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This article reports on the results of a research project into the development activities undertaken during the launch of 132 new financial services in Greece. According to the results, business analysis and marketing strategy formation as well as launch are the stages of the new service development process which influence the success of a new service irrespective, for the most part, of the degree of innovativeness that characterizes it. The significance of the other three stages of the development process varies depending the degree of innovativeness that characterizes the new service and the type of objective (financial or not) that management considers in order to evaluate its actual performance.

The reason for this study is to help increase understanding concerning the service elimination decision and implementation since it remains a highly under‐investigated topic. In doing so, an empirical investigation of the successful vs not‐so‐successful elimination practices from eight service industries were examined.

The data were secured by means of a lengthy and structured questionnaire, instrumented through personal interviews as part of a much wider examination of the service elimination decision‐making process in Greece entitled “Project ServDrop”. The companies included in the sample were drawn from a population of 1,964 service companies listed under selected service sectors, namely, insurance, banking, advertising, professional services, freight forwarding, marine, telecommunications and lodging.

The analysis reveals that treating the elimination as a strategic issue, considering how resources can be more effectively re‐allocated, paying attention to market consideration regarding the consequences of a potential elimination and adoption of a systematic behavior, building interdisciplinary teams to deal with the decision and keeping the time between the making and the implementation of the decision short, are all important dimensions of “successful elimination”.

However, the findings should be cautiously adopted because of the limitations of the study: the use of a retrospective methodology in the data collection, the use of the key‐informant approach, the limited number of variables included in the conceptual framework are issues that cannot be neglected. Nonetheless future research that will be directed towards tackling these limitations may dispel these concerns.

Despite its limitations, this study has significant implications for practitioners. It mainly points to the strategic nature of the elimination decision and its implications. Also, it unveils certain behavioral changes that must accompany the effort to treat the elimination decision as part of the greater strategy for managing the firm's offerings. Thus, the contribution of this study is twofold. For academia, it is a step forward towards a stronger understanding of the service elimination issues, while, for practitioners, it helps to clarify certain important issues that can help improve the outcome of the decision to drop a service from the firm's portfolio.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of marketing, sales, EDP/systems and operations in the ultimate success of new‐to‐the‐market vs “me‐too” retail financial services.

To collect the data, the “dropping off” method was followed using a self‐administered questionnaire. Respondents were new service development project leaders. The unit of analysis was the service innovation project. After two follow‐up contacts, 114 usable questionnaires were returned from 64 companies, yielding a company response rate of 76 per cent and a project response rate of 68 per cent.

There are significant differences in the involvement of marketing in the stages of business analysis and marketing strategy, technical development, testing and launching, and the involvement of EDP/systems during technical development between “me‐too” and new‐to‐the‐market retail financial services. Further, in the case of new‐to‐the‐market projects, the involvement of marketing and sales positively influences performance. By contrast, the performance of “me‐too” retail financial services is positively affected by the involvement of the technical‐related functions, namely EDP/systems and operations.

The study offers only indirect evidence of a strong link between market orientation adoption and performance of innovative retail financial services. Future research attempts should incorporate a measurement of market orientation and examine directly its relation with the performance of major innovations. Also, the development process is only one of the many factors, which may explain variations in the performance of different new services. Future research is again needed in order incorporate in the analysis measures of such factors and refine the links that this study has revealed.

On the basis of the study's findings, middle and top management may reconsider their new service development process and possibly reassess their practices regarding the different roles that various functions hold during the development process.

Reports the results of a research project into the marketing communications tools used during the launching of 100 new retail financial products – 58 non‐innovative and 42 innovative – and it is part of a broader study conducted on the development and launching practices of new financial products in Greece. It is revealed that innovative and non‐innovative products, generally, follow a different marketing communications approach. Innovative successful products are launched through the most integrated communications package followed by non‐innovative successful products, while innovative and non‐innovative unsuccessful products receive very limited communications support during their market introduction. Overall, three marketing communications tools are found to lead to enhanced performance, either for innovative or for non‐innovative products, namely intensive selling, below‐the‐line advertising, and telemarketing.

