Organizational buying effectiveness in supply chain environment: A conceptual framework

The idea of effectiveness measurement in supply chain context stresses the importance of value development process for the forthcoming member of the chain. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model of organizational buying effectiveness in the supply chain context, emphasizing the importance of marketing orientation in the purchasing process. Literature has revealed that there are many focal interaction points between relationship marketing, supply chain management, and organizational buying. The effectiveness framework was developed regarding the value perception, organizational buying involvement, and decentralization of decision making     

Understanding product migration to the electronic marketplace: A conceptual framework

We present a conceptual framework that organizes current thinking regarding increased interactivity in the electronic marketplace and its implications for product migration. Product migration refers to the extent of reliance by buyers and sellers on the electronic marketplace for activities pertaining to information search, purchase, acquisition, use, and disposal of a product. We posit that value outcomes derived by buyers and sellers from increasing interactivity mediate the relationship between interactivity and product migration. The relationship between interactivity and value outcomes for buyers and sellers is moderated by three sets of product-related characteristics: the core characteristics of the product, its purchase and use-related characteristics, and market characteristics. Inertia and resistance exhibited by buyers and sellers negatively impact product migration to the electronic marketplace and also attenuate the impact of value outcomes on product migration. In addition to guiding theoretical and empirical work in this emerging area, the proposed framework can also be employed to structure a firm's strategic discussions related to the electronic marketplace.     

Consumer reporting: A conceptual framework for the organizational level

In this paper, a conceptual framework for consumer reporting at the organizational level is developed. Consumer reporting is defined as the provision of information by an organization to its consumers with respect to the effects of its activities judged relevant by those consumers. In this context, the term organization covers business firms but also governmental agencies, hospitals, charities, and other non-profit organizations with relations to their consumers/clients.The concept of consumer satisfaction is regarded as the core element of consumer reporting. Several issues with respect to consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction as well as their measurement are discussed. It is concluded that perceptual indicators of consumer satisfaction should constitute the core of consumer reporting in establishing the consumer profile of the organization. However, additional information could be provided too, for instance situational indicators of consumer satisfaction or information about consumer dissatisfaction. All of this information should be geared towards the goal of accounting for the resulting organizational strategy and policies towards the consumers. Several practical examples are given to illustrate the items about which information can be provided and the fact that consumer reporting can be realized in practice.

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Berichterstattung von Organisationen für Verbraucher: ein konzeptioneller Rahmen

Zusammenfassung Eine solche Berichterstattung wird im vorliegenden Beitrag definiert als Informationen einer Organisation für ihre Konsumenten über diejenigen Wirkungen ihrer Aktivitäten, die von diesen Konsumenten für wichtig gehalten werden. Der Begriff Organisation steht hier nicht nur für kommerzielle Firmen, sondern auch für Behörden, Krankenhäuser, Stiftungen und andere nicht gewinnorientierte Organisationen mit ihren jeweiligen Beziehungen zu ihren Verbrauchern bzw. Klienten.Das Konzept der Verbraucherzufriedenheit steht dabei im Mittelpunkt. Deshalb werden zunächst dieses Konzept und die Methoden zur Messung von Verbraucherzufriedenheit diskutiert. Ergebnis ist dabei, daß das Konsumentenprofil einer Organisation durch perzipierte Indikatoren ermöglicht wird. Figur 1 gibt hierfür ein Beispiel. Das Konsumentenprofiel kann durch situative Indikatoren und durch Informationen über Verbraucherzufriedenheit ergänzt werden (Figur 2). Alle diese Informationen sollten zum Ziel haben, die Unternehmenspolitik gegenüber den Konsumenten zu verantworten.Zum Schluß werden einige praktische Beispiele behandelt, die einerseits zeigen, welche Informationen solche Berichterstattungen enthalten können, und andererseits, daß es in der Praxis bereits Ansätze in dieser Richtung gibt.

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Hans Kasper is Associate Professor of Marketing and Hein Schreuder Professor of Business Economics at the Faculty of Economics, University of Limburg, P.O. Box 616, NL-6200 MD Masstricht, The Netherlands.     

