The power of emotional value: Moderating customer orientation effect in professional business services relationships

Just recently, the literature has established the existence of a dark side with regard to customer orientation (CO) in terms of sales performance. However, no clear position is presented about the possible dark side of CO when it comes to B2B relational outcomes, preventing managers from knowing when to accentuate/suppress CO activities. The aim of this study is to examine the relational consequences of suppliers' CO seen through the customers' lenses, and to investigate the moderating role of perceived emotional value in a professional service relationship context. A conceptual model anchored in value and relationship marketing theories is tested on a sample of 226 professional service firms' business customers, using the PROCESS routine. The study finds that perceived CO is related to satisfaction with the relationship and with relationship performance in an inverted U-shaped form, while satisfaction is positively related to relationship performance. We show that, although preferring to receive CO from their supplier, customers might want a relationship that is not as intense/comprehensive as the one that the supplier aims to achieve. The study unfolds emotional value as a moderating mechanism that can prevent the diminishing effect of CO activities.     

Telecommunications services in France: The regulated monopoly and the challenge of competition

Classical microeconomic modelling cannot alone explain the present trend of telecommunications deregulation. Based upon an examination of the French situation, the author argues that the current phenomenon should be viewed more as a game between three main players whose behaviour can be analysed using principles of industrial organization. The traditional telecommunications monopoly is bound to react defensively in response to increasingly powerful demand, stimulated by technical innovations, while at the same time the public policy maker searches for modern regulatory principles. Demand, as represented by large corporate customers, will probably trigger the next step in the game between the three players.     

Toward a comprehensive framework of value proposition development: From strategy to implementation

Value propositions (VPs) can play a major role for the strategy development and implementation process in B2B markets. While being recognized as one of the firm's most important organizing principles, the VP concept is still poorly understood and executed in many B2B firms and scholarly research provides limited guidance on how to develop and implement VPs in B2B markets. This article re-assesses the VP in the context of both strategy and implementation. It undertakes a review of extant conceptual frameworks and identifies key elements that are overlooked and/or not addressed. A new conceptual framework for addressing VP design and development is offered, which incorporates five key interrelated phases of implementation that need to be comprehensively addressed. This research provides a theoretically sound and practically applicable VP development framework, integrating the firm's strategic considerations, ensuring a fit between its business model and customers' needs, and reflecting the nature of B2B markets through its dynamic perspective. In addressing key implementation issues, the article provides firms with a robust approach to addressing the dynamic competitive environment, as well as taking into account changing customer needs.     

Relationships in the purchasing of business to business professional services: The role of personal relationships

There has been a shift from transactional to relational exchange and relationship marketing both in the business to business and professional services contexts. This paper seeks to explore the manner in which personal relationships affect the process and outcomes of purchasing of professional business services. Specifically, it focuses on the role of the professional service providers as boundary spanners in the formation of personal relationships. These personal relationships constitute the underlying basis of long-term relationships between the purchasing and provider organizations in such complex service settings. The findings of this study demonstrate that the manner in which the boundary spanners cultivate relationships support the concept of relationship specific tasks. It extends this conception by use of the data to outline the chronological process over time Understanding the roles, function, and ultimately importance, of these relationships facilitates the identification and development of appropriate strategies to manage these relationships.     

The effects of service supply on perceived value proposition under different levels of customer involvement

Based on the resource-based view and service-dominant logic, this paper tries to examine how the process of offering product-centric or knowledge-centric services can integrate heterogeneous resources so as to create customer perceived value. In product-centric service supply, the tangible product itself is central to the provision of an integrated set of services, while in knowledge-centric service supply, intangible knowledge is central to the provision of an integrated set of services. The effects of the two dimensions on customer perceived value are quite different. This paper examines the specific conditions under which these effects arise by highlighting the important role of customer involvement as a way of mobilizing resources between the supplier and the customer. It adopts a large sample survey in the Chinese fine chemical industry. The results show that the two kinds of service supply can yield short-term economic value and technical value to buyers. Long-term relational value, however, can only be achieved through the mediating role of short-term value and only if customers can acquire knowledge-centric services. In addition, the effect of knowledge-centric service supply on technical value is stronger if the customer has a greater rather than lower extent of involvement.     

