The Antecedents and Consequences of Affordable Value Innovations for Emerging Markets

Emerging markets offer tremendous growth opportunities for firms. While established multinational firms typically focus on premium segments in emerging markets, they often fail to leverage additional growth opportunities in so‐called good enough or low‐income segments in emerging markets. Customers in these low‐income markets have substantially different requirements and are very price sensitive. Theoretical and case‐based research suggests that innovating for these low‐income segments in emerging markets differs significantly from innovating for premium or traditional Western markets. We argue that tapping successfully into low‐income segments in emerging markets requires the development of new products that meet the low price expectations while at the same time offering also value to customers in these segments. We refer to these new products as affordable value innovations. We analyze the antecedents of affordable value innovation for emerging markets. We draw on institutional theory to derive three potentially relevant antecedents of affordable value innovation for emerging markets. These are bricolage, local embeddedness, and standardization. We test our hypotheses using multiple informant data from 47 multinational corporations involving 103 innovation projects that target low‐income customers in emerging markets. Our empirical analysis shows that all three antecedents have significant effects on the level of affordable value innovation: while bricolage and local embeddedness are positively related to the level of affordable value innovation, standardization has a negative impact. We also examine the relationship between the level of affordable value innovation and performance. We find evidence for our basic assumption that a firm's capability to develop and launch affordable value innovations is key to success in emerging markets. It indicates that a firm's investments in affordable value innovations for emerging markets pay off financially. Finally, a cross‐regional comparison of our data shows that the key findings on antecedents of affordable value innovation and its impact on performance do not vary across various emerging markets. Overall, our findings offer important implications for research on and the practice of innovation for low‐income segments in emerging markets.     

Oil prices and transport sector returns: an international analysis

This study examines the role of oil prices in explaining ‘transport sector’ equity returns in 38 countries across the world. The findings of the study are strongly supportive of some role for oil prices in determining the transport sector returns for the countries falling within the ‘Developed’, ‘Europe’ and ‘G7’ groupings. In particular, by allowing for an asymmetry in our model, we find the oil factor to be jointly significant along with the presence of negative oil risk premium in these groupings. It is worth noting that these groups represent mature economies and stock markets. However, there appears to be no such evidence of a significant role for oil for other country groupings (named, Asia Pacific, Emerging and Latin America). Collectively these countries have a relatively short market history and/or are developing economies.     

Key problems facing industrial distributors

This article reports on a survey of the problems faced by industrial distributors. Five major problem categories are identified and managerial implications are derived from the findings.     

Preventing motor vehicle crash injuries and deaths: science vs. folklore lessons from history

Abstract

Not long after the beginnings of motorization in the early 1900s, deaths and injuries from motor vehicle crashes became a problem in a number of high-income-countries (HIC)s, especially the United States. With the biggest problem the US led early efforts to address this issue, and for six decades these efforts were based on folklore (ie a body of widely held but false or unsubstantiated beliefs). They were not evaluated, but clearly were unsuccessful as crash deaths and injuries continued to rise. It was not until the 1970s that a broader range of countermeasures began to be adopted and was scientifically evaluated, and as a result, crash deaths and injuries declined. This history has important lessons today for many low-and-middle-income countries that have growing numbers of motor vehicle crash deaths and injuries, many of which are pedestrians and motorcyclists. This is because there continue to be advocates for many of the failed approaches (especially educational) that dominated the early efforts in HICs.     

Caribbean Diversification and Development

Small Island Developing States generally adopt diversification as their primary development strategy, often with little success. Nevertheless, there is no empirical study specifically focusing on the pattern of diversification of these countries in relation to their development. The objective of this paper was to study the export diversification pattern by the intensive (a more equally spread export basket) and extensive (an increase in new export lines) product margin of 21 Caribbean countries in relation to their level of development using panel data. The results show that despite their limited ability to diversify, Caribbean countries, as has been found for other parts of the world, first diversify and subsequently respecialise though at a substantially lower level of income than other countries and that the intensive margin plays a greater role in this process.     

Health Care Matters: Supply Chains In and Of the Health Sector

Providing health care involves a complex enterprise, and the trade‐off between quality and cost has been particularly stark compared to other industries. However, a recent focus on health sector supply networks is now producing significant innovations and improvements. This Special Topic Forum illustrates for the academic and practitioner community how health care supply chain research can benefit from our evolving understanding of supply chains and help push that understanding even further. We classify health care supply chain research into two broad categories—supply chain in health care and supply chain of health care—to set an agenda for future research.     

Internationalization and HRM strategies across subsidiaries in multinational corporations from emerging economies—A conceptual framework

The rapid rise of multinational Corporations (MNCs) from emerging economies has led to greater interest and urgency in developing a better understanding of the deployment and diffusion of managerial strategies from their perspective and without assuming the prevailing Western ethnocentric orthodoxy. This paper develops a conceptual framework of global HR strategies and practices in MNCs from emerging economies across their subsidiaries in both developed and developing markets. Using data from a pilot study of an Indian MNC, it provides insights and guidance into the motives, strategic opportunities and constraints in cross-national transfer of HR policies and practices in a multi-polar world.