2005影响船舶供求市场的诸多因素

对于今后的船市发展趋势,存在着两种截然不同的观点.一方面,随着全球经济复苏势头明显,许多人对造船业充满了信心,相信2005年后船舶价格将继续攀升,船舶新船订购会依然强劲;另一方面,受世界经济合作组织预测的影响,有些人对造船市场并不乐观,他们估计2005年后,世界油船更新需求大幅度减少必将导致新船需求量急速降低.本文从影响船舶供求因素的状况入手,分析国内外船舶市场变化情况.     

船板市场供求平衡价格跟随大势

在政策预期及成本支撑带动下．7月下旬以来．国内钢材市场出现一轮较为明显的上涨．包括船板在内的钢材市场重新对下半年寄予厚望．但高企的库存．以及相对清淡的市场需求和成交又始终对价格运行产生压力。9月份开始．国内造船业将迎来传统旺季．船板是否继续上涨．创造新一轮价格上涨？在目前国内船板面临产能过剩．全球航运业复苏不稳定．船舶需求尚未恢复的背景下．     

Market orientation in the context of SMEs: A conceptual framework

A number of studies in the marketing literature have examined the construct of market orientation (MO). These studies generally show a positive link between MO and organizational performance. This paper examines MO specifically in the context of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). An in-depth review of the extant literature is used to develop a conceptual framework by exploring the major antecedents of MO, the MO–Performance relationship, and the key mediators and environmental moderators of this relationship. This paper also examines several studies on SMEs with respect to various aspects of this framework and offers suggestions for future research in order to understand more thoroughly how MO influences SME performance.     

Financial fraud,scandals, and regulation: A conceptual framework and literature review

Abstract

This perspectives article surveys publications in business history and constructs a conceptual framework for researching fraud and other dubious financial practices, their determinants and their consequences. The prevalence and nature of the practices studied are mainly determined by individual traits, firm governance and control, the economic environment, and regulation. Contemporaries make sense of dubious practices by constructing narratives, possibly framing them as scandals, which are likely to lead to attempts at regulatory change. It is primarily the socio-economic impact of dubious practices that determines whether regulation becomes fundamentally stricter. Existing agendas for reform strongly influence the substance of regulatory responses.     

A conceptual framework for entrepreneurship education policy: Meeting government and economic purposes

There is an increasing tendency for government policy to promote entrepreneurship for its apparent economic benefit. Accordingly, governments seek to employ entrepreneurship education as a means to stimulate increased levels of economic activity. However, the economic benefit of entrepreneurship education has proven difficult to substantiate. It is perceived that the problem is partly due to the multi-definitional perspectives of entrepreneurship. What stems from this is a lack of a theoretically sound conceptual grounding that will assist policy-makers and educators to locate a program within specific objectives. This article sets out an argument, extending from economic theory, to provide purpose for entrepreneurship education and proposes a policy framework supported by analysis of the Australian government policy context.     

Purchasing behaviour for environmentally sustainable products: A conceptual framework and empirical study

Although there are some instances of prior research on the relationship between attitude and purchase intention for environmentally sustainable products, literature is scant about mediating role of attitude on the relationship between environmental knowledge and purchase intention for environmentally sustainable products. Following the theory of planned behaviour, this study develops and tests a conceptual framework, which provides several insights. First, the attitude towards environmentally sustainable products mediates the relationship between environmental knowledge and purchase intention. Next, this mediated relationship is moderated by the environmental knowledge. Third, the subjective norm is not significantly related to the purchase intention - contrary to established findings - in a collectivistic culture considered in this study. And last but not the least, the direction of subjective norm as a moderator on relationship between environmental knowledge and attitude is not supported. The findings of this study offer some important guidance for marketing theory, retailing practices for environmentally sustainable products and public policy.     

Technology support for cooperative work: A framework for studying introduction and assimilation in organizations

This article draws on published research on the nature of the innovation process and exploratory field research in 10 companies to develop a framework for research on organizations’ introduction and assimilation of computer‐supported cooperative work technologies. The research reported in this article, part of a much larger study of the general process of innovation in organizations, focuses specifically on the transfer and assimilation of new technology innovations.

