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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between Business-to-business professional service firms (B2B PSFs) customer cooperation capability (CCC) and its financial performance. This study explores how deep and broad expert and customer knowledge assist PSFs to enhance CCC and increase financial performance.

A multiple informant survey was designed and administered to B2B PSFs’ managers in Taiwan.

The results indicate that customer and expert knowledge improve PSFs’ CCC and that CCC has a positive U-shaped relationship with financial performance. Importantly, the ability to control for the efficiency of customer cooperation moderates the U-shaped relationship between CCC and financial performance by diminishing the negative effect of low levels of CCC.

The contribution of this study rests on the theory developed and empirical support disclosing the complex relationship between PSFs’ CCC and financial performance. The study further contributes to the literature by presenting different effect of deep and broad expert and customer knowledge on development of CCC. The study extends the literature by introducing control for efficiency of customer cooperation as a mechanism that has the capacity to compensate for lower levels of CCC.

Religion is a significant force in the lives of many people, however; its role in fashion clothing consumption is still unclear. To expand the knowledge on this issue, the present study seeks to understand the role of religiosity in affecting status consumption and fashion consciousness (FC) among Generation Y Muslim consumers, specifically focussing on Iran.

A survey was designed and administered in Iran to a sample of 300 young adults aged between 18 and 24.

The findings of research show an inverse association between status consumption and religiosity, where individual's FC is contingent upon the degree to which they are status conscious or religious. The other major finding of the present study is the importance of brand status in mediating the relationship between FC and willingness to pay (WTP) a price premium for fashion clothing brands.

The originality of the study rests on exploring the moderating role of religiosity on the relationship between status consumption and fashion conscious among Iranian Generation Y Muslim consumers. Further, contrary to the belief that fashion conscious customers are willing to pay extra to obtain fashion brands, this relationship is not direct. New fashion conscious consumers pay extra provided that the new fashion brand enhances their status. Thus, the importance of status is in acknowledging the relationship between FC and WTP a price premium.

The purpose of this paper is to examine fashion clothing consumption in relation to status consumption and perceptions of fashion clothing brand status (BS) in transition economies.

A survey was designed and administered in China to a sample of 460 young adults aged between 18 and 24.

The results indicate that individuals’ status consciousness (SC) has an impact on fashion clothing brand preference (BP) and perceptions of the brand's status. Also, individuals’ BP and perceived BS were found to mediate the relationship between individuals’ SC and their willingness to pay (WTP) a premium for a specific brand of fashion clothing.

The originality of this study rests on a detailed examination of SC and status perceptions in the context of branded fashion clothing (western vs Asian brands) in China, where individuals’ wealth, status-consciousness and brand-consciousness are growing. Equally, it provides knowledge for academics about the development of status consumption in an emerging economy. Importantly, from a theory perspective this study is the first to examine the intervening roles of perceived BS and BP in the relationship between SC and WTP a price premium for fashion clothing brands. Further, studying this evolving market provides insights for practitioners into the design of marketing strategies for their brands. The findings may assist practitioners to address drivers of perception of their brands, especially for Asian brands competing against western brands.

This study aims to examine how market orientation (MO), marketing resources and marketing resource deployment are related and impact business-to-business (B2B) firm- and customer-level performance.

A self-administrated questionnaire was used to collect data from 251 firms out of a sample of 1000 B2B firms selected from a database of businesses.

Marketing resources and marketing capability are complementary in contributing to both firm and customer performance. In addition, they are partial mediators of the relationship between MO and firm- and customer-level performance. Only marketing resources fully mediate the relationship between MO and firm-level performance.

This study relied on self-reporting by marketing executives, thus inferences about causality should be made with caution. Specifically, the time sequence of the relationships among resource possession and resource deployment and marketing results is not easily discernible with cross-sectional data.

This study sought to address research gaps in the two research streams; MO-firm performance via the mediating role of marketing resources and deployment, and the resource based view (RBV) resource–deployment interaction. Our contribution to the literature is threefold. First, MO indirectly enhances performance at both firm and customer level via marketing resources and marketing resource deployment. Second, while possessing marketing resources does explain some of the economic rent differentials, the effect depends fundamentally on how firms deploy their marketing resources. Third, our findings suggest research on resources, resource deployment and cross-level firm performance should be conducted at the business process level within firms.

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of competitiveness. The authors introduce the concept of Competitive Productivity (CP), supplementing shortcomings of traditional understandings of national, organisational and individual productivity which overlook the nature of competitiveness, i.e. outperforming the competition, or at least bettering one’s own performance. The authors offer definitions, components and construct measurements of CP at three levels: macro, meso and micro.