Studying innovation processes in real-time: The promises and challenges of ethnography

This paper discusses the promises and challenges of innovation ethnographies. We depart from the notion that innovation processes are highly contingent, messy and non-linear and examine ways in which these processes have been studied. Our focus is on the challenges posed by the use of ethnographic methods to study innovation in-the-making. Our discussion is illustrated by an example culled from a longitudinal, real-time study of an innovation process in the food industry, inspired by actor-network theory (ANT) and its injunctions to focus on controversies and follow the actors. We conclude that although innovation ethnographies pose plenty of theoretical, methodological and practical challenges, they remain a promising and powerful method to map out the complex and tortuous paths of these processes.     

B2B purchase engagement: Examining the key drivers and outcomes in professional services

The concept of engagement in regard to the business-to-business (B2B) sector has received less attention due to the complexity and heterogeneity of people involved in making the buying decisions. Hence, there is limited research examining the role of professional service firms' simultaneous collaboration with stakeholders in general, and the drivers and outcomes of engagement in particular, within the B2B sector. To address this gap, this study examines the drivers and outcomes of purchase engagement in B2B professional services. Using the structural equation modelling approach, the results from a survey of CEOs and/or owner-managers of small and medium-sized enterprises in Australia found that customization and loyalty to the account manager are two salient drivers of purchase engagement. Purchase engagement is also found to yield three important outcomes, namely consideration set size (CSZ), dependence, and willingness to pay a premium price (WTP). In the study, customers' dependence on the suppliers was found to act as a mechanism through which engagement can influence CSZ and WTP.     

Differential importance of social and economic determinants of relationship performance in professional services

Managing business relationships successfully is critical for many professional service firms (PSFs) in order to be able to address complex client needs. Furthermore, the project-based nature of PSFs' work puts pressure on them to retain clients across project periods. Drawing on both net effect and configurational perspectives, this study provides a holistic understanding of the relative importance and of the interplay of social and economic determinants of business relationship performance in the context of dynamic relationships between PSFs and their clients. Using data from 297 business clients, the results reveal that, overall, social determinants are more important than economic determinants as drivers of the client's willingness to cooperate with a PSF in future. The importance of social determinants increases further in later relationship lifetime phases. The configurational analysis also reveals several equifinal constellations of social and economic determinants across the lifetime phases to drive a client's willingness to cooperate in future. Therefore, no single determinant by itself is sufficient for ensuring relationship performance. We advance the literature by showing that distinct constellations of social and economic determinants are required to achieve the desired outcome, and that these constellations change across business relationship lifetime phases.     

Purchasing professional services: A transaction cost view of the antecedents and consequences of purchasing formalization

Professional services represent an increasing share of expenditures in contemporary organizations. While these services are often of strategic importance, they are also perceived as being difficult to purchase and use, which creates challenges for the purchasing process. In order to address these challenges, organizations are increasingly engaging in systematic efforts to improve their ability to purchase professional services. These efforts focus on formalizing the purchasing process by introducing policies, guidelines, and other measures for the hiring of service suppliers. Based on a transaction cost economic framework, the current paper investigates the nature, antecedents and consequences of formalization initiatives in the purchasing of professional services. The results from a cross-sectional study of 76 large Swedish organizations show that the formalization of purchasing professional services takes two different forms: the formulation of policies and the establishment of preferred supplier agreements. The former is driven by company size, whereas the latter is driven by the frequency of purchase transactions. Only the establishment of policies, however, is found to be positively related to organizations' perceived ability to purchase professional services.     

Customer participation in knowledge intensive business services: Perceived value outcomes from a dyadic perspective

Knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) are considered a cornerstone of contemporary developed economies. Successful production and delivery of these services, and thus their perceived value outcomes, highly depend on customer participation (CP) in the service processes. However, the extant understanding of the perceived value outcomes of CP, which is crucial to the appropriate inducement and integration of organizational resources in service processes, is limited. Through the exploratory investigation of three dyadic cases, each comprising one customer and one service provider organization engaged in a knowledge-based service project, this study addressed this crucial topic. Results indicated four categories of perceived value outcomes emerged through CP: functional, economic, relational, and strategic values. The study provides insights on the evolution of value perceptions over time, the individual value components within each value category, and perceptual similarities and differences between customer and provider organizations. Further, these results indicate that various value outcomes of CP receive divergent levels of attention from personnel in different organizational hierarchies. The paper provides useful and applicable suggestions for managers, especially in the context of technology-based KIBS and solutions.     

