Search results

This study examines the potential of foreign business-to-business (B2B) firms to select high-status local partners in emerging markets to achieve positive relationship outcomes. Because a domestic firm’s high status may also promote opportunism, the study also examines if the foreign B2B firms may mitigate such behavior through either or both transaction-specific investments (TSIs) and socialization.

The research is conducted via a model that suggests a positive correlation between high local partner status and the focal relationship outcomes and the moderating effects of structural TSIs and social governance systems. The model was developed and empirically tested using data collected from 96 foreign firms operating in China.

Using multiple regressions, the findings suggest that foreign B2B firms are likely to achieve more beneficial relationship outcomes with high-status local partners. Standing alone, foreign B2B firms’ TSIs mitigate the positive relationship outcomes, whereas their socialization with the high-status partners enhances the beneficial outcomes. Most importantly, combining socialization with TSIs increases beneficial outcomes.

This study adds to B2B marketing, status theory and the application of transaction cost economics (TCE) and social exchange theory to foreign-local B2B exchange relationships in emerging markets. The findings confirm the attractiveness of high status in emerging markets by exploring how the selection, formation and chosen B2B governance processes may lead to competing outcomes of opportunism or success. Future research will benefit from simultaneously securing data from both sides of the dyad.

The paper suggests that foreign B2B firms consider high status as a key criterion in selecting local partners in emerging markets and the importance of managing high-status partners’ potential opportunism by effective governance mechanisms.

This study is one of the first to apply and explore the workings of status theory in the foreign-local B2B partner selection process and relationship outcomes in emerging markets and thereby contributes to B2B marketing, status theory and both TCE and social exchange theories in the focal foreign-local B2B context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the cognitive appraisals, coping choices and behavioral responses by business-to-business (B2B) sales professionals confronting the acutely stressful experience of losing a customer, and their pursuit of justice in the win-back process, influences reacquisition outcomes. The paper further examines the role of sales experience as a moderator between coping choices and successful win back.

In all, 98 critical incidents were reported by sales professionals from B2B firms across various industries. NVivo 9, content analysis and logistic regression were used to analyze the data.

The results show that problem-focused coping (PFC) and pro-active responses positively affect win-back outcome. By contrast, emotion-focused coping (EFC) and re-active responses have a negative association with customer reacquisition. The findings also show that sales experience moderates the relationship between levels of EFC and win-back outcomes. Specifically, for sales professionals with low levels of EFC, sales experience helps improve chances of winning back lost customers. But for sales professionals using higher levels of EFC, more sales experience decreases win-back probability. Additionally, the findings show that procedural, interactional and distributive justice all contribute to successful customer reacquisition.

The few published studies of how B2B sales professionals deal with customer defections reveal a mixture of bereavement and drivenness in striving for new accounts. The authors’ focus and findings on the use of PFC and EFC strategies, justice mechanisms and the uneven role of experience in responding to this stressful context suggests that there is much to be gained from additional research. Specifically, probes into how sales professionals may be inadvertently skewed to EFC behaviors by either overly simplistic training systems, learning- versus performance-based incentives or their experience with prior customer defections.

The findings highlight the importance of PFC strategies and the delivery of procedural, interactional and distributive justice strategies to productively adapt to customer defections, activate switch back behavior and win back lost customers. Sales force training systems need to address the increased churning in B2B markets and integrate win-back procedures in sales training programs so that sales professionals do not default to EFC and/or strive for new accounts when facing the stress of customer defection.

The findings contribute to customer defection management and sales literature by integrating coping and justice theories in exploring sales professionals’ cognitive appraisals and coping responses to the acute stress of losing a current customer.

The purpose of this study is to examine the concept of customer value and its role in building switching costs perceptions. The current research develops scales and empirically validates a typology of customer value for business services.

Through an extensive literature review, qualitative interviews, and an empirical investigation, the current study identifies three facets of customer value for business services (i.e. economic value, relational value, and core value) and investigates their relationships with buyers' perceptions of switching costs. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to evaluate a measurement model and structural relationships.