The paper aims to offer a preliminary insight into the issue of whether service providers eliminate their offerings in various stages of their life cycle, and if so, whether elimination decision‐making differs depending on the service's life cycle stage.

Data were secured by means of a structured questionnaire which was completed through personal interviews. Respondents answered all questions having a recently eliminated service in mind. The initial calls and follow‐up efforts generated 164 usable responses (49.8 per cent response rate).

A service may be eliminated from a service provider's portfolio in any stage of its life cycle. Further, in terms of precipitating circumstances, evaluation factors and elimination strategies, the service elimination process differs depending on the stage of the service life cycle that the elimination decision is taken.

The most important implication is service providers eliminate services not only as a response to a crisis possibly caused by drops of sales volume, but also for other reasons. In this respect, service portfolio rationalization and particularly service elimination may result as a consequence of strategic management decisions taken for positive (e.g. development of a new service) or negative (e.g. competitive actions) reasons. Within this framework, the service life cycle (SLC) model, as a strategic tool for analysis and decision‐making, may well serve to guide the rationalization process.

The research questions of the study have been examined for tangible products, but this is the first relevant study that is conducted in a service context.

Research studies have started to appear in recent years about the use of world wide web (WWW) by organizations. In an attempt to shed more light into this issue, this study seeks to take a behavioral approach for classifying enterprises on the basis of WWW use. It aims to address two research questions: Can different organizational profiles reveal as a result of a classification scheme/taxonomy of enterprises based on WWW use? and If such a classification is possible, to what extent are the WWW usage profiles related to specific market, organizational and demographic characteristics?

The sampling frame of the study consisted of the largest 1,250 firms in Greece in terms of sales turnover that had already adopted information and communication technologies. After three follow‐up contacts by telephone, e‐mail and fax the cooperation of 500 companies was secured (40 percent response rate). Data collection was carried out by a professional market research firm by means of computer‐aided personal interviewing (CAPI) system. The research instrument was a structured questionnaire.

Five distinct WWW usage profiles of enterprises were identified, namely “E‐merchants”, “Information seekers”, “E‐purchasers”, “E‐transaction adopters” and “WWW experimentalists”. These profiles are found to be associated with different market, organizational and demographic characteristics.

This classification scheme can be viewed as a behavioral segmentation exercise based on the application/use criterion that is used for segmenting B2B markets by web service providers. The present classification may also help suppliers of networking infrastructure and e‐business software. E‐commerce policy makers can also benefit from the results of this study. The different types of WWW adopters that have been uncovered in the present study practically map the extent of combined WWW uses by various types of enterprises. Such information is important for future WWW promotions and the design of funding projects to further promote WWW.

The paper's value is considered important because, despite its acknowledged importance, only limited research has been conducted on the commercial use of the WWW, mainly, through examining the use of WWW home pages of various organizations and their effect in marketing. Similarly, despite the fact that various European Union‐sponsored studies are conducted regularly by the National Statistical Offices of the member states and the European E‐Business Market W@tch, these studies limit their analysis to descriptive statistics.

While significant empirical work exists around the conceptualization of the notion of market orientation, as well as its relation to company performance, little empirical work has attempted to sketch how a firm's behavior alters when the principles of market orientation are adopted. In this study, the authors investigate empirically the notion of market orientation continuum, according to which companies can be classified depending on the degree of adoption. Next, the behavioral implication of the company's position on the continuum is investigated. Moreover, the role of the company's market environment in explaining the degree of market orientation adoption and its classification along this continuum is also assessed. Finally, the behavioral consequences of this classification are considered.

Considers the brand and store choice behaviour of grocery shoppers and explores relationships among consumer characteristics, brand choice criteria and store selection criteria. A survey was carried out to collect data on demographic profiles and decision criteria of shoppers in the Greek grocery sector. The data were collected through in‐store, personal interviews and subsequently analysed using descriptive as well as optimal scaling methods. The data reveal asymmetric evaluations of choice criteria and some clear and interesting patterns regarding the two choice processes. In addition, several associations between brand and store preferences are identified and related to specific demographic characteristics of the consumers. The present work is a first attempt at addressing these issues in the grocery Greek market and leaves considerable room for further research.