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This study aims to build a conceptual model based on socio-aesthetic value accentuation (SAVA), positional advantage and sales-network power as the bridging process for enhancing sales performance in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

A structural study methodology is adopted. In all, 200 owner– managers of SMEs were involved in the study and voluntarily spent time for an interview in the data collection process. To test the model and hypotheses, the authors used the analysis moment structure structural equation modeling (AMOS SEM structural model software to analyse 178 usable questionnaires.

The results demonstrate three strategic pathways to enhanced sales performance, namely, anchors on SAVA, positional advantage and sales-network power and are the basis of the separate contribution of our proposed strategic equilateral triangle model for conceptual bridging.

The rejection of the hypothesis provides a room for further research. The sample frame of Indonesian SMEs limits the generalisation power of SAVA concept, which then calls for replication to achieve a broader generalisation. The theoretical implication of the study relates to strengthening the applicability of the theory of service-dominant logic in marketing studies.

There are several practical managerial implications for SME entrepreneurs seeking to improve sales performance.

This pioneering study explains the role of SAVA – positional advantage and sales-network power to bridge innovation capability and enhanced marketing performance.

This paper investigates how three marketing‐related sources of advantage – market orientation, new service development and brand investment – contribute to service firm performance by operationalising the sources‐position‐performance framework in a multi‐sector sample of service organisations. New service development and brand investment are found to contribute to the attainment of positional advantage and thence to performance. Market orientation, when considered in combination with these other sources, does not contribute directly to positional advantage and performance. Cost, brand and new service success positions are found to contribute to service firm performance.

Although service guarantees are generally believed to give firms a competitive edge, much remains to be learned about the value of, and return on, this customer relationship management strategy. This study aims to examine the influence of implicit service guarantees on two important aspects of business performance: customer satisfaction and return on investment.

The study hypotheses are tested utilizing three different sources of secondary data to assess the study variables.

Over a four-year period, top implicit service guarantee provider firms generated superior market and financial performance in terms of customer satisfaction and return on investment than their industry peers

Research limitations/implications

The number of top implicit service guarantee provider firms used to test the study hypotheses is relatively small due to inherent constraints associated with using secondary data. Testing more exemplar firms against their respective industry averages would have been preferable and may have yielded even more robust findings.

Firms recognized for leveraging customer service skills and resources to “make right” any sources of customer dissatisfaction may achieve positional advantages associated with superior business performance. Therefore, focusing on building a firm's reputation for exceptional customer service provision may be a more effective approach than offering an explicit service guarantee.

This research offers support for contentions that customers value the implicit service guarantees associated with firms recognized for outstanding customer service and responds to calls for research that evaluates the specific information that must be communicated to customers to enhance the credibility and effectiveness of service guarantees.

Economic mobility means different things to different people, but four major classes of mobility measures have been identified in the literature: positional, directional, mobility as an equaliser of long-term earnings, and earnings risk (or flux). We illustrate some advantages of a multifaceted approach by comparing German and American earnings mobility using multiple indices from each of the four major classes for three panels of 10-year intervals. We anticipate and confirm that due to extensive differences in the German and American labour markets and in other social institutions that influence labour market outcomes, each country dominates in one facet of mobility but not in the others. Thus, a multifaceted approach contributes to a better understanding of the strengths and weakness of the two systems.

Competitive advantage is the basis for superior performance. Understanding the anatomy of competitive advantage is of paramount importance to general managers who bear the ultimate responsibility for a firm’s long term survival and success. Advances an integrative framework called SELECT to help general managers systematically examine the various facets of the anatomy of competitive advantage: its substance, expression, locale, effect, cause, and time‐span. Analyzing the causes of competitive advantage helps a firm create and gain advantage. Studying the substance, expression, locale, and effect of competitive advantage allows the firm to better utilize the advantage. Examining the time span of competitive advantage enables the firm to fully exploit the advantage according to its potential and sustainability.

By using the dynamic capabilities (DC) theory and the theory of competitive advantage, the purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to investigate the role of marketing capabilities on the firm’s export performance. Specifically, this framework depicts the consequences of marketing capabilities and focuses on the relationships among marketing capabilities, competitive advantage, and export performance.

The authors conduct a meta-analysis of the literature on marketing capabilities and use multivariate analyses to test the framework.

The study revealed that competitive advantage has an important mediating role in the relationship between marketing capabilities and export performance. Specifically, the authors found that two types of competitive advantage (i.e. low-cost advantage and differentiation advantage) positively mediate the effect of marketing capabilities on export performance.

Although research on marketing capabilities is still in its early infancy, the study provides a base from which future work can be developed. The authors also contribute to the literature by examining the mediating role of competitive advantage in the marketing capability-export performance relationship, thereby offering new insights into how and why marketing capabilities play a crucial role in explaining the firm’s export performance.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

Competitiveness is one of the most misunderstood concepts of the 1990s. It has drawn substantial attention from the government and business communities during the last 25 years. Morrisson et al. (1988) noted that between 1983 and 1987, the term competitiveness appeared more than 5700 times in the titles of newspapers and magazine articles. The growth of importance and interest can also be observed from the increase in the bibliographical entries in ABI/Inform database. From 1981 to 1986, the topic “international competitiveness” increased by about 26 listings per year (a total of 159 in 6 years) and the rate increased to 45 listings per year from 1987 to 1993. Academic interest in the area has also increased and as a result, new developments contemplating conceptualization and understanding of competitiveness are taking place. However, to no one's surprise, writers from different disciplines offer a variation in perspective when describing the concept, understanding, and postulation of competitiveness.

Based on the strategic challenges faced by Western companies in the coming decade, this paper is concerned with the area of strategic management. In particular, emphasis is on the relationship between managerial problems, managerial practice and state‐of‐the‐art theories on strategic management. Interestingly, it is found that managerial practice over the past 10 years has had a poor relationship to the actual problems faced by managers and to the state‐of‐the‐art theories on strategic management. At the same time, however, state‐of‐the art theories of strategic management have also had a poor relationship to the problems faced by managers. Strategic management is, therefore, lost and needs to be reconsidered in light of the empirical challenges of the area.

Literature concerning the linkages between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance (FP) has been growing in tourism research. However, the linkage's relevance to new venture travel intermediaries remains vague. This study proposes a model that helps researchers and practitioners understand how EO translates into new venture FP through two strategic perspectives of value creation, i.e. firm value (FV) and customer perceived value (CPV).

The study tests this framework using structural equation modeling on a matched dyadic sample of 127 new venture firms belonging to the Indian travel industry.

The results posit that FV and CPV partially mediate the relationship between EO and new venture FP. The study advances the existing knowledge on the link between EO and FP and provides insights into how EO can enhance FV and CPV which ultimately enhances FP.

This work is the first to extend and integrate the idea of FV and CPV to entrepreneurship and new venture performance literature. By considering the two strategic aspects of value creation, i.e. FV and CPV, the paper presents a holistic view of value creation through EO.