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The use of various forms of cooperative sales promotions such as intracompany and intercompany multibrand promotions is on the ascendance, particularly among manufacturers and marketers of frequently purchased packaged consumer products. This article provides an overview of various forms of cooperative sales promotions, objectives that firms strive to realize through cooperative sales promotions, and other issues. In addition, from the standpoint of improving marketing productivity, the need for greater focus on the consumer franchise building potential of various sales promotion tools is highlighted.

A survey of consumer attitudes towards marketing practices, consumerism and government regulations in India, an industrialising country, revealed a high level of consumer discontent and support for the consumerism movement. A comparison of the results of the survey of consumers in India with the results of a prior study of consumers in six industrialised countries revealed certain similarities as well as differences, thus providing additional empirical insights into the validity of the consumerism life cycle concept.

The contingency approach and its relevance to theory building and research in marketing is described. The approach is delineated and its theoretical foundations traced. Several established contingency theories within the management discipline are outlined and the research they have stimulated on related topics in marketing are highlighted. An assessment of the current state of the contingency approach in marketing literature is then provided.

While the consumer movement was popular in economically advanced countries between 1965 and 1975, developing countries were not yet ready for such issues. The consumers in these countries, due to their economic, social, and political environments, were not aware of their rights. Taiwan was a typical case. Three main reasons contributed to the ignorance of the Taiwanese consumers at the advent of the worldwide consumer movement. First, in its early years, Taiwan was basically an agricultural society. The primary industry and its commodities made product differentiation impossible. It was nature, and not human beings that decided the quality and/or quantity of the products produced for the market. Everyday products were simple and few, and the choice between products, easy. Secondly, it was not until the 1960's that Taiwan turned slowly from an import‐oriented economy to that of an export‐oriented economy. Raising tariffs and controlling the importation of products were necessary to protect local businesses from foreign competition. Thus, the rights of consumers were sacrificed. Lastly, the very nature of the Chinese (e.g., psychological profile), led them to endure the suffering of any mistreatment. They would avoid a direct confrontation on any dispute. Therefore, organized activities against businesses was not possible. All of these reasons made the consumer movement unheard of in Taiwan during the 1960s.

Numerous conceptual and empirical studies in the services marketing literature have focused on the unique characteristics of services and the resulting marketing problems. Building on these works, this article explores differences in the future strategic orientation of goods and service businesses in the context of various functional areas.

The main issue of stakeholders’ inclusion nowadays is the establishment of relationships between policy actors and creation of a supportive environment for stakeholder participation to allow a straightforward stakeholder inclusion with a meaningful contribution to policy making. The concept of a collective identity describing how shared values, shared activities and a shared identity lead to social cohesion between a large number of people, could suggest a hint for stakeholder empowerment. We argue that a proper inclusion leads towards empowerment of stakeholders only where efforts to build collective identity are allocated. Otherwise, stakeholder inclusion is only about static participatory governance where knowledge collection predominates over knowledge sharing and co-production. The goal of the present chapter is to trace formal governance networks as a participatory governance mechanism and analyse stakeholder perspectives to be empowered to act in a formal governance network presuming that the network structure creates an environment where a collective identity is being built.

The formal governance networks of 2013 led by the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Education and Science were reconstructed on the bases of documents available in the organisations. The structure of the governance networks of 2013 is analysed as a precondition for an organisational collective identity to form.

The structure of the governance networks leads us to the conclusion that stakeholders are expected to be knowledge providers instead of being knowledge co-producers.

The networks demonstrate that the process of sharing knowledge and values is not recognised as an important element of participatory groups and efforts made to build a collective identity are too scarce.

This study examined the relationship between 130 firm's business investment strategy and their firm performance, as measured by return on investment (ROI) and earnngs per share (EPS). ROI was used as the accounting performance measure and EPS was used as the market‐based performance measure. Results indicate that the accounting performance measure (ROI) may be more appropriate for firms pursuing share‐increasing and turnaround business investment strategies. Whereas both accounting (ROI) and market‐based (EPS) measures may be more appropriate for firms pursuing less risky profit‐oriented business investment strategies.

Examines the issue of excessive growth in the service firm, using the case example of People Express, a US domestic airline. Addresses the question of how service firms can grow and yet maintain financial stability. Focuses on sustainable growth a marketing planning method for determining the financial feasibility and desirability of a company′s product and market growth strategies. Concludes that an excessive growth firm must carefully examine its choices to be able to align its market opportunities with its financial resources, otherwise it faces disaster