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Marketing researchers continue to debate the significance of the managerial relevance of marketing, especially in the boardrooms. Despite a growing number of published papers on the topic, it is surprising that there are virtually none on mental models. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these issues.

The paper presents mental models as a perspective to discuss marketing's position in companies, and reflects on the marketing mental models of boardroom members and top management.

The paper addresses marketing's relevant issues and offers new insights into the role of marketing in companies by highlighting mental models, which drive the boardrooms’ and managers’ attentions, decisions, actions, and evaluations. The paper demonstrates the importance of mental models by introducing and discussing the notion of the mental footprint of marketing, or the impact marketing has on mental models.

The rapidly changing business environment, in addition to current marketing research trends, strengthens the need to understand the scope of issues included under the notion of marketing, as well as the overall significance of marketing within the company. The paper advocates that understanding and investigating mental models is useful in these endeavors.

The paper presents a set of different implications from recognized mental models in companies.

This paper contributes to discussions on the relevance of marketing in modern companies by introducing a new perspective, involving the mental footprint of marketing, which challenges functional points of view. If the mental model of marketing takes a broader approach, considering marketing to be ubiquitous, then marketing can be seen as being present in the boardroom.

This commentary aims to stimulate debate about the role of relationships in marketing. It raises the question of when it is appropriate to use the term relationship, requests a distinction between ongoing interaction and relationship, cautions against a “one size fits all” marketing theory and calls for much more focussed and innovative research in this area.

This paper aims to develop an alternative perspective on marketing informed by service scholarship to resolve marketing’s challenges as a discipline and practice.

This paper is conceptual and builds on the ongoing debate regarding marketing’s challenges and on service research to develop a new alternative marketing perspective and model, which could contribute to reforming marketing.

An analysis of the current understanding of marketing showed that the discipline’s myopic focus on activities, which disregards what marketing is as a phenomenon, is the primary reason for the prevailing problems and failure to reform marketing. Based on research into service logic (SL), the paper demonstrates that a higher level view of service can be characterized as the provision of help to the users of goods and services to ensure that these goods and services deliver meaningful assistance in their lives and work. This suggests that the ultimate objective for marketing is to make firms meaningful to the users of their goods and services.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, since this paper is the first to conceptually develop a perspective on marketing and a corresponding model informed by service scholarship, more conceptual and empirical research is necessary. Developing the new meaningfulness-based perspective and model for marketing brings a new approach to the process of resolving marketing’s current troubled situation.

The meaningfulness approach to marketing enables customer-centered marketing strategies to be implemented. Such strategies include both demand-stimulating and demand-satisfying programs.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to examine marketing’s troubled situation from a service research and SL perspective.

Mobile communication technologies have come a long way, but they are far from completing their evolutionary path. An examination of the Japanese mobile sector, with its cutting‐edge technologies, may provide a glimpse of what is to come for the rest of the world. Japan's mobile users are demanding ever more functionality, and service providers are responding. Moreover, the mobile phone is affecting social norms of behaviour and its use has become integrated within Japanese society as nowhere else. Even though the technology is developing rapidly, the case of Japan suggests that self‐regulation and individual restraint can work.

To show how consumer researchers can learn from novels and analogous works of fiction.

Close reading of two recent novels, The Savage Girl by Alex Shakar and Jennifer Government by Max Barry.

The paper shows how works of fiction can be used as a intellectual resource by the consumer research community. It argues that fiction refreshed the parts that other research methods cannot reach.

Much depends on the caliber of the novels. Not every work of art is a work of genius. The article contends that consumer researchers need to move beyond singing the praises of fiction and, in pursuit of new paths to thick description, seek instead to novelise our findings. Or narrate them better at least.

Marketing practitioners might learn more from reading novels than the academic marketing literature.

There is nothing particularly original in the paper. It reiterates what several scholars have said already. The message is sufficiently important to warrant constant repetition, however.

This study aims to illuminate the way in which consumers question the authenticity and worth of musicians, leading to a classification of selling out. The authors contribute to the debate on authenticity by attending to the question of worth that is under-examined in existing literature, by drawing upon French pragmatic sociology with specific attention to convention theory to understand conflicting interpretations of worth.

The considerations music fans go through navigating whether artists are selling out and the loss of worth were explored through 22 semi-structured interviews, complemented by focus group discussions (20 participants) and analysis of an online video blog.

The study identified three key themes: “Authenticity and Worth in the Inspired World”, “Selling Out as Loss of Worth” and “Signifiers of Selling Out”.

The emergent themes enable us to understand the worth that consumers place on musical artists, and the clash between the ideologies of the market world and the inspired world. The ideas regarding selling out and the signifiers may apply to other consumption experiences where the clash between the inspired and the market worlds exists and the conflicting ethos of each can lead to a loss of worth and selling out.

In this research, the authors examine situations in which consumers stigmatise as “sell outs”, artists who are marketised under the influence of capitalist social relations of production. As a result, these artists lose their authenticity and worth in the eyes of consumers. In doing so, this research contributes to the debate on authenticity by attending to the question of worth that is under-examined in existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the economics of various printing processes proposed for small‐scale electronic products such as radio frequency identification tags, smart cards, and wireless sensors, and to present a new transfer printing method.

