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The motivation for this study comes from decision making related to strategic marketing orientations in international markets. The authors examine if customer orientation and customer relationship orientation perform as two distinct constructs in driving firm innovativeness, and how together they support business growth among export firms. This study aims to suggest a customer-centric strategy for export firms that drive innovativeness and growth.

An international corporation specialized in company information services provided a list of the contact information of Italian companies. The authors sent an email request to respond to an online survey and received 416 effective responses from firms operating in export markets. The authors propose and empirically test a model in which customer orientation, customer relationship orientation and innovativeness predict business growth. This model controls for the effects of firm size, industry and customer type (B2B vs. B2C).

The study findings suggest that customer orientation and customer relationship orientation are two distinct strategic orientations driving innovativeness. However, they do not directly affect business growth. Instead, they require the innovativeness of an exporter to materialize as business growth.

The results of the study recommend business strategies focusing not only on customer needs and satisfaction but also on retaining current customers and building customer relationships in international markets. Firms can learn from international customers and develop effective customer-centric strategies to spread the acquired information into the internal decision-making as it contributes to firm innovativeness and business growth in international markets.

This study is one of the pioneering studies combining customer orientation and customer relationship orientation, showing their theoretical and empirical divergence. This study is also among the first which tests how the two strategic orientations together with innovativeness promote business growth among export firms. The authors add understanding of the synergistic effects both of using customer information and developing deeper relationships on firm innovativeness and performance among exporters.

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the supply and demand of marketing and communication consulting services and evaluate actual and perceived gaps.

The paper uses two different datasets to assess the gap. The supply database comes from desk research carried out in the province of Bergamo (n. 159 consulting agencies). The demand dates are the results of 100 structured interviews with local companies that requested marketing and communication consulting services both inside and outside the province.

Findings show that there is no significant shortage in local service supply. Nonetheless, a limited gap exists between the provision of specific services and their overall quality. Conversely, the perceived gap is wider, leading to an impression of scarce availability – a notion disproven by the analysis of the actual supply.

The study suggests that local agencies may overcome their “myopic” attitude and need to increase their visibility, competencies and expertise by investing in these areas and improving networking.

There are no previous studies that compare the supply and demand for marketing and communication consulting services. The paper also provides insights into actual and perceived gaps in a hypercompetitive environment.

This conceptual, multi-voiced paper aims to collectively explore and theorize family entrepreneuring, which is a research stream dedicated to investigating the emergence and becoming of entrepreneurial phenomena in business families and family firms.

Because of the novelty of this research stream, the authors asked 20 scholars in entrepreneurship and family business to reflect on topics, methods and issues that should be addressed to move this field forward.

Authors highlight key challenges and point to new research directions for understanding family entrepreneuring in relation to issues such as agency, processualism and context.

This study offers a compilation of multiple perspectives and leverage recent developments in the fields of entrepreneurship and family business to advance research on family entrepreneuring.

The purpose of this paper is to study the radio resource assignment problem in the context of a heterogeneous ad hoc network, composed of 1EEE802.15.4 sensor devices, their coordinators, mobile terminals conveying vldeo streams, and sinks. This scenario also fits to the paradigm of opportunistic networks.

In such hierarchical heterogeneous opportunistic networks, the focus is on cross‐layer scheduling of the video and sensor traffics toward the sink. The scheduling strategy proposed takes into account information coming from both physical and application layers. Evaluations are performed via simulations.

Results show that the proposed cross‐layer strategy significantly outperforms the maximum throughput scheduling, used as a benchmark, in case of video traffic, while preseruing the same performance for 802.15.4 traffic.

The architecture and the relevant algorithms proposed could be used in realistic emergency‐deployed networks composed by the kind of nodes considered in the paper.

The novelty introduced is related to the application of a crosslayer design strategy in a very peculiar hierarchical heterogeneous opportunistic ad hoc network. This paper is believed to be the first published combining traditional tratfic sources with sensor generated data flows.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the packaging and operation of an electronic tongue sensor. The sensor will be used in an industrial setting and the packaging needs to withstand the harsh clean‐in‐place (CIP) routines that are commonly employed. A suitable epoxy, Loctite FP4450 HYSOL, was identified from a number of packaging materials. The sensor was validated by carrying out cyclic voltammetry in a number of reference solutions including sulphuric acid solution and ferrocyanide in potassium chloride solution, which gave well‐defined reduction and oxidation peaks that could be compared with the literature. The operation of the sensor in mixtures of salt and citric acid solutions was also investigated and it was seen that by applying a carefully selected voltage window and scan rate to each electrode, the sensor could distinguish between the different mixtures. Further experimentation and the application of principle component analysis have shown the sensor to have good repeatability.

This paper concentrates on the ability of the sensor packaging to withstand a typical industrial CIP procedure. A number of packaging materials are investigated. In addition, the operation of the sensor has been investigated by using cyclic voltammetry.

One successful packaging material is Loctite 9461A&B HYSOL. Poly ether ether ketone also performs well after repeated CIP exposure. For ease of manufacture, Loctite FP4450 HYSOL is the epoxy of choice. An extensive matrix of test solutions was prepared from salt and citric acid powders. The aim was to investigate the sensor's ability to distinguish between increasing concentration levels of salt and citric acid and also to investigate how the sensor operates in mixtures of the solutions. By carefully choosing the applied voltage window and scan rate, the electrodes can distinguish between the mixtures

This research work has highlighted a robust packaging material to withstand industrial CIP procedures.