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Fashion companies have been among the first to ride the new trend and develop projects for the Metaverse, considering Generation Z (Gen Z) as a relevant target. The paper aims to investigate Gen Z consumers’ intention to use digital fashion items in the Metaverse.

The study relies on the technology acceptance model (TAM). The authors include specific aspects of the Metaverse: the user-avatar identification and the development of an alternative identity; fashion innovativeness is discussed as a moderator variable. The model is tested on Gen Z consumers, with 329 survey responses collected in 2022 and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The paper shows that the two external and explanatory variables the authors added, i.e. user-avatar identification and alternative identity, positively and directly impact the individual attitude to use digital fashion items in the Metaverse. Moreover, according to the proposed research model, the moderating effect concerning fashion innovativeness has positive and negative consequences.

Using TAM, the authors explored consumers’ perceptions (perceived usefulness and ease of use), attitudes and intentions regarding the new technology context (digital fashion in the Metaverse). This study enriched TAM with new consumer marketing constructs (user-avatar identification and alternative identity) and their relationships with consumers’ intention to use digital fashion items in the Metaverse. This study also contributed to TAM by exploring the relevance of moderating the effects of consumer fashion innovativeness on consumers’ intentions and attitudes in the novel context of digital fashion in the Metaverse. The paper contributes to the academic debate by focusing on the individual and personal sphere of the consumer moving in the Metaverse digital environment. The marketing-focused study develops research on Gen Z consumers to provide new insights and possible opportunities for marketers in the Metaverse.

This paper aims to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the interaction in a business-to-business (BtoB) setting and the emerging relational dynamics. The COVID-19 pandemic is having a strong impact on BtoB markets in terms of the stop of production, the difficulty of coping with payments, restrictions on the flows of people and goods within national and international markets. The paper discusses that the effects of worldwide lockdowns, social distancing and other related restrictions undermine one of the salient features of business relationships, namely interaction.

The paper relies on a qualitative interpretivist approach based on the data collected from in-depth interviews with key informants and secondary sources. The fashion industry is taken as an emblematic case, given the relevance of BtoB relationships, especially those between global fashion brands and their suppliers, and the dramatic impact of the pandemic.

The paper shows four effects in terms of relational dynamics. The freezing effect is the maintaining of interaction at minimum operating levels capable of ensuring survival for both interacting actors. The ripple effect can be conceived as a negative effect of the pandemic related to the weakening of the freezing effects in interactions along the supply chain. The rebound effect is a sudden increase in interactive processes among existing relationships. The vicious effect is a negative effect of the pandemic on the interaction that refers to the decay of existing interaction and their ending.

This study fits into the current period of the COVID-19 pandemic to stress the role of interaction involving people and businesses as a key to restart. The paper suggests managerial implications to respond to the pandemic in the short term and to set the basis for future opportunities.

This paper aims to provide a wide picture of studies on heuristics for international decision-making with a focus on foreign market entry. This paper systematically reviews studies published in the international business and international marketing domain to examine heuristically based decisions for foreign market entry.

This paper proposes a systematic literature review and an in-depth analysis of 32 papers published between 1997 and 2021 dealing with foreign market entry and the use of heuristics for international decision-making.

Even if the marketing and management literature is in many ways permeable to the debate around heuristics developed in experimental psychology and cognitive science, international business and international marketing studies on the one hand recognize that international decision-making, especially when dealing with foreign market entry, is strongly characterized by uncertainty, on the other hand, there isn’t a developed and systematized literature about it. This paper shows key topics and areas fundamental to foreign market entry in which heuristics are applied by decision makers and their effectiveness.

A systematic review of the use of heuristics for foreign market entry decision-making can represent a useful step for a more organic development of knowledge about the more general use of heuristics for international decision-making. Understanding the decision-making process on the modes of entry in foreign markets is a key topic for international marketing and international business scholars and practitioners.

The paper delves into the international expansion of luxury SMEs to investigate their internationalization pathways, namely how the internationalization process unfolds in terms of timing of entry into foreign markets, the geographic scope of operations and the scale. The paper examines also the determinants of the internationalization pathways as a set of factors that contribute to developing an asset of foreignness.

The paper adopts a multiple case study approach and reports findings from four cases of Italian SMEs operating in the luxury fashion industry.

SMEs’ specific characteristics at the firm and entrepreneurial levels (i.e. craftsmanship, quality, product creativity, entrepreneurial mindset), country of origin attributes (e.g. Italy’s positive image) and the inherently global nature of the luxury industry, can turn foreignness into an asset of foreignness that allows luxury fashion SMEs to pursue internationalization pathways of born globals.

The paper highlights that the global luxury market is not the exclusive domain of MNEs and sheds light on luxury SMEs, overlooked by extant literature. The paper also contributes to understanding early internationalization by highlighting a potential link between internationalization pathways and foreignness and discussed the asset of foreignness by extending it to SMEs.

This paper aims to investigate the market access (MA) of ethical drugs, the underlying public-private interaction (PPI) between pharmaceutical companies and public actors, and the implications for the sustainability of the health system.

A qualitative interpretivist approach was selected. Interviews were carried out as the primary method of data collection: 27 interviews were conducted with 13 key informants from the pharmaceutical industry.

The perspective of MA evolves from formal negotiation with the public actor at various levels to PPI, which should include aspects of interactions with other actors in the network. Conceptualization in these terms is fundamental because it allows an understanding of the implications in terms of the sustainability of the health system.

The paper discusses MA by highlighting the shift from a “market access as formal negotiation” perspective to a “public-private interaction for market access” perspective, in which the focus is on the content of the interaction and the representation of the network of relevant actors for MA. It contributes to the debate on the sustainability of health systems by suggesting the adoption of a medium-to-long-term approach to economic and social sustainability based on PPI; it adopts an industrial marketing approach and contributes to the recent debate on PPI.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate pharmaceutical market access (MA) and the interaction between the pharmaceutical company and other business and non-business actors (NBAs) involved in the MA of ethical drugs, to identify the main categories of actors, their role for MA and the content of the interaction, adopting an industrial marketing approach.

A qualitative interpretivist approach is adopted, with interviews as the primary data collection method: 36 interviews have been conducted with 16 key informants from the pharmaceutical industry.

The findings of this study reveal that (i) MA can be seen as a relational-driven activity with specific features owing to the highly regulated nature of the pharmaceutical industry, (ii) there is a multiplicity of business, and NBAs involved in the MA activities with whom pharmaceutical companies interact to acquire knowledge, legitimacy and make MA timely and effective, and (iii) the interaction with each category of actors has specific content.

This paper advances the debate on the marketing and management of pharmaceutical companies by emphasizing the importance of MA and the need to conceptualize it according to an industrial marketing perspective, revealing the interdependencies among actors for MA and the content of the interaction. It also contributes to the industrial marketing literature that has recently stressed the importance of NBAs as part of the extended business network of a company by identifying different categories of actors, their role in terms of knowledge and legitimization and the features and the trade-off of the extended business network in highly regulated markets.

This paper aims to investigate sustainability-led innovation, focusing on the interplay between product and process innovation for sustainability goals and the underlying supplier–customer relationships. Thus, the paper delves into sustainability-led innovation and how it affects supplier–customer relationships, and vice versa, thus providing a twofold perspective.

The textile industry is the empirical context of this study, which is exploratory research based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, managers and experts in the textile industry.

In the textile industry, sustainability-led product innovation concerns mainly product durability and performance, product recyclability and the use of waste for new product development. Process innovation deals with circular economy, traceability and water and chemical use minimization. The paper also shows how sustainability-led innovation is implemented in more technical terms and regarding supplier–customer relationships.

The paper adopts an original perspective on how processes take place in the relationships between suppliers and customers, where there is no dominance of one actor, but innovation emerges from interdependence and interaction. Such perspective allows to provide an in-depth analysis of the supplier–customer relationships and underlying dynamics that affect sustainability-led innovation; moreover, the authors study how such innovation impacts supplier–customer relationships and the underlying relational dynamics. The value of the paper also stands in delivering a real representation of the innovation processes grounded in the textile industry.

The purpose of this paper is to address the topic of business network dynamics and identify different relational paths, as forms of change in business relationships and related types of network change. The paper contributes to the literature on business network dynamics by providing an understanding of relational paths in the context of firms’ internationalization and shading light on different forms of change in business relationships and types of network change. The paper also contributes to the understanding of liabilities in internationalization that has to do with business networks, namely the liability of outsidership.

This paper is based on qualitative research following the multiple case study research approach. The authors propose three cases of internationalizing firms in the fashion industry that follows relational paths corresponding to different forms of change in business relationships that imply different types of network change.

Changes to a firm’s business network may be addressed through relational paths, namely creation of new business relationships (activation), maintenance of existing relationships (integration) and ending of existing relationships (substitution). These relational paths can be considered forms of incremental (integration) and radical (activation and substitution) change in business relationships and lead to different types of network change for business network dynamics that coexist and influence each other within the same firm.

This paper contributes to a better understanding of business network dynamics by showing how firms change their business relationships following different relational paths as the best way to respond to the challenges and new opportunities offered especially by international markets. The present paper has relevant managerial implications since coping with change in business relationships is perhaps one of the most critical and difficult tasks for management, even more critical if compared to the increasing complexity of doing business internationally and the liabilities that firms face in their internationalization process, especially the liability of outsidership.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is a first attempt to deal with the phenomenon of new venture failure from the business network perspective of the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group. In particular, this study aims to explore the post-failure phase of a new venture to investigate what happens to the new venture’s resources and relationships in the aftermath of its failure and the role of the entrepreneur in this process.

The paper builds on an explorative multiple case study of two failed new ventures, unfolding the failure and post-failure phase: evidence from both cases is confronted and discussed.

This study shows that the post-failure is a complex phase of recombination of activities and residual resources that may lead to new business opportunities. It is discussed that residual resources influence the direction and extent of post-failure activities in terms of restrictions as well as opportunities to restart new projects or ventures. It is also shown how the entrepreneur deals with the “business remains”.

While much attention has been devoted to new ventures’ failure, the paper focuses on the post-failure phase, an almost neglected topic in industrial marketing research. This study sheds some new light upon the journey through which entrepreneurs come to develop the set of resources, activities and relationships that are not only key to the establishment of the venture but also relevant in the complex and intricate trajectories of post-failure.