A Toy Store(y)

This article was used as the starting point for a series of seven analyses that comprise a special issue on entrepreneurial narrative. This article was given to scholars with the title “A Toy Store(y)” with no other identifying characteristics. The story describes the founding and operation of a toy store in Rutland Vermont in 1965. The story describes the process of realizing an opportunity, identifying and acquiring resources to pursue this opportunity, involving and managing others, and adapting to unforeseen circumstances as new competitive conditions are encountered.     

Pricing Eurodollar futures options with the Ho and Lee and Black,Derman, and Toy models: An empirical comparison

This article compares empirically the Ho and Lee (1986) and Black, Derman, and Toy (1990) discrete-time debt option pricing models in the pricing of Eurodollar futures options over the period from March 1997 through February 1998 using daily data. The results indicate that both models performed well. The average absolute pricing errors over the sample period were less than one tick (0.01) in every case. The Black, Derman, and Toy model slightly outperformed the Ho and Lee model in the pricing of in-the-money call options and out-of-the-money put options over the period studied. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 19: 291–306, 1999     

Of course that is not the whole (toy) story: Entrepreneurship and the cat's cradle

Reading and analyzing the Toy Store story imply a critical inquiry into how the act of storytelling can be understood. The entrepreneurial story is situated within the context of the plea to downplay the focus on the individual entrepreneur. As this discussion did not share some of the critical debates on the status of the subject, a narrative study of entrepreneurship might refocus on the storytelling entrepreneur rather than on the process of storytelling. To prevent this, storytelling is conceived as an enacted performance that balances complexity and coherence and that draws upon but is not enclosed by a range of cultural and masternarratives.     

International entrepreneurial marketing strategies of MNCs: Bricolage as practiced by marketing managers

The extant research lacks information on entrepreneurial marketing in large international firms. This study explores the international entrepreneurial marketing strategies of multinational corporations (MNCs), and its results reveal that MNC marketing managers use bricolage to develop international entrepreneurial marketing. A novel finding of the study is that the international entrepreneurial marketing strategies of MNCs include co-innovation, accelerating customer value, and international expansion based on regional market leadership. Marketing managers use both parallel and selective bricolage in their international entrepreneurial marketing. Environmental uncertainty and entrepreneurship culture are important drivers of the implementation of bricolage to develop international entrepreneurial marketing. The research findings can inform MNC management of the options available to utilize corporate venturing to facilitate bricolage and in turn to realize international entrepreneurial marketing strategies.     

资源匮乏、拼凑策略与中小企业产品创新关系研究

资源对创新的作用研究多集中在资源富余的一面,但是在竞争日趋激烈的今天研究资源匮乏的作用同样很有必要。尤其是,已成为社会创新中坚力量的中小企业在资源普遍匮乏的同时,又灵活通过拼凑致力于创新,分别有研究据此推断资源匮乏和拼凑策略可能引致中小企业创新,但是这些论断尚需细化分析与验证。文章分类分析并以科技型中小企业为样本证实：资源匮乏和中小企业产品创新之间存在显著的倒U型关系;只有选择拼凑有利于中小企业产品创新,并行拼凑的作用恰好相反;连续拼凑负向调节资源匮乏和中小企业产品创新关系,选择拼凑则正向调节这一关系。分类别和多角度探讨资源匮乏、并行策略对于中小企业创新的作用表现是对相关研究的拓展和推进,对理解和促进我国当前中小企业的创新实践也具有参考价值。     

Bricolage effects on new-product development speed and creativity: The moderating role of technological turbulence

This study provides a theoretical account of bricolage effects on two critical new-product advantages. Survey data from 222 firms reveal that bricolage hastens new-product development (NPD), but has an inverted U-shaped relationship with new-product creativity. However, under high technological turbulence, bricolage has an enhanced positive association with NPD speed. Consequently, this study contributes to bricolage theory and practice by revealing how bricolage influences new-product advantages and identifying boundary conditions for successful NPD.     

Achieving sustained competitive advantage in retail and consumer service firms: The role of entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial bricolage

The vital role of entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial bricolage in creating sustained competitive advantage in retail and consumer service firms is increasingly acknowledged in modern markets. Using data from 246 retail and consumer service firms (hereafter R&CSFs) in Japan, this paper develops and empirically tests a framework delineating how entrepreneurial-oriented R&CSFs strategically combine existing resources while managing risks to differentiate their service portfolios to be competitive. The findings reveal that entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial bricolage influence differentiation advantage and risk management, which, in turn, is associated with creating a sustained competitive advantage (hereafter SCA). This paper adds novel insights to the dynamic capabilities view and retail and service marketing literature by identifying entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial bricolage, and risk management as dynamic capabilities, which allows R&CSFs to create service innovations in resource-constrained environments.     