The rising disparity in the price of healthful foods: 2004–2008

Nutrient-dense foods that are associated with better health outcomes tend to cost more per kilocalorie (kcal) than do refined grains, sweets and fats. The price disparity between healthful and less healthful foods appears to be growing.This study demonstrates a new method for linking longitudinal retail price data with objective, nutrient-based ratings of the nutritional quality of foods and beverages. Retail prices for 378 foods and beverages were obtained from major supermarket chains in the Seattle, WA for 2004–2008. Nutritional quality was based on energy density (kcal/g) and two measures of nutrient density, calculated using the Naturally Nutrient Rich (NNR) score and the Nutrient Rich Foods index (NRF_9.3). Food prices were expressed as $/100 g edible portion and as $/1000 kcal. Foods were stratified by quintiles of energy and nutrient density for analyses.Both measures of nutrient density were negatively associated with energy density and positively associated with cost per 1000 kcal. The mean cost of foods in the top quintile of nutrient density was $27.20/1000 kcal and the 4-year price increase was 29.2%. Foods in the bottom quintile cost a mean of $3.32/1000 kcal and the 4-year price increase was 16.1%.There is a growing price disparity between nutrient-dense foods and less nutritious options. Cost may pose a barrier to the adoption of healthier diets and so limit the impact of dietary guidance. Nutrient profiling methods provide objective criteria for tracking retail prices of foods in relation to their nutritional quality and for guiding food and nutrition policy.     

Trade in data services : The international context

This article explores the importance of data services within the service sector, and particularly with regard to international trade in services. International economic agreements have traditionally only dealt with trade in manufactured products and ignored the services, which now make up the largest economic sector. Some international organizations, encouraged particularly by the USA, are beginning to confront the problem of defining an open international framework covering foreign direct investment and trade in services. The national interests of different countries are explored, in the light of their existing data resources and their desire to build them up or be able to access foreign databases.     

The effects of an articulated customer value proposition (CVP) on promotional expense,brand investment and firm performance in B2B markets: A text based analysis

Using text-based analysis, we search for evidence of articulated customer value propositions (CVP), in annual reports of US B2B firms, and then demonstrate that B2B firms that explicitly emphasize a CVP invest more in their brands, have higher future sales and sales per customer. We also find that CVP has a negative effect on the size of their customer base, perhaps because firms who care about a CVP appear to attract more long-term, loyal customers. Firms that pay more attention to CVP also tend to spend less on advertising and promotion. Future performance, particularly among small to mid-size firms, is positively affected when these firms emphasize CVP, and this also holds especially in less competitive markets. Our findings are based on a large dataset of around 12,000 firm year observations for a 14-year period from 2004 to 2017.     

The geopolitics of digital rights activism: Evaluating civil society's role in the promises of multistakeholder internet governance

Multistakeholderism is thought to play an important role in democratizing internet governance institutions and processes by including civil society. Therefore, scholars have studied the participation of civil society organizations, from the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society through to the most recent Internet Governance Forum, to understand how they engage in and shape internet governance. However, this category is not well defined; therefore, it is not always clear whose interests are being advanced by civil society organizations. This study evaluates representation in civil society by examining the annual RightsCon conference as an ideal site of civil society engagement in internet governance in order to evaluate the potential of multistakeholderism to achieve the goals of democratization, representation, and inclusion. Through a meso-level analysis of discursive production at RightsCon that operationalizes a critical geopolitical rubric, this study finds that organizations that represent interests from the Global North and West are highly over-represented in three ways: in leading overall discourse, in claiming authority over global issues, and in driving specific topics such as misinformation, privacy, and internet shutdowns. These findings offer an empirical evaluation of global representation in internet governance, raising the stakes for further study about why and how the category of civil society meets expectations. Finally, conceptual implications are discussed, including evaluating earlier critiques of multistakeholderism as less democratizing in reality than in theory, affirming the analytic value of civil society discourse to policy research, and opening up questions about how a more precise understanding of civil society can contribute to multistakeholderism in internet governance.     

