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Export market orientation can be broadly divided into intelligence (generation and dissemination) and responsiveness activities. Although previous studies assess intelligence and responsiveness activities, little is known about what type of international channel partner acts as an enabling condition for the impact of these activities on export venture performance. This study aims to examine the extent to which the selection of international channel partners through word-of-mouth referrals versus direct contacts affects the benefits of intelligence and responsiveness activities.

Data were collected from 246 exporting manufacturers in Japan. To test the hypotheses, we conducted regression analyses using a subjective performance measure at the venture level. We also performed a post hoc analysis using objective performance measure at the function level.

We find that the extent to which international channel partners are selected through word-of-mouth referrals has a moderating role in the export market-oriented activities–performance linkages. Specifically, it acts as an enabling condition for intelligence activity and a disenabling condition for responsiveness activity.

This study contributes to a better understanding of export market orientation by classifying it into intelligence and responsiveness activities and providing empirical evidence on their different interaction effects with partner selection. It also contributes to the elaboration of agency theory by offering insights into the fit between task characteristics and contract type. Our study is critical for business managers as it suggests guidelines for manufacturing exporters engaging in export market-oriented behaviors and export channel management.

Cross-border e-commerce continues to garner much attention within the international marketing literature as the world becomes hyperconnected through digital channels. Although there is an abundance of international marketing research on cross-border e-commerce, there is a lack of information regarding the influences of meta-institutional factors, such as a country’s level of globalization, on the relationship between digital advertising and cross-border e-commerce buyers. The objective of this research is to examine the effects of digital media ad spend at the country level on cross-border e-commerce buyers across countries under differing degrees of formal (i.e. political) and informal (i.e. cultural) institutional globalization.

This work examines the influence of digital ad spend at the country level and the degree of the country’s formal and informal institutional globalization on the share of cross-border e-commerce buyers. We examine this issue within a 21-country, 8-year, unbalanced panel dataset.

We find that there is substantive heterogeneity in degrees of formal (i.e. political) and informal (i.e. cultural) institutional globalization and cross-border e-commerce across countries. Digital ad spend at the country level is positively associated with cross-border e-commerce buyers within a country. A country’s level of political globalization enhances, but cultural globalization was found to dampen the positive association. The results indicate that political and cultural globalization of a country both contribute to increased interconnectedness with the global market, yet the nature of the interconnection differs.

The findings are informative to international marketing managers navigating the digital landscape and highlight the importance of institutions in international marketing activities. The study specifically demonstrates the varying effects of the meta-institutional factors of a country’s level of political and cultural globalization on the association between digital ad spend and cross-border e-commerce buyers at the country level, across a wide variety of countries, thus also contributing to the effort to improve generalizations from multi-country comparisons in international marketing research.

In this paper, the authors aim to introduce international dynamic marketing capabilities (IDMCs) theoretically derived from marketing capabilities (MCs), dynamic marketing capabilities (DMCs) and international marketing capabilities (IMCs) and provide a novel conceptualization of the concept by applying a holistic view of the international enterprise.

This is a literature review that maps the current research on MCs, DMCs and IMCs and serves as a basis for the theoretical conceptualization of a novel IDMCs concept as well as for the identification of research gaps and the development of future research directions on this phenomenon.

Existing typologies of MCs, DMCs and IMCs are classified into four categories: strategic, operational, analytical and value creation capabilities. A new typology of IDMCs is proposed, consisting of digital MC and dynamic internationalization capability as strategic capabilities, agile IMC, IM excellence and absorptive capability in IM as operational capabilities, IM resilience capability, IM knowledge management capability, AI-enabled IDMC and Industry 4.0-enabled IDMC as analytical capabilities, and ambidextrous IM innovation capability as value creation capability. Finally, the authors identify research gaps and develop research questions that open future research avenues for the coming years.

This paper offers a novel view of MCs, DMCs and IMCs and argues that, in contrast to the majority of previous research, a comprehensive understanding of these is only possible if all levels are considered simultaneously: the strategic, the operational, the analytical and the value creation level. A new conceptualization and typology of IDMCs follows this logic.

The purpose of this study is to review and analyze the status of word-of-mouth (WOM) research in the business-to-business (B2B) context and discuss and identify new possible future directions.

A systematic review was conducted and 36 articles on B2B WOM were collected to evaluate the current state of the literature and clarify possible future research directions.

This thematic analysis categorize these articles into three themes: WOM generation, WOM usage and reference marketing. Under each theme, the authors reveal research findings unique to B2B research and different from business-to-consumer (B2C) WOM research. This study identifies several research questions that should be addressed by future research.

Both academic researchers and business practitioners recognize that WOM plays an essential role in B2B marketing. However, no review paper focuses on WOM in the B2B context. Findings in the B2C WOM literature suggest that WOM substantially influences firms’ performance, but that managers cannot simply attempt to extrapolate B2C findings to the B2B arena. By synthesizing and assessing prior research on WOM in the B2B context, this study contributes to a better understanding of the B2B WOM phenomenon and facilitates future research on this topic.

This study aims to investigate the logistics service quality (LSQ) from a supply chain quality perspective. The purpose is twofold: (1) to investigate how business customers perceive the LSQ dimensions in business-to-business (B2B) relationships, with a particular focus on the role of logistics service providers and (2) to analyse the manner in which such dimensions, when combined, lead to high levels of customer satisfaction.

Data collected through a survey of a sample of Italian food companies are analysed using a qualitative comparative analysis approach. The analysis explores ways of achieving customer satisfaction through different combinations of LSQ dimensions and not only via a “single recipe,” as in most symmetrical methods.

The study describes how seven dimensions of LSQ lead to achieve customer satisfaction, particularly highlighting and discussing how the different LSQ constructs lead to gain high customer satisfaction via different configurations. This approach is unique in identifying not only linear relationships among variables as traditional statistical methods do, via a configurational approach.

Most academic studies in the related literature investigate service quality from a quality management and a supply chain management perspective. This study fills the existing gap in the analysis of B2B relationships, focusing on the role of third-party logistics (3PL) service providers.

The study presents useful implications for practitioners, describing several ways in which 3PL service providers can combine LSQ dimensions to perform a continuous improvement of customer experience and to gain higher levels of customer satisfaction.

This study fills the existing gap in the analysis of B2B relationships, using the lens of quality management and supply chain management perspectives, and focusing on the role of 3PL service providers.

The purpose of this study is to explore the customer shopping experience in the innovative technology setting. Specifically, the purpose is to understand how do innovative technologies influence the customer shopping experience?

This qualitative, explorative study has characteristics of a phenomenological research strategy. The data were collected from four focus groups and ten in-depth interviews with consumers. Abductive approach with an implementation of content analysis was used as a method of analysis.

The results show that there are three critical factors in customer's shopping experience in the context of innovative technologies; (1) channel choice, (2) value dimensions related to convenience and enjoyment, and (3) social interaction. All factors are highly intertwined and influence each other.

This study contributes to customer experience literature by offering a framework for understanding customer shopping experiences in the innovative technology setting. These findings have important implications for retail managers seeking to enhance customer experience and achieve a competitive advantage by utilizing innovative technology.

We study the contemporaneous effects of US monetary policy normalization on African stock market using panel data from six African countries.

Daily data from May 1, 2013 to December 31, 2018 were used in order to accommodate the announcement effects since the US monetary policy normalization announcement was made in May 2013, while the rate hike was in December 2015. The study used the FE, RE and PMG models.

The results revealed that US 10-year bond yield and Treasury bill rate shocks negatively affect stock prices in Africa. S$P500 shock positively affects African stock prices.The result revealed that the integration of African financial market to the global financial market is a major source of vulnerability. The finding that US Treasury bill rate is a major depressant of the African stock prices reveals the short-termism of foreign polio inflows into African economies.

We provide inexorably insight into the interplay of financial systems globally. It can be useful for the purposes of generalization in developing economies in the shape of African countries. More so, this study could be replicated in another economic bloc or region with the aim of further exposing the far-reaching spillover effects of the US monetary policy normalization.

The psychic distance often hinders the interaction between cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) and consumers. This paper aims to discuss the issues of psychic distance of consumers in the CBEC. In addition, it attempts to explain the factors that affect psychic distance from three dimensions of culture, economy and politics and the two different shopping behaviors caused by psychic distance.

This research incorporates both theoretical and empirical studies. In this study, 249 validated questionnaires were selected from 300 Chinese CBEC consumers by snowball sampling, and the relationship between variables was tested using structural equation model (SEM). This was done through online research, and it is ensured that the data obtained are first-hand information.

The paper suggests the theoretical model operationalizing CBEC psychic distance and the empirical analysis results show that all the six influencing factors have a positive impact on the psychic distance of consumers. Logistics infrastructure barriers in the economic dimension are confirmed as the major influencing factor, and the significance of the political dimension is relatively small. Based on consumers' uncertainty of various kinds of information, psychic distance subconsciously causes consumers to deviate in the cross-shopping process.

Currently, research on e-commerce mainly focuses on saving trade costs and improving consumer welfare, while research on the internal impact of CBEC on consumers is insufficient. Psychic distance is a new concept in the field of cultural and social research. The originality of this paper is that the concept of psychic distance has been extended from overseas invested enterprises to research with CBEC consumers as the selected object. The obstacles of CBEC have been widely studied, but few are related to the closeness of consumers, or the inner feelings of consumers are ignored. In the context of CBEC, this paper lists the actual external factors and potential threats that may affect consumers' consumption concerns of CBEC from three dimensions. The real emotions of consumers in the face of these difficulties indirectly affect the purchase satisfaction and reduce the purchase desire. Consumer psychic distance is a real phenomenon in cross-border shopping, and it is almost inevitable for these difficulties. On the premise of inevitability, high psychic distance will slow down cross-border shopping in the eyes of consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to fill the research and cognitive gap by comparative analyzing of the cluster supply chain (CSC) and supply chains not belonging to the clusters to examine the relational embeddedness as the differentiator of supply chains operating in the clusters.

The conceptual model was tested with data collected from 475 industrial companies cooperating with their partners within supply chains, including 135 CSC. To identify the livraisons between different indicators, the correspondence analysis was applied.

The division of enterprises participating in this study into groups allows for the determination of relatively clear boundaries between enterprises belonging to the cluster and those that do not declare such affiliation. The obtained results confirmed that the relational embeddedness is the differentiator of the CSC collaboration.

The main limitations are referred to as the static character of the data.

The paper contains implications for cluster facilitators, as well as for cluster policy decision makers, to better design support for cluster organizations.

This research is a contribution to the literature on inter-organizational structures, such as clusters and supply chains, and in particular, contributes to the creation of the scientific ground of SCS theory. The research allowed to better understand the nature of collaboration taking into consideration the fact of the relational embeddedness of the companies operating within supply chains located in clusters. It proves the existence of a new type of inter-organizational form that is CSC.

This paper aims to analyze factors based on organizational knowledge management (KM; transactional memory systems and knowledge-oriented leadership [K-OL]) that help firms to mitigate conflicts based on task management at work, with the aim to improve their innovation capabilities (IC). The knowledge-based view of the firm, conflict management theory and cognitive collective engagement theory have been used to build a model of relationships that connects the development of positive KM contexts and management of dysfunctional conflict with IC improvement.

Data survey collected from inland hotel establishments in Spain is used to test seven hypotheses by means of structural equations modeling, applying the partial least squares technique. Direct, indirect and mediating relationships between variables are examined from the structural path model.

The results confirm that, as expected, IC improve when K-OL and transactive memory systems (TMSs) are properly implemented by hotel establishments, which leads them to reduce negative effects of task management conflict (TMC). Significant direct effects are found between the key variables of the study and also a significant indirect effect between K-OL and IC through TMS reinforcement and the mitigation of TMC.

This paper provides useful ideas for hotel managers about how to improve KM contexts in their establishments while avoiding TMC. Efforts devoted to creating those contexts by hotel establishments are shown to be effective to improve their IC and create competitive advantages.

The analysis of IC improvement by studying TMC mitigation had not been researched to date by the KM literature. The consideration and testing of a model that integrates KM-related tools such as K-OL and TMS to avoid TMC in the hotel industry is the main contribution of this study.