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This article examines the use of customer service as a competitive weapon in industrial markets. The database consists of respondents from industrial firms throughout the United States. While the majority of respondents indicated a willingness to use the service option, only a few had an organisational customer service philosophy as embodied in a written customer service policy statement. An analysis of the data concluded that firms with a written customer service policy were more likely to use customer service as a competitive weapon. Furthermore, these firms also assigned greater importance to respective customer service attributes.

This study aims to assess how innovative organizational culture and innovative leadership generate market flexibility for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the service sector to enhance their competitiveness. Both organizational culture and leadership are seen as firm-level resources capable of influencing the flexibility of the firm in periods of market turbulence. The study argues that SME service firms must use their internal resources to develop their flexibility capability which is more valuable, rare, inimitable and not substitutable.

SME service firms from Ghana are used to test the study’s hypotheses through robust standard regression analysis. A sampling frame was developed from an online database of small and medium enterprises operating in the service sector.

The findings suggest that although organizational culture and leadership may influence a service firm’s competitiveness, it is more viable to use these firm-level resources to create market flexibility capability to amplify the effect. This means, when culture and leadership propel the flexibility drive, the service firm is able to connect, coordinate and synchronize functional units to take advantage of new product and market opportunities. Additionally, market flexibility emanating from organizational culture and leadership wields enough power and resource support to tackle the turbulent market conditions better than firms with less support.

The managerial implication from this study is that firms should use their organizational culture and leadership to create flexible organizations that afford them the opportunity to adapt to the environmental dynamics. If both leadership and culture work together, they are able to create strong market capabilities such as flexibility which determines how well the firm will respond to the competition, customer demand and all other external pressures. It is, therefore, the view of this paper that SMEs should use their organizational culture and leadership to build a market-flexible organization to create a competitive advantage.

This paper shows how internal resources/assets such as culture and leadership generate the needed flexibility to create a competitive advantage for SMEs. This paper explains the two dimensions of Volberda’s flexibility from a firm-level resource perspective and highlights flexibility as a second-order capability whose cultivation and effectiveness are dependent on a firm’s culture and leadership. Evidence of how a firm’s market flexibility is fuelled by organizational leadership and culture is demonstrated. Finally, this paper shows how resource-poor SMEs in emerging African economies can enhance their market competitiveness through internal systems and processes.

Evidence suggests that the recent interest in competitive strategy and competitive positioning, while good in itself, has resulted in the management of many firms placing too much emphasis on competitive performance and too little emphasis on customer expectations. This research in the chemical industry provides support for the conclusion that management needs to refocus on the customer if US companies are going to succeed in the increasingly competitive marketplace. A methodology is presented that can be used by management to collect and analyse customer‐based competitive data for use in establishing priorities for customer service expenditures.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between firm service characteristics and customer satisfaction as moderated by firm competitive strategy. Specifically, this research utilizes Porter's depiction of generic competitive strategy to explain the strength of the relationship between a service's particular servicescape choices and customer satisfaction.

The empirical data for this research were obtained from 1,287 customers of ten service organizations representing three industry segments. Multiple regression analysis is utilized to test three hypotheses that propose firm competitive strategy moderates the strength of the relationship between service characteristics and customer satisfaction.

The results support the assertion that firm competitive strategy has an impact on the strength of the relationship between customer satisfaction and servicescape characteristics. Of note, these findings indicate that the payoff for investment in physical surroundings differs depending on firm competitive strategy.

The results point to the importance of aligning firm strategy and operational decisions when seeking to maximize customer satisfaction. Decision makers benefit from understanding how strategy matters in service operational choices.

The paper makes connections across academic disciplines to highlight the importance of linking firm competitive strategy with service operation choices to enhance customer satisfaction. The model developed here, supported with empirical results, provides insights for both researchers and practitioners regarding the value of investment in service‐related activities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how an international joint venture (IJV) company can efficiently develop a competitive international service strategy in the competitive global marketplace. Specifically, this study seeks to highlight the key antecedents related to the development of an international service strategy and its implementation through the case of the IJV of Starbucks Korea.

The case study method is used. A series of in-depth personal interviews with the CEO of Starbucks Korea, a marketing manager at Starbucks Korea, and outlet managers of Starbucks Korea were conducted. Furthermore, an array of secondary data and company documentation was reviewed to triangulate the findings of the study.

Several themes illuminating the development and implementation of a successful international service strategy in the case of an international joint venture are identified. It was found that one of the critical antecedents related to the successful international service strategy in the context of an IJV is the similarity of organizational values between the IJV partners. The similarity between the corporate values and missions of the two partners in Starbucks Korea has become a major impetus in the development of a competitive international service strategy for Starbucks Korea.

The findings of the study may not be applicable to other service firms since the study uses a single firm and a single country as its context.

The results of the study should help international service firms understand the importance of a successful international service strategy in the case of an international joint venture. Furthermore, the findings of the study illustrate the importance of understanding the local culture to develop a successful international service strategy.

The primary objective of this paper is to formulate a research agenda in the area of consumer evaluation and competitive advantage in retail financial services markets. In order to achieve this objective, a brief exposition of the market‐led view of competitive advantage is provided, which emphasises the importance of the provision of “customer value” in the relevant market. The process of consumer evaluation of financial services offerings is then reviewed and potential problems in consumer understanding of some types of financial services offerings are highlighted. The implications of such problems for the formulation of value adding strategies are explored with reference to the conceptualisation of the financial service offering and in particular which elements of the offering may be particularly important in adding value in the eyes of consumers. Finally, propositions for research are developed and explored, with the aim of informing both academics and practitioners.

The paper investigates firms' optimal pricing policies and green strategies in a dynamic green supply chain with consideration of different retail service strategies. The purpose of the paper is to address the following research questions: (1) What are the optimal pricing policies and green strategies of the dynamic decentralized supply chain with the competitive or supportive retail service? (2) How does the dynamic consumer's perception of green product affect these equilibrium solutions?

The paper establishes the dynamic game models and then derives a firm's instantaneous and steady-state feedback equilibrium solutions in three scenarios as follows: (1) the integrated supply chain; (2) the decentralized supply chain with competitive retail service and (3) the decentralized supply chain with supportive retail service. Finally, we conduct numerical analyses to compare the firm's instantaneous and steady-state equilibrium solutions and profit in the three scenarios.

The theoretical and numerical analysis results suggest that the supportive retail service is less inefficient than the competitive retail service in the decentralized supply chain and that the types of retail service have no influence on the green strategy. Moreover, a firm's myopia leads to lowering the greenness degree, retail service level and severe price competition, resulting in economic losses. Consumers’ initial perception of greenness degree determines whether the retailer should adopt the skimming pricing strategy or penetration pricing strategy. Furthermore, only when consumers’ perception of greenness degree is higher than a threshold, will the manufacturer produce green product with positive greenness degree.

This is one of few studies on the effect of different types of retail service on horizontal competition in green supply chain. The extension of the static study by adopting differential game approaches provides researchers with a deeper understanding of the application of retail service in green supply chain.

States that understanding of the durability of differentiation and positioning as strategies is generally limited, although these areas are of great interest to service marketers. Argues that service marketers must be aware of the need to create and implement durable strategies. Proposes a framework for identifying strategies resistant to competitive imitation, based on the isolating mechanisms idea. Gives examples of differentiation strategies useful for exploiting isolating mechanisms. Concludes that managers analysing the role of both competitive and customer‐based isolating mechanisms will be morelikely to adopt a long‐term, proactive view of service differentiation.

Explores practitioner views as to how to formulate strategies for adding value and, hence, gain competitive advantage, given the characteristics of many services and the resultant implications for consumer evaluation of offerings. In particular, the case of retail financial services exhibiting increased complexity, intangibility and impalpability in the eyes of most consumers. Finds that the features and quality of the core service provided are judged by managers to be more important in adding value to more complex services, as are organisational factors such as image and reputation. Price is perceived to be significantly more important in adding value to more simple, rather that complex, offering. Presents conclusions and explores managerial implications.

This paper proposes identifying determinants of the choice of an organizational mode for providing after‐sales service in foreign markets. It aims to focus on the decision between contractual/equity cooperation and wholly‐owned foreign entities and the influence of firm‐specific variables on this decision.

An empirical study based on 80 German manufacturing companies was carried out. Hypotheses on the influence of certain firm‐specific variables on the organizational mode were developed and tested by binary logistic regression.

The paper finds that international experience of a company, whether a company already has manufacturing facilities in the specific foreign market, and strategic considerations such as the seeking of global integration advantages and the choice of service as competitive advantage, seems to exert a strong influence on the decision of the internalization of after‐sales service operations. The size of the company and the choice of price as competitive advantage, however, did not display a significant influence.

Since the research is based on a sample of 80 companies from a single country, testing for generalizability of the results to other countries and other industries would seem necessary. Also, the research focused on firm‐specific determinants while an extension into country‐specific and activity‐specific variables would be required to offer a more powerful explanation of the organizational mode decision.

Almost no empirical investigations exist on the provision of after‐sales service in foreign markets. This paper offers first evidence on determinants of the choice between cooperative and fully internalized modes of after‐sales service provision.