Professional associations and their members: A study of the market for professional services when ability and size are independent

The members of a professional group are organized in an association which influences ability requirements and size in order to keep either the price, its own revenues or the members' incomes as high as possible. Ability is, contrary to earlier approaches, treated as a matter of education rather than selection. The members are free to set quantity and/or price in order to maximize income. The association incentive to influence size and ability is shown to depend on how demand elasticity changes with these variables. New types of misallocations such as ‘exclusive incompetence’ may emerge.     

Network information services: The emergence of an industry

The authors discuss the characteristics and benefits of network information services (NIS), which are developing into an important new industry likely to have profound effects on society. Many of the services and possible applications are described. Three scenarios are analysed, in which the future of the industry may be directed by technology, the market, and policy issues. It is concluded that consumers and small businesses are unlikely to be able to achieve sufficient economies through NIS by the end of the century to make much use of the services provided. Large and medium companies, however, will be served by a diversified, multi-network marketplace. The issue of equality of access to information will become of significant public concern.     

The impact of trade liberalization in telecommunications services: The case of APEC countries

This paper examines the impact of liberalizing the telecommunications services sector on investment and output in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries by estimating a system of four structural equations that takes into account the causal relationship between national income and telecommunications infrastructure. The degree of openness to trade in telecommunications is represented by a carefully constructed index that reflects a country’s trade and investment policy in terms of market access, national treatment and regulatory principles. One interesting finding from the empirical analysis is that the effects of trade liberalization depend on the risk rating of a country. In countries with relatively high risk ratings liberalization reduces investment in telecommunications.     

Technological and geographic heterogeneity in broadband markets: The challenge for regulation

When the telecommunications industry was liberalised in Europe and North America in the 1980s and 1990s, it inherited a legacy of monopoly providers whose footprint was national or multi-regional in its character. The regulatory framework, particularly that adopted in EU member states, reflected this pattern of relatively homogeneous deployment achieved, in part, by decades of cross-subsidised pricing and universal service goals. Perhaps because of this legacy, telecommunications regulators have often adopted the presumption that relevant markets are national in character, unless proven otherwise Although geographically-variegated regulatory remedies have been permitted (even in the face of allegedly national relevant markets) and adopted in many member states, many regulators have never done so, and overly cautious thresholds for permitting geographically based forbearance suggest a continued bias towards presuming national markets and remedies. We find that this presumption of uniformity and the tendency to aggregate geographic markets together is not supported by first principles of antitrust analysis, although there may have been strong practical reasons to apply this presumption in the past circumstances of the telecommunications and broadband industries.On the ground, however, there has arguably never been as much heterogeneity across geographies and across technological solutions that provide effective ultra-fast broadband speeds. Both technological (i.e., product market) and geographic heterogeneity are likely to increase with the advent of mobile 5G networks. With their deployment, a cautious regulatory stance towards geographic variation and a cautious regulatory stance towards inter-technology or inter-modal competition may result in regulation that could exceed what is required to ensure effective competition and could instead distort the incentives to enter of facilities-based actors. This may also result in higher-cost and inefficient investment. A more geographically varied and technologically agnostic regulatory framework may satisfy the principle of proportionate and focused regulation—with the possibility that the locus of regulation shifts from the access network to bottleneck facilities such as fibre, ducts and poles.This discussion is especially germane when one considers the highly speculative nature of forecasts and projections about future demand, and the competing claims of proponents of 5G and fibre. While there is some scepticism about the performance of mobile networks, we note that pure mobile and fixed 5G services may have synergies in deployment, and that the idea of competing with residential broadband services is a core strategy of very influential large-scale industry actors. In terms of a future research agenda, regulatory decisions could benefit from much more research into the relationship between domestic and global bandwidth constraints and their influence on development of software and application, as well as much more quantitative research by academics on the drivers of bandwidth demand. The risks associated with promoting investment that results in large-scale wasted resources should also be central to the regulatory agenda.