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This paper illuminates the distinction between individual and organizational actors in business-to-business markets as well as the coexistence of formal and informal mechanisms of coordination in multinational corporations. The main questions addressed include the following. (1) What factors influence the occurrence of personal contacts of foreign subsidiary managers in industrial multinational corporations? (2) How such personal contacts enable coordination in industrial markets and within multinational firms? The theoretical context of the paper is based on: (1) the interaction approach to industrial markets, (2) the network approach to industrial markets, and (3) the process approach to multinational management. The unit of analysis is the foreign subsidiary manager as the focal actor of a contact network. The paper is empirically focused on Portuguese sales subsidiaries of Finnish multinational corporations, which are managed by either a parent country national (Finnish), a host country national (Portuguese) or a third country national. The paper suggests eight scenarios of individual dependence and uncertainty, which are determined by individual, organizational, and/or market factors. Such scenarios are, in turn, thought to require personal contacts with specific functions. The paper suggests eight interpersonal roles of foreign subsidiary managers, by which the functions of their personal contacts enable inter-firm coordination in industrial markets. In addition, the paper suggests eight propositions on how the functions of their personal contacts enable centralization, formalization, socialization and horizontal communication in multinational corporations.

Understanding the privacy concerns of individuals in the adoption of contact tracing apps is critical for the successful control of pandemics like COVID-19. This paper explores the privacy paradox in the adoption of contact tracing apps in Australia.

A comprehensive review of the related literature has been conducted, leading to the development of a conceptual model based on the privacy calculus theory and the antecedent-privacy concern-outcome framework. Such a model is then tested and validated using structural equation modelling on the survey data collected in Australia.

The study shows that perceived benefit, perceived privacy risk and trust have significant influences on the adoption of contact tracing apps. It reveals that personal innovativeness and trust have significant and negative influences on perceived privacy risk. The study further finds out that personal innovativeness is insignificant to perceived benefit. It states that perceived ease of use has an insignificant influence on perceived privacy risk in the adoption of contact tracing apps.

This study is the first attempt to use the privacy calculus theory and the antecedent–privacy concern–outcome framework for exploring the privacy paradox in adopting contact tracing apps. This leads to a better understanding of the privacy concerns of individuals in the adoption of contact tracing apps. Such an understanding can help formulate targeted strategies and policies for promoting the adoption of contact tracing apps and inform future epidemic control through effective contact tracing for better emergency management.

Purpose — In the context of the study of the role of social networks in travel behavior, this chapter adds to that body of knowledge by presenting a new data collection effort, which collects a wide array of information about the social, urban, and temporal context where social activity-travel behavior occurs.

Methodology/approach — The study was developed in Concepción, Chile, involving 240 respondents from four different urban contexts and their personal networks. The analysis concentrates on the challenges and opportunities of different techniques to build personal networks as a way of studying the social dimension of travel behavior. Although most of the current methods to study personal networks rely on emotional closeness, this approach may not be sufficient, since these “elicited” people may not include daily contacts that could be relevant to study social activities. Tackling this issue, the data instrument also collects those daily “revealed” people, on a two-day time use diary and a social activities listing. With this information, the chapter presents a comparative analysis between these “elicited” and “revealed” personal networks.

Findings — Overall, the results illustrate the dependence of the name generator technique on what is observed in terms of social activity-travel behavior, specifically on aspects such as personal network size, average distance, and frequencies of interaction. In addition, the comparison between the different methods to construct the personal networks, illustrates how name generators provide the opportunity to further understand transport related questions, such as the role of income and access to amenities on spatial and temporal patterns of social interactions, and their effect on social capital.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of personal and inter-firm networks and the elements that contribute to the formation and management of these networks for regional small businesses.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 small business owners located in regional areas.

The findings highlight key characteristics of regional small business owners’ networks. Findings indicated that participants relied strongly on their personal networks for business purposes. This study shows that while personal networks adapted and changed into informal inter-firm networks, weak-tie relations within inter-firm networks were unlikely to develop into close personal networks. Novel findings also include a preference for “regional interactions” and included regular collaboration with local business competitors. Although the participants used social media to manage their business through personal networks, results confirmed there was a lack of awareness of the benefits of inter-firm networks with businesses outside the local region.

While it is acknowledged small business owners use personal and inter-firm connections to maintain and grow their business, there is a lack of research examining both of these networks in the same study. This research addresses this gap and presents five propositions as a useful direction for future research. This paper adds to the evolution of existing knowledge by expanding understanding of the formation of business networks and conditions of business trust relations within a regional context.

The purpose of this study is to develop and examine an integrated mediating model that contains relationship benefits as the relationship antecedents; trust, relationship commitment and gratitude as mediators; and repurchase intention as the relationship consequence in a service business context.

The study recruited 253 respondents to test the proposed model. A partial-least-square-based structural equation modeling was adopted to evaluate the measurement of research constructs and test the research hypotheses that underpinned a proposed conceptual model.

The results show that confidence benefits increase trust more than social and special treatment benefits; social benefits have the most influence on relationship commitment; and special treatment benefits most greatly enhance feelings of gratitude. Thus, depending on the improvement objectives, marketers can accordingly choose the proper relationship benefits as a primary approach. Furthermore, both the direct and indirect effects of confidence benefits and social benefits on repurchase intention were significant.

The main limitation of this study is that all research variables were measured at a static point rather than as they were developing. Ignorance of the temporal sequence may incur the concern of possible spurious causal relationship inferences.

The study’s findings offer several important implications for service providers, which, in this study, were separated into high (e.g. such as hairdressing, beauty and massage) and low personal contact service groups (e.g. telecommunications and equipment maintenance). First, social benefits are more effective at increasing gratitude in the low personal contact service group, and at boosting trust in the high-contact group. Second, special treatment benefits increase gratitude much more in the high-contact group than in the low personal contact group. Third, gratitude has a much stronger effect on repurchase intention in the high personal contact group than in the low-contact group.

The interactions among relationship benefits, mediators (i.e. trust and relationship commitment) and outcomes remain unclear. Although the importance of gratitude as a mediator in relationship marketing (RM) has been shown, little research has examined how relational benefits influence repurchase intention through the combined mediating effects of commitment, trust and gratitude. Therefore, this study advances RM theory by examining the degree of additional explaining power that gratitude contributes to the commitment–trust model. The study also makes a practical contribution by building a research model to understand the nature of mediating roles played by relationship commitment, trust and gratitude in the service industry.

An updated version of the original (1985) text, the book covers all aspects of marketing and selling bank services: the role of marketing; behaviour of customers; intelligence, planning and organisation; product decisions; promotion decisions; place decisions; price decisions; achieving sales. Application questions help to focus the readers' minds on key issues affecting practice.

This paper is concerned with the challenge posed by the management of customer relationships in services. The focus is on banks, although similar service businesses (with long‐term customers) may be expected to encounter like challenges. The relationship approach for businesses is discussed and is judged to be quite fundamental with wide‐ranging implications. The paper considers the appropriateness of the relationship approach for retail banking given the prerequisite conditions suggested by the literature. The personal banker strategy is considered as a means to implementing the relationship approach in retail banking. Empirical findings from a study examining the role of personal bankers in New Zealand are presented. It is concluded that a relationship strategy can be a double‐edged sword: implemented well it can have the desired effects; implemented badly it can have a negative impact that will leave the organization with more problems than if they had done nothing at all.

The purpose of this paper is to increase the transparency of the value‐creation chain in the stock market. It aims to: conceptualize the value‐added through the relational capital, inductively develop models on how values are created, and discuss the values created for the analyst firm, the clients and investors in the stock market in general.

The paper is based on a case study of sell‐side analysts at a big Swedish investment bank and their work with real life situations of changes in recommendations.

The findings of the case study indicate that analysts, through their relational capital, access competitive advantages needed for remaining on a highly competitive market. They get access to value‐added information and knowledge and also business for the firm. This helps them to fulfill the three roles played, i.e. as information intermediaries, knowledge builders and businessmen. However, the analysts' dependencies, due to their relational capital and the analysts' conflicting roles, result in ambiguous or even biased information. The values added to clients differ between prioritized clients who receive value‐added information through the relational capital with the analysts and non‐prioritized clients with limited, or no access, to the analysts' services.

Value created through relational capital within organizations has been intensively studied within the area of intellectual capital. However, the sell‐side analysts' value‐creation chain linked to their relational capital with company representatives and clients, considered in the present study, has been neglected.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated model on perceived employability in university students, based on personal and contextual factors.

The authors use structural equation modelling to estimate a model that includes a set of variables, previously validated at exploratory and confirmatory levels, in order to measure personal and contextual factors involved in perceived employability. The sample comprises 816 university students selected by a stratified procedure.

The model explains how perceived employability in university students is built up. It identifies the involved factors and their level of influence and provides statistically valid and reliable measures for these factors.

This study develops an integrated model which explains more than previous ones to know perceived employability of university students by combining personal and contextual factors. A limitation of the study lies in the use of a cross-sectional design, and the specificities of the cultural context as well as consideration of the labour market situation. Generalizing the results to other cultural contexts requires caution.

The model explains perceived employability in university students and provides validated scales at confirmatory level that can be used for futures studies in sociology, behavioural psychology, human resources management or education. The model and scales also serve as tools for evaluation that can be used by those responsible for such personal or contextual factors.

The development of an integrated model that explains perceived employability to a much higher degree than previous models.

This paper aims to explore relationship marketing and the existence of relationships in mass consumer markets from the consumers' perspective, with the focus on the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector.

Ten focus groups were conducted with consumers from a broad range of demographic and socio‐economic backgrounds to enable in‐depth exploration of the research issue.

The study highlights the dominant negative attitudes that exist among consumers to relationship marketing as it is operationalised in FMCG markets. It is found that from the consumers' perspective relationships do not and cannot exist in these markets and that the nature of exchange in such markets is not relationship based. Consequently, the research concludes that there is a necessity to move away from relationship rhetoric in FMCG markets, and to explore the true nature of exchange in the quest for effective marketing strategies. The research also suggests that further research on relationship marketing should focus on situations where relationships do and can exist and consequently the boundaries of relationship marketing should be limited to only these situations.

By offering the consumer perspective on relationships and relationship marketing this study broadens understanding of the phenomenon and makes an important contribution to the relationship marketing debate.