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This paper aims to investigate how pharmacies communicate their customer value proposition (CVP) in a complex and multiple-stakeholder setting. More specifically, from the pharmacists’ perspective, the study analyzes how CVP is articulated in complex settings/offerings and among multiple stakeholders; and elucidates the communication gap among stakeholders of the CVP.

Two studies were conducted to examine how offerings are communicated throughout the value chain. Through six in-depth interviews, Study 1 aimed to analyze how pharmacies articulate CVP for over-the-counter (OTC) drugs in a complex business-to-business-to-consumer setting. For Study 2, the data were collected from 113 French pharmacists to investigate the communication issues and to unveil the tools used to promote OTC drugs among the different stakeholders.

From the pharmacists’ perspective, the longer the chain, the more complex the efficiency of the CVP. This study conceives a new and adapted CVP as iterative and cumulative. This paper also highlights how value is distributed across the customer relationship in a complex and regulated industry. The findings feature a reciprocal perspective of CVP between the pharmaceutical labs and their direct/indirect customers. Final customers aim at creating a reciprocal approach with the different stakeholders. Pharmacists use a unidirectional perspective of CVP with their direct customers (patients/final customers).

The study contributes to a better understanding of the CVP in complex industries characterized by a chain of value distributed among multiple stakeholders (i.e. business-to-consumer and business-to-business). The article also enriches past research that analyzed the way firms communicate their offerings from a CVP perspective.

This research aims to explore retail managers' views on how food waste (FW) management activities contribute to sustainable value creation and how the customer value proposition (CVP) for a given food retailer interacts with their approaches to FW management.

A three-stage exploratory qualitative approach to data collection and analysis was adopted, involving in-depth interviews with retail managers, documentary analysis of multiple years of relevant corporate reports and email validation by seven major UK grocery retailers. Thematic content analysis supplemented by word similarity cluster analysis, two-step cluster analysis and crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis was undertaken.

FW management practices have been seen by retail managers to contribute to all forms of sustainable value creation, as waste reduction minimises environmental impact, saves costs and/or serves social needs, whilst economic value creation lies at the heart of retail FW management. However, retail operations are also framed by CVP and size of a retailer that enable or inhibit the adoption of certain FW management practices. Low-price retailers were more likely to adopt practices enabling them to save costs. Complicated cost-incurring solutions to FW were more likely to be adopted by retailers associated with larger size, high quality and a range of services.

This study is the first of its kind to empirically explore retail managers' perception of sustainable value creation through FW management activities and to provide empirical evidence of the linkages between retail CVP and sustainable value creation in the context of retail FW management.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for identifying competitive customer value propositions in retailing.

The paper draws on existing literature on customer value and competitive advantage in order to form an understanding of the key dimensions of customer value, developing a hierarchical model of value propositions and establishing a link between customer value and competitive advantage.

The work suggests a framework for identifying competitive customer value propositions (CVPs) where four hierarchical key dimensions of customer value – economic, functional, emotional, and symbolic – are first identified. In the second stage, a CVP is developed on the basis of these value dimensions. In the third stage, the CVP is evaluated for competitive advantage. It is proposed that economic and also functional CVPs are more likely to represent points of parity, whereas emotional and social CVPs represent points of difference for retail companies seeking differentiation from their competition and gaining of competitive advantage.

Identifying competitive CVPs, the paper combines a hierarchical perspective on customer value and the concept of competitive advantage in a manner that offers managers a strategic positioning tool that links the customer's value needs to company resources and capabilities.

Literature on strategic alliances (SAs) is large, diverse and growing. It needs synthesis and analysis for application and further research. Authors have also underlined the need for studies covering differences in structuring, situational application and management of alliances. This systematic literature review aims to cover dyadic, network and ecosystem (DNE) alliances with theory, context, characteristics and methodology (TCCM) methodology covering the life cycle stages of an alliance (pre-formation, formation and management) to uncover insights which inform practice and guide further research on this important subject.

This paper follows systematic literature review (SLR) methodology for research design and article selection and TCCM methodology for analysis. It also analyses the literature on DNE alliances using a nine-box matrix with DNE alliance forming one axis and three alliance lifecycle stages of pre-formation (alliance objectives), formation (alliance design and operationalisation) and post formation (alliance management) stages along the other axis.

Analysis indicates focus on individual firms and their own customer value proposition (CVP) in the dyadic and network alliances. Industries with fast-paced technological change benefit from loosely coupled alliances. Social context and social exchanges leading to collaboration and collective strengths mark network alliances, with a focus on knowledge creation and dissemination. Ecosystems focus on a collective CVP, which guides alliance behaviour. Ecosystem leadership guides this purpose through governance for sustained competitiveness. Negative consequences (dark side) of alliances can be mitigated by careful design, formation and management of DNE alliances.

While literature has focussed on static view of alliances in their industry or social context, this literature review analyses alliances along the dyadic, network and ecosystem typology, thus providing a new lens to study alliances. The review also recognises that alliances evolve over their life-cycle stages and observes their progression through their lifecycle stages aids for fuller comprehension of their behaviour. Areas for future research in structuring, leadership, value co-creation and technological change set an agenda for future research.

Dynamic managerial capabilities are drivers of alliance performance. The analysis using the nine-box matrix allows managers to better appreciate the options that exist and the consequences of their actions. Situating their alliance in the appropriate box can allow managers better plan, operationalise and manage their own alliances.

This systematic review compares and contrasts DNE alliances in extant literature and through their lifecycle stages. Insights from TCCM analysis and the nine-box matrix provide unique contribution to both theory and practice in this large and growing domain.

Gillette’s historically successful “razor and blade” business model (RBM) has been a promising benchmark for multiple businesses across diverse industries worldwide in the past several decades. The extant literature deals with very few nuances of this business model notwithstanding the fact that there are several variants of this business model being put to practical use by firms in diverse industries in grossly metaphorically equivalent situations.

This study adopts the 2 × 2 truth table framework from the domains of mathematical logic and combinatorics in fleshing out all possible (four logical possibilities) variants of the razor and blade business model for further analysis. This application presents four mutually exclusive yet collectively exhaustive possibilities on any chosen dimension. Two major dimensions (viz., provision of subsidy and intra- or extra-firm involvement in the making of razors or blades or both) form part of the discussion in this paper. In addition, this study synthesizes and streamlines entrepreneurial wisdom from multiple intra-industry and inter-industry benchmarks in terms of real-time firms explicitly or implicitly adopting several variants of the RBM that suit their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of evolution in situations that are grossly reflective of the metaphorically equivalent scenario of razor and recurrent blades. Inductive method of research is carried out with real-time cases from diverse industries with a pivotally common pattern of razor and blade model in some form or the other.

Several new variants of the razor and blade model (much beyond what the extant literature explicitly projects) have been discovered from the multiple metaphorically equivalent cases of RBM across industries. All of these expand the portfolio of options that relevant entrepreneurial firms can explore and exploit the best possible option chosen from them, given their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of growth.

This study has enriched the literature by presenting and analyzing a more inclusive or perhaps comprehensive palette of explicit choices in the form of several variants of the RBM for the relevant entrepreneurial firms to choose from. Future research can undertake the task of comparing these variants of RBM with those of upcoming servitization business models such as guaranteed availability, subscription and performance-based contracting and exploring the prospects of diverse combinations.

Smart entrepreneurial firms identify and adopt inspiring benchmarks (like razor and blade model whenever appropriate) duly tweaked and blended into a gestalt benchmark for optimal profits and attractive market shares. They target diverse market segments for tied-goods with different variants or combinations of the relevant benchmarks in the form of variegated customer value propositions (CVPs) that have unique and enticing appeal to the respective market segments.

Value-sensitive customers on the rise globally choose the option that best suits them from among multiple alternatives offered by competing firms in the market. As long as the ratio of utility to price of such an offer is among the highest, even a no-frills CVP may be most appealing to one market segment while a plush CVP may be tempting to yet another market segment simultaneously. While professional business firms embrace resource leverage practices consciously, amateur customers do so subconsciously. Each party subliminally desires to have the maximum bang-to-buck ratio as the optimal return on investment, given their priorities ceteris paribus.

