy is matched with consistent support from top management.     

The impact of SME internationalization on innovation: The mediating role of market and entrepreneurial orientation

In today's highly competitive global environment, even small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need to make product and process innovations in order to outperform the competition and satisfy global customers. Investigating the success factors of innovation performance has become critical for the survival and competitiveness of SMEs. The aim of this study is to explore the impact of the degree of internationalization (DoI) on innovation performance through the mediating factors of market and entrepreneurial orientation in the context of emerging-market SMEs. We tested our model and hypotheses with 235 SMEs in the United Arab Emirates, which is an emerging market. The results obtained from partial least squares estimates indicate that the degree of internationalization positively affects innovation performance and, more importantly, that this relationship is indirect and fully mediated by market and entrepreneurial orientation for SMEs. These results shed light on the mechanism of the effect of DoI on innovation performance in the emerging-market SME context.     

A multilevel analysis of the role of interactional justice in promoting knowledge-sharing behavior: The mediated role of organizational commitment

Knowledge sharing behavior has received increased attention in the context of business due to its important role in enhancing organizational competitive advantage. This study aimed to identify possible predictors of knowledge sharing behavior and its underlying mechanisms from a multilevel perspective. The results showed that interactional justice positively related to knowledge sharing behavior both at the individual and the team levels. And organizational commitment took a mediated role between them. This study is the first to highlight the role of organizational commitment and interactional justice in knowledge sharing behavior, enriching current understanding of organizational knowledge management and providing further suggestions as how managers can improve knowledge sharing behavior in their organizations.     

The role of obsolescence and inventory costs in providing commitment

This paper modifies the Cournot and Stackelberg models to allow the firms to sell less than they have produced and to store the unsold portion of their output as inventory. Even if one of the firms can choose its output before the other, if it is costless to carry unsold goods forward then the Cournot outcome emerges. We show, however, that costs of carrying the inventory forward endow the firms with a limited degree of commitment to sell what they have produced. This partially restores the first-mover advantage. If the firms choose their outputs simultaneously, the Cournot outcome emerges and has locally consistent conjectures.     

How social media shapes the fashion industry: The spillover effects between private labels and national brands

Social media has become one of the major industrial marketing channels for companies. Because of the nature of social media, social media marketing produces a strong branding effect for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the fashion industry. This study contributes to social media analytics research by exploring the interactions between private labels and national brands in fashion social media and investigating how these interactions influence the popularity and subsequent sales of private labels. Our main findings suggest the presence of large national brands has a positive spillover effect on the popularity of private labels in fashion social media and ultimately influences sales of private label products. The results add to our understanding of the impact of Business-to-Business (B2B) social media marketing on brand competition in the fashion industry.     

Understanding the role of marketing-purchasing collaboration in industrial markets: The case of Russia

This study aims to investigate the role of interfunctional collaboration between marketing and purchasing functions in industrial companies. Interfunctional collaboration is considered as a measure of the internal alignment and partnership between departments in the firm, which in turn contributes to the creation of sustainable advantages via improved external partnerships and facilitating demand chain integration. We test the impact of customer orientation as well as the interactions between departments (specifically marketing and purchasing) as collaboration antecedents, and analyze the direct impact of marketing-purchasing collaboration on business performance. The model is tested on a sample of 148 industrial companies in Russia with two key respondents in each firm, incorporating the purchasing as well as the marketing perspective. The results show that marketing-purchasing collaboration mediates the effects of interfunctional interaction as well as customer orientation on business performance. Alternative model testing shows that the direct effects of these antecedent constructs on performance are non-significant in the context of Russian industrial companies.     

Power symmetry and the development of trust in interdependent relationships: The mediating role of goal congruence

Power in business-to-business relationships has been a core theme in industrial marketing research. However, diverging approaches have been used to study power resulting in inconsistent empirical findings. In this paper we explore the complexities of establishing, nurturing and sustaining cooperative relations, investigating the interplay between power symmetry, trust and goal congruence. We draw on the narrative approach in research to understand interorganizational relationships as shared meanings and how these evolve over time. We study two cases where organizations seek to achieve seamless interorganizational relationships but find themselves engaged in rather antagonistic or unpredictable positions. We show how goal congruence mediates the relationship between power symmetry or asymmetry, and the respective development of trust within organizational structures, processes and formal roles. We make a contribution to business-to-business marketing literature by showing that goal congruence becomes a prerequisite for the development of trust, irrespective of whether symmetrical power dependence predominates. We discuss how this novel insight may inform the strategies for developing interorganizational relationship in practice.     