Towards a practice theory of entrepreneuring

Adopting a process perspective on entrepreneurship, captured by the notion of “entrepreneuring,” the emerging practice-theory approach in the social sciences is proposed as an appropriate frame of reference. Entrepreneuring as a practice is ontologically/epistemologically qualified by presenting phronesis as the relevant guiding intellectual virtue in the knowledge-creating process. A constructionist view invites different modes of coping with an ambiguous environment, including the use of analogizing and bricolage when enacting entrepreneuring by way of improvisation and personal networking. The notion of “organizing context” is introduced to grasp how collective support for entrepreneuring may be mobilized. Enactive research as an interactive way for doing field research is outlined and illustrated in order to complete the paradigmatic and theoretical arguments for a practice-theory approach to entrepreneuring with an adequate methodology.     

Exploring the Effect of Store Characteristics and Interpersonal Trust on Purchase Intention in the Context of Online Social Media Marketing

This article explores the effect of store characteristics and interpersonal trust on formation of attitude and intention to purchase from online stores in the context of online social media marketing. Store Brand Knowledge, Store Reputation, Perceived Store Size, and Perceived Store Risk have been considered as antecedents of trust. Based on existing literature, a conceptual model is proposed and empirically tested with a sample (n = 424) of online social media users with the help of partial least square path modeling. This study is among the very few empirical investigations done in the context of trust in online social media marketing and focuses only on consumer-perceived store-controlled factors as antecedents of trust.     

Mobile application service networks: Apple’s App Store

In fast-moving and complex App Store, there is a need for exploring the content of mobile application services themselves. Thus, this research empirically analyzes the relationships among mobile application services to identify their structures and positions through a text-mining-based network analysis. Associations among categories and applications are visualized as macro-level category network and micro-level app network; network indexes gauge the structural properties and positional characteristics of each network. Mobile service categories are compared according to their values and grouped according to network properties using cluster analysis, offering implications for the sectoral characteristics of mobile services in App Store.     

发展我国连锁经营的理性思考

连锁经营作为现代商业组织形式和经营方式,近年来在我国得到了很快的发展。但总地来说,连锁经营在我国仍然处在发展的起步阶段,存在许多问题。为了改革我国传统商业的经营方式和组织形式,深化流通企业改革,实现流通产业现代化,应进一步研究发展连锁经营对策。     

A bricolage perspective on service innovation

Service innovation is often viewed as a process of accessing the necessary resources, (re)combining them, and converting them into new services. The current knowledge on success factors for service innovation, such as formalized new service development (NSD) processes, predominantly comes from studying large firms with a relatively stable resource base. However, this neglect situations in which organizations face severe resource constraints. This paper argues that under such constraints, a formalized new service development process could be counter-productive and a bricolage perspective might better explain service innovation in resource-constrained environments. In this conceptual paper, we propose that four critical bricolage capabilities (addressing resource scarcity actively, making do with what is available, improvising when recombining resources, and networking with external partners) influence service innovation outcomes. Empirical illustrations from five organizations substantiate our conceptual development. Our discussion leads to a framework and four testable propositions that can guide further service research.     

Women's Perceived Empowerment in Entrepreneurial Efforts: The Role of Bricolage and Psychological Capital

Women's entrepreneurial empowerment—perceived competence, self‐determination, and ability in managing a firm as an entrepreneur—is important to women's entrepreneurship in developing countries. Drawing on a sample of 369 women entrepreneurs from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) located in Gujarat, a western state in India, we find that women's entrepreneurial empowerment is positively associated with firm revenues. Gains from empowerment could be further enhanced for women entrepreneurs managing resource constraints—through bricolage—and meeting the challenges of self‐employment—through psychological capital. The present study contributes to literature on women's entrepreneurial empowerment and SME performance. Women's empowerment and the bolstering effects of bricolage and psychological capital could help government agencies and non‐government organizations devise programs and policies to improve the performance of women‐owned SMEs in developing countries.     

