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Using the resource-focused view of the firm as a theoretical backdrop, this study aims to examine the relationships between entrepreneurial perceptions and two dependent measures (i.e. customer satisfaction outcomes and firm performance). Specifically, the study tests the boundary conditions of the resource-based view (RBV) performance relationship in a Middle Eastern context.

The data from 171 female Saudi entrepreