Mitigating the Myopia of Dominant Logics: On Differential Performance and Strategic Supply Chain Research

The primary question of management scholarship is, “What leads some firms to be successful even as others fail?” Over the years, a variety of dominant logics have emerged to inform this question. Synthesized, these logics make it clear that companies win when they create customer value better than the competition and efficiently enough to be profitable. That is, firms that design distinctive and dynamic value‐added systems win competitive battles. This observation is salient to the Journal of Business Logistics community as systems design and value creation are focal decision areas of supply chain management. With this in mind, we briefly discuss two of many areas for which strategic supply chain research can inform differential performance.     

How competent are consumers? The case of the energy sector in France

This paper discussed the notion of value co‐creation and the concept of customer competence as suggested by this notion. This led us to consider the competent customer as a social construction related to managerial representations. In order to examine this issue, a longitudinal exploratory research based on participant observation and in‐depth interviews with employees of a French energy supplier was conducted to explore whether customers are perceived as competent or incompetent market actors. The data analysis revealed four categories illustrating customers' profiles coping with the new situation of the ‘Utility X’ group in the energy sector. ‘Utility X’ employees define their customers according to four profiles: myopic, ignorant, uncreative and organizer of company resources. Even if the marketing studies that share the Service‐Dominant Logic point‐of‐view suggest that the customer would be competent at all times, our findings showed that customer competencies are in fact socially constructed and emerge partially from managerial representations. Therefore, the adoption by companies of a marketing philosophy (‘market with’ philosophy), in which the customer and supply chain partners are collaborators in the entire marketing process, seems only possible if they recognize customers' competencies and identify situations when customers do not activate their competencies or do not have the resources that enable them to develop their competencies.     

Ethical Customer Value Creation: Drivers and Barriers

There is a long-standing discussion on the positive interactions between enterprise value creation and business competitiveness. The corporate value can be seen as being created from three major sources within the cycle – from employees, from processes, and from customers or investors through reinvestment. To achieve competitive advantages, a firm must create more value than its competitors in the industry. Emphasizing that, firms should explore the positive drivers of customer value creation, allowing for a true value creation that will lead to increments in competitiveness. In reality, however, there are also barriers that hinder customer value creation. Targeting the above issues that have not yet been explored or analyzed, we have collected related literature at the first stage. Based on these presumable assumptions, this paper then conducts an empirical study by surveying and analyzing the relevance given by the investigated leading machinery measuring equipment firms in Taiwan, regarding the concerns as drivers and barriers in relation to customer value creation. This paper especially aims to answer several key questions: What drivers revolving around employees and processes can facilitate the organization to create more value for its customers? Conversely, what barriers block the organization from creating value for customers in examining the same dimensions? Does value creation direct an organization’s profitability and competitiveness? Our questionnaire survey results show that the most recognized and agreed drivers of customer value creation in consideration of employees are “distinctive skills”, “personal experience”, “learning and training”, and “team work”; and, in regard to the firm’s processes, the key drivers are “innovation and evolution”, “R&;D capability”, and “capability for differentiation”. Conversely, the most recognized and agreed barriers to customer value creation in relation to employees are a “distrustful environment” and “inadequate knowledge”; and, in terms of processes, they are “short of core technology”, “poor resource support”, and “bad services and attitudes”. Furthermore, our in-depth interview outcomes reveal that “capital sufficiency” and “mergers and acquisitions” are in practice considered to be other important customer value creation drivers; in contrast, “cultural and structural barriers” and “short of mechanisms to measure customer value creation effectively” are viewed as additional critical barriers to customer value creation.     

论20世纪初的中国翻译文学与性别

20世纪初叶的中国,翻译文学被当作启蒙和教诲的工具而得到大力提倡,与此同时,女性也被推向中国历史的前台。在这一特定历史时期,翻译文学出现了“写情”和“女性”题旨作品的广泛流行。翻译文学作为当时输入西方文化和思想的一个重要介质,引进了许多栩栩如生的异国人物形象,其中各种西方女性形象的输入激发了国人对新型性别秩序的想象和重构,翻译文学成为性别话语交锋的斗争之场。     

试析顾客价值管理的涵义及特点

顾客价值管理日益受到重视。顾客价值管理以企业价值最大化为最终目标,重视提高顾客的忠诚度,以顾客价值创造为核心,通过五个层次为顾客创造价值;采用“由外而内”的思考方法,实行价值创新战略,业务流程再造及整合企业内外的资源和能力等一套系统化的方法来实现顾客价值创造,同时,顾客价值管理是一个连续不断的过程。     

流通领域的价值创造与实现

本文根据马克思关于流通领域的价值创造与实现的论述,结合我国现阶段社会主义市场经济的实践,论证了如何坚持和发展马克思的流通经济理论问题。文章认为,在我国现阶段社会主义市场经济实践中,必须在坚持马克思流通经济理论的基础上,对其进行不断的丰富和发展:扩大劳动和生产劳动的概念;承认服务业也创造价值和剩余价值,从事信息生产、应用和传播活动的劳动也创造价值;肯定信息生产、流通、消费生产性不断增长和非生产性不断减少的趋势;要深入探讨生产过程在流通领域中继续的劳动性质,商业人员的劳动性质,金融资本流通的性质以及流通领域价值的创造与计量等重要问题。     

Strategies for creating value through individual and collective customer experiences

Despite tremendous interest in how online communities create value, existing research tends to focus on limited means through which such value is generated. In this article, we develop a conceptual model of customer value formation. This model rests on two dimensions, namely whether value is formed in the customer or provider domain and whether the value is individual or collective in nature. This enables value formation to be characterized in four ways and enables a more nuanced view of value formation to emerge. Firms are encouraged to reflect on their efforts to support each of the four value formation types. In particular, our conceptualization challenges companies to consider customer contexts outside of customer-firm interaction as important sources of value creation for customers. Such reflection enables practitioners to develop strategies for supporting individual and collective value creation across both the customer and provider domains.