Elucidating trust-building sources in social shopping: A consumer cognitive and emotional trust perspective

With the popularity and growth of social commerce, scholars and practitioners are particularly interested in how the integration of social media with e-commerce practice may resolve the challenge related to developing consumer-seller trust. Adopting a cognitive-emotional trust perspective, this study investigated the process by which consumers' trust in seller builds in a social commerce setting. Specifically, perceived familiarity, situational normality, cognitive and emotional trust in platform, and social interactivity were proposed as key antecedents of consumers' cognitive and emotional trust in seller. The model was examined with two complementary data sets collected from leading social commerce platforms in China: WeChat Store (N = 430) and Xiaohongshu (N = 397). This work advances the theoretical understanding of consumer's social shopping intention through extending the cognitive-emotional trust perspective and lends insights into the contextualized sources of trust building. In addition, these findings offer practical implications that help practitioners cost-effectively build consumer trust in the social commerce setting.     

Bridging family boundaries: mediating postmodern complexity in urban Sinhalese Sri Lankan families

ABSTRACT

There is a bricolage of competing local and global ideologies, value systems, and practices vying for the attention of urban South Asian consumers. We term this as “postmodern complexity”. Drawing from a three-year ethnographic research expedition on Sinhalese Sri Lankan families, we illustrate the process by which these families mediate postmodern complexity during new family formation. Our findings support an emergent framework to understand the processes in which families negotiate the influence of competing discourses and illustrate that the process is a perpetual experimentation spanning across three overlapping stages. We argue that negotiating postmodern complexity in our families is a hybrid and creolised resolution that is tailored to each family’s unique identity needs. Families can draw from a multitude of meanings that are anchored in consumption in order to create a unique family identity that is most appropriate to their identity pursuits.     

Leading national brands facing store brands competition: Is price competitiveness the only thing that matters?

Store Brands (SBs) have experienced a strong increase in both value and unit sales internationally during the last decades; thus their market share has been constantly growing. Starting from these considerations, the present work aims at deepening the topic of inter-brand competition within the FMCG market and, in particular, the market share trade-off between Leading National Brands (LNBs) and Store Brands. Our empirical analysis is based on panel data about 322 product categories sold within the Modern Grocery Distribution stores in the 2010–2013 period. Results obtained show: (i) the existence of a relationship between the increase in the LNB-SB price gap and the switching of market share from the former towards the latter; (ii) the consolidation of a change in consumers' purchasing preference in favor of SBs; (iii) the existence of an inverse relationship between the inter-brand competition intensity and the retail branding life cycle evolutionary stage, which is different for each product category.     

The Dynamics of Local Markets: A Case Study of Cameras

Longitudinal data on the availability and prices of two related products in a local market are used to assess the dynamic performance of the markets for these products. Consistent with prior research, a large degree of price dispersion was found for both products. There was some evidence of a modest reduction in price dispersion over time, and of the lowest quality models to “drop out” of the market. Store quality differences and likely search costs did not appear to explain the remaining dispersion.     

Segmentation Correlates for Small Grocery Chain Preference

Abstract

Five benefit segments are identified for grocery patrons. They include: (1) “Customer Service Seeker,” (2) “Specials' Seeker,” (3) “Take-Home Foods and Modern Store Seeker,” (4) “Low Price Seeker,” and (5) “Small Store Seeker.” The key findings are: (1) large grocery chain patrons compared to small chain patrons stress more the importance of low prices while (2) the small chain patrons compared to large chain patrons stress more the importance of service quality attributes and other non-price criteria. Managerial recommendations are also presented for small grocery chain owners.     

Discount Store Retailing in Korea

Abstract

This study examined the effects of consumers' internal shopping motives and external store attributes on excitement that shoppers may experience at discount stores in Korean markets and the mediating impact of excitement on selected behavior outcomes. Among three types of shopping motives (socialization, utilitarian and diversion), diversion significantly affected the level of excitement that shoppers experienced at the discount store. Store attributes of facility-related convenience and a neat, spacious atmosphere had an impact on shoppers' excitement at the discount stores. Excitement positively affected shoppers' satisfaction and repatronage intentions in discount store retailing in Korea. The empirical study results have major implications for multinational retailers as well as for future research in the area of international retailing.     

Foreign investment in the retail sector of the People's Republic of China

For many years, manufacturing was the hottest sector in the Chinese market. But when free market retailing became legal again in 1978, China's retail sector took off. Joint ventures between large department stores, such as Yaohan Department Store of Japan and the Chinese state-run Shanghai No. 1 Department Store, are growing to take advantage of China's potential 1 billion new customers. Davies paints a clear picture of the industry and candidly discusses the problems surrounding this new market: over-estimates of consumer demand, retail price inflation, currency flow problems, and increased smuggling and counterfeiting. Yet he is optimistic that retailing can only grow when Hong Kong becomes part of China in 1997.