Using actors' perceptions of network roles and positions to understand network dynamics

This article explores network dynamics by analysing how actors make sense of time and space in business networks, and how they act based on these perceptions. The time dimension is understood here as actors' perceptions of past, present and future changes in their network. The space dimension is understood, first, in terms of the network position a company holds in relation to its business partners, and secondly, in terms of the network role it enacts. As such, this study relates three pivotal concepts in industrial marketing: network change, network position, and network role. The link between these three relates to the interdependencies within a network, in that if one company attempts to change its position, this will in turn affect the position of other companies. Moreover, actors' attempts to change their position or role in the network are directed by their subjective sensemaking or perceptions of their surrounding network. In this article we posit that in order to understand network dynamics we must analyse how actors attempt to affect change based on their perceptions of their positions and roles in their network environment. Our analysis suggests that although there are similarities between perceptions by actors holding similar positions in the network, such network positions alone cannot explain their actions. Rather, differences in actors' interpretations and enactments of their network role are necessary to explain their networking activities. We use an extensive case study of the changing distribution structure for seafood in Norway and Japan to exemplify these points.     

Driving Trucks and Driving Sales? The Impact of Delivery Personnel on Customer Purchase Behavior

This study investigates how and under what conditions delivery persons, specifically truck drivers of a supplier firm, affect customers’ purchase behavior in industrial customer–supplier relationships. Drawing on service quality and customer contact literature, we test a proposed theoretical model that suggests a positive direct effect of personal contact quality (provided by a delivery person) on sales as well as three situational constraints that determine the occurrence and strength of the direct effect.     

The Risk‐Sharing Implications of Disaster Insurance Funds

We study the risk‐sharing implications that arise from introducing a disaster insurance fund to the cat insurance market. Such a form of intervention can increase efficiency in the private market, and our design of disaster insurance suggests a prominent role of catastrophe reinsurance. The model predicts buyers will increase their demand in the private market, and the seller will lower prices to such an extent that their revenues decrease upon introduction of disaster insurance. We test two predictions in the context of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA). It is already known that the introduction of TRIA led to negative abnormal returns in the insurance industry. In addition, we show this negative effect is stronger for larger and for low‐risk‐averse firms—two results that are consistent with our model. The seller’s risk aversion plays an important role in quantifying such feedback effects, and we point toward possible distortions in which a firm may even be overhedged upon introduction of disaster insurance.     

Do people behave in experiments as in the field?—evidence from donations

Laboratory experiments are an important methodology in economics, especially in the field of behavioral economics. However, it is still debated to what extent results from laboratory experiments are informative about behavior in field settings. One highly important question about the external validity of experiments is whether the same individuals act in experiments as they would in the field. This paper presents evidence on how individuals behave in donation experiments and how the same individuals behave in a naturally occurring decision situation on charitable giving. While we find evidence that pro-social behavior is more accentuated in the lab, the data show that pro-social behavior in experiments is correlated with behavior in the field.      

Positioning of commodities using the Kraljic Portfolio Matrix

This article proposes a more objective methodology to classify and position commodities (works and services) in the Kraljic Portfolio Matrix (KPM) in a continuous scale around the two dimensions of supply risk and profit impact—the two dimensions which mainly influence the choice of a firm's purchasing strategy. Fuzzy multi-attribute scoring is used to assign performance scores to different commodities on supply risk as well as profit impact attributes. With a multidimensional scaling approach the commodities are placed in the KPM. An application of the proposed approach is attempted on commodities procured by the Rural Development Department of a state government in India.     

Susanne Fengler,Universität Dortmund

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