The costs of several types of microstructuring techniques were calculated from commercial product data, along with a detailed spreadsheet simulation of inkjet printing for microelectronics. A new material for transfer printing was developed, along with suitable tooling for placing small and thin dice on flexible substrates.

The cost analysis of inkjet printing suggests that it may not be substantially less expensive than conventional silicon technology for this purpose, while achieving inferior performance. Offset printing is cheaper but further from practicality. The new transfer printing process successfully prints very small silicon dice at high speed, and appears to meet the market needs with respect to cost, product performance and flexibility in readily producing different designs.

The cost analysis depends on assumptions which are not all well known, and which change with time. The new method has not yet been run in a high‐volume production mode. Such experience will be necessary to fully confirm its value.

This analysis identifies cost factors which have not been generally appreciated in public discussions of printed electronics. The transfer printing process offers a unique way to make cost‐effective use of silicon integrated circuits which are much smaller than any that appear in products today, and may have ramifications beyond the original target of tags and sensors.

Institutional voids – the lack of institutions that can facilitate the functioning of markets – are ubiquitous in emerging markets. Because of their newness, entrepreneurial ventures are especially susceptible to institutional vacuums. This research seeks to shed light on the role that business groups can play in the development of entrepreneurial ventures in emerging markets.

Based on detailed fieldwork, the study describes and analyzes the creation and evolution of two biotechnology start-ups that were affiliated to a major Latin American business group. The research cov ers the period between their foundation and later acquisition by a multinational company.

The article discusses the role that the business group affiliation had in terms of helping the start-ups to interact with multiple institutional voids. The analysis shows that the start-ups benefited from the group's reputation and connections, experience and know-how in managing different types of businesses in the country, strong resource base, long-term vision, and strong organizational culture.

The main contribution of this work is to show that business group affiliation can be an interesting solution that facilitates the development of entrepreneurial ventures in emerging markets.

La presencia de vacíos institucionales – la carencia de instituciones que facilitan el funcionamiento de los mercados – es muy común en las economías emergentes. Debido a su novedad, los nuevos emprendimientos son especialmente susceptibles a los vacíos institucionales. Esta investigación trata de entender el papel que pueden desempeñar los grupos económicos en el desarrollo de nuevas empresas en economías emergentes.

Basado en trabajo de campo, el estudio describe y analiza la creación y evolución de dos start-ups biotecnológicos que estuvieron afiliados a un importante grupo económico latinoamericano. La investigación cubre el período comprendido entre la fundación de las dos empresas y su posterior adquisición por parte de una empresa multinacional.

El artículo analiza cómo la afiliación a un grupo económico ayudó a las start-ups a lidiar con múltiples vacíos institucionales. El análisis muestra que las empresas se beneficiaron de la reputación y conexiones del grupo, su experiencia y conocimiento en la gestión de diferentes tipos de negocios en el país, su sólida base de recursos, su visión de largo plazo y su fuerte cultura organizacional.

La contribución más importante de este artículo es mostrar que la afiliación a un grupo económico puede ser una solución interesante que facilita el desarrollo de nuevos emprendimientos en economías emergentes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the state of readiness of large UK based retailing companies for the introduction of ubiquitous computing (U‐computing) retailing applications.

A questionnaire was distributed to a sampling frame of large British retailers, leading to 255 responses. The document contained items concerning, inter alia, a firm's level of preparedness, managerial attitudes towards and support for U‐computing applications, strategic fit and pre‐existing IT capacities.

A third of the respondents reported the existence of a “good fit” between U‐computing retail applications and their companies' products, activities and core competencies. However, only 20 per cent of the sample appeared to be well‐prepared for the introduction of U‐computing. There was little evidence of the sample enterprises adopting strategic approaches to implementation.

Only a minority of the firms in the sampling frame participated in the research and the sample size was modest. Data were self‐reported and only a single country was considered. The study concerned just large businesses.

The outcomes suggest a widespread “wait and see” approach towards U‐computing among the sample businesses and a distinct lack of strategic thinking regarding implementation.

This is the first empirical study to explore the prospective introduction to British retailing of a new technology that possesses the potential to revolutionise the operations of UK retailing firms.

This study aims to examine the effects of system and information characteristics in developing users' perceptions towards ubiquitous decision support systems (UDSS).

The research model is empirically examined with survey data from 218 mobile users who have adopted a UDSS, i.e. mobile Dianping.com. A structural equation modelling approach is employed to assess the hypotheses.

The findings demonstrate that system characteristics of wireless networks, mobile devices and mobile applications significantly predicted system quality, which in turn determined system usefulness. Localisation, immediacy and customisation of mobile word‐of‐mouth were the major predictors of information quality, which in turn determined information usefulness.

This study contributes to our current understanding of ubiquitous commerce, especially mobile word‐of‐mouth, by presenting an integrated research framework, identifying system and information characteristics that are specific to the ubiquitous era, extending system quality and system usefulness from a single system to a combination of systems, and empirically examining the crossover effects between system and information factors.