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This study aims to conduct a pertinent assessment of the concept of business competitiveness and how Portugal can progress in that field, for the sake of becoming a more sustainable and wealth-creator economy.

The research was elaborated with 65 in-depth interviews with expert persons from the Portuguese business ecosystem, who were asked to reflect on the state of the economy and competitiveness of the country.

There is much room for improvement in almost all areas of activity, in particular by promoting an innovative, value-adding and exporting private sector and a lighter and more efficient public sector. The conclusions point to modernisation of the Portuguese economy as a way of making it more competitive in a highly competitive and demanding global scenario.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time that a reflection with experts of the local Portuguese economy has been carried out, especially after a difficult period of COVID.

This paper examines the likely influences on the sourcing of textiles by UK retail buyers. It reports the results of secondary data analyses on the retail market and primary data from personal interviews with 102 textile buyers. The main influence on the British market from changes in international agreements will be a greater opportunity to source from low‐cost markets. This could negatively affect traditional sources such as Italy and Portugal. The structure of the UK market is analysed to provide a basis for the selection of interviewees. Buyers who were interviewed tended to fall into two groups, younger but well qualified and older, less well qualified but more experienced. The younger group included more females. They tended to refer important decisions to others, although this correlated more with experience than with gender. Conclusions are drawn on the implications of the study for textile marketers, particularly those from other EU countries. By enhancing their understanding of the structure of the UK retail sector, suppliers are able to devise strategies that take into account the specific nature of distribution of textiles and clothing in the UK, and consequently increase their ability to compete in this changing market.

The net outward investment position (NOIP) indicator is insufficient for the purposes of understanding firms’ internationalization decision-making behaviour. The indicator does not allow for the withdrawal of insights into the structure of an economy and is a weak predictor of the degree of foreign direct investment. The purpose of this paper is to argue that a typology of firms aggregated according to intrinsic characteristics of those firms is a better predictor of the degree of internationalization of an economy than the NOIP.

This paper uses a database of 2,133 firms located in Portugal with international operations, made available by AICEP, a government agency. This paper uses multiple correspondence and cluster analyses to build a typology of firms and obtains evidence of common characteristics of the constituent groups.

This paper identifies a typology of firms characterized by five types differentiated by firm age, length of internationalization process, sector of economic activity, legal status and psychological/cultural proximity. These variables suggest an evolutionary, iterative, self-learning approach to internationalization, which can be better explained by the combined use of the investment development path (IDP) framework, the Uppsala Evolutionary School and Vernon’s product life cycle theory. Additionally, this paper finds that the most striking differences between developed and developing host countries are in terms of the economic sector, legal status of the firm and belonging (or not) to an economic group.

This paper establishes a link between the IDP framework, the Uppsala Evolutionary School and Vernon’s product life cycle theory, using a categorization of firms made according to selected characteristics to understand the internationalization of firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine brand knowledge of wines produced in a selected Portuguese viticulture area. More specifically, we intend to understand how consumers organise brands that have the highest awareness in their memory in terms of perceived personality traits.

A survey was developed to assess brand awareness of Portuguese green wine brands and brand personality using Aaker’s brand personality framework. Multiple correspondence analysis was used in this study to present the relative positioning of the top-of-mind green wine brands.

Despite the large number of green wine brands available on the market, six brands dominate in terms of brand awareness. Top-of-mind green wine brands are marked with clear and distinctive brand personality, and a small subset of brand personality attributes serve as significant criteria for brand positioning.

The results of the present study could be beneficial for academics and practitioners, as it reveals that the top-of-mind brands within a specific viticulture area could exhibit a clear positioning based on personality traits. Therefore, brand personality traits might provide a mechanism for wine managers to distinguish or differentiate their wines.

This work contributes to the findings of previous studies held to study brand personality perceptions. From a theoretical point of view, this paper reflects the usage of one the most popular instruments for brand personality measurement in a wine market context.

This paper aims to look into contemporary thinking within the brand equity paradigm, with a view to establishing avenues for further research on the drivers of brand equity formation, enabling a more in-depth understanding of the antecedents of brand equity and its determinants, as well as the development of an improved instrument to measure brand equity. The brand equity paradigm and its importance for marketing theory have been in the research focus for more than two decades. There is no agreement in the literature how to develop a unique measure of brand equity, neither what are the sources, drivers or determinants.

The authors develop the relating conceptual study through the differentiation and integration as specific conceptual goals. The authors present a taxonomic framework of brand equity grounded on a synthesis of contemporary approaches to the theme.

The authors identify gaps in the brand equity literature. The analysis and development of the conceptual study in this paper shall serve as beacons for future research and provide valuable theoretical insights on the determinants of brand equity formation and the development of better brand equity measurement tools.

The authors synthesized contemporary approaches in the field, identified research gaps and proposed open questions that should be tackled, as well as provided avenues for future research. The authors argue that creation of a unifying brand equity theory should be based on three pillars: stakeholder value, marketing assets and brand financial performance outputs.