The findings show that economic value and the value obtained from relational and support aspects of a service exert strong positive impact on customers' perceptions of switching costs and thus serve as barriers to exit. Although core service does not seem to have positive impact on switching costs, core value maybe a “hygiene” factor that may promote customers' switching if not properly managed.

The results of this study are generated from a single industry; additional studies in other industries may strengthen the generalizability of the proposed constructs and framework.

Business suppliers need to build exit barriers through co‐creating relational value. Through communications, suppliers may be able to monitor customers' desired value as a proactive action to anticipate changes and to influence positive changes in customer value.

The current study sheds some light on how supplier firms can enhance switching costs, and consequently raise exit barriers by better managing various aspects of customer value perceptions.

Case research has typically been criticized as lacking objectivity and methodological rigor. It has, therefore, taken a back seat to more quantitative methods like survey and experimental methods when conducting business-to-business research. However, many of the issues of importance to business-to-business research take place in a rich and theoretically important context. When a phenomenon of interest takes place within a complex context, case research is often the most appropriate means to pursue investigation. Thus, in order to enhance the legitimacy of case research, a systematic case methodology is developed that addresses the traditional criticisms. Central to this method are three critical aspects. First, all research must begin with theory development. Second, the research design must be logical and systematic. Third, findings must be independently evaluated. By designing research projects around these aspects, case studies can provide marketers with one more tool to investigate business-to-business marketing, its processes, and the complex environment in which it operates. Specifically, case research is thought to be beneficial is studying network systems, international business-to-business marketing, and the industrial new product development processes.

This study aims to test a theoretical research model specifying how two emerging job stressors, i.e. centralized authority and reporting requirements, influence hotel managers’ well-being. A mediated model through reappraisal is hypothesized.

The model was tested on 600 Norwegian and Swedish hotel managers using a questionnaire survey (72 per cent response rate). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analyses, correlation and structural equation modeling, which included bootstrapping.

Job stressors were negatively related to well-being, whereas reappraisal had a positive influence on well-being. A positive relationship was found between reporting requirements and reappraisal, while the opposite appeared for centralized authority. A negative mediating role of reappraisal existed in the relationship between centralized authority and well-being, while there was a positive one in the relationship between reporting requirements and well-being.

The findings will have important implications for management practices, as they illuminate how job stressors reduce well-being on the one hand and how reappraisal positively influences well-being on the other. This knowledge indicates that reappraisal is important for well-being when faced with stressful environments. The findings illustrate the importance of controlling stress in the managerial environment, and for hotel managers to maintain the ability to reappraise.

The study advances the knowledge of the managerial role, as well as the importance of reappraisal and well-being. This is the first empirical study among hotel managers testing a research model that illustrates how job stressors and reappraisal influence well-being.

The present state of the financial services industry suggests the need for banks to appeal to consumers’ emotions with the aim of improving their reputation; this study aims to explore how UK banks are using emotional appeals in their advertisements and how this shapes consumers’ attitudes towards their brands.

Qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis in a two-stage study – Study 1 analysed the content of 1,274 UK bank advertisements to understand how the banks convey emotional appeals, whereas Study 2 elicited consumers’ perceptions of these advertising appeals and how they influenced their attitudes through semi-structured interview with 33 UK retail bank customers in London and Luton.

UK banks are using emotional appeals in their marketing communication strategies. The qualitative findings highlight the bi-dimensional nature of feelings towards the advertisements and how this relates to the brand. There is a lacklustre attitude towards the brands; there was no sense of pride in associating with any bank, even with though there are possibilities of switching; and consumers feel there is no better offer elsewhere as all banks are the same.

Bank brands should present distinct values about their services to the target audience, endeavour to build relationships with existing customers and reward loyalty. Importantly, financial brands need to engage in and highlight charitable activities and any corporate social responsibility as this can help to improve consumers’ attitudes as they often consider bank brands greedy and selfish.

Qualitative research methodology was adopted to better understand consumers’ attitudes towards UK retail bank brands.

