Organizational Trust and Interfirm Cooperation: An Examination of Horizontal Versus Vertical Alliances

Over the past decade, trust has emerged as the central means of achieving cooperation in interorganizational relationships. Past empirical inquiries have largely focused on the role of trust within the context of vertical relations between channel members or service providers and their clients. Thus, little is known about the nature or the role of trust in horizontal relations. A number of interorganizational scholars suggest that the nature and the effect of behavioral norms such as trust may be widely different in horizontal versus vertical relationships. This study examines the effect of relationship form on organizational trust using data from a survey of 106 U.S. firms who have recently participated in either horizontal or vertical R&D alliances. The results of this survey indicate that participants in vertical alliances display higher levels of organizational trust than participants in horizontal alliances. In addition, while organizational trust enhances cooperation in vertical alliances, trust is unrelated to cooperation in horizontal alliances.     

Exporter-importer business relationships: Past empirical research and future directions

We present a systematic and comprehensive review of the extant empirical literature on exporter-importer business relationships during the period 1975–2017. The review covers 196 articles published in academic journals, which were content-analyzed with their theoretical background, research design, scope of research, sampling/data collection methods, data analysis, and thematic areas covered. Our findings reveal that this line of research is characterized by: (a) a sound theoretical foundation, the most frequent theories being the behavioral paradigm, transaction cost economics, and relational exchange theory; (b) heavy emphasis on formalized, statistical, cross-sectional, and causal research designs; (c) focus on single-country studies, conducted mainly in Europe, Asia, and North America; (d) a tendency to employ probabilistic samples, of a relatively large size; (e) an adoption of relatively sophisticated methods to purify and analyze data collected; and (f) an emphasis on topics relating to behavioral and structural relational dimensions, followed by external and internal influences. Guidelines for researchers focusing on exporter-importer relationships are provided, as well as suggestions for potential new research topics.     

An alternative perspective on relationships,loyalty and future store choice

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to provide an alternative perspective for retailers to develop relationships and loyalty. This study suggests that traditional trust and commitment theories are somewhat imperfect in predicting future store choice. Through path modelling, we introduce two additional constructs of store functional loyalty and relationship worth. These constructs together with commitment are powerful predictors of future store choice. Furthermore, the study examines the antecedents of relationships, loyalty and future store choice. We conclude with new insights and practical suggestions for retailers to build relationships, loyalty and influence customers' future store choice.     

Demarketing for sustainability: A review and future research agenda

In the context of emerging sustainability challenges, demarketing has continued to draw the attention of academicians and practitioners globally over the past few years. It is interesting to note that demarketing is as old as marketing itself, yet its application and scope have grown from the past two decades only. Kotler and Levy, (1971) has defined demarketing as “that aspect of marketing which deals with discouraging customers in general or a certain class of customers in particular on a temporary or permanent basis”. This systematic literature review attempts to enrich the discussion on demarketing research through a systematic and comprehensive review of 64 articles published between 2000 and 2022. Using TCCM framework, we present relevant theories, research contexts, study characteristics, and methodologies used in demarketing research. Our review (1) Presents a systematic and comprehensive overview of the research in demarketing over the last two decades (2) Examines studies in demarketing within the framework of ‘triple bottom line’ approach for sustainability (3) Suggests a suitable definition of demarketing considering its exorbitant application within the sustainability context (4) Identify gaps and sets agenda for future research. Our systematic literature review found that research in demarketing has been growing considerably over the past two decades, twice as much in the last decade compared to the previous decade with spill-over to new sectors. The literature review, through the lens of ‘triple bottom line’ approach, is able to establish that demarketing can be employed to effectively address the sustainability challenges encountered by policymakers and practitioners.     

Anti-consumption: An overview and research agenda

This introduction to the Journal of Business Research special issue on anti-consumption briefly defines and highlights the importance of anti-consumption research, provides an overview of the latest studies in the area, and suggests an agenda for future research on anti-consumption.     

Ecotourism experience: A systematic review and future research agenda

This study presents a systematic review of the last 25 years' literature and offers a comprehensive understanding of the ecotourism experience. The study uses a Theory-Context-Characteristics-Method (TCCM) framework, offering insights that ecotourism experience research has advanced beyond ecotourism sites and resources to a multi-stakeholder approach. As a result, we have developed a conceptual framework illustrating three consumption stages of ecotourism, that is, pre-visit, on-site and post-visit. The study concludes by identifying some neglected areas and suggesting some future research directions in ecotourism experience field. Lastly, several theoretical and practical implications are presented that could aid the ecotourism industry in overcoming ecotourists' inertia toward site visits.     