Technologies to support group process, communication, and coordination in face‐to‐face group meetings [electronic meeting support systems (EMSS)] were chosen to illustrate the use of the research framework. The article focuses on the transfer of these technologies from R“D units to target organizational units and the alignment of group, technology, and task during assimilation by end‐user groups. Research propositions are developed and discussed. Future articles will present the findings from current research that utilizes the frameworks presented in this article to study the introduction, transfer, and assimilation of EMSS in organizations.     

A global market advantage framework: the role of global market knowledge competencies

The globalization forces engender companies to develop a new set of competencies that would enable the generation of abnormal returns in the global marketplace. This article reviews the extant literature regarding the effect of globalization on organizations and develops a conceptual framework that underlines the importance of knowledge management competencies in creating global market advantage. The knowledge management competencies consist of global customer, competitor and supplier knowledge development, inter-functional coordination and value chain coordination. The relationship between global market knowledge competencies and global market advantage is partially mediated by company's responsiveness. Global market advantage is positively associated with company's strategic and financial performance.     

The effect of culture on perception and cognition: A conceptual framework

Researchers are increasingly recognizing the role of culture as a source of variation in many phenomena of central importance to consumer research. This review addresses a gap in cross-cultural consumer behavior literature by providing a review and conceptual analysis of the effects of culture on pre-behavioral processes (perception and cognition). The article highlights a series of important perceptual and cognitive differences across cultures and offers a new perspective of framing these differences among cultures—that of “culturally conditioned” perceptual and cognitive orientations. The article addresses several theoretical issues and suggests directions for future research as well as managerial implications.     

Value co-creation in web-based multisided platforms: A conceptual framework and implications for business model design

The internet is fertile ground for multisided platforms that articulate the production of goods or the execution of services between third parties, thus relying on value co-creation as their core business model mechanism. However, an understanding of co-creation that underlies dynamics and implications for business model design and innovation is still dispersed and fragmented along a number of literature streams. This article aims to provide an understanding of the value co-creation process in web-based multisided platforms. A conceptual framework is proposed based on the combination of an analysis of a comprehensive systematic literature review, interviews with academics and entrepreneurs, and an analysis of secondary data on representative cases of multisided business models based on value co-creation. We offer a model of value co-creation in multisided platforms and advance a number of propositions regarding value dynamics, including the role of the focal firm in defining and maintaining value creation, propositions, and capture structures with consequences to monetization schemes and actors’ contributions and motivations for value co-creation. This article contributes to the understanding of the co-creation phenomenon, especially in multiple actor interaction regimes, and raises a number of suggestions for future research.     

The demand for and the supply of distribution services: A basis for the analysis of customer satisfaction in retailing

This paper brings together two bodies of literature. One of them is a literature on the special role of the consumer in retailing. The other one is the literature on customer satisfaction. This joining of literatures is accomplished by identifying distribution services as outputs of retail firms and fixed inputs into the production functions of consumers and relaxing the standard assumption that the demand for these services is always equal to the supply of these services. The result is a new conceptual framework for the analysis of customer satisfaction in retailing. This framework extends the basic ideas on customer satisfaction developed for manufacturing in a homogeneous single product setting to the heterogeneous multi-product setting relevant for many retailers. The paper illustrates one approach to the implementation of this framework with data for a set of supermarkets in Pamplona, Spain, that measure distribution services by asking consumers questions explicitly identifying these services. The five main categories of distribution services identified by the conceptual framework and measured in the data are economically important and statistically robust determinants of customer satisfaction with supermarkets. These results are obtained controlling for other variables typical of the customer satisfaction literature and measuring customer satisfaction in a manner consistent with that literature. The results are robust to corrections for sample selection and alternative estimation methods. Perhaps our most interesting novel result is that the effect of the determinants of customer satisfaction on future purchase intentions in the supermarket case is different when measured directly in a one stage process than when measured indirectly in a two stage process through the attributes/satisfaction/ purchase intentions chain.

