Kunden- oder Markenorientierung – Zwei Seiten einer Medaille oder alternative Routen?

Kundenorientierung bildet seit langem den Kern eines modernen Marketingverst?ndnisses. Allerdings ist fraglich, ob es nicht Alternativen zu einer Kundenorientierung gibt. Dieser Artikel pr?sentiert mit der Markenorientierung eine solche alternative strategische Orientierung und diskutiert die Unterschiede zwischen Kunden- und Markenorientierung auf einer theoretischen, kulturellen, verhaltens- und controllingorientierten Ebene.     

The role of Swedish retailers in food innovations

Innovations should create value for increasingly individualistic consumers with varying demands and for other stakeholders. Today, retailers have the power in the supply/value chain. This research investigates how Swedish food retailers view innovations, their role and that of customers and suppliers in the development process and how they see future development. The study is based on open-ended interviews. The results show that Swedish retailers regard food product innovations as something to provide to consumers rather than achieve with consumers. Retailers want more collaboration with packaging suppliers to differentiate. Retailers are successful in establishing their own brands, in becoming brands themselves and in competing with producer brands. This follows the UK model and may result in fewer alternatives in stores and fewer product – or new technology-based innovations by Swedish producers. Service innovations can still occur for retailers to retain consumer loyalty. Consumers demand more than new products; they want to be excited by the shopping experience. More innovations will require deeper insight about consumers, efforts from the value chain and from outsiders. Collaboration is needed to establish trust among supply chain actors.     

Improved road accessibility and indirect development effects: evidence from rural Philippines

This paper develops earlier conceptual frameworks and methods for analyzing the indirect development effects of improved road accessibility. The creation of economic opportunity and response to economic opportunity are the two concepts used in the theoretical framework, while time-series data, a road accessibility inventory, and a multi-criteria analysis were the methods used to analyse the indirect effects among households and household firms. A weakness of many impact studies is that they merely chart aggregate economic development. The method employed here includes access to resources by various groups and therefore enables the focus to shift from mere aggregate economic development to also encompass equitable and sustainable social development. The study focused on a rural Philippine fishing community, previously characterized by poor transport conditions and poor accessibility to major markets. It found that the benefits of the road improvement were considerable and benefited a great majority of the population in the fishing community. In addition to the extensive direct effects of the improved road, a number of complementary factors led to substantial indirect effects. These included: abundance of harvested resource in the community; a potential for technical innovations that increased production and productivity; available investment to support this increased production; abundant demand for this increased production in the market region (the market widened in spatial terms and prices were maintained).     

The business model dilemma of technology shifts

Technology shifts are lethal to many manufacturing companies. Previous research indicates that this is not purely a problem of technological innovation, but is also closely related to the inertia of business models and business model innovation. This paper inquires into the dynamics of this intersection between technology and business models. Anchored in a case study in the automotive industry, it reveals how a potential technology shift constitutes a business model dilemma for firms leading in the existing technology. The paper illustrates why technology shifts are so difficult to master and contributes to theory by suggesting that managing technology shifts does not require either technology or service innovation in order to create a viable business model, but instead a compound of both. Furthermore, the paper applies a business model perspective to illustrate the explanatory power of analyzing the challenges of technology shifts faced by incumbent firms.     

The changing role of middlemen — Strategic responses to distribution dynamics

Middlemen in distribution are challenged by considerable changes in their business contexts.     

Workplace bullying as an antecedent to job insecurity and intention to leave: a 6‐month prospective study

Workplace bullying is a severe problem in contemporary working life, affecting up to 15 per cent of employees. Among the detrimental outcomes of bullying, it is even postulated as a major risk factor for exclusion from work. In support of this claim, the current study demonstrates that exposure to bullying behaviour predicts an increase in both levels of job insecurity and intention to leave over a 6‐month time lag, among a random sample of North Sea workers (n = 734). The findings suggest that bullied employees are insecure about the permanence and content of their job, and they may be at risk of turnover and exclusion from working life. It is recommended that these outcomes are taken into consideration when incidences of workplace bullying are addressed.     

A Contingency‐Based Approach to the Use of Product Platforms and Modules in New Product Development

To face the challenges of increasing demand for variety, more specific customer demands and shortening product life cycles, firms increasingly adopt mass customization techniques. Two important such techniques are product modularization and product platform development, which allow firms to reach high levels of product variety, and at the same time, keep complexity and its related costs at a limited level. Often modularization and product platform development are treated as variants of the same basic idea. However, even if the concepts are closely related, they also have some fundamental differences, which influence their usefulness and applicability in different settings. One potential shortcoming of existing literature on modularization and product platforms is the present lack of research on their limitations and potential negative effects. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify and explore contingencies influencing the applicability of modularization and product platforms, respectively, taking their different economic effects as a starting point. Moreover, the paper addresses how different organizing solutions are interrelated with the use of modularization and product platform approaches. The empirical observations originate from studies of three Swedish manufacturing firms. The study reveals that important contingencies affecting the applicability of modularization and product platforms are demand side characteristics and the speed of environmental change. Furthermore, it is seen that firms need to organize themselves differently with respect to how they combine modularization and platforms, for example, in terms of degree of centralization, formalization, and allocation of decision‐making authority, and that this poses challenges to the combined use of the two approaches.     

Sickness Absence and Local Benefit Cultures

In many countries, sickness absence financed by generous insurance benefits is an important concern in the policy debate. There are strong variations in absence behavior among local geographical areas. Such variations are difficult to explain in terms of observable socioeconomic factors. In this paper, we investigate whether such variations are related to group effects in the form of social interaction among individuals within neighborhoods. Well‐known methodological problems arise when trying to answer this question. A special feature of our efforts to deal with these problems is that we adopt several alternative approaches to identify group effects. Our study is based on a rich set of Swedish panel data, and we find indications of group effects in each of our approaches.