Entrepreneurial branding: measuring consumer preferences through choice-based conjoint analysis

Start-ups face branding challenges. Not only are they confronted with the task of building brands from scratch, their newness also leads to a particularly high amount of customer uncertainty. This paper contributes to the emerging field of entrepreneurial branding by investigating start-up characteristics that signal trustworthy information to potential customers. An extended choice-based conjoint approach for modeling brand equity is used to explore the impact of different signals as initiated by established and new firms in the field of tablet computers. An empirical study reveals brand signals that have significant effects on purchase probabilities and are appropriate to overcome information asymmetries between start-ups and prospective customers.     

Competing technologies and industry evolution: The benefits of making mistakes in the flat panel display industry

This article investigates the post‐entry implications of pre‐entry technological choices made during the uncertain period before a dominant design. Building on work on technological dynamics and organizational inertia, I argue that too early commitments to the winning technology may impede the ability to bring the best product to market, but delaying investment too long limits the ability to accumulate useful knowledge. Using data from the evolution of the flat panel display industry from 1965 to 2005, the study shows empirical support for the two theoretical mechanisms and offers the surprising result that firms starting in the losing technology before switching outperform other firms in terms of product value. Switching, while difficult behaviorally in recovering from failure, both delays difficult‐to‐reverse technological commitments and develops market knowledge. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reversing course: Competing technologies,mistakes, and renewal in flat panel displays

Research summary: The study explores renewal in a novel but understudied context—an era of ferment with competing technological options. It focuses on IBM's transition from market leadership in a failed path (plasma) to leadership in the emerging dominant technology (LCD) in the 1980s. Interviews and internal documents offer two primary factors explaining renewal at IBM. First, IBM Research had a hybrid structure that captured the benefits of both centralized and decentralized R&D. Second, middle managers shaped senior management cognitive frames to focus on business‐related issues instead of specific technical issues, thus bypassing biases often resulting from failure. The study offers an integrated framework on what facilitates flexibility at the technology, organization, and decision‐making levels. This flexibility helps firms survive a turbulent era of ferment. Managerial summary: Firms facing technological uncertainty may need to recover from unlucky bets. But responding to failure is politically and organizationally difficult. This study explores how IBM recovered from its failed bet on plasma displays to lead the LCD display market. This study identifies six key factors, highlighting two. First, IBM's researchers received centralized funding, but could also receive funding directly from division managers. This structure helped preserve options and variety. Second, internal LCD champions focused on the business case for displays and not technology. This fostered technology agnosticism and helped avoid managerial biases from failure. For managers looking to use real options to maintain flexibility in an uncertain environment, this study offers clear suggestions related to design and decision making that can foster flexibility. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Examining the relationship between customer and entrepreneurial orientation on nascent firms’ marketing strategy

Is entrepreneurial marketing (EM) a ??one type fits all?? approach? Research suggests that EM is especially suitable for small firms. However, it is obvious that??despite their size??small firms show a myriad of different characteristics. In this paper, it is argued that different firm characteristics can be seen in different business orientations, namely customer orientation (CO) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO). In turn, different amounts of EO and CO lead to different forms of EM strategy. The Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) serves as source to investigate relationships between EO, CO, and respective marketing strategies among nascent firms. The study suggests that innovativeness is strongly related to the importance of several marketing strategies, such as developing new or advanced product or process technologies. However, other strategies, such as lower prices or convenient location, are not related to either significant levels of CO or EO. The paper offers two main implications. Firstly, small business founders have to be aware of the fact that certain strategies cannot come ??out of nowhere??. This paper shows that running proactive marketing strategies that aim for ongoing innovativeness require the existence of an underlying EO. Secondly, there are different forms of ??small firm EM??; a finding that requires further research in the future.     

The negative effect of NCAA football bowl bans on university enrolment and applications

Universities provide consumption amenities to students in addition to their educational services. Collegiate sports programs have been characterized as one of these consumption amenities. Previous research has shown that athletic success has a positive impact on both the quantity and quality of students attending a university. Alternatively, we analyse if athletic malfeasance, as measured by NCAA postseason bans of football programs, negatively affects either the quantity or quality of student applications or enrolment. Our findings suggest that athletic malfeasance that results in a postseason football bowl ban lowers the quantity of applications, admittances and enrolment to a university. In addition, we find that universities respond to decreased application numbers by increasing their admission rates, while students who are admitted to the school enrol at the same rate as before the ban. Thus, the reduced enrolment is the result of a smaller applicant pool and not the result of a lower rate of enrolment. Lastly, we do not detect any reduction in student quality at the sanctioned university. Our results demonstrate that impropriety by an athletics program directly impacts a university’s non-athlete student enrolment by influencing the amenity mix provided by the university.     

The impact of brand authenticity on brand trust and SME growth: A CEO perspective

This article investigates the linkages between brand authenticity, brand trust, and SME growth from a CEO perspective. Brand authenticity is operationalized as consisting of three factors: brand consistency, brand customer orientation, and brand congruency. The hypotheses derived in this paper will be tested with new measures and data from 285 German SMEs using structural equation modeling. The results confirm that brand consistency and congruency foster brand trust, which in turn drives SME growth.     

Public transaction costs of agri-environmental schemes and their determinants—Analysing stakeholders' involvement and perceptions

Despite an overall budget increase for rural development in the new programming period (2007-2013), most older Member States in the now expanded European Union are facing a substantial reduction in their budget for rural development and thus for agri-environmental schemes (AESs). It can be assumed that, in most countries, none or at best only part of this loss can be offset by national funds. Therefore the design of more efficient national governance structures for AESs, which decrease public transaction costs (TCs), would be an appropriate solution to this problem. The objective of this paper is to define the factors that influence these public TCs, so that appropriate action can then be taken to reduce them. A statistical analysis, with a proxy for public TCs, is combined with an analysis of stakeholder perceptions (excluding farmers) concerning public TC influencing factors. The research showed that it is mainly scheme related factors that are perceived to be important, although the governance structure, institutional environment and level of trust also play a role. Finally, the analysis of perceptions concerning TCs also showed that AES related actors have a limited knowledge of TCs.