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While marketing analytics can be used to improve organizational decision-making and performance significantly, little research exists to examine how the configurations of multiple conditions affect marketing analytics use. This study draws on configuration theory to investigate marketing analytics use in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

This research employs a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis using data collected from a survey of 187 managers in UK SMEs.

The key findings show that (1) configurations of multiple conditions provide alternative pathways to marketing analytics use, and (2) the configurations for small firms are different from those for medium-sized firms.

The research results are based on several key configurational factors and a single key-informant method to collect subjective data from UK SME managers.

The study helps SMEs to understand that marketing analytics use is influenced by the interaction of multiple conditions, that there are alternative pathways to marketing analytics use, and that SMEs should choose the configuration that fits best with their organizational contexts.

The study contributes to the literature by addressing an important yet underresearched area, i.e. marketing analytics use in SMEs, applying a configurational approach to the research phenomenon. It highlights different pathways to marketing analytics use in SMEs. The findings provide empirical evidence on the possibility and implication of marketing analytics use being asymmetrical and different between small and medium-sized firms.

Business analytics (BA) has attracted growing attention mainly due to the phenomena of big data. While studies suggest that BA positively affects organizational performance, there is a lack of academic research. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to examine the extent to which top- and bottom-performing companies differ regarding their use and organizational facilitation of BA.

Hypotheses are developed drawing on the information processing view and contingency theory, and tested using multivariate analysis of variance to analyze data collected from 117 UK manufacture companies.

Top- and bottom-performing companies differ significantly in their use of BA, data-driven environment, and level of fit between BA and data-drain environment.

Extensive use of BA and data-driven decisions will lead to superior firm performance. Companies wishing to use BA to improve decision making and performance need to develop relevant analytical strategy to guide BA activities and design its structure and business processes to embed BA activities.

This study provides useful management insights into the effective use of BA for improving organizational performance.

Evidence in the literature has indicated that customer-linking marketing capabilities such as customer relationship management (CRM) and brand management are important drivers of marketing performance and that marketing analytics use (MAU) enables firms to gain valuable knowledge and insights for improving firm performance. However, there has been little focus on how firms improve their CRM and brand management via MAU. This study aims to draw on the absorptive capacity theory, research on marketing capabilities and marketing analytics to examine the capability-developing mechanisms that enable a firm to use marketing analytics to enhance its CRM and brand management capabilities, thereby improving its marketing performance.

A research model is developed and tested based on an analysis of 289 responses collected using an online survey from middle and senior managers of Chinese firms with sufficient knowledge and experience in using marketing analytics for survey participation.

The findings demonstrate that MAU is positively related to both CRM and brand management capabilities, which in turn are positively associated with marketing performance; and that both CRM and brand management capabilities mediate the relationship between MAU and marketing performance.

The study’s outcomes were based on data collected from a survey, which was distributed using mass e-mails. Thus, the study is unable to provide a meaningful response rate. The research results are based on and limited to Chinese firms.

MAU is essential for enhancing customer-linking marketing capabilities such as CRM and brand management, but it alone is not sufficient to improve marketing performance. Firms wishing to improve marketing performance should leverage the knowledge and insights gained from MAU to enhance their critical customer-linking marketing capabilities.

This study explicates the capability-developing mechanisms through which a firm can use its market-sensing capability as manifested by MAU to enhance customer-linking marketing capabilities and to improve its marketing performance. In so doing, this study extends our understanding of the critical role of absorptive capacity in helping firms identify, assimilate, transform and apply valuable external knowledge.

This study aims to develop and validate a cross-national framework to identify the motivation underpinning consumers' (i.e. the general public's) loyalty toward credit card usage. The following research questions guided the study: (1) What factors motivate consumers to stay loyal to their credit card? (2) Does the investment model (regarding satisfaction and investment size) mediate the relationship between factors motivating consumers to stay loyal to their credit card?