Export promotion programs: A system-based systematic review and agenda for future research

Despite abundant research, we lack systematic knowledge on the effects of export promotion programs (EPPs). Extant research is largely fragmented and shows contradictory results. To fill this void, the present paper systematically reviews 192 articles to develop a system-based taxonomy and conceptual model of export promotion comprising six main components: system inputs, outputs, firm resources and capabilities, strategies, managers’ characteristics, and networks. The review contributes to extant research by taking stock of the current state of knowledge on the role of different EPPs in companies’ internationalization process. Furthermore, it reveals research gaps that chart important directions for future studies.     

Empirical models of manufacturer-retailer interaction: A review and agenda for future research

The nature of the interaction between manufacturers and retailers has received a great deal of empirical attention in the last 15 years. One major line of empirical research examines the balance of power between them and ranges from reduced form models quantifying aggregate profit and other related trends for manufacturers and retailers to structural models that test alternative forms of manufacturer-retailer pricing interaction. A second line of research addresses the sources of leverage for each party, e.g., trade promotions and their pass-through, customer information from loyalty programs, manufacturer advertising, product assortment in general, and private label assortment in particular. The purpose of this article is to synthesize what has been learnt about the nature of the interaction between manufacturers and retailers and the effectiveness of each party’s sources of leverage and to highlight gaps in our knowledge that future research should attempt to fill.     

Cultural diversity in top management teams: Review and agenda for future research

Despite its growing social relevance, research on cultural diversity in top management teams (TMTs) has been sparse and fragmented. To build a firm foundation and facilitate the development of this field, we review and synthesize 106 key articles published between 1997 and 2021. Our study provides a comprehensive field map explicating the antecedents and influence of TMT cultural diversity, showing that cultural diversity constitutes a distinct and important aspect of TMT diversity that has significant implications for a variety of outcomes. By critically assessing the field, we identify key research gaps and promising areas for future research.     

Internationalization through foreign listing: A review and future research agenda

This paper reviews and synthesizes literature on foreign listing from international business, management, and finance disciplines. A systematic review of 66 studies from 25 journals indicates fragmentation of the literature across the macro and firm-specific perspectives and a limited usage of current international business theories in research on foreign listing. We propose multiple developmental paths including use of institutional theory, especially institutional distance and institutional evolution to provide more comprehensive understanding of antecedents and contingent factors for foreign listing; supply-chain disaggregation of cross-border capital flow; integrate financial and strategic implications of foreign listing; and advancement of emerging market specific theories.     

Managing interaction for learning and value creation in exchange relationships

Firms create value by establishing and maintaining appropriate exchange relationships. However, beyond the generally recognized importance of trust and commitment, there is a lack of specific cues as to how such value creation can be managed. In an attempt to gain more insight this study examines the success formulas in three different types of interactions in exchange relationships. The purpose is to investigate how different types of interactions can be managed so that buyer firms make important contributions to the development of their suppliers' capabilities. The study empirically examines how inter-organizational management facilitates value creation in three different types of interactions in exchange relationships: unilateral learning, unilateral development, and bilateral learning. This study uses a partial least squares analysis (PLS) to analyze survey data from 142 exchange relationships in the seafood industry. The main contribution to the literature is the assessment of how various types of inter-organizational management promote value-creation initiatives (such as information supply and coaching), and ultimately, value creation.     

The intersection of entrepreneurship and selling: An interdisciplinary review,framework, and future research agenda

Selling is integral to entrepreneurship, yet it has rarely been a focal topic of analysis for entrepreneurship scholars. To address this, we undertake a broad-ranging systematic literature review of research that in some way explores selling within entrepreneurial contexts. We inductively develop a framework that orders extant research into selling antecedents, activities, contexts, and outcomes. Then, drawing on these entrepreneurship-selling intersections, we suggest opportunity theory can be extended by integrating critical insights from selling literatures. In particular, we address ego-centric views of entrepreneurship which prioritize entrepreneurial agency, and advocate for the incorporation of customer agency into synchronized processes of opportunity identification, refinement, and exploitation. The article concludes that a promising avenue for future theory development resides in the study of situated sales interactions, which can serve as an empirical vista to the underexplored entrepreneur-customer nexus.     

Cognitive foundations of firm internationalization: A systematic review and agenda for future research

Managerial cognition has a fundamental role in the internationalization of firms. However, there exists no coherent understanding of how prior research has examined and captured the cognitive foundations of internationalization. This paper provides a systematic review of this body of literature. The review identifies three main streams of research that, overall, consists of nine more specific research areas. We show that especially the areas addressing (1) managerial learning, (2) characteristics of upper echelons, (3) intra-organizational perceptions, and (4) external actors’ perceptions provide opportunities for the further advancement of internationalization literature. For harnessing these opportunities, we find that the microfoundational approach could support the empirical examination of the cognitive foundations and would notably contribute to the Uppsala model-based theorization of the firm internationalization process.     

