Brand positioning in financial services: A longitudinal test to find the best brand position

Brand positioning is a core activity of most marketing departments. In this paper, the relationship between six different positions and customer vulnerability is tested over time in the business financial services market. Two particular attributes relating to fees and charges and relationship/service were found to have strong relationships with customer vulnerability, both across brands and over time. This research suggests that the ’better‘ brand positions, as defined here, can be common across brands. Therefore, marketing managers of financial services should perhaps not be striving for a unique position for the brand, but aim for distinctiveness in the way the position is communicated. Research techniques to identify ’better‘ positions should also not assume that these ’better‘ positions will be those that differentiate between brands.     

Antecedents and consequences of opportunism in buyer–supplier relations: Research synthesis and new frontiers

Buyers and suppliers must concern themselves with opportunism, a phenomenon empirically established in exchange relationships. What causes firms to behave opportunistically? What are the consequences of firms' opportunistic behavior? To date, these antecedents and consequences have not been comprehensively synthesized. Herein, the opportunism phenomenon is revisited to expose research gaps and chart new directions that will enhance our understanding of buyer–supplier relationships. First, we provide a brief review of two critical theories of exchange that provide a theoretical foundation for opportunism. We next provide an overview of opportunism. Then each of the antecedents and consequences is discussed with emphasis on the contribution of each finding. Finally, and most importantly, several promising paths for further research are proposed.     

Pharmaceutical marketing through the customer portfolio: Institutional influence and adaptation

This paper discusses the dilemma of managing marketing in institutionalized business contexts. On the basis of a study of pharmaceutical marketing practices it is argued that business aspirations are dependent on understanding institutional influence and adaptation mechanisms on the customer-portfolio level. As relationships are perceived as such mechanisms, understanding network dynamics, institutional co-evolution and actor cognitions are key managerial issues. Furthermore, it is suggested that institutional discontinuities leverage institutional entrepreneurship to a critical extent.     

How many singularities are near and how will they disrupt human history?

This paper reviews a large number of approaches that have been used for considering technologically driven profound societal change. We agree with Vinge's suggestion for naming events that are “capable of rupturing the fabric of human history” (or leading to profound societal changes) as a “singularity”. This is a useful terminology especially since a mathematically rigorous singularity seems impossible for technological and related societal change. The overview of previous work is done within the context of a broader look at the role of technological change within human history. The review shows that a wide variety of methods have been used and almost all point to singularities in the present century particularly in the middle of the century. The diversity of the methods is reassuring about the potential robustness of these predictions. However, the subjectivity of labeling events as singularities (even well studied past events) is a concern about all of the methods and thus one must carefully pause when relying in any way on these predictions. The general lack of empirical research in this area is also a concern.Quantitative considerations (by proponents and opponents) about past singularities or future singularities often confound two types of metrics. The first type is essentially related to diffusion of technologies (or bundles of technologies) where the logistic curve is empirically well established as the proper time dependence. The second type of metric is for technological capability where hyper-exponentials are empirically well established for their time dependence. In this paper, we consider two past singularities (arguably with important enough social change to qualify) in which the basic metric is alternatively of one type or another. The globalization occurring under Portuguese leadership of maritime empire building and naval technological progress is characterized by a metric describing diffusion. The revolution in time keeping, on the other hand, is characterized by a technological capability metric. For these two cases (and thus robust to the choice of metric type), we find that:

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  People undergoing profound technologically-driven societal change do not sense a singularity.

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  The societal impacts depend in complicated ways on human needs, institutional variables and other more uncertain factors and thus are particularly hard to project;

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  The societal impact is apparently not determined by the rate of progress on either type of metric or by projections to mathematical points with either kind of metric. This finding supports the existing concept that social change due to technology is a more holistic phenomenon than can be characterized by any technical metric.

In the final section, we use these empirical findings as the basis for exploring the possibilities for and nature of future singularities. In this we speculate that the potential for a future strong singularity based upon computational capability does not appear particularly probable but that one may already be occurring and is not fully noticed by those (us) going through it. Other possible 21st century singularities (life extension and fossil fuel elimination are two examples considered) may also be already underway rather than waiting for the predicted mid-century changes.     