This study employs the investment model theory (Rusbult, 1980) as a theoretical framework and uses structural equation modeling to develop and validate a cross-national framework, addressing factors that motivate consumers to stay loyal to credit card brands. In addition, the authors test the mediating effect of the investment model on the relationship. Survey data were collected from the United States and France.

The findings revealed four factors (incentives, customer service, investment size and satisfaction) that impact consumer credit card loyalty behavior in the two mature credit card markets. The authors find empirical support for two of four hypotheses. That is, investment size mediates the relationship between incentives and consumer loyalty, and satisfaction mediates the relationship between customer service and consumer loyalty. Moreover, unlike the French sample, the American sample produced a significant finding for investment size to mediate the relationship between customer service and consumer loyalty.

This paper validates and extends the investment model theory in the marketing of credit cards within a cross-national setting. Most studies on credit card consumption focus on the college student segment, and there is less understanding of the motivation to stay loyal to using a credit card from the general public who are not necessarily college students. Given the scarce stream of empirical studies dealing with cross-national consumer motivation, choice criteria of credit cards, and loyalty toward credit cards, this research comes at an opportune moment as credit card firms differentiate their card brands in the global marketplace. Further, a dataset originating from two mature Western economies has been put forward for the benefit of practitioners and researchers.

Increasingly, studies are reporting supply chain analytical capabilities as a key enabler of supply chain agility (SCAG) and supply chain performance (SCP). This study investigates the impact of environmental dynamism and competitive pressures in a supply chain analytics setting, and how intangible supply chain analytical capabilities (ISCAC) moderate the relationship between big data characteristics (BDC's) and SCAG in support of enhanced SCP.

The study draws on the literature on big data, supply chain analytical capabilities, and dynamic capability theory to empirically develop and test a supply chain analytical capabilities model in support of SCAG and SCP. ISCAC was the moderated construct and was tested using two sub-dimensions, supply chain organisational learning and supply chain data driven culture.

The results show that whilst environmental dynamism has a significant relationship on the three key BDC's, only the volume and velocity dimensions are significant in relation to competitive pressures. Furthermore, only the velocity element of BDC's has a significant positive impact on SCAG. In terms of moderation, the supply chain organisational learning dimension of ISCAC was shown to only moderate the velocity aspect of BDC's on SCAG, whereas for the supply chain data driven culture dimension of ISCAC, only the variety aspect was shown to moderate of BDC on SCAG. SCAG had a significant impact on SCP.

This study adds to the existing knowledge in the supply chain analytical capabilities domain by presenting a nuanced moderation model that includes external factors (environmental dynamism and competitive pressures), their relationships with BDC's and how ISCAC (namely, supply chain organisational learning and supply chain data driven culture) moderates and strengthens aspects of BDC's in support of SCAG and enhanced SCP.

Rising expectations for exceptional customer experiences demand strategic amalgamation of cross-functional, customer-focused teams (marketing/sales/service departments). However, the long history of interface conflicts between functional teams continues to attract research attention. Past research has given more attention to conflicts between marketing and sales teams than to triadic interface conflict between custom-focused teams and their sub-conflicts in a business-to-business (B2B) sales process. The purpose of this research paper is to quantify the triadic interface conflicts and associated sub-conflicts between customer-focused teams, discuss conflict resolution strategies and perform a sensitivity analysis (SA) to give a fuller account of functional team conflict.

Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) based in the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is proposed for identifying and resolving conflicts in customer-focused team interfaces. A group of 30 managers of a large electronics company participated in this research. The authors collected the data from customer-focused team managers during training sessions on interface conflicts and conflict management/resolution strategies. The authors perform SA to test the robustness of conflict resolution strategy rankings.

The findings reveal that managers adjudge task as the most crucial conflict attribute driving teams apart, followed by lack of communication. For the sub-conflicts, managers considered how to do the task as the most important conflict attribute, followed by lack of regular meetings. For conflict resolution strategies, managers regarded collaboration or integration as the overall best strategy, followed by compromise. Leveraging the AHP-based MCDM to resolve customer-focused team interface conflicts provides managers with the confidence in the consistency and the robustness of these solutions. By testing the SA, it is also discovered that the final outcome stayed robust (stable) regardless when the priorities of the main criteria influencing the decision are increased and decreased by 5% in every combinations.

This study examined only a large B2B company in the electronics industry in African and Middle East settings, focusing on interface conflicts among customer-focused departments. Future research could address these limitations.

This paper advances our understanding of customer-focused team interface conflicts in a B2B sales process. It also provides valuable insights on effective management of major and sub-interface conflicts. This paper provides a framework for and practical insights into how interface conflicts that are prevalent in marketing, sales and service sectors can be resolved to improve customer experience and business performance.

This study contributes to the literature by developing an AHP-based MCDM, which not only extends our conceptual understanding of the interface conflicts between customer-focused teams by emphasizing their triadic nature but also provides valuable strategies and insights into the practical resolution of such conflicts in a B2B firm’s sales process. Methodologically, SA is valuable to ensuring the robustness of the conflict resolution strategies’ rankings that will influence relevant pragmatic decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to develop, and explicate the significance of the need for a systemic conceptual framework for understanding IT business value.

Embracing a systems perspective, this paper examines the interrelationship between IT and other organisational factors at the organisational level and its impact on the business value of IT. As a result, a systemic conceptual framework for understanding IT business value is developed. An example of enhancing IT business value through developing systemic capabilities is then used to test and demonstrate the value of this framework.

The findings suggest that IT business value would be significantly enhanced when systemic capabilities are generated from the synergistic interrelations among IT and other organisational factors at the systems level, while the system’s human agents play a critical role in developing systemic capabilities by purposely configuring and reconfiguring organisational factors.

The conceptual framework advanced provides the means to recognise the significance of the need for understanding IT business value systemically and dynamically. It encourages an organisation to focus on developing systemic capabilities by ensuring that IT and other organisational factors work together as a synergistic whole, better managing the role its human agents play in shaping the systems interrelations, and developing and redeveloping systemic capabilities by configuring its subsystems purposely with the changing business environment.

This paper reveals the nature of systemic capabilities underpinned by a systems perspective. The resultant systemic conceptual framework for understanding IT business value can help us move away from pairwise resource complementarity to focusing on the whole system and its interrelations while responding to the changing business environment. It is hoped that the framework can help organisations delineate important IT investment considerations and the priorities that they must adopt to create superior IT business value.

Business process reengineering (BPR) is widely applied. However, its high failure rates give much cause for concern and call for more research, thus future BPR programmes might be implemented more successfully. Reports on one such research programme. Based on a holistic perspective, it critiques BPR as an approach to change management, in which four types of organisational change are classified: change in process, structure, culture, or power distribution. They are often seen to be interrelated, thus the management of the interaction is central. BPR, it is argued, is powerful in addressing process change, but incapable of dealing with other types of organisational change. Suggests that if BPR is to be applied successfully, either its usage needs to be restricted to change situations where process dominates, or a holistic approach is needed to help address adequately change situations where different types of organisational change are surfaced.

While total quality management (TQM) has been widely applied in the management of change, and is likely to remain a priority into the next century, failure rates at times above 75 per cent give cause for concern. The study on which this paper is based has reviewed TQM as an approach to change management. Four interrelated classifications of organisational change are presented: change as structure (or “functional change”), process, values, or power distribution. Of these, it is contended, TQM adequately addresses only process change, with incidences of failure closely correlated to the application of process‐based TQM techniques in change contexts characterised by structure, values or power. This study suggests that, for TQM to be applied successfully, either an approach is required which adequately addresses all types of change context (a so‐called “systemic” approach), or its application needs to be restricted to those contexts where process dominates.