International strategy and business groups: A review and future research agenda

Motivated by the growth and internationalization of business groups, this paper reviews the business group literature and presents a future research agenda, highlighting their implications for international strategy. The paper identifies theoretical tensions and empirical ambiguities around three key business group features—corporate governance, internal markets, and corporate strategy—and three key outcome variables—performance, economic impact, and innovation—that have generated significant debate. We conclude with three methodological concerns relevant to these debates: generalizing business group research across countries, endogeneity in business group research, and performance measurement in business groups.     

Fashion and the metaverse: Clarifying the domain and establishing a research agenda

In recent years, the metaverse has garnered significant attention as a term referring to a network of 3D virtual worlds that integrate elements of both physical and digital worlds. Fashion brands have begun exploring the metaverse as a new marketing platform, which is expected to bring about substantial changes in the fashion and retail industry. However, a lack of consensus on the nature of the metaverse and its impact on the fashion industry currently exists, and limited academic research is available on the metaverse's influence on fashion brands' marketing strategies and brand experiences. To address this gap, this study employs a thematic analysis approach on trade journals and industry articles that cover fashion brands' metaverse strategies. Through this analysis, the study provides a typology of current marketing strategies of fashion brands in the metaverse. Based on these empirical findings, this research proposes a theoretical framework that explains how different metaverse strategies affect different dimensions of brand equity. Finally, this study offers research directions for fashion brands' metaverse strategies by presenting an integrated framework that synthesizes the key insights from our research findings.     

Blockchain application in consumer services: A review and future research agenda

The potential of blockchain technology (BCT) to modify and innovates established business structures and frameworks has received widespread attention. Academia and businesses are becoming increasingly curious about how this technology could be used to improve and refine consumer services and operations. Despite the growing popularity of blockchain research in consumer services, there remains a dearth of detailed summaries in the literature. Hence, this bibliometric analysis, combined with a systematic literature review (SLR) using SPAR-4-SLR protocol with the theories, characteristics, contexts, and methods framework (A hybrid review), aims to convey qualitative and quantitative knowledge on the ever-evolving subject of blockchain application in consumer services in an organized manner. Specifically, this article analyses: (1) the current publication trends in studies devoted to blockchain-based applications for consumers, (2) the most important publications and themes of research in this field, (3) the evolution of blockchain in consumer service over the years, and the most current trends in this field, (4) the advantages and challenges of incorporating BCT into consumer services, (5) gaps in the existing literature that future researchers should investigate. In addition, this review also describes the widely used theories, characteristics, and methods in the application of blockchain in consumer service research by examining the most applied theories, methods, constructs, and study contexts and paving the way for new research directions. The review includes 417 documents after searching for scholarly publications in two databases (Web of Science and Scopus) and choosing documents based on their relevance to the stated goals.     

Social media influencers and consumer engagement: A review and future research agenda

The rise of social media influencers (SMIs) in the recent decade garnered wide interest from academicians and marketers. Academicians try to understand the effect of influencers on consumer behaviour, while marketers use influencers as part of their strategy to achieve marketing objectives. Although, plenty of practical and conceptual research is available in this area, literature reviews in the domain of SMIs and consumer engagement are scarce as it is still developing, and most of the studies have focused on these two concepts separately. In this study, the authors attempted to combine and understand how social media influencers affect consumers engagement. This systematic review of the literature offers a comprehensive view of previous research on social media influencers and consumer engagement. The study reviewed articles published in the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC), Scopus, and Web of Science indexed journals till 5 June 2021. To understand consumers' engagement with SMIs, authors identified and theorized the antecedents, decision and outcome of such engagement. It also discusses the influencer-follower parasocial relationship on different social media platforms. The study proposes an integrated conceptual framework that can be further used to test and validate the impact of social media influencer's marketing efforts on consumer engagement. This framework also may serve as a foundation for marketers to develop effective influencer strategies for brand promotions. The review concludes the discussion by highlighting theories, methodology, and context of studies conducted by past researchers.     

Resource interaction in inter-organizational networks: Foundations, comparison, and a research agenda

The focus of this article is on discussing the foundations, conceptual development, and implications of resource interaction in inter-organizational networks. The article conceptualizes and classifies resources before discussing how resource interfaces enable to utilize, manage, and change resources. In doing so it provides a set of basic principles as to how resources interact at a network level, or how firms combine, develop, mobilize, and manage resources over time. This is in strong contrast to a focus on the acquisition, accumulation, and exchange of resources by the firm. The article further provides a comparison with two other research streams, the Resource-Based view (RBV) and the Service-Dominant logic (S-D logic), in order to better position this perspective on inter-organizational resource interaction. It concludes by discussing an agenda for further research.