Too big to fail — Lessons for today and the future from British industrial policy, 1960–1990

British industrial policy for two sectors (automotive and aerospace manufacture) in the period the 1960–1990 is considered and compared with the challenges facing the United Kingdom following the financial crisis of 2008. The history of the period 1960–1990 is informed by interviews with well-placed policy-makers of the time. These observations complement the historical record to confirm that British industrial policy was then more often a pragmatic response to events than the consequence of political ideology. Four particular phases of policy are observed: consolidation, investment, nationalisation and privatisation. During the decade 2000–2009 several British companies in banking, transport and energy have been subject to similar state interventions. In 2010 these companies are at various stages on the four step journey considered by the paper. The paper provides four lessons from the past for twenty-first century policy makers tasked with taking forward the companies with state investment and ensuring a return to economic prosperity.     

Comparing China’s GDP statistics with coincident indicators

We use factor analysis to summarize information from various macroeconomic indicators, effectively producing coincident indicators for the Chinese economy. We compare the dynamics of the estimated factors with GDP, and compare our factors with other published indicators for the Chinese economy. The estimated factors and the published coincident indicators match the GDP dynamics well and discrepancies are very short. The largest discrepancies may correspond to shocks affecting the growth process.     

An Empirical Investigation of Dual Network Effects in Innovation Project Development

As innovation project developers advance their knowledge through more project experience, cross-project learning is likely to enhance project performance. Past research has demonstrated positive contributions of developer networking at the macro (project) level. However, the network effects at the micro (project property) level have not been studied as much. To address this gap, we apply a network model to examine which project properties (e.g., the project's operating system and topic) generate positive or negative network effects in addition to the macro network effect when developers engage in multiple projects. In this dual (developer and property) network model, we theorize that positive network effects take place because of cross-project learning and knowledge exchange, whereas negative network effects can also occur due to time constraints and cognitive overloading. In addition to such dual network effects, we also consider such project success predictors as spatial and temporal reach opportunities for project users (scope of translations and project age) and human resources availability (developer team size). Our empirical application using open source software (OSS) data demonstrates that the presented model can effectively integrate both the dual network effects and non-network variables as factors influencing the commercial success of OSS projects.     

Do Interruptions Pay off? Effects of Interruptive Ads on Consumers' Willingness to Pay

We present the results of a study designed to measure the impact of interruptive advertising on consumers' willingness to pay for products bearing the advertiser's brand. Subjects participating in a controlled experiment were exposed to ads that diverted their attention from a computer game they were testing. We measured subjects' willingness to pay for a good associated with the advertised brand. We found that the ads significantly lowered the willingness to pay for goods associated with the advertising brand. We do not find conclusive evidence that providing some level of user control over the appearance of ads mitigates the negative impact of ad interruption. Our results contribute to the research on the economic impact of advertising, and introduce a method of measuring actual (as opposed to self-reported) willingness to pay in experimental marketing research.     

Network evolution and the embedding of complex technical solutions: The case of the Leaf House network

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the connection between network evolution and technology embedding. To this end, we performed an exploratory case study of the network surrounding an eco-sustainable technology, Leaf House, Italy's first zero-carbon emission house. We apply theories on technological development within industrial networks, with a specific focus on their resource layer and on the three settings involved in embedding an innovation: “developing”, “producing”, and “using”. Our results contribute to these theories by developing four propositions on the connections between network evolution and embedding: first, technology embedding entails both downstream network expansion and upstream restrictions. Secondly, conflicts among actors increase as technology embedding approaches the producing and using settings. Third and fourth, the more the shapes a technology can assume, and the more each of these shapes involves actors acting in different settings, the easier it is to embed it. The paper concludes with managerial implications and suggestions for further research.     

Building capabilities to manage strategic alliances

Recently, academics have attributed a large part of alliance success to a firm's ability to successfully manage its alliances, also called its level of alliance management capability. We contribute to this growing body of literature by (1) verifying the impact of alliance management capability on alliance performance and (2) analyzing the drivers of alliance management capability. We measure this capability through four types of alliance learning processes and study how each of these processes affects alliance outcome. Furthermore, we take into account several possible drivers of alliance management capability such as organizational culture, commitment of the top team, alliance experience and the alliance function. We refine the results by examining how these factors affect each of the four learning processes underpinning alliance management capability. Our research model will be tested on a sample of 189 Belgian companies using PLS. We find that the commitment of the top management team is the most critical factor in explaining success with alliances.