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The purpose of this paper is to integrate aspects of the literature on strategic and performance groups and explicitly derive strategic/performance groups which exhibit differences with respect to both strategy and performance, as well as display associations and potential interrelationships between the two sets of variables.

A two‐way clusterwise bilinear spatial model was formulated (e.g. a scalar products or vector multidimensional scaling model (MDS)) for the analysis of two‐way strategic and performance data which simultaneously performs MDS and cluster analysis. An efficient alternating least‐squares procedure was devised that estimates conditionally globally optimum estimates of the model parameters within each iterate in analytic, closed‐form expressions.

This bilinear MDS methodology was deployed in the context of strategic/performance group estimation using archival data for public banks in the NY‐NJ‐PA tri‐state area. For this illustration, four strategic/performance groups and two underlying dimensions were found.

Consideration of both strategy and performance data should be employed in describing the heterogeneity amongst firms competing in the same industry.

The paper provides a new spatial methodology to derive strategic/performance groups in any given industry to more completely summarize intra‐industry heterogeneity.

In recent years, many U.S. direct marketers have expanded their efforts into Asia. A few studies of consumers’ attitudes towards direct marketing were conducted outside of the United States in order to ascertain their attitudes towards direct marketing, privacy, environmental concerns, and trust issues. International direct marketers must take care to respect these issues before entering new countries, such as Taiwan and other emerging markets. The following article reports the results of a survey done in both the U.S. and Taiwan.

This study aims to explore if and how business-to-business (B2B) companies can use social media to influence the buying process.

The study uses an exploratory approach into the existing literature related to the B2B buying process and its relationship with social media.

The study shows that companies in a B2B context can use social media as a means of influencing the stages of the buying process by means of using one or more of the seven functional blocks of social media.

The findings demonstrate the relation that exists between each stage of the buyer process in a B2B organization and the functional blocks of social media. This study opens the door for further research into the influence of each of these blocks on the buying process stages and the roles involved.

This study identifies how social media’s blocks influence the different stages and how organizations can use that to their benefit.

Few studies have investigated the use of social media in a B2B context. However, not many have looked into the influence of social media in the B2B buying process and buying center. This study looks into the relationship between the buying process stages and social media’s functional blocks as related to the different roles of the buying center.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of market orientation (MO) and service quality (SQ) logic on business performance. It is generally believed that MO and SQ are different philosophies, as the first, mainly, focuses on the “external orientation or market based considerations”, whereas the second mainly falls into the “internal orientation or resource based” of the firm. However, very little empirical evidence is provided to examine their relationships and comment on their role in achieving superior business performance.

Drawing evidence from 400 shipping firms, this study examines the role of these two concepts (MO and SQ) on shipping companies’ business performance and attempts to classify cases according to their score on those constructs.

Analysis revealed that despite what was thought by most managers inside and outside the maritime sector, all shipping firms are strongly market-oriented and that SQ and business performance are closely related to each other.

The present survey, using a sample of 700 maritime professionals from some 400 shipping companies in Greece, aimed at exploring the combined effects of marketing orientation and quality on their performance. It further discriminates among three types (states) of companies based on their MO and SQ scores.

This paper aims to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by buying centers in small and medium enterprises (SME) manufacturing companies in view of recent technological changes and the virtualization of communication.

This study uses a qualitative approach with multiple case studies to portray complex realities within the buying centers in the manufacturing SME context. The authors selected five Italian companies to portray the diverse characteristics, practices and policies of relevant stakeholders before reaching saturation with the issues explored.

The authors find that interactions among buying center members are more effective with greater collaboration and exchange (as opposed to competition and a struggle for power). Virtual/hybrid relations require greater intra-group cooperation, whereas diverse backgrounds and collaborative interactions help the flexibility and performance of the buying center. Greater use of technology produces certainty and automation, but it may also cause overload and biases that can be solved with the ability to analyze and clear responsibility for decisions.

The authors studied only five Italian companies in this study. Future research in other countries with diverse cultural and socio-economic conditions and methods would help extend this research.

The findings would improve the understanding of the challenges of adopting new purchase process technologies that would help automate routine tasks, produce useful data and support decision-making.

Unlike prior studies, this study uses an exploratory design to study the evolution of buying centers in SMEs to seek deeper insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by SMEs because of the growing use of emerging technologies.

This study aims to examine if the participation of live-stream influencers (LSIs) affects tipping frequency on live streaming platforms, and further investigate the mediating and moderating mechanisms.

Quasi-experiment and difference-in-differences models are used for data analysis. Propensity score matching is used to address potential unobservable endogeneity.

Real-time live streaming data reveal that LSIs’ participation significantly improves tipping frequency in live streaming rooms. Also, more users are attracted to the live streaming rooms and more users become active in participation. Additionally, the positive impact of LSIs’ participation is enhanced in the live streaming rooms with a greater number of relationship links between users.

The findings clarify the new role of influencers and reveal the mechanisms on how LSIs benefit the platforms.

The findings offer novel insights into implementing influencer marketing to interactive social media platforms, by encouraging influencer participation, user relationship building and influencer network growth.

This study highlights the value of LSIs for interactive social media platforms in terms of organic growth, revenue generation and cost reduction.