The Power of Innovativeness in Manufacturer–Retailer Relationships

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Retailers often challenge manufacturers through aggressive store brand policies and severe listing constraints. This study investigates manufacturer innovativeness as a managerial lever to shift the power balance between manufacturers and retailers.

Methodology/approach: Using data from 277 senior managers of Swiss and German consumer goods manufacturers and analyzing these data with structural equation modelling, the authors test hypotheses about the impact of manufacturer innovativeness on manufacturer–retailer relationship characteristics (i.e., retailer dependency, store brand aggressiveness, and listing constraints).

Findings: The study demonstrates that manufacturer innovativeness enhances retailer dependency, which in turn positively affects overall manufacturer performance. This relationship can be explained further: By increasing retailer dependency, manufacturers suppress retailers’ store brand aggressiveness and attenuate retailers’ listing constraints. Store brand aggressiveness affects overall manufacturer performance through listing constraints.

Research implications: Identifying levers such as innovativeness that assist manufacturers in fostering their power over retailers provides a new mode for understanding how manufacturers can influence the balance of power between manufacturers and retailers. The study provides support for the approach/inhibition theory of power on the inter-organizational level. Organizations with increased power are assumed to have approach-related tendencies and act in goal-consistent manner, whereas organizations with reduced power are assumed to develop the tendency to pursue inhibition-related actions, e.g., attending to threats. Furthermore, this study identifies channel relationship characteristics such as retailer dependency as a mediating path between manufacturer innovativeness and performance.

Practical implications: Managers need to strengthen the firm’s innovative capacity to enhance the performance of their companies. By developing the capability to provide radical innovations, manufacturers are able to enhance their performance not only directly but also indirectly by strengthening the manufacturer’s position with regard to retailers. This study underscores the relevance of innovativeness for strengthening the manufacturer’s position in its relationship with retailers that avoids problems with aggressive store brands and constrained listing conditions.

Originality/value/contribution: This study proposes manufacturer innovativeness as a managerial lever to shift the power balance between manufacturers and retailers.     

Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing Part I: Subject Listing

The Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing (JBBM), an important thematic journal within the field of marketing, serves as a vital venue for both academicians and practitioners interested in business-to-business marketing phenomena. Articles cover a broad spectrum of topics related to business marketing management. A subject-based listing classifies these articles into sixteen categories according to their key research issues. Those categories are: Advertising and Communication, Brand Management, Buyer-Seller Dyad and Relationships, Channels, Customer Relationships, Education, International Issues, Literature Reviews, Methodology, Networks and Strategic Alliances, Organizational Buying Behavior, Pricing and Value, Product Development, Segmentation, Selling and Salesforce Management, and Technology. After the subject listing, titles and abstracts of all articles appearing in the first fifteen volumes of JBBM are listed in volume/issue order. We hope that this index will provide a useful tool for academicians and practitioners who are interested in business-to-business marketing research     

Deterrence or Conflict Spiral Effect? Exercise of Coercive Power in Marketing Channels: Evidence from China

Purpose: The article aims to test the appropriateness of deterrence and conflict spiral models in marketing channels. Both models have been alternatively used as bases to explain firms’ power-related behaviors in marketing channels. However, the issue of the appropriateness of such an application in various contexts has not yet been addressed.

Methodology/approach: The authors develop the hypotheses based on deterrence theory and their alternatives based on conflict spiral theory. They gather data from 204 sales representatives of suppliers in China and use linear regression analysis to test their hypotheses versus alternatives.

Empirical findings: The data analysis offers supportive evidence for the deterrence logic but with unexpected results. By elaborating on the empirical results, the original assumption of deterrence theory, and the nature of interfirm relationship in marketing channels, the authors modify the deterrence model for research on power related-behaviors in the given context. The analysis implies a possible explanation for inconsistent findings in the literature regarding exercises of coercive power.

Originality/value/contribution: This article proposes a revised deterrence model that can interpret the empirical results with a consistent logic and better predict power-related behaviors in marketing channels.

Research limitations/implications: The research results may lack generalizability with respect to channel type and culture. It does not directly test the cognitive mechanisms that mediate the impact of power on its exercise. Researchers are encouraged to directly test the mediating constructs in other channels or countries.

Practical implications: The article includes some insights and implications for managers in understanding power structure and implementing influence strategies in business-to-business marketing.     

Value Co-Creation Processes—Early Stages of Value Chains Involving High-Tech Business Markets: Samsung–Qualcomm Semiconductor Foundry Businesses

Purpose: This research aimed to identify both the specialized resources and competences for value co-creation when the value co-creation phenomenon is extended to the early stage of the value chain. Further, it proposes a framework that can analyze the value co-creation process in the high-tech business-to-business (B-to-B) market.

Methodology/approach: The research methodology was based on building a theory from a case study. The qualitative data was coded based on the grounded theory coding after collecting data from multiple sources.

Findings: Four critical resource types (financial resources, knowledge resources, efficiency resources, and intellectual resources) and five competence types (relational capability, collaboration capability, strategic capability, innovation capability, and managing capability) were constructed as the principal factors for value co-creation at the early stage in the value chain within the high-tech B-to-B market. Among the four resources and five competences, intellectual resource and strategic capability associated with value co-creation were unique findings in our case research.

Research implications: Our results provided new insights, which the value co-creation can be extended to the early stages in the value chain, such as the research and development (R&D) stage, in the high-tech B-to-B market, whereas extant value research was more focused on the late stages of the value chain. The reciprocal value co-creation process, which used four resources and five competences of both the supplier and customer, was proposed as an integrated framework to co-create value at the early stage of the value chain within the high-tech B-to-B market.

Practical implications: A supplier’s R&D, marketing, manufacturing, planning departments and the customer can utilize the defined resources as well as competences at different stages of the value chain in order to co-create value and improve their performance. In particular, the marketing department of the supplier needs to turn their eyes to the early stages in the value chain so as to seek a value co-creation strategy.

Originality/value/contribution: A value co-creation strategy was sought from a different perspective, extending from a late stage to an early stage in the value chain of the high-tech B-to-B market. The integrated research framework, combining resources and competences of the supplier and customer, was established to analyze the value co-creation phenomenon.     

Marketing and Technological Absorptive Capacities: Environmental Antecedents and Performance Outcomes in High-Tech Firms

Purpose: This article investigates marketing and technology absorptive capacities as distinct types of external knowledge while considering three environmental conditions, namely uncertainty, munificence, and heterogeneity and two distinct outcomes, namely innovation and financial performance.

Methodology/approach: Using a quantitative approach, the authors analyze data from 141 Israeli business-to-business high-tech firms.

Findings: The data mostly supported the hypotheses. Empirical findings imply that an uncertain environment is a precursor for a strong effort to develop a technological absorptive capacity and, to a lesser extent, a marketing absorptive capacity. Technological and marketing absorptive capacities were found to be distinct constructs with positive impacts on financial and innovation performance. Marketing absorptive capacity had a stronger impact than technological absorptive capacity on financial performance. Surprisingly, marketing absorptive capacity was negatively associated with innovation performance.

Originality/value: This study attempts to overcome some limiting assumptions of absorptive capacity theory that have contributed to its reification in order to make three theoretical contributions. First, it distinguishes between marketing and technological absorptive capacities. Second, it tests differential responses of the two absorptive capacities to environmental contingencies. Third, it compares the differential impacts of marketing and technological absorptive capacities on financial and innovation performance.     

The Impact of Revenue Sources on Marketing Behavior: Examining Web‐Promotion and Place‐Marketing in Nonprofit Organizations

To overcome failure to generate profits from the goods they produce, nonprofit organizations have unique methods to generate and sustain capital flows resulting in distinct exchange relationships. This leads scholars to argue that nonprofit marketing strategies should differ as well. Given the lack of empirical work that investigates this possibility, this article explores how the uniqueness of the nonprofit funding environment shapes the ways in which nonprofits use business principles to market their products and services, asking if the resource acquisition process is the primary mechanism that predicts business‐like marketing behavior. Findings indicate that both the resource acquisition process and institutional relationships are influential in predicting business‐like marketing behavior.     

Call for Book Reviews and Review Essays

ABSTRACT

The Journal of Business to Business Marketing, an important thematic journal within the field of marketing, serves as a vital venue for both academicians and practitioners interested in business-to-business marketing phenomena. Articles cover a broad spectrum of topics related to business marketing management.

A subject-based listing classifies these articles into 16 categories according to their key research issues. Those categories are: Advertising and Communication, Brand Management, Buyer-Seller Dyad and Relationships, Channels, Customer Relationships, Education, International Issues, Literature Reviews, Methodology, Networks and Strategic Alliances, Organizational Buying Behavior, Pricing and Value, Product Development, Segmentation, Selling and Salesforce Management, Technology.

After the subject listing, titles and abstracts of all articles appearing in the first ten volumes of JBBM are listed in volume/issue order. We hope that this index will provide a useful tool for academicians and practitioners who are interested in business-to-business marketing research.     

Customer Participation and Project Performance: The Mediating Role of Knowledge Sharing in the Chinese Telecommunication Service Industry

Purpose: Extant literature has devoted more attention to customer value co-creation and knowledge sharing, not only in business-to-customer (B2C) markets, but also in business-to-business (B2B) markets. This study explores and examines the antecedents and consequences of customer knowledge sharing in the context of B2B markets by applying the motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) framework.

Methodology/Approach: This empirical study involves two structured surveys of project managers from both suppliers (n = 213) and customers (n = 312), which were conducted in the context of the Chinese telecommunication service industry. The conceptual model of this study was subsequently tested by developing Partial Least Squares (PLS) based structural equation models.

Findings: It was found that customer knowledge sharing is facilitated by four MOA factors: customer orientation, customer perceived benefits, customer socialization, and customer technological capability. It was determined that knowledge sharing has a direct and significant effect on project performance. Furthermore, the study revealed that such relationships vary across suppliers and customers.

Research Implications: This study extends the existing research stream of interfirm knowledge sharing by examining the antecedents and consequences of customer knowledge sharing from dual perspectives of customers and suppliers, and sheds light on the benefits of customer knowledge sharing. The dyadic perspective embodied in this design facilitates our understanding and management of knowledge sharing between organizations.

Originality/Value/Contribution: This article provides an important contribution to the existing literature of customer knowledge sharing by revealing how to effectively facilitate interorganizational knowledge sharing, particularly knowledge from customers to suppliers, and discovers conditions under which customers are more likely to exchange information, and share knowledge with their suppliers from the dyadic perspective.