The purpose of this study is to develop a sales process framework to facilitate business-to-business (B2B) customer reacquisition. A comprehensive CRM process needs to include reacquisition strategies. Yet, very few firms have formal procedures to guide reacquisition efforts. This gap in the sales process reflects the relatively sparse literature on B2B customer reacquisition models. The present research intends to fill this gap and creates a sales process model to guide salespeople to regain B2B lost customers.

Using critical incident technique (CIT), this study conducted in-depth interviews with 54 B2B salespeople. Each salesperson reported one successful and one unsuccessful reacquisition incidents. A total of 108 critical incidents were collected for analysis.

A four-step sales process model to regain B2B customers was developed and empirically supported, including: Segment lost customers; Assess reasons for loss; Develop reacquisition activities; and Implement reacquisition strategies.

This study is qualitative and exploratory in nature; future research should develop dyadic surveys to validate the results.

This four-step reacquisition process allows sales firms to identify essential elements and establish protocols/policies to train and motivate salespeople. The framework can facilitate salespeople develop problem-focused solutions to correctly diagnose the situation and effectively re-negotiate with defected customers. Thus, this process may help reduce inefficiency in the reacquisition process and increase reacquisition ratios.

By considering justice/fairness from customer’s perspective, sales firm may properly recover lost business relationship, and do so in ways that are considered both just and ethical.

This is one of the first studies to examine the reacquisition of lost B2B customers. It expands on the traditional sales process to include four steps that enable a sales reacquisition process.

The purpose of this study is to reduce the semantic distance by proposing a model for integrating indexes of textual and visual features via a multi-modality ontology and the use of DBpedia to improve the comprehensiveness of the ontology to enhance semantic retrieval.

A multi-modality ontology-based approach was developed to integrate high-level concepts and low-level features, as well as integrate the ontology base with DBpedia to enrich the knowledge resource. A complete ontology model was also developed to represent the domain of sport news, with image caption keywords and image features. Precision and recall were used as metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of the multi-modality approach, and the outputs were compared with those obtained using a single-modality approach (i.e. textual ontology and visual ontology).

The results based on ten queries show a superior performance of the multi-modality ontology-based IMR system integrated with DBpedia in retrieving correct images in accordance with user queries. The system achieved 100 per cent precision for six of the queries and greater than 80 per cent precision for the other four queries. The text-based system only achieved 100 per cent precision for one query; all other queries yielded precision rates less than 0.500.

This study only focused on BBC Sport News collection in the year 2009.

The paper includes implications for the development of ontology-based retrieval on image collection.

This study demonstrates the strength of using a multi-modality ontology integrated with DBpedia for image retrieval to overcome the deficiencies of text-based and ontology-based systems. The result validates semantic text-based with multi-modality ontology and DBpedia as a useful model to reduce the semantic distance.

This paper aims to examine diners’ luxury restaurant consumption behavior by incorporating diner expectations into a modified Mehrabian–Russell model. Consumers dine at luxury restaurants for reasons beyond fulfilling basic needs. However, little is known about the factors that contribute to diners’ emotions and loyalty toward luxury restaurants.

To examine the proposed six hypotheses, qualitative and quantitative studies were performed. Following exploratory qualitative research, 310 consumers who dined at Taiwan’s five-star hotel restaurants were recruited for the main study. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results show that restaurants’ stimuli influence diners’ positive and negative emotions (organisms), which, in turn, affect their loyalty toward luxury restaurants (responses). Furthermore, customers with different levels of expectation react differently to stimuli.

This study offers new empirical support for the proposition that diner expectation plays a role in building customer loyalty and, thereby, shades both theoretical and managerial understanding of the luxury restaurant consumption process.

This study conceptualizes diners’ loyalty toward luxury restaurants (e.g. revisiting and recommending luxury restaurants) by examining the influence of restaurants’ stimuli, diners’ emotions and customers’ expectations toward luxury restaurants. Additionally, this study offers some managerial implications for practitioners.