The industrial brand personality scale: Building strong business-to-business brands

To remain distinct and build strong business relationships in a competitive business-to-business (B2B) environment, an increasing number of industrial marketers attempt to exploit the potential of branding. However, brand management in the industrial sector is still at its starting point. For this reason, the authors introduce the concept of brand personality to industrial markets. Based on a series of qualitative and quantitative studies, the authors develop and validate an Industrial Brand Personality Scale. Furthermore, they examine whether brand personality perception differences exist among different types of industrial transactions and among different members in the buying center. The analysis yields a framework for theoretical discussion and provides B2B managers with a tool to build strong B2B brands in an increasingly competitive industrial market.     

Predicting the level of B2B e-commerce in industrial organizations

Through the use of business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B e-commerce), leading companies are transforming interorganizational transaction processing, trading, and collaboration into a competitive advantage. The research empirically examines several models with B2B e-commerce overall use as the dependent variable and innovation characteristics, context, channel factors, and organizational structure as the predictor variables. The results demonstrate that compatibility with existing systems, cooperative norms with customers, lateral integration within a firm, technocratic specialization, and decentralization of information technology decisions facilitate B2B e-commerce overall use. In addition, large firms are more likely than small firms to have greater levels of B2B e-commerce and firms are more likely to use B2B e-commerce with customers that use recommendations rather than threats to encourage e-commerce use.     

Exploring the contribution of management innovation to the evolution of dynamic capabilities

Companies that find innovative ways to manage capabilities gain competitive advantages. The results of multiple case studies of capital goods manufacturing companies suggest that management innovation contributes to dynamic capabilities. The findings confirm the importance of sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring as dynamic capabilities. Management innovation differs in terms of whether it contributes to sensing, seizing, or reconfiguring. The findings describe issues of management innovation, such as key change agents and utilization (motivation, invention, implementation, as well as theorizing and labeling), which facilitate sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring. Maintaining capability-driven competitive advantages is not limited to the innovation of products and services, but should also address management innovation that drives dynamic capabilities. The present study relies on a novel conceptualization of dynamic capabilities through management innovation. This conceptualization advances theory-building on the issue of dynamic capabilities.     

The impact of external forces on cartel network dynamics: Direct research in the diamond industry

This paper describes the impact of external environmental forces on cartel networks. Using a case research approach, this report examines two leading business networks within one industry, over time. The results suggest that (a) bargaining power of intermediaries increases with the advent of new and powerful actors, (b) process activities that cartels previously controlled are being outsourced to new actors sometimes based in developing countries, (c) other actors are acquiring resources once dominated by a cartel, (d) external forces triggered by the illegal diamond trade, such as international regulatory constraints, no longer favour cartels like De Beers, and (e) over time, these and additional environment factors are forcing actors like De Beers who perform rigid process activities to become more flexible. For example, forces are moving cartels which relied previously on hand-picked intermediaries in highly controlled networks to market their products to adopt a flexible market-focused expansion of operations in retail contexts.     

The involvement and influence of emotions in problematic business relationships

This paper discusses emotions as mediators in business-to-business relationships which is an understudied topic. Yet within consumer marketing, emotions have been widely studied, and calls have been made for business relationship research to take account of managers' emotions. This study addresses the gap by firstly establishing the relevance of emotions in problematic business relationships and secondly showing how emotions are a major component in determining the outcomes of the problematic relationships. Interview data in the form of narratives describing problematic relationships is analyzed and identifies both the emotions experienced by participants and their role in the future course of the business relationship.     

Relationship equity and switching behavior in the adoption of new telecommunication services

This paper first defines and then presents a model of “relationship equity” for business markets. It points out that the potential benefits of managing relationship equity have been largely ignored and that a general model and stream of relevant research questions could be useful to marketing and relationship practitioners. The model developed considers the special case of key account management as antecedent, two different types of moderator variables, relationship equity as a perception by the buyer, and switching behavior via adoption of new telecommunication services as a result of this perception. The model is used as a basis for developing a number of working propositions.