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This study analyzes how technological changes in the context of Industry 4.0 influence buyer-supplier relationships (BSRs).

The study is explorative in nature; hence, an empirical qualitative research design is applied. It bases on 45 expert interviews with managers from German and Austrian industrial companies as empirical data. A qualitative content analysis is conducted to inductively analyze the empirical material and to identify common patterns, themes and categories.

The paper finds that future transactions are mainly based on digitized, automated procedures, transferring various value creation processes to platforms. BSRs become more intense in nature. Companies consolidate their supplier base by focusing on important strategic suppliers.

As the paper is of exploratory nature, it can only present first qualitative insights. Further studies can extend the results by analyzing and contrasting BSRs in various industries or value chain stages and map differences and similarities, respectively.

The paper's results provide implications for management and corporate practice alike. These help companies to raise Industry 4.0's full potential as for BSRs creating and securing long-term and sustainable competitive advantages.

This paper is among the first to empirically investigate BSRs in the context of Industry 4.0. Providing implications for research and corporate practice, it contributes to tapping Industry 4.0's full potential complementing an extra-organizational perspective.

The purpose of this article is to empirically examine the influence of consumer involvement on perceived relational benefits across service types.

Based on Bowen's service typology, responses from patrons of fast‐food restaurants and hairdressers/stylists were used to assess the influence of consumer involvement on relationship marketing, specifically perceived service benefits and response behaviors.

Results indicate that highly involved consumers perceive greater relational benefits when engaged in a high contact, customized service (i.e. hairdressers/stylists) versus a more standardized, moderate contact service (i.e. fast‐food restaurant).

Care should be taken when generalizing these findings to other service settings as this study only addressed two service types. Thus, an opportunity for future research could add moderate contact, non‐personalized services to determine if there are significant differences between the three service categories. Additionally, this study was based in the USA, thus cultural differences may influence perceived benefits of service firms selected.

The results of this study suggest that a service firm providing a more standardized service offering is better served by hiring and training competent and trustworthy employees than by adopting relational benefit programs. On the other hand, high contact customized service providers are encouraged to engage in relationship activities with highly involved consumers, specifically those related to confidence benefits.

This study confirms the recommendation that relationship marketing may be inappropriate for all service firms. More importantly, the level of consumer involvement with the service has a significant moderating effect on perceived relational benefits.

Employees’ emotional competencies (EEC) are skills, based on emotional intelligence, used to perceive, understand and regulate customer emotions during a service encounter. In the context of service recovery, these skills are especially important and allow employees to influence consumers’ attitude and behaviours. The purpose of this study is to assess the direct and indirect impacts of EEC in post-recovery satisfaction, trust, word-of-mouth and repurchase intention, considering the moderating role of service (level of employee-customer contact) types.

A total of 355 customers who experienced a service failure and subsequent recovery were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire. EEC was specified as a formative construct, determined by its perceiving, understanding and regulating dimensions. To measure EEC and its impact on selected outcomes, PLS-SEM was used. A multi-group analysis was performed to analyse the moderating role of service type.

Results confirm EEC as a formative construct, with a positive direct impact on post-recovery satisfaction, particularly in high-contact customized services. Findings also reveal the mediating role of satisfaction on selected outcomes, and the significant direct impact of EEC on trust, even when controlling for satisfaction.

EEC remains unexplored in the service recovery literature, and most research fails to understand how EEC role may vary given contextual differences. This study adopts a consumer perspective of EEC in the emotionally charged situation of service recovery, considering the moderating role of service type. The authors further contribute to both literature streams while examining the impact of EEC on post-recovery evaluations. Companies should consider these findings in the recruitment and training of front-line employees to develop better service recovery strategies.

This paper looks at science communication through an organisational lens with the aim of assessing the relevance of different organisational forms for science communication.

The paper explores science communication in different organisational forms. Based on conceptual considerations and by reviewing existing empirical literature, the paper selects and compares three organisational forms of science communication: the editorial office of a daily newspaper, the press office of a university and the Science Media Centre.

The paper shows the relevance of organisation for science communication by comparing three organisational forms. The first two, the science news desk and the press office, have the character of a sub-system of an organisation, while the third, the Science Media Centre, forms its own organisation. The paper shows how the respective set-up shapes science-media contacts with a focus on the occurrence and resolution of conflicts.

The paper proposes a conceptual framework for studying science communication through an organisational lens but leaves comparative empirical studies of all types to future research. Yet, it outlines and compares implications of the formal organisation of science communication from a conceptual point of view.

The findings provide information on the structural impact of different organisational forms on science communication and point to where conflicting expectations, and thus potential conflicts, are most likely to occur in each case. A reflection of structurally conflicting expectations and how they can be overcome in specific situations is of high practical value for all science communication activities.

Organisational theorists have long argued that organisations are the key to understanding society. Despite their undoubted relevance, however, organisations and their influence on science communication have so far been much less analysed – both conceptually and empirically – than its contents, its practices and its impacts on public understanding, public policy, and on science and scientists. The paper contributes to the emerging field with conceptual considerations towards an organisational sociology of science communication.

This study’s aim is to investigate the role of investor communication in equity-based crowdfunding. The study explores whether and how investor communication can reduce information asymmetries between investors and new ventures in equity-based crowdfunding, thereby facilitating the crowd’s investment decisions.

This paper follows an exploratory qualitative research approach based on semi-structured interviews with 23 market participants in equity-based crowdfunding: 12 investors, 6 new ventures and 5 third parties (mostly platform operators). After analyzing, coding and categorizing the data, this paper developed a theoretical framework and presented it in a set of six propositions.

