Relational Contracting and Distribution Channel Cohesion

This study attempts to test a relational contracting model of distribution channels in the context of the international salmon industry, using data from three successive channel levels. Relational contracting norms were found to be positively associated with channel cohesion, as defined by convergent perceptions across channel levels. Channel formalization was found to correlate positively and channel centralization correleated negatively with relational contracting norms of reliance, solidarity and mutuality. A contracting framework consistent with a political economy model is suggested for future channel studies.     

Just‐in‐Time Retail Distribution: A Systems Perspective on Cross‐Docking

Cross‐docking is a just‐in‐time strategy for distribution logistics. It is aimed at reducing inventory levels and distribution lead times by creating a seamless flow of products from suppliers to customers. Prior supply chain literature has argued that creating such a seamless product flows requires a holistic view on cross‐docking management, aimed at synchronizing cross‐docking operations at the distribution center with its inbound and outbound network logistics. This paper provides an in‐depth case study illustrating how cross‐docking operations can be managed more holistically in a retail distribution context. A discrete event simulation model has been developed to understand and improve the cross‐docking operations of a large grocery retailer in the Netherlands. The model is used to quantitatively evaluate two proposed changes that exploit opportunities in the design and control of the retailer's distribution network. An extensive real‐world data set is used as input to the model. Overall, the case and simulation results show that a holistic cross‐docking management approach can indeed improve system‐wide performance, which further stresses the importance of making cross‐dock operational decisions making and network decisions together.     

A Reconsideration of Rent‐to‐Own

Rent‐to‐own agreements (RTO) are traditionally seen as disguised installment contracts imposed on uninformed consumers at usurious interest rates. After the flaws and omissions in these interest rate calculations are addressed, the implied annual percentage rates (APRs) remain extraordinarily high. It is shown that alternatives to RTO, such as layaway and long‐term rental, yield comparable APRs. The appeal of rent‐to‐own is then attributed to its structure that includes an initial pure rental phase of high value to persons in volatile financial and/or personal situations followed by an installment phase. Should these situations be resolved, the consumer exercises an imbedded option to acquire a perhaps otherwise unobtainable installment agreement at a competitive interest rate.     

Message‐to‐person versus person‐to‐message: An alternative way to conceptualize personalized advertising

This study provides an alternative way to conceptualize personalized advertising and discusses when and why nonpersonalized information can be more effective than personalized information in changing people's attitudes and behavioral intentions. Different from the traditional personalization approach in the literature that personalizes a message for an individual, this alternative way of thinking is to personalize an individual for a message. It is argued that an individual can be personalized for a message via priming tactics and it leads to reverse personalization effects where a nonpersonalized message generates stronger persuasion effects than a personalized message. The effects of priming on personalization are moderated by perceived prime credibility and mediated by perceived message relevance.     

A Simulation Model Of Multi‐Echelon Retail Inventory With Cross‐Channel Product Returns

This study explores the relationship between a retailer's product returns processing structure and Multi‐Echelon inventory system performance under cross‐channel and same‐channel product returns policies with nonstationary demand. Our research contributes to the growing body of reverse logistics literature, offering insight into how a retailer's logistical returns management strategy can impact inventory effectiveness in cross‐channel retail environments. Adopting a contingency framework, we develop research hypotheses which we test through experimentation on a Multi‐Echelon retail inventory system within a discrete‐event simulation. Model parameters are derived from data collected from a large U.S. retailer of consumer durable and nondurable goods. We find an amplifying effect of a cross‐channel returns policy on the positive relationship between a decentralized returns processing structure and inventory effectiveness. Further, through our analysis of nonstationarity in demand and resulting returns, we uncover strong main and interaction effects that seasonal demand variation can have on inventory outcomes, even under only moderate levels of seasonality. Our results highlight the need for firms to align logistical structures for returns processing with the returns policy and the external environment, while also lending credence to calls within the logistics literature for improved modeling of nonstationary demand in inventory management research.     

Socioemotional Wealth and Innovativeness in Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Family Enterprises: A Configuration Approach

What makes small‐ and medium‐sized family firms (family SMEs) innovative? Some family firm dynamics promote, yet others hinder innovation. It remains unclear whether combinations of family firm dynamics increase innovativeness. Our configurational perspective of socioemotional wealth (SEW) unravels determinants of family SMEs' innovativeness. We conduct a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis with 452 Swiss family SMEs. We categorize SEW dimensions into configurations of necessary and sufficient conditions. We contribute to theory on family SMEs' innovativeness because we reveal that the interplay of SEW dimensions leads to innovativeness. This offers practitioners a better framework to choose between SEW configurations.     

