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This study aims to investigate how companies’ understanding of the business network influences the creation of value in business-to-business relationships. The authors do this by analysing dimensions in actors’ “network pictures” and illustrating how value perception and network understanding influence actors’ mutual effort to create value. Approaching relationship value from the point of actors’ cognitive understanding of their business network has so far been largely overlooked in relationship value research.

This study applies a qualitative case study methodology whereby dyadic data from a well-established business-to-business relationship is collected from 18 company representatives through personal interviews and group interviews supplemented by participant observations and company data.

The findings contribute with new insight into how companies’ understanding of their surrounding network influence (facilitates or limits) relationship value creation. The authors find that companies continuously reflect on changes in their networks and the related changes in partners’ value perceptions. Through value articulations, companies seek to explicitly express their value perception. Value reflections and value articulations create a dynamic process formed not only by the individual actor but also through their relationship and engagement in their network environment. This requires companies to develop their networking capabilities.

This paper presents findings, insights and contributions limited to a case study of a particular business relationship within an industrial setting. Although the findings and contributions are valid and in line with the criteria for rigorous qualitative research, the authors advocate and call for additional studies that investigate relationships value creation and address the interplay between actors’ network understanding and their actions and behaviour. One way to approach this would be to test the four propositions derived and presented as part of the present study.

The findings imply that management needs to be aware not only of the value created and delivered to a specific partner but also of how the partner’s understanding of the wider network will influence the value delivering and capturing process.

This study contributes to the growing literature on relationship value creation by outlining a dynamic process where relationship partners reflect upon and articulate value. Such activities are influenced by the partners’ network understanding and form the basis of the mutual relationship value creation effort. The findings also contribute to the network pictures literature by emphasizing insights into the formation of value perceptions through actors’ understanding of their surrounding networks.

This paper aims to investigate the influential aspects of industrial branding in building customer brand engagement from the buyer’s and the seller’s points of view. Collecting buyer and seller information is essential to understand business-to-business interaction better. Buyer’s and seller’s perspective integration is significant for stakeholders to develop proper strategies to achieve customer brand engagement.

This study uses a structural equation model to examine the antecedents of customer brand engagement from the buyer’s perspective; then, the result is compared with the seller’s view by conducting an analytical hierarchy process. The authors exercise 140 valid data from the buyer’s industry and 9 experts from the seller’s industry.

This study finds that in developing customer brand engagement, rational brand quality is the most influential from the buyer’s view and top priority from the seller’s view. Surprisingly, both parties have different perspectives about the second and third priorities. The buyers put emotional brand associations as a second priority; perceived value is meaningless and insignificant. On the contrary, the sellers set the perceived value as the second priority and emotional brand associations as the last.

The respondents from the buyer industry cover various industries, and the research is limited to the buyer and the seller in the chemical polymer emulsion market, a market where product quality and application quality on the buyers’ side are essential and where the buyer–seller interaction is intense. Replicating the study in other industries and cultural backgrounds is recommended for generalization.

The paper’s novelty is that there are different priorities and perspectives from the buyer’s and the seller’s views. This study contributes to industrial brand engagement research studies. Investigation of the buyer’s and the seller’s perspectives in industrial brand engagement research studies is still limited.

Given the dominant share of India in global production of fruits and vegetables, this paper intends to analyze the export competitiveness of India and other major food exporters in the world trade. The purpose of this study is to examine export structure, substitutability and complementarity of selected fresh and processed fruits and vegetables of top ten food exporters for the period 2010-20.

Balassa’s (1965) revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index was used to measure RCA indices of selected fruits and vegetables under study. Also, revealed symmetric comparative advantage (RSCA) and normalized RCA (NRCA) indices have been calculated. Further, Spearman rank correlation coefficients were computed to analyze changes over the study period for India and other competing countries. The export data have been sourced from UN Comtrade, an electronic database of United Nations, as well as World Trade Statistical Review, a database of World Trade Organization. The analysis was undertaken at Harmonized System (HS) four-digit classification for the period 2010-20.

The results disclosed an improvement in India’s comparative advantage over the period of 2010-20 in HS 07 product category, whereas the advantage ceded to other competitive nations in HS 08 product category. Further, Spearman rank correlation coefficients revealed that India faces competition from countries like China, Indonesia, Brazil, Thailand, Argentina and European Union for HS 07 product category, while countries like Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil and Thailandare the major competitors of India in HS 08 product category.

The paper expands the existing agricultural trade literature in three ways. First, it is one of the very few studies that have analyzed RCA for Indian fresh and processed fruits and vegetables using three different types of indices, namely, Balassa’s RCA, RSCA and NRCA. Second, the authors provide a number of comparisons related to RCA for Indian fruits and vegetables with other top food exporters in the world for a period of 10 years (2010-20). Third, the authors contribute to agricultural trade literature by assessing the substitutability or complementarity of India in the export of fruits and vegetables with other competing nations by using Spearman rank correlation coefficients.

This chapter presents findings from a qualitative study conducted among students from Germany, Hungary, Portugal, France, and Poland on their expectations and experiences of learning in two types of international mobility (physical and virtual) during the pandemic of 2020. The authors identified imprints of internationalization onto the students’ learning. They are of a binary nature and manifest themselves in the following dualities: Duality 1: Expectations (new life experiences) versus reality requirements (empowerment); Duality 2: Formal learning (at university) versus non-formal learning (outside formal environments as a part of daily life); Duality 3: Designing (the digital environment) versus reconstruction (the “old order” of university learning); Duality 4: Latitudes (choice of method, place, and time of learning) versus restrictions (staying at home and family responsibilities). Moreover, internationalization through student mobility programs simultaneously show features of some revolutionary changes and evolutionary transformations that have come about during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Consumer confusion is an emerging phenomenon of interest that significantly drives choice behaviour. Considering the dearth of scholarly focus on confusion faced by consumers in a healthcare setting, this paper aims to conceptualize and validate a patient confusion model consisting of its drivers and outcomes.

Drawing upon adaptive decision-making framework and consumer confusion literature, patient confusion model has been developed. Empirical data of 310 patients from three private sector hospitals in India was collected through pen and paper survey administration. The hypothesized patient confusion model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to derive confirmatory results.

The results confirm the role of decision-making variables such as information overload, information similarity, information ambiguity, information asymmetry, patient involvement and physician-patient communication in the occurrence of patient confusion. A significant impact of confusion on switching intention was also confirmed, providing insights for healthcare managers.

The effect of confusion on switching intention of consumers found through the present study holds significant implications from a healthcare management standpoint. Dissemination of credible information, improved communication between doctors and patients and creation of organized channels of health information provision also represent some of the notable implications for healthcare managers to mitigate patient confusion.

This study presents an empirically validated model of patient confusion creating a research agenda for theory development in this emerging area. Consumer confusion represents a core consumer behaviour problem that is of utmost significance in the healthcare sector. This paper is one of the first and early attempts to address this research problem.

This paper aims to explore how entrepreneurs use social media (SM) to develop their organisational identity within business networks.

A single embedded case study was used comprising a case firm entrepreneur and eight connected network actors within an artisan food context in Ireland. Data was collected using an in-depth interview complemented with content analysis of networked firms’ Facebook posts (N = 1,652) over a three-year period.

This paper identifies four common network processes through which entrepreneurs can leverage SM to develop their organisational identity within networks. The processes are network relating, collaborating within networks, interacting with trends and connecting with community.

Findings are limited to the Irish artisan food sector and explore identity development through a single SM platform. The applicability and variation of use of the processes across industries would serve to further refine the processes identified.

Practically, the four processes through which identity within a network can be developed using SM can help entrepreneurs to access and position themselves within business networks, gain access to resources and overcome the classic limitations of newness and smallness.

This paper provides a conceptual framework illustrating the processes involved in developing entrepreneurial organisational identity within business networks using SM. This paper adds to a growing literature that places interaction at the heart of identity development and responds to calls to further understanding of the process of identity development for entrepreneurial ventures.

Brand equity (BE) can be strengthened by the strategic association of brand heritage (BH) with social media (SM) in business-to-business (B2B) markets.

Qualitative research using cognitive maps.

BH empowers BE and should be explored within B2B communications.

Brand image and other BH dimensions should be measured in next studies.

BH strongly influences SM, especially the fan loyalty, and impacts BE in all dimensions.

Research shows marketing mix impacted, BE reinforcement and willingness to pay a premium price.

Interaction between BH, SM and BE in B2B has not been evaluated yet.

The purpose of this study is to, first, analyze the past years of research on international branding and, second, building on an early literature review, to analyze patterns in the field and suggest future research.

The analyzed papers were compiled using the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The author searched papers published between 2007 and 2023 that used terms related to international branding in their title, abstract and keywords.

This paper structures and identifies key institutions, papers, regions and authors in the field. It provides an overview of the past years of research in the area. The study identifies important gaps in the literature and suggests further research dealing with, for example, the B2B sector and emerging markets.

Despite the increase in international branding studies, few literature reviews have been published since 2007. This review fills this research gap. It identifies future research areas dealing with branding in the B2B sector, branding in emerging markets, branding process and implementation studies using longitudinal methods and more practical research.

Business organizations are evermore expected to behave conscientiously, but a lack of clarity remains regarding this strategy for business-to-business (B2B) brands. This paper aims to develop and validate a B2B brand conscientiousness model that identifies what factors are driving this approach.

The research model is validated through a three-stage study that collects insights from high-level executives, mid-level managers and employees in B2B firms. Whereas the first two exploratory stages follow a qualitative approach to identify what factors motivate B2B firms to be conscientious and develop a model, the third stage empirically tests the proposed model through structural equation modeling.

The results suggest that brand conscientiousness is viewed as an important strategy by B2B stakeholders. Whereas perceived risk discourages, external and internal stakeholder expectations and a firm’s financial commitment to a cause encourage, brands to pursue a conscientious approach. Furthermore, a B2B conscientious strategy must be perceived as authentic. Long-term commitment to the cause, strategic alignment of brand values with the cause and a congruent delivery of the brand’s promise are the drivers of this perceived authenticity.

This paper contributes to the emerging knowledge on B2B conscientious brands by confirming the importance of this approach in a B2B context, identifying the factors that B2B stakeholders – executives, managers and employees – believe are driving it and highlighting the importance and identifying the factors that drive its perceived authenticity.