Prior studies on the RBM have explicitly captured only a few variants of the razor and blade model. This study is perhaps the first of its kind that ferrets out many other variants (more than ten) of the razor and blade model with due simplification and exemplification, justification and demystification.

Companies recently have begun to look for ways to help make value pioneering more systematic and repeatable. This “Masterclass” paper aims to examine one of the first frameworks for making value innovation an effective, manageable practice, an approach practiced by Mark W. Johnson.

This “Masterclass” paper shows how Johnson's framework for mapping the “basic architecture underlying all successful businesses” can be understood in terms of four main elements of the business model.

A degree of creativity and a willingness to experiment, pilot and adjust as you go, remains part of the business model innovation process, the author found, but Johnson's four‐element framework can serve to “bring the discipline of architecture” to the process, and provide a structure on which “a manageable” and more repeatable innovation activity can be pursued.

The paper explains how to go about developing an innovative business model. The process starts with finding an important unfilled job‐to‐be‐done, and the key to this step is to look at the world of the customer “in a new way” from the outside in rather than through the lens of current products or approaches to segmentation. Thus, the same customer may turn out to have different unfilled jobs‐to‐be‐done in the same product/service category at different times and in different personal contexts.

Johnson highlights three opportunity types – the white space within, the white space beyond and the white space between, and he identifies a different strategy for pursuing each one.

This study aims to examine how open innovation can be effective in changing organizational inertia to create business model innovation and improve firm performance. It also seeks to explore whether the existence of open innovation has a mediating effect and influence.

This study constructs a theoretical model to explore the relationship between latent variables and uses a questionnaire to collect research data. In the conceptual framework, organizational inertia is a second-order latent variable and comprises three first-order latent variables: insight inertia, action inertia, and psychological inertia. Open innovation is also a second-order latent variable, and consists of two first-order latent variables: outbound and inbound open innovation. To clarify the relationship between these latent variables, structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the goodness of fit of the theoretical model and research hypotheses. This study uses 141 small to medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan as the research subjects.

The SEM analysis revealed that open innovation has a significant mediating effect on the relationship between organizational inertia and business model innovation, and the relationship between organizational inertia and firm performance; business model innovation also has a positive influence on firm performance.

This study contributes the empirical analysis of SMEs to illustrate the role of open innovation on business model innovation processes.

This paper seeks to examine the innovative business model of Saigon Eye Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The paper takes the form of a case study.

The study identifies the categories underlying the high performance of the hospital system, namely leadership style, cause‐related marketing, market driving approach, HR and cost reduction, innovation stimulators, and brand building.

The research offers insight into the elements of the innovative business model of Saigon Eye Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, highlighting concepts of service management and social marketing in an emerging market context.

The study aims to explore the role of digital economy and technology adoption for financial inclusion in the Indian context.

A conceptual framework was developed and hypotheses were tested through a survey conducted on 433 educated adults (males and females) residing in different districts of Rajasthan (India). Data was collected through a structured questionnaire and was subjected to confirmatory factor analysis. Structural equation modeling (second-order) was used to validate the measurement model and to test the mediating effect.

The measurement model is a confirmatory factor analysis and measures the reliability of the observed variables in relation to the latent constructs and indices shows the overall model fit. Structural model results indicate a complete mediation and a reflective impact (R² = 0.28) of the extended technology acceptance model on digital economy and financial inclusion relationship.

The study has taken into account only the perception of educated adults residing more specifically in one geographical area of a country. Thus, it limits the generalization of results in terms of implications to other regions and countries.

The proposed framework and implications are quite significant for policymakers and service providers to understand the nexus and strategic choices involved in this area. Moreover, understanding of user’s frame dependence would help in the development of digital assistive models that would perhaps mitigate the gap from participation (digital economy) to acceptance (financial inclusion).

Present study proposed a three-dimensional hypothetical model and conceptualized the digital economy (independent variable) as participation, behavioral intentions measured through the extended technology acceptance model (mediating variable) as adoption and financial inclusion (dependent variable) as acceptance to better understand the nexus. It represents the foremost step and a unique effort in this area. Moreover, the study was empirical and has wider applications both from the perspectives of end-users and service providers.