A review of the literature was conducted to evaluate the need for combining productivity and competitiveness into one new construct. There are theories that combine these ideas – e.g., the resource-based theory of the firm – but the authors are presenting these concepts differently, or in a novel way. The authors’ focus on CP makes necessary a new group of construct measures which are different from that of the strategy literature: the authors measure an agent’s tendency “to be better than the competition” along multiple dimensions. Based on the CP construct, the authors present three testable models to uncover determinants of CP at three levels (macro, meso and micro). Finally, the work around “emergent property” can be applied to examine CP itself as being a determinant for other higher-order outcomes such as welfare, profits and life satisfaction. CP forms a platform to explore likely interplay (bottom-up and/or top-down mechanisms) within the micro–meso–macro architecture.

Three CP models were developed and are briefly discussed in this paper: first, a National Competitive Productivity (NCP) model to capture the components/drivers of national CP (macro level). Second, a Firm Competitive Productivity (FCP) model to capture the components/drivers of firm CP within an industry context (meso). And finally, an Individual Competitive Productivity (ICP) model capturing the components/drivers of CP at the individual (micro) level.

The study provides a combined approach to capture productivity and competitiveness within one innovative concept: CP. It can be used by government and policy makers (NCP model), managers and organisations (FCP model), and individuals such as workers and students (ICP model) to evaluate and enhance their performance. A better understanding of the components/drivers of CP at the three levels and the suggested measurement of CP should provide a stronger theory of competitiveness of nations, firms and individuals. Not least should a focus on the three levels (macro, meso and micro) better prepare citizens, firms, workers and students to effectively function and work in the marketplace and in society. The authors’ work should eventually contribute to more effective benchmarking and continuous improvement in the competitiveness domain. Crucially, this conceptual paper forms the foundation for future empirical testing of CP components in the context of the relative values and moderated behaviour as captured by the ReVaMB model.

This study aims to address the extent that the deployment of and complementarity between marketing mix and customer-focused (brand management, and customer relationship management) capabilities provide firms the capacity to transform their market knowledge into effective responsive actions that help to achieve new product success.

A questionnaire was used as the primary means of data collection. Data from 160 large business-to-business firms across a variety of industries in Iran were analyzed using partial least squares regression to test the hypothesized paths.

The results show that market-oriented firms are better at deploying marketing mix, brand management and customer relationship management capabilities, and these capabilities help to drive new product performance, and the complementarity between these marketing capabilities enhances the firm’s capacity to achieve new product success more than deploying each capability in isolation.

In contrast to many existing studies, this study is the first to examine the role of marketing mix, brand management and customer relationship management capabilities and their complementarity as intervening mechanisms in the relationship between market orientation (MO) and new product performance. Further, this study extends the marketing literature by investigating the role of different forms of marketing capabilities in a complementary fashion in the context of a Middle Eastern economy.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the need for developing pricing capability (PC) for business-to-business firms to effectively manage and execute the pricing activities in the organization and succeed in a competitive market. Using the firms’ resource-based view, organizational learning theory and organizational capabilities literature, this study develops a conceptual framework in which market-focused learning and firm innovativeness are potential antecedents of PC and pricing value and business performance (BP) are consequences.

The authors conducted an online e-mail-based survey to collect primary cross-sectional data from the 127 Indian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The partial least squares structural equation modeling technique was used to empirically validate a conceptual framework as well as the research hypotheses.

The findings indicate that market-focused learning and firm innovativeness have a substantial influence on PC, which in turn positively affects both pricing value and BP. Moreover, pricing value demonstrates a partial mediating effect on the link between PC and BP.

This research has certain limitations, namely, using cross-sectional data and limited sample size. More empirical research on the antecedents of PC is required.

The empirical findings enlighten the SMEs on the significance of developing specialized PC in delivering superior pricing value to customers and achieving greater BP.

The existing literature lacks empirical data on the development and antecedents of PC, particularly in the SME context. The current study empirically examines the impact of market-focused learning and firm innovativeness on PC.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying knowledge structure and evolution of industrial-buying research published between 1965 and 2015.

Bibliometric analysis is performed on 357 relevant papers (using principal component analysis and natural language processing, using VantagePoint® tools, used to generate bubble maps, auto-correlation maps and Aduna cluster maps), demonstrating how various factors involved in industrial buying have evolved, their degree of correlation with each other and the interrelationships of multiple factors concerning their co-occurrences.

The systematic mapping of industrial-buying research would illustrate the development of the significant factors in industrial-buying research. This paper provides both a global perspective on the leading countries and journals in the field and a robust roadmap for further investigation in this field.

This paper is limited to the data considered for analysis and may, therefore, overlook or underestimate some work that has not been captured while filtering databases related to industrial buying.

This paper facilitates near-future projection and trend analysis in industrial-buying research.

The methodology used is unique to the field of business-to-business marketing.