Mapping the impact of home‐ and host‐country institutions on human resource management in emerging market multinational companies: A conceptual framework

While there is a growing literature concerned with multinational companies from emerging markets (EMNCs), it does not contain a robust conception of how institutions shape human resource (HR) practices in such firms. We contribute to filling this gap through developing a framework of how institutions create a range of constraints and opportunities for EMNCs. Specifically, our framework contains three key elements of how MNCs from emerging markets interact with institutions: EMNCs develop approaches that to some extent reflect the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the institutions in the home country (institutional conditioning); the strategies of actors in EMNCs can overcome the weaknesses of the home country by drawing on institutions in other countries (institutional arbitrage); and the actions of EMNCs can reinforce, or create pressures for change in, the institutional context in the countries in which they operate (institutional change/consolidation). By mapping this set of strategies of EMNCs, we contribute to a fuller understanding of the relationship between institutions and HR practices, and we outline how the rise of EMNCs reshapes the global landscape by adding new kinds of firm behavior to capitalist diversity.     

Religion's influence on the financial well-being of consumers: A conceptual framework and research agenda

Religion is an indelible force in society, yet research examining its influence on consumption, particularly in the context of financial well-being is lacking. Thus, this paper presents a conceptual framework of factors influencing, and outcomes associated with, the effects of religion on financial well-being. Specifically, this paper introduces a conceptual framework aimed at understanding how religion influences financial decisions and well-being, both from a consumer and a business perspective. Focus groups were conducted with consumers and financial practitioners to support the development of the conceptual framework. Most novel to this framework is the identification of potential process mechanisms explaining this relationship, including trust, affect, risk propensity, and perceived personal control. The framework concludes with potential interventions targeted at consumers and businesses to improve financial well-being. This propositions-based conceptual framework serves as a research agenda to guide and aid scholars, consumer advocacy groups, policymakers, and marketers in promoting greater financial well-being.     

A conceptual framework for analyzing consumers' food label preferences: An exploratory study of sustainability labels in France,Quebec, Spain and the US

In a qualitative study of 375 consumers in France, Quebec, Spain and the US, respondents are asked to choose between pairs of actual food labels and to describe the reason(s) for their choice. The food labels included sustainability labels (eco‐labels, Fair Trade, origin) as well as product attribute (e.g. quality, kosher) and health/nutrition labels. Respondents' reasons were coded in the original language using the same coding system across all four nations to examine their preferences for label message, design and source. We also examined the role of consumers' values, beliefs and experiences on their label choices. The coding system was drawn from a review of theoretical and empirical literature and provides a conceptual framework we call the Label Consumer Interaction model for evaluating consumers' food label preferences. Although this is case study, the results point to substantial differences across nations in terms of preferred labels, as well as the rationale for their choice in terms of attributes of the labels and consumer characteristics.     

A conceptual framework of the antecedents of customer journey satisfaction in omnichannel retailing

In light of the complex customer behaviour and customer journeys in omnichannel retailing, this study aims to investigate customer co-creation behaviour, customer response and customer experiential values as critical aspects of the customer journey, and examine their impact on the level of customer journey satisfaction. The results confirmed the significance of all factors, except information seeking and arousal, in all phases and exploration in the post-purchase phase, on customer journey satisfaction. For a further examination, this study classified the participants into three different segments according to their journey pattern and scrutinised whether the impact of the three predictors of customer journey satisfaction varied across customer segments. The analysis showed that customer segments were fragmented. The impact of customer co-creation behaviour, customer response and customer experiential values on customer journey satisfaction varied across the three customer segments. A heatmap highlighted the most influential factors of each customer segment. The study yielded several theoretical contributions and insights into omnichannel customers for managers.     

A framework of the risk assessment for the supply chain of hazardous materials

This paper shows a framework of risk assessment models and analyzes the Mexican context of the supply chain for hazardous materials. A new set of risk assessment models is developed for each main activity of the closed-loop supply chain for hazardous materials. This model can be used to evaluate suppliers, transportation routes, outsourcing options and the material itself. A proportional risk-assessment technique is used to define risk cost calculation for the hazardous materials management using the National Fire Protection Agency classification. Hazardous materials represent a logistics challenge because of the risk involved at their handling. From 2006 to 2009 a total of 1,200 accidents were reported at different points of the supply chain. The investigated models require a previous analysis of the activities in order to calculate factors, such as the accident rate and possible affected population, among others; that could affect the cost in case of an accident. Analyzing the risk, cost values can be used by decision makers to determine which activities should be outsourced in order to avoid the risk itself or to fulfill laws and regulations.