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This article describes a futures‐oriented leadership process called visionary management as developed in the Finland Futures Research Centre and implemented successfully with several medium‐sized companies in the 1990s. It is regarded as an addition to advanced management processes aimed at making good business decisions. The aim of the process is to create new business ideas for the company in the form of a vision. The visionary process enriches the strategic management of the company by motivating key people to work jointly as a creative team for longer‐term success. It starts from finding a common understanding of the future business situation, and discovers the resources and options available to the company. It ends up with a vision, a synthesis of the common understanding of success and the will to accomplish it. Tools and approaches applied in this communication process are presented. Inside the company the vision becomes an empowering means for directing the future course of the company, and it is an effective way to communicate the aims of the company and attract external interest and support. The examples in the article represent real cases with the kind permission of the companies involved.

Analyses the ability of ability of copywriters to perceive the attitudes of various target group towards their advertising material. Uses Swedish copywriters based in Finland as an example. Outlines a trend towards a particular type of copy which uses short‐clipped sentences, with abbreviations in headlines and text. Focuses on this type of copy for the survey. Defines four target groups for discussion: Younger women with higher education. Younger women. Men with lower education. Younger men. Reveals findings, inter alia, that: Only traditional copywriters had correct expectations of the target group's attitudes. Pointillist copywriters wrongly anticipated more proactive attitudes towards short‐clipped advertising copy. Concludes that more attention should be paid to the linguistic features of advertising copy.

Identifies how western companies make successful entries in East European transition economies by studying the establishment process of Nordic companies in the Baltic States. Applies a model based on the network approach and the concept of matching and analyses the entry process of three Norwegian case companies. At global and macro levels the entry was facilitated by assistance for economic restructuring from international institutions and the Nordic governments, and by building up good relationships with central and local authorities. In the final establishment phase difficulties occurred in establishing trust and relationships with actors at the micro level and in matching company functions. Finds that market entry in transition economies differs from entry into traditional developing countries, where more problems are faced at the beginning of the establishment process, whereas, appropriate matching activities undertaken at different levels can facilitate the entry into transition economies.

Reports the findings and implications of a bank marketing study which was conducted in the Turku region of Finland in 1993. Determines the importance of selected patronage factors used by Finnish bank consumers in choosing national versus local banks, and determines the perceived usefulness of the variety of services offered by these two groups of commercial banks. Offers certain guidelines for bank managers. Suggests that the study findings would have wider application in other Nordic countries. With the recent entry of Finland into the European Union, banks from other member countries may find the study useful for policy development purposes. Suggests further avenues in Finnish commercial bank marketing.

At the beginning of the nineties, the Danish construction market was in the midst of a severe slump (Eurostat, 1995). At the same time, the German market was beginning to boom, due to the process of unifying the two German states (European Construction Research, 1995). Because of the poor home market circumstances, many Danish construction industry actors, including individual architects and architectural firms, attempted to find work in Germany (Halskov, 1995). However, the aspirations of most of these actors were dashed. By 1996, many of the largest Danish civil engineering and contracting firms had lost billions of Danish kroner, and a great number of small firms, typically architectural firms or subcontractors in the construction process, had also experienced severe losses, some of which had jeopardized the very existence of these firms (ibid.). This turn of events surprised both insiders in the Danish construction industry and the general Danish population as both groups believed that Denmark has high construction standards and that the most of the firms that had attempted operations in Germany were technically competent and had sound domestic business policies.

Project operations are a dominating mode of international business. Managing relationships and networks is crucial to project marketing success both at the level of the individual project and at the level of multiple projects. This article first defines key characteristics of project business, identifies potentially relevant actors in the project marketing milieu, and emphasizes the importance of constantly nurturing project business relationships, also in “sleeping relationship” periods where concrete projects are not expected. Thereafter the points made are illustrated with a Finnish‐Chinese turnkey project case at the level of the individual project and a Danish‐German professional service project case at the level of multiple projects. It is concluded that project managers and marketers should focus their attention on the management of project relationships before, during, and after projects, as well as on relevant environmental factors in the project marketing milieu, instead of using resources on sporadic or last minute running after potential projects.

This paper presents the results of survey research conducted in 1994 and 1995 on consumer perceptions of different retail formats in Albania. As a developing country where consumers and retailers are learning to adjust to a new market system, Albania presents a unique context for this type of study. We measured consumer perceptions of merchandising and customer service attributes and overall satisfaction for private stores with a permanent location, kiosks, and open market vendors. Contrary to other studies of informal retailers, our results show that open market vendors and, to a lesser extent, kiosks provide consumers with less overall satisfaction as compared to the permanent, private stores. Since these markets are segmented to a certain extent by product type, consumers shopped across all markets. Over time, consumers are becoming more confident of their decision skills, product quality has become more important, and permanent private stores were perceived as improving in merchandising and service. However, shopping frequency in the open market increased due to the economic situation. Implications for both Albanian entrepreneurs and potential foreign investors are discussed.

This paper draws on the experiences of project marketing and solution selling to improve the understanding of how to create superior value for customers. Project marketing and solution selling have both developed approaches to deal with complex marketing situations for a number of years now. The upstream mobilization of customer network actors and the downstream enlargement of the content and scope of the offering are the key features of these approaches.

This paper presents two case studies to focus attention on elements that are crucial to this twin-track approach. The downstream extension of the offering relies on services supporting the customer's action (SSC), which supplement traditional services that support the supplier's product (SSP). The upstream extension leads to an introduction to other types of services or elements of the offering – the services supporting the customer's network actors (SSCN).

Furthermore, the paper proposes a marketing process that takes the supplier's viewpoint, for whom the entire approach is a network mobilization, into account. This approach to the offering, which included SSP, SSC, and SSCN, is typical of a network strategy in which the supplier recruits and enrolls new actors to (re)model the buying center.

This marketing process is in tune with the latest developments of the service-dominant (S-D) logic, as it proposes a move from the value chain toward a value-creation network/constellation. Consequently, creating superior value for customer means mobilizing and servicing actors far beyond the boundaries of the buying center, supply chain, and customer solution net.

Many types of commercial professional services are commonly sold as projects. Therefore this article draws on the project marketing literature to elucidate the international marketing of professional service projects. After an initial literature review, the project marketing milieu concept’s a priori territorial definition is critically examined on the basis of cases concerning the internationalization of Nordic architectural firms. It is hypothesized that territoriality plays the biggest role in situations where a firm is moving from one national milieu with well‐established norms, rules, and representations to another national milieu with similarly well‐developed norms, rules, and representations, yet that there also exist global milieux. Managerial implications concerning professional service firms’ preparation for entering a foreign milieu as well as subsidiary or office establishment abroad are provided.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.