Structural and relational influences on the role of reward interdependence in product innovation

This study examines the relationship between reward interdependence, or the extent to which managers' rewards are tied to the performance of colleagues in other functions, and product innovation. It also considers how structural and relational features of the organizational context might moderate this relationship. Our analysis of a sample of Canadian‐based firms reveals a positive relationship between reward interdependence and product innovation that is invigorated at higher levels of job rotation, social interaction, and interactional fairness, but we find no evidence of a moderating effect of decision autonomy. Consistent with a systems approach to organizational contingencies, we also find that the reward interdependence–product innovation relationship is stronger when the organization's context comes closer to an ‘ideal’ holistic configuration that is most conducive to knowledge exchange within the organization, with a more prominent role played by the relational sub‐context (social interaction and interactional fairness) than the structural sub‐context (job rotation and decision autonomy). The findings have important implications for innovation research as they shed light on how the extent to which individual rewards are tied to collective performance can be channeled to enhance innovation pursuits.     

Linking business model design and operational performance: The mediating role of supply chain integration

Despite the increasing interest in the role of business model design (BMD) in improving performance, its influence on operational performance remains unexplored, as do the underlying mechanisms of such effects. Drawing on dynamic capability theory, we propose that supply chain integration (SCI), including external integration and internal integration, mediates the relationship between BMD and operational performance. Matched survey data and objective performance data were collected from 131 Chinese manufacturing firms in three waves to test our research model. The key results are that external integration fully mediates the effect of novelty-centered BMD on operational performance, and efficiency-centered BMD directly improves operational performance. Theoretical and practical insights on how BMD and SCI can be leveraged to support operational performance are discussed.     

Modeling service alliances: an exploratory investigation of spillover effects in service partnerships

The objective of the current study is to provide a preliminary look at the process by which consumers evaluate alliances between service providers. Specifically, the study demonstrates how the service quality of one partner can impact, or ‘spill over’ onto, consumers' evaluations of their transactions with a second partner, and how the performances of partners can have differing effects on customers' intentions to reuse a service partnership. The study tests hypotheses related to the quality, value, and reuse intentions of customers relative to the partnered service through a sample of 334 customers utilizing a seamless service alliance. Our results suggest that spillover effects of service partnerships can either result in beneficial gains for service partners or produce grave consequences when partner providers' service quality is substandard. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Depth and breadth of external knowledge search and performance: The mediating role of absorptive capacity

Nowadays it is commonly accepted that exploiting external knowledge sources is important for firms' innovation and performance. However, it is still not clear how this effect takes place and what internal capabilities are involved in the process. We propose to open the black box between external knowledge search strategies, and innovation and performance by proposing absorptive capacity (AC) as the mediating variable. A sample of 102 biotechnology firms from Spain is used to test the proposed theoretical model through structural equation modeling taking the partial least squares approach. Results suggest that AC acts as a full mediator in the relationship between the depth of external knowledge search and the innovation and business performance of the firm. Finally, some suggestions for managers and future lines of research are highlighted.     

Transfer of market knowledge in a channel relationship: Impacts of attitudinal commitment and satisfaction

This paper attempts to explain how a manufacturer's attitudinal commitment and a distributor's kind and degree of satisfaction have an impact on the transferring of market knowledge from the distributor in a channel relationship. Using data from 225 paired distributors and manufacturers in the Chinese household appliances entity, six of our seven research hypotheses were supported. Results of the study show that a distributor's economic satisfaction directly promotes market knowledge transfer, while a distributor's social satisfaction will enhance market knowledge transfer only when positive economic satisfaction already exists. Furthermore, both the calculative commitment and the loyalty commitment of a manufacturer have inverse U-shaped relationships with a distributor's economic satisfaction, and are negatively and positively related, respectively, to the distributor's social satisfaction. The study thus points out the distinct roles of economic satisfaction and social satisfaction and their interaction in market knowledge transfer, and the insightful impacts of calculative and loyalty commitment on economic and social satisfaction. These findings provide new theoretical thinking about channel relationship management and the business practices of manufacturers.     

The effects of distributor relationship commitment and relationship exploration on opportunism: The moderating roles of exchange uncertainties and network factors

Channel management entails both the evaluating of incumbent business partners and simultaneously seeking potential new partners. In supplier–distributor exchanges, distributors can explore alternative suppliers while still committing to incumbent suppliers. While the current literature has demonstrated the importance of relationship commitment, the consequences of relationship exploration and whether that exploration is harmful to any incumbent relationships remain unclear. Drawing from relational governance and social network theories, this study thus examines how distributor dual relationship strategies of commitment and exploration influence their opportunistic behavior. The findings from a survey of 328 distributor firms indicate that relationship commitment leads to reduced opportunism; yet relationship exploration exerts no significant main effect on opportunism. More interestingly, these effects are subject to two types of uncertainty and two characteristics of distributor network wherein the focal exchange relationship resides. Specifically, behavioral uncertainty—an internal source of uncertainty—aggravates the opportunism that arises from both strategies, whereas, environmental uncertainty—an external source of uncertainty—alleviates both these effects. The distributor's network density weakens the effect of relationship commitment on opportunism, but network centrality strengthens this effect. By contrasting relationship commitment with relationship exploration under multiple moderating conditions, this study advances the extant channel relationship management literature and practice.     

A retrospective study on the regional benefits and spillover effects of high-speed broadband networks: Evidence from German counties

This study aims to assess the economic benefits of high-speed broadband within and across neighboring counties in Germany. Utilizing a balanced panel dataset of 401 German counties with data from 2010 to 2015 as well as different panel estimation techniques, we find that an increase in average broadband speed has a significantly positive effect on regional GDP in the average German county. Furthermore, we find that broadband deployment in German counties induces not only substantial economic benefits in terms of direct effects within counties but also positive regional externalities across counties. According to our estimation results, an increase in average bandwidth speed by one unit (1 Mbit/s) induces a rise in regional GDP of 0.18%. This effect is almost doubled if we also take regional externalities into account (0.31%). Moreover, we find that regional agglomeraton effects are of particular relevance for rural counties. Our cost-benefit analysis of subsidies based on conservative estimates suggests efficiency gains, as the total economic per capita benefits (€164) of subsidy programs to encourage broadband expansion exceeded their associated per capita costs (€114).     

The link between computer use and job satisfaction: The mediating role of job tasks and task discretion

This study focuses on the consequences of the use of computerized work equipment (hereafter: computer use) on the content and quality of work. It investigates, first, the relationship between computer use and both job tasks and task discretion and, second, their mediating role for the relationship between computer use and job satisfaction. With our German-UK comparison, we contribute to the long-standing debate on the upskilling/de-skilling nature of the use of technology and its repercussions on the quality of work. We analyse data from the Skills and Employment Surveys for the UK and the BIBB/BAuA Employment Surveys for Germany using structural equation modelling. In line with the literature on routine-biased technological change, we show that computers are complementary to the performance of less routine and more abstract cognitive tasks and that this relationship is conducive to a higher level of task discretion and job satisfaction in both countries. Accounting for differences in job tasks performed, we find a negative direct effect of computer use on both task discretion and job satisfaction in the United Kingdom but not in Germany. Our results indicate that the ultimate effect of computer use on both task discretion and job satisfaction depends on the institutional contexts in which technology is introduced.     

On the role of verifiability and commitment in credence goods markets

A client has a problem, but does not know whether it is serious or minor. She consults an expert who can correctly diagnose and fix her problem. This paper characterizes the equilibrium pricing and recommendation strategies of an expert under the assumptions that i) the type of treatment is verifiable by the client, ii) the client has the option of rejecting any treatment recommendation, and iii) the expert is not liable for the outcome of the treatment. It is found, for any parameter configuration, that there exist equilibria in which the expert makes fraudulent recommendations resulting in inefficient treatment. The market outcome is compared with that under an alternative market environment in which the expert is liable for treatment outcome but the type of treatment performed is non-verifiable. It is shown that for some parameter configurations the equilibrium is more efficient when liability is in place than when the treatment is verifiable. These findings stand in sharp contrast to the received wisdom that the market outcome under verifiability of treatment is efficient while the market outcome under liability for outcome is not. Finally, this paper shows that the existence of some honest experts may induce more fraudulent behavior by opportunistic experts.     

The Chinese paradigm of global supplier relationships: Social control,formal interactions and the mediating role of culture

This paper reports the results of a study that examined how firms can establish successful business relationships with Chinese suppliers. Its aim is to explore salient characteristics of the nature of buyer supplier relationships with the emergence of China as a dominant economic power. Two surveys have been conducted that investigated several factors that inhibit and enable effective supplier relationship management (SRM) between organisations sourcing from China and Chinese suppliers, and explored the impact of cultural characteristics of Chinese management on the nature and performance of supplier relationships. The research highlights the importance of the social control aspect of governance structure of supplier relationships and stresses that both social and formal control mechanisms should be implemented for more effective relationships with Chinese suppliers. It also demonstrates the need for companies to recognise the importance of guanxi and several cultural characteristics of the Chinese style of management in SRM and advocates the need for the development of a hybrid Sino-Japanese and global supplier relationship management paradigm that incorporates elements from the existing SRM models. It generates insights into how the cultural context of emerging markets affects the nature of business relationships and generates a research agenda in the field of supply chain management that can explore the development of new paradigms in supplier relationships management. The main theoretical argument put forward centres on the need for the development of a new global supplier relationship management paradigm that will take into account the cultural elements of the Chinese society.