Search results

A key point in the internationalisation process of companies comes with the choice of international market. Following this choice, the results companies may thereby obtain help in measuring their level of international performance. This study aims to measure the impact of internationalisation processes in keeping with company market orientations (MOs) through measuring their effect on international performance.

The authors obtained the data from a questionnaire sent out by email to a total of 8,103 exporting companies and/or with interests in exporting (the study population) registered in the AICEP-Portugal Global database that provided the email addresses of the company representatives responsible for internationalisation. The authors received a total of 320 valid responses (sample).

The results display a positive MO effect both on internationalisation processes and on international performance. The authors also note the importance of studying the influence of strategic orientations on internationalization processes, motivated by the particular SME’s characteristics.

The authors aim to contribute to the study of the influence of the MO, both upstream and downstream, thus seeking to verify its impact on internationalization processes.

Social relationships play an important role in organizational entrepreneurship. They are crucial to entrepreneurs’ decisions because, despite the bleeding-edge technological advancements observed nowadays, entrepreneurs as human beings will always strive to be social. During the COVID-19 pandemic many companies moved activities into the virtual world and as a result offline Social relationships became rarer, but as it turns out, even more valuable, likewise, the inter-organizational cooperation enabling many companies to survive.

This chapter aims to develop knowledge about entrepreneurs’ SR and their links with inter-organizational cooperation. The results of an integrative systematic literature review show that the concept of Social relationships, although often investigated, lacks a clear definition, conceptualization, and operationalization. This chapter revealed a great diversity of definitions for Social relationships, including different scopes of meaning and levels of analysis. The authors identify 10 building blocks and nine sources of entrepreneurs’ Social relationships. The authors offer an original typology of Social relationships using 12 criteria. Interestingly, with regard to building blocks, besides those frequently considered such as trust, reciprocity and commitment, the authors also point to others more rarely and narrowly discussed, such as gratitude, satisfaction and affection. Similarly, the authors discuss the varied scope of sources, including workplace, family/friendship, past relationships, and ethnic or religious bonds. The findings of this study point to a variety of links between Social relationships and inter-organizational cooperation, including their positive and negative influences on one another. These links appear to be extremely dynamic, bi-directional and highly complex.

This study proposes that reciprocity appeal may influence consumers helping behavior. The authors suggest that this influence depends on the target of reciprocity (direct vs. indirect), consumer–brand social distance (close vs. distant) and frequency of exposure to the appeal over time.

This research was conducted through three experimental studies. They were carried out both through online experiment (Study 1) and in laboratory (Studies 2 and 3). Study 3 consisted of an experiment combined with longitudinal growth models, supporting the hypothesis that repetitive periods decrease reciprocity over time.

The results demonstrate that consumers close to a brand become more prosocial toward the company when the reciprocity appeal is perceived as direct (vs. indirect). In contrast, the indirect reciprocity appeal influences consumers distant from the company. Furthermore, reciprocity appeal decreases consumer helping behavior over time, but indirect reciprocity appeal attenuates this negative effect only to close customers.

This research contributes to theory by showing that direct reciprocal appeals increase the helping behavior of close customers when company appeals are infrequently made.

This research is the first to empirically investigate the efficiency of voucher campaigns. Furthermore, it innovates by exploring a situation of direct consumer reciprocity in which the consumer decides to help a company with an expectation, but no explicit requirement, that the company will reciprocate.