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Integrates perspectives across operations, marketing, human resources, and organizational theory in a conceptualization of the theoretical relationships between customer competency and marketing and operations practices in service firms. Suggests service firm strategies to leverage customer competency by managing process variation in an industry through service firm co‐operation when altering process structure does not support or achieve a differentiated market position for individual firms; by using market segmentation on the basis of customer productcore competency to develop new service offerings; by balancing the mix of customers at different competency levels with the firm’s productive capacity; and by optimizing socialization of four types of new customers: “Virgin Newcomers”, “Virtual Newcomers”, “Value Switchers” and “Vagabond Switchers” who have different levels of experience with competing firms and expectations for competency fit with new firms.

This paper shows how business suppliers set up processes allowing the translation of their competencies into value for the customers. As such, this paper seeks to complement the dominant view in which competencies are seen mainly as valuable for the firm owning the competencies but not for that firm's customers. In so doing, the paper seeks to contribute to two bodies of research: the notions of core competencies in strategic management and of value for customer in business marketing. These two bodies of research interact infrequently thus far, leaving the question of how value is transferred unanswered. This question is relevant because competencies are immaterial, tacit, and non-tradable assets. Hence, the research question underlying the present paper becomes: How can competencies translate into valuable outputs and be made accessible to the customer? To answer this question, a qualitative approach is used that involves a multiple-case study analysis aimed at exploring the competence-based process of value supplying in business markets. Specifically, this paper suggests the following propositions: (1) Competence-based value analysis, where suppliers anticipate customers’ competence needs, require an end-market orientation. (2) Competence-based value creation implies an accumulation of know-how that overlaps with customer competencies. (3) Competence-based value communication builds on live communication tools that allow customers to get an ongoing experience of the value potential of competencies. (4) Competence-based value delivery is based on bundles of suppliers’ competencies into tradable means and direct access to competence tools.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze customers’ purchasing behavior with respect to perceived benefit and the perceived risk towards customer competency in firms. In this research, the authors validate the concept of customer competency in eight dimensions (i.e. e-trust, quality of products and services, customer support, application design, reasonable price, availability of user-generated content, replacement and returns and risk in purchasing products) and examine empirically its impression on company’s decision-making performance.

The findings are based on an empirical analysis of survey data from 69 respondents and demonstrate a large, significant and positive relationship between customer competency and firm’s decision-making performance.

The results reveal that majorly three dimensions of competency, i.e. application design, reasonable price and user-generated content (UGC), will impact significantly the decision making performance of firm. This is the empirical study to conceptualize, operationalize and validate the concept of customer competency and to study its impact on decision-making performance. The validity of customer competency constructs as conceived and operationalized suggests the potential future scope by evaluating its relationship with possible antecedents and consequences. For practitioners, the result provides important guidelines for increasing firm’s decision-making performance through the use of customer behavior.

Further in this research, it is critical to understand that other constructs of customer competency may likewise play an important part in the advancement of expectations of customers. These constructs comprise customers’ self-effectiveness, encouragement and innovation thinking (i.e. observed comparative advantage, complexity and compatibility) of business-to-customer firms in e-commerce. Future research studying these constructs could improve the understanding of success factors for e-commerce firms. The model used in this study can further be extended to understand the variance in a firm’s decision-making.

The prime target of this questionnaire was to gather all of the information about how consumers behave while interacting with e-commerce portals. The questions were based on the factors identified in literature reviews. Previous studies also look at consumer competency toward a particular internet portal and its vendors; however, through this survey, the authors want to look at how consumers behave while shopping on e-commerce portals. This was a clear representation of the authors’ research strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an instrument to measure service competencies and explore the relationship between service competencies and service quality.

Data were gathered from 207 frontline employees (FLEs). A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to examine the goodness-of-fit of the FLE service competence scale. Further, the partial least squares technique was used to analyze the data gathered from 252 customers to clarify the relationship between service competencies and perceived service quality.

The results indicate that the instrument demonstrated high reliability, stable dimensionality and predictable relationships with service quality within the nomological network of service competencies. Moreover, the results provide evidence for the position that FLE interpersonal competencies are positively associated with the service quality dimensions of reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy, and that FLE professional competencies are positively associated with reliability and assurance of service quality.

The study has limited generalizability given the convenience sample and the wide variety of service industries. Implications regarding which specific FLE service competencies FLEs should focus on to enhance specific customer perceptions of service quality are also discussed.

The present paper contributes specifically to understanding how service competencies of FLEs can influence consumers’ perceived service quality, and developing an instrument to measure service competencies.

To outline a core competence model by exploring links between core competence and the associated concepts of competencies, capabilities, and resources, and by proposing refinements to the characteristics of these concepts.

A case study based primarily on personal interviews.

The findings suggest that competencies, capabilities, and resources are all linked to core‐competencies; the first two continuously, and the third intermittently; motivate refinement of the competence concept, by adding adaptation competence as governing customer loyalty, and transfer competence as managing transcendental integration; and motivate refinement of the capability concept, by adding capacity as a quality characteristic, and communication as a characteristic that can actively initiate organizational change.

The paper outlines a core competence model and propose refinements of the characteristics and links of the concepts, contributing to both core competence theory and resource‐based theory.

This work informs managers of the details of the core competence concept, of particular interest to managers with a customer‐focused standpoint. An empirical core competence exemplifies the importance of knowing the characteristics of competencies, since they encapsulate the power of organizational development. Managers also need to pay attention to the influences of capabilities, since they not only support organizational processes (if up‐to‐date), but also initiate change.

The development and specification of the core competence concept.

Logistics and supply chain management has been elevated to a strategic level whereby firms can simultaneously achieve differentiation and low cost for sustained competitive advantage. Empirical studies have often concentrated on logistics management in developed Western countries, displaying a bias towards the USA. This study applies the competency approach to explore logistics in Taiwan. A survey of 1,200 manufacturing firms was undertaken in order to examine the relationships between logistics competency, logistics performance, and financial performance, using exploratory factor analysis and the structural equation modelling technique. Four logistics competencies, namely, integration and knowledge competency, customer focused logistics competency, measurement competency, and agility competency were identified. The research findings revealed that (1) logistics competency was significantly related to logistics performance but not significantly associated with financial performance, and (2) logistics performance was positively associated with financial performance. These findings also implied that logistics competency has an indirect effect on financial performance through logistics performance. This finding confirmed the “world-class” logistics competencies (i.e. positioning, integration, agility, and measurement) as identified by MSUGLRT (1995). In addition, it suggests that logistics competency in a huge geographic area such as America can have the same effect in a smaller geographic area such as Taiwan.

The purpose of this study is to examine customer orientation and fashion merchandising competencies to learn which strategic option has a stronger relationship with retailer financial performance.

A cross‐sectional survey was used to collect self‐report data from a random sample of 275 small specialty retailers of women's clothing in Bangkok. Retailers offer similar merchandise assortments and customer services in dense, highly competitive, agglomerative environments. The survey form contained multi‐item scales measuring customer orientation, fashion merchandising competencies, and store financial performance. Bivariate correlations, multiple regression coefficients, and hierarchical linear model coefficients describe relationships of interest, controlling for retailer location.

Results show medium to large effect sizes for several fashion merchandising competencies but no substantive effects for the two customer orientation constructs. Effect sizes depend on whether financial performance is measured subjectively or as retailer return on investment or as probability of retailer survival.

Data are restricted in range and reported effect sizes are smaller than true effect sizes. Data also are influenced by common method variance, influencing reported effect sizes in an opposite direction. Effect sizes may or may not describe causal relationships because of the study's cross‐sectional design. Because of the study's setting in Bangkok, results must be extended to similar retail settings with caution. Results indicate that a clustered fashion retailer can improve financial performance by striving for a fashion leadership position, anticipating fashion trends, and offering merchandise assortments in terms of styles and usages. Results indicate that a clustered fashion retailer will have difficulty improving financial performance via customer service and CRM activities.