构建关系型营销渠道:一个渠道知识共生网络

在传统的交易营销理念指导下所形成的交易型营销渠道因现代营销环境的改变和关系营销理念的广泛应用,其地位和作用日益受到挑战和限制。因此,在这样的背景下,改革交易型营销渠道,建立以关系营销理念为指导的关系型营销渠道成为企业界和理论界共同关注的一个重要课题。本文首先综述了西方营销渠道关系理论的研究内容,然后在交易型营销渠道与关系型营销渠道比较的基础上提出了一个构建关系型营销渠道的渠道知识共生网络。     

The Impact of Organizational Orientations on Medium and Small Firm Performance: A Resource‐Based Perspective

Recent studies suggest that market, entrepreneurial, and learning orientations individually improve firm performance. In this study, we suggest that each of the orientations can enhance company success, but the potential of each orientation should not be viewed in isolation. Instead, we draw on the resource‐based view of the firm, looking at these three orientations as capabilities of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). The analysis was carried out on a sample of 164 SMEs. The results indicate that market, entrepreneurial, and learning orientations jointly give rise to positional advantage, which, in turn, is positively related to the performance of the firm.     

The Impact of Relational Governance on Relational Exchange Performance: A Case of the Taiwanese Automobile Industry

Relational governance affects manufacturers’ ability to adapt flexibly to uncertainty in manufacturer–supplier relationships. Enhancing manufacturer–supplier relationships requires considering supplier willingness and opinions on the relational governance of their focal manufacturer and the effect of relational governance on relational exchange performance. After reviewing the related literature, I identified the antecedents of relational governance affecting suppliers’ relationships with their focal manufacturers and explored the effect of relational governance on relational exchange performance, taking relationship value and relationship norms as the intervening constructs. Data were collected from 241 usable questionnaires that had been completed by suppliers for all Taiwanese automobile manufacturers. The hypotheses were tested with respondent data by using a structural equation model. The results indicated that relational governance directly and positively relates to relationship value and relationship norms, relationship value and relationship norms directly and positively relate to relational exchange performance, and customer focus and competitive priorities directly and positively relate to relational governance.     

Rent‐to‐Own Pricing: Theory and Empirical Evidence

The rent‐to‐own (RTO) industry given its emphasis on subprime or, at least, financially constrained consumers is often seen as exploitative with excessive financing costs. This paper develops a rational‐expectations competitive equilibrium model to explore the pricing mechanism of an RTO agreement. The model accounts for the contract's embedded options and several bundled services. Using detailed transactional data, we infer how customers exercise these options to calibrate our model for several product categories, contractual lengths and payment periodicity. The resulting predictions provide a justification for the high financing costs observed in the marketplace.     

A Negotiation Model for Inducing Higher Service in a Distribution Channel

This paper analyzes, in the context of negotiation, the problem of coordination and conflict resolution between the manufacturer (Seller) and the retailers (Buyers) for a two-tier inventory system. The retailers capture demand (from customers) and therefore are responsible for the level of service offered by the system. The larger the inventory that a retailer has of a particular product, the lower the probability of running out of stock and therefore, avoid the possibility of a lost sale for the manufacturer. A conflict arises (and therefore the negotiation process starts) when the manufacturer wants the retailer to increase the level of service while retailers are satisfied with the status quo. Using the Nash bargaining solution, we develop a theoretical framework that incorporates behavioral dimensions and predicts the outcome of “sharing” the profit. The results indicate the advantage of developing long term relationships among the members of the distribution channel to minimize the uncertainty and therefore the source of conflict.     

A Social Exchange Perspective on Business Ethics: An Application to Knowledge Exchange

An extensive body of literature in sociology and anthropology has shown that different societies have developed different structures for exchange of items such as goods, status and information. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how social exchange theory can help illuminate many of the underlying bases of different ethical perspectives in debates about social exchanges. Social exchange theory is applied to three common types of knowledge exchange – R&D joint ventures, commercial intellectual property exchange and academic exchange. Two key factors that underlie different ethical perspectives are shown to be differences in structures for social exchange and differences in views of the alienability of knowledge from its originator.     

The Big Family: Informal Financing of Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Businesses by Guanxi

Guanxi facilitates interaction between companies and people in Confucian societies. Does this type of social construct still play the key role, when the entrepreneurs live in Western societies? The objective of this article is to verify the impact of Guanxi on the capacity of small and medium‐sized businesses accessing financial resources informally. To this end, data collected from small Chinese entrepreneurs active in the principal business center of Brazil were used. From nonparametric tests, the results suggest that: (1) different levels of Guanxi allow small and medium‐sized businesses to access informal financial resources; (2) different types of informal financing are mostly used, or judged to be more significant, depending on the level of Guanxi of the entrepreneur in terms of parental and nonfamily ties; and (3) unlike the Western literature on the financial cycles of start‐ups, this type of informal financing can extend beyond the initial stage of the business. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A Framework for the Examination of Relational Ethics: An Interactionist Perspective

Despite the widespread agreement that the ontology of the marketing discipline is exchange, marketing ethics researchers have largely adopted a monadic viewpoint of ethical decision making. In this research, an interactionist approach is adopted in order to introduce a dyadic perspective of un/ethical decision making. The dyadic model includes each channel member's individual, situational and decision process factors linked by relationalism, an emerging paradigm in marketing channels. Relationalism is represented as a discriminating variable between perceived ethical dilemma and decision behaviour. Finally, a number of theoretical propositions are presented and future research directions are discussed.     

Managing International Distribution Channel Partners: A Cross-Cultural Approach

Although the topic of conflict has been extensively studied in the distribution channels literature from a domestic perspective, there is relatively little published research examining the construct within the international distribution channels context. This is of particular concern because cross-national channel partnerships are on the rise, and divergent cultures may engender heightened conflict, which has a deleterious effect on channel performance. This article explores the extent to which different channel leadership styles, predicated on Hofstede's dimensions of national culture, can be effective strategies to manage conflict in international distribution channels. Specifically, the article examines whether the relationship between leadership style and conflict in international distribution channels is moderated by national culture. Additionally, the impact of manifest conflict on international channel partner performance is investigated. A conceptual model and research propositions are developed. The use of leadership styles to manage disagreements among international channel partners is argued to be culturally specific. International channel management implications and directions for future research are suggested.     

The Evolution of the Credit‐to‐GDP Ratio: An Empirical Analysis

We assess the persistence of the credit‐to‐GDP ratio over more than 130 years of data for 11 advanced economies, employing an approach based on fractional integration and allowing for nonlinearities. We show how the time series properties of the data changed around World War II (WWII). Moreover, our findings are consistent with the idea that the supply of mortgage loans has been particularly strong since WWII, in the sense that the degree of integration of the leverage ratio obtained with only these loans is larger than that of the ratio obtained with the total loans for almost all the studied countries. Nevertheless, it is generally the case that both types of ratios show a higher degree of integration after WWII than before it, though often insignificantly, and that their time trends are significant only after WWII.     

Heuristics in Mutual Fund Consumers' Willingness‐to‐Invest: An Experimental Approach

This paper improves the understanding of heuristics in the choice of mutual funds. We analyze the effect of price‐quality relationship and anchors as heuristics on the evaluation of the willingness‐to‐invest. We perform two studies with graduate students who possess a medium–high level of financial literacy in Chile. In the first study, we find that willingness‐to‐invest increases (decreases) when subjects observe (do not observe) in the market a positive relationship between expense ratios (price) and service quality. In the second study, in the presence of an anchor, the reference price obtained by individuals from the market information loses relevance and the anchor effect predominates. Our results confirm that participants, as consumers of financial services, apply heuristics as groundwork for their investment decisions. These heuristics as a decision making process are useful but do not always lead to the choice of the lowest cost alternative with the highest possible service quality.     

Microfinance Traps and Relational Exchange Norms: A Field Study of Women Entrepreneurs in Tanzania

In interdependent social groups, microfinance traps occur when conflicts arise between borrowers’ affective ties related to family needs and instrumental ties related to obligations toward their loan group. Thus, the social capital that facilitates microfinancing can lead to conflicting obligations toward business needs and economic obligations toward family. Building on an inductive field study among female entrepreneurs in Tanzania, we conceptualize microfinance traps. By using relational contract theory to interpret the qualitative data, we argue that microfinance traps can be reduced by balancing role integrity, preserving norms and reciprocity, and harmonizing the social matrix toward the family and loan group.     

基于资源整合视角的企业生产柔性系统研究

本文构建了基于资源整合视角的企业生产柔性系统,提出了企业生产柔性应该由资源层柔性和能力层柔性扩展到供应层柔性和产业层柔性的观点,认为企业应该搭建资源整合平台,应该注重其在供应链环节间的柔性共生,并提高其在产业集群、产业裂变和产业融合中的柔性度和引擎能力,从而提升企业适应全球市场竞争新范式的能力。