The purpose of this paper is to look into the relationship between the physical aspect of a retail store, product‐related attributes, personal interaction with customers and perceived reliability and corporate brand image in an offline or bricks and mortar context.

The study is based on 511 interviews conducted in various bookstores and uses structural equation modelling as a statistical tool for concluding the above.

The paper argues that physical aspect of a retail store, product‐related attributes and personal interaction with customers will have a significant and positive direct effect on the offline corporate brand image whilst there was no significant connection between reliability and corporate brand image.

The research has been conducted in one organisation, albeit a number of bookstores were scrutinized.

The paper's managerial contribution lies in its lessons for practitioners who want to understand what are the key drivers of corporate brand image in an offline context. It also provides a background for further studies which can extrapolate the current thinking into other sectors in order to validate or refute the results presented here.

The paper scrutinizes the impact of: physical aspects; product related information; reliability; and personal interaction in the corporate brand image of a retail organisation.

The main aim of the present study is to empirically test a model of antecedents and consequences of corporate brand image (CBI) in two book retailers, one selling exclusively online, and the other selling exclusively offline in a British context.

The study employed a survey to investigate the relationships of the antecedents and consequences of the CBI. The sample (n=511) comprised experienced customers of these two bookstores (visitors and shoppers of the site or bookstore). The antecedents of CBI which were the functional aspects of brand attributes (such as ease of use, secured web site, interactivity/building relationship, customer care and reliability) were combined with the CBI itself (emotional aspects of the corporate brand or personality traits of the company) and, further, the consequences of these emotional aspects such as customer satisfaction and loyalty were tested using a cross‐sectional study.

Using two separate structural equation models, the study found an empirical relationship between the brand attributes and the corporate brand image (the emotional values). This relationship in turn influences the customer's responses (loyalty).

By combining two methodological approaches of brand image evaluation: cognition (assessed through tangible and intangible brand attributes) and affect/emotion (assessed through brand personality scale) this study intends to add to the current understanding of consumer brand knowledge, in particular when the consumer is assessing a company's brand image (the CBI) and also learn how important the effect of cognitive attributes (such as brand attributes of a store and web site) is in explaining the subsequent CBI, and the integration effect on consumer responses such as brand loyalty. Do cognitive evaluations drive conative, behavioural actions in retail buying decision making? Are cognitive evaluations directly related with satisfaction with the retailer and consumer loyalty?

Explicitly, the present study offers practitioners a research framework, aimed at guiding them as to how they could understand their defined or desired brand values (the corporate core values) among their consumers.

In general, the present study adds to the existing literature in cognitive and affective attributes in consumer judgement and corresponding conative or behavioural attitudes in branding and reputation management. It brings together the concept of functional brand attributes, emotional brand attributes (the CBI), and the dependent variables such as customer satisfaction and loyalty in a unique context (internet), and compares this with the bricks and mortar context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine which brand attributes need to be emphasised/addressed by retailers in order to achieve a positive representation of the corporate brand images in an online setting. Using bookstores as the research context, the research's main aim is to investigate the association between the functional brand evaluation (represented by brand attributes in this study) and emotional brand evaluation (represented by the corporate brand image). Specific research questions are: Are there any associations between the brand attributes and corporate brand image of an online e‐tailer?; What are the most important corporate brand attributes/drivers of online corporate brand image?

Using the brand triangle framework developed by de Chernatony and Christodoulides, the current study investigates the associations between brand attributes and corporate brand image of an online e‐tailer.

The findings show that factors such as ease of use, “personalisation”, security and customer care are significant in determining the corporate brand image of the online e‐tailer.

The practical contribution of the study and its managerial implications are in the provision of strategic directions and positioning the corporate brand in an online context.

It has been suggested by recent branding literatures that both functional and emotional brand characterizations should be adopted in order to better model consumer responses. Ailwadi and Keller pointed out that the priority of research should be to understand how corporate brand image and retailer brand attributes interact. The impact of corporate brands on the internet has been the object of study (e.g. Phillips; Lindstrom). The originality of the work is in linking online brand attributes and online corporate brand images and the role of functional and emotional attributes in brand evaluation in an online context.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Portugal must strengthen its public sector, remove bureaucratic burdens, stimulate the local economy, and collaborate with foreign stakeholders.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Institutions play a central role in service-dominant logic. However, the discussion regarding how institutional theory supports service-dominant logic advancements is still insufficient. This paper aims to contribute to a discussion on the multiple service-dominant logic approaches to institutions.

This conceptual paper presents the characterization of the existing streams in the broad institutional literature, highlighting the differences among those streams and elaborates on how one of the discussed streams – neo-institutionalism – is suitable to support service-dominant researchers in understanding the role of institutions in markets and value co-creation.

The paper shows that the three institutional perspectives presented are used indistinctly by service-dominant logic and a greater fit between the service-dominant logic and the neo-institutionalism stands out.

The paper proposes that service-dominant researchers should look at the neo-institutional stream as a particularly fertile ground for furthering their research.