The results indicate that the venture’s overall impression – especially perceived sympathy, openness and trustworthiness – is important to reduce perceived information asymmetries of investors in equity-based crowdfunding. To communicate these soft facts, personal communication seems to be replaced by pseudo-personal communication over the Internet (e.g. videos, investor relations channels and social media). In addition, the communications of third parties (e.g. other crowd investors, professional and experienced investors and other external stakeholders) influence the decision-making process of investors in equity-based crowdfunding. Third-party endorsements reduce the perceived information asymmetries and lower the importance of pseudo-personal communications by the venture.

Prior research shows that investor communication reduces information asymmetries between companies and investors. Currently, little is known about the role of investor communication in equity-based crowdfunding. This study focuses on the role of investor communication to reduce the perceived information asymmetries of investors in equity-based crowdfunding.

Because service encounters and service relationships are first and foremost social encounters, norms and expectations related to such encounters are likely to vary from culture to culture, but especially between high context Eastern, collectivist and low context, Western individualistic cultures. The purpose of this study was, in part, to replicate and then extend the work of Gwinner et al. in the USA, but this time in a Southeast Asian context. Gwinner et al.’s work examined the benefits customers perceive they receive from engaging in long‐term relationships with a variety of service‐providers. The current sample comprised 155 respondents in Bangkok, Thailand who each completed a series of questionnaires concerning their relational behavior with service suppliers. The results support the earlier study showing relational benefits can be categorized into three distinct benefit types. However, compared with the past research results in a Western context (USA), the results indicate some clearly discernible variations. It is apparent that we should not rely wholly on empirical research emanating from Western cultures, but also develop reliable models of how various marketing phenomena work in the rapidly expanding Asian economies.

An online survey was carried out with the purpose of finding out the extent to which internet users subscribe to online dating services. The paper aims to assess users' experiences of such services and their eventual outcomes.

Data were obtained through a self‐completion online questionnaire survey posted on the website of a leading internet research agency, utilising its online panel of c. 30,000 UK respondents.

More than 3,800 online panellists responded of whom 29 per cent said they had used an online dating site. Most of these respondents (90 per cent) had spent up to £200 on internet dating in the past two years, with 70 per cent of users achieving at least one date, 43 per cent enjoying at least one sexual relationship, and 9 per cent finding a marriage partner.

Despite the limitations over sample control of self‐completion surveying, a large online sample was achieved that indicated the growing importance of the internet for finding social and even sexual companionship.

Data indicate the kinds of factors that are important to internet daters in choosing online dating agencies and that drive eventual satisfaction with service received.

This survey provides original and up‐to‐date findings on a growing online and social phenomenon and represents one of the largest surveys of its kind yet carried out in the UK.

Within academic literature, there has been a burgeoning of literature in the field of economic geography which has centred on the nature of local concentrations of economic activity, with particular interest on those which are most dynamic, variously styled as clusters (Porter, 1990; Swann, Prevezer, & Stout, 1998), innovative milieux (Camagni, 1991), industrial districts (Piore & Sable, 1984), new industrial spaces (Scott, 1988) and nodes (Amin & Thrift, 1992). Such intense interest among geographers stands in contrast to the relatively more muted impact within the management, and more specifically, the strategy field (Audretsch, 2000). What makes this particularly odd are firstly, the intense interest of policy makers that has been stimulated by the seminal work of Porter (1990), and secondly the manifest claim and implication of much of the extant literature that the existence of dynamic clusters is at once both a result of corporate strategies and also a vital consideration which should inform strategic thinking. This chapter assesses the extent to which one of the UK's most successful clusters behaves in ways which are consistent with Porter's positive statements about the nature of clusters. In doing so, the chapter will consider insights which the wider literature offers on how and when concentrations of economic activity will give rise to superior performance, at least among some of the firms located there, which do not feature prominently in Porter's thinking. In particular, it will explore Martin and Sunley's (2003) critique of Porter's clusters concept and its utility as a basis for regional development policy. It will also consider recent contributions which claim that the resource-based theory (RBT) of the firm offers a superior framework for thinking about the strategic implications of clusters for corporate strategy, rather than the more industrial organization-based lens through which Porter views this issue. This chapter concludes that a synthesis is warranted rather than an attempt to claim that one view is correct and the other wrong.

The chapter seeks to address a current gap in the literature: envisioning and justifying community outreach projects and turning such insights into best practices for managing such projects. Drawing heavily on informational interviews, the article highlights the importance of defining shared missions and strategic plans, identifying partners, researching needs and expectations, building trust and partnerships, setting and fulfilling communication expectations, offering tangible benefits to the partner, and evaluating outcomes. While focused on health sciences librarians and their community partners, these practices are broadly applicable to many library outreach programs and can enhance credibility, approaches, and impact, while increasing funding opportunities and users while creating sustainable collaborations.

The field of marketing has had a history of individuals and organizations attempting short‐term gain through less than ethical means. The advent of the Web and other technological advances has placed powerful resources in the hands of practitioners. Coupled with that power is an acute public awareness of marketing abuses that have adversely hindered subsequent marketing efforts. Marketers need to address basic marketing skills through old‐fashioned personal contact and personal relations that probably never will be effectively replaced with modern IT methodology. Additionally, marketing should take a proactive approach to defining marketing responsibilities to the public it serves to overcome the reputation that is established by a few who are unethical in their approach to the craft.