Few studies in fashion retailing address predictors of financial performance at the individual store level. The authors help fill this knowledge gap by examining relationships between customer service activities, CRM activities, and key merchandising competencies and retailer subjective financial performance, return on investment, and probability of survival. Retailers compete in a spatially confined area, facilitating comparison shopping and heightening rivalries between retailers.

Organization’s core competencies are acknowledged as most valuable assets and skills which contribute to enhance the ability of innovation, the competitive advantage and commercial success of the business. Although several researchers have studied the effects of core competencies on the success of an organization, no enough work has been carried out to investigate the effect of core competencies onfront-end decision-making. Apparel-specific studies in the area of core competencies relating to front-end decision-making are rarely found. Therefore, this paper aims to determine the impact of organizational core competencies on front-end decision-making in the apparel innovation.

A conceptual framework was developed focusing four groups of competencies; technological/ technical, customer, network/ partnership and financial competences and hypothesis were derived. Sixty participants in different companies across Sri Lanka were randomly selected based on their involvement in the front-end of the apparel innovation for questionnaire survey. The data were analyzed using the SPSS version 20 statistical software package. Spearman's rho correlation and Linear regression analysis were used to quantify the impact of the competencies on front-end decisions.

The factors of network competencies are found to be the most influentialon effective front-end decision-making in apparel innovation in Sri Lanka. These results strongly suggests strengthening companies’ ability to interact with partners who possess raw materials, machineries and technology know-how to facilitate efficient front-end decision-making. The next most influential are the factors of technological competencies. It highlights the importance of strengthening the companies’ own technical/ technological competencies to facilitate effective front- end decision-making in apparel innovation.

The findings of this research are of main interest to extend the current understanding on how different factors of organization’s core competencies influence on effective front-end decision-making in apparel innovation. Particularly, apparel domain practitioners will be motivated in implementing and nurturing these important/ and most influential competencies within their firms to facilitate front-end decision-making to achieve better results consistently.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of strategic integration of knowledge management (KM ) and customer relationship management (CRM). The integration is a strategic issue that has strong ramifications in the long‐term competitiveness of organizations. It is not limited to CRM; the concept can also be applied to supply chain management (SCM), product development management (PDM), eterprise resource planning (ERP) and retail network management (RNM) that offer different perspectives into knowledge management adoption.

Through literature review and establishing new perspectives with examples, the components of knowledge management, customer relationship management, and strategic planning are amalgamated.

Findings include crucial details in the various components of knowledge management, customer relationship management, and strategic planning, i.e. strategic planning process, value formula, intellectual capital measure, different levels of CRM and their core competencies.

Although the strategic integration of knowledge management and customer relationship management is highly conceptual, a case example has been provided where the concept is applied. The same concept could also be applied to other industries that focus on customer service.

The concept of strategic integration of knowledge management and customer relationship management is new. There are other areas, yet to be explored in terms of additional integration such as SCM, PDM, ERP, and RNM. The concept of integration would be useful for future research as well as for KM and CRM practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some ethical issues in the internet encounter between customer and bank. Empirical data related to the difficulties that customers have when they deal with the bank through internet technology and electronic banking. The authors discuss the difficulties that customers expressed from an ethical standpoint.

The key problem of the paper is “how does research handle the user's lack of competence in a web‐based commercial environment?” The authors illustrate this ethical dilemma with data from a Danish Bank collected in 2002. The data have been structured by an advanced text analytic method, Pertex (by generation of intentionality of verbal actors from text).

The authors can conclude that the experience of lack of competency in internet banking implies a severe damage on the experience of the ethics of the good life and of the respect for the basic ethical principles of customer autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability. However, increased experience of competency may imply experience of increased feeling of ethical superiority and of the good life among customers.

The important implication for managerial research of this study would be for banks to focus on customer competency with an ethical concern instead of only being concerned with technical solutions for effective internet operations.

Since more and more businesses are digitally based, the authors can foresee a potential generic problem of lack of competence for certain age groups and also of people from different social groups.

The paper provides an analysis of the ethics of on‐line banking on the basis of Pertex methodology and with the use of basic ethical principles of autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability.