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A valuable, although little-used, case data analysis technique, degrees-of-freedom analysis (DFA), is the subject of Chapter 12. Given the richness of case data and its prevalence in business marketing research, DFA has the potential to become an important addition to one's “research workbench.” Donald Campbell (1975) first proposed this theory testing.

This chapter presents three business-to-business marketing applications; the first two involve use of the technique to compare the extent to which four theories of group decision making are manifested in organizations. The third application illustrates how the technique is useful for theory development in the context of manufacturer–distributor relationships. The contribution is in demonstrating how researchers can link “traditional” (i.e., logical positivistic) hypothesis testing procedures to examine theoretical propositions in case study research. This approach is one way of achieving a critical test (Carlsmith, Ellsworth, & Aronson, 1976), that is, testing the relative empirical strengths of competing theories. The chapter highlights the value of generalizing case data to theory versus the inappropriate attempt to generalize such data to a population (Yin, 1994). The explication and demonstration of this technique is not available elsewhere to the degree that Chapter 12 provides.

The main thesis here is that the stories that some brands tell to consumers enable consumers to achieve archetypal experiences. Examining the stories consumers tell in natural contexts involving shopping for and using brands informs explanations of associations of archetypes, brands, and consumers. The study advances the use of degrees-of-freedom analysis (DFA) and creating visual narrative art (VNA) as useful steps for confirming or disconfirming whether or not the stories consumers tell have themes, events, and outcomes that match with the core storylines told by brands. As a proposal, an extension of thematic apperception tests (TATs) is relevant in applying the DFA to brand-consumer storytelling research. The study includes a review of early work on TATs, DFA, archetypal theory, and how brands become icons. The study's theory, method, and findings provide useful tools for brand managers and researchers on issues that relate to psychology and marketing.

Digital technology is increasingly important for businesses as it has the capability to enable, support and sometimes influence the overall strategic direction of the corporation. This paper investigates business‐to‐business (b2b) inter‐organisational digitalisation strategies in one of Denmark's biggest companies with an annual turnover of €3 billion and over 30,000 employees. This paper specifically seeks to understand to what extent the widely used strategic continuum (planning – incremental) is sufficient to understand the process of creating inter‐organisational digitalisation strategies in the case.

This paper utilises degree of freedom analysis (DFA). DFA is in essence a “pattern‐matching” between theoretical propositions and observations in a set of data. Inline with the DFA tradition in‐depth interviews were conducted and finally the results and interpretations are returned to the respondents for final feedback.

This paper concludes that a strategic continuum spanning planning to interaction, where the incremental approach is in the middle is more powerful as an analytical tool in relation to the specific case. The case further illustrated that the actors in the empiric context utilising the digital technology successfully mostly organised their strategic work as described in the interaction approach to digitalisation strategy.

The study demonstrates a pragmatic route to deepening digitalisation success in a large firm with considerable e‐business investments.

Documenting the need for new thinking and theorising in the area of digitalisation strategy. This paper opens the organisational black box relating to how strategy actually is performed and, thus, helps to develop a more holistic understanding of how strategies are developed and implemented. Finally, this is one of the few studies utilising DFA to understand digitalisation strategy.

This chapter points out that the use of a wide range of theoretical paradigms in marketing research requires researchers to use a broad range of methodologies. As an aid in doing so, the chapter argues for the use of case study research (CSR), defines CSR, and describes several CSR theories and methods that are useful for describing, explaining, and forecasting processes occurring in business-to-business (B2B) contexts. The discussion includes summaries of six B2B case studies spanning more than 60 years of research. This chapter advocates embracing the view that learning and reporting objective realities of B2B processes is possible using CSR methods. CSR methods in the chapter include using multiple interviews (2 + ) separately of multiple persons participating in B2B processes, direct research and participant observation, decision systems analysis, degrees-of-freedom analysis, ethnographic-decision-tree-modeling, content analysis, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA.com). The discussion advocates rejecting the dominant logic of attempting to describe and explain B2B processes by arms-length fixed-point surveys that usually involve responses from one executive per firm with no data-matching of firms in specific B2B relationships – such surveys lack details and accuracy necessary for understanding, describing, and forecasting B2B processes.

This paper presents a conceptual model of partners’ assessment of the performance of their co‐partners in a collaborative relationship. The model’s usefulness has been illustrated through a study of 12 collaborative arrangements between Danish and Ghanaian companies. The results indicate gaps in partners’ expectations and perceived performance of their co‐partners. The perceptual gaps have been explained with reference to differences in motives of collaboration, intensity of interaction, cultural differences as well as the active involvement of a catalyst institution in the development of the relationship. The paper also draws attention to the policy and strategy implications of the empirical evidence.

This study seeks to provide analytical insights into corporate brand‐rapture (CBR), its antecedents and consequences, and contributes to methodology for modeling CBRs.

The paper defines the construct and develops a theory that explains how corporate brand‐rapture works and is testable empirically.

CBR merits further investigation as a potentially valid, operational concept in marketing that underpins the conscious and unconscious drivers of the corporate brand's strongest stakeholders and that lays the foundations of research into corporate brand‐rapture communication.

The paper, while remaining conceptual, identifies a dynamic concept of interest to researchers and to corporate brand marketing management and proposes seven fundamental propositions for modeling CBR.

The paper provides researchers and corporate brand marketing with a more rigorous understanding of the foundations of engagement with a corporate brand.

This paper is the first so far on CBR theory and provides insights that are important to corporate brand marketers and their communications strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to optimise the process parameters, namely, fibre orientation angle, helix angle, spindle speed, and feed rate in milling of glass fibre-reinforced plastic (GFRP) composites using grey relational analysis (GRA) and desirability function analysis (DFA).

In this work, experiments were carried out as per the Taguchi experimental design and an L27 orthogonal array was used to study the influence of various combinations of process parameters on surface roughness and delamination factor. As a dynamic approach, the multiple response optimisation was carried out using GRA and DFA for simultaneous evaluation. These two methods are best suited for multiple criteria evaluation and are also not much complicated.

The process parameters were found optimum at a fibre orientation angle of 15°, helix angle of 25°, spindle speed of 6,000 rpm, and a feed rate of 0.04 mm/rev. Analysis of variance was employed to classify the significant parameters affecting the responses. The results indicate that the fibre orientation angle is the most significant parameter preceded by helix angle, feed rate, and spindle speed for GFRP composites.

An attempt to optimise surface roughness and delamination factor together by combined approach of GRA and DFA has not been previously done.

This paper aimed to validate the sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) measures in Malaysian electronics manufacturing organizations' context after the post coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Post pandemic sustainability in competitive advantages have become a buzzword for Malaysian electronics industries in facilitating the value chain generation to consumers, besides enhancing profitability to the organization. SCAs are important when the manufacturer can provide something valuable to the market, and it differs from the competitors, especially during the crisis.

This study adopted the quantitative research approach in validating the SCA variables. The questionnaires were self-administered and randomly distributed among the electronics manufacturing organizations across Malaysia, with a total of 207 responses. Concisely, this research theoretically conceptualized SCAs as a multidimensional construct containing two dimensions: lower cost advantage (LCA) and differentiation advantage (DFA).

Besides, the findings ascertained the strategies to sustain the competitive advantages within an organization, which is underpinned by resource-based theory. In short, findings of this research would be an imperative implication for academicians and organization's policymakers to move forward towards advanced economy and Industrial Revolution 4.0 in the current global competitive environment.

There is no prescription of attaining competitive advantages that suits all conditions in Malaysian electronics industries; this implies that the literature gaps existed, and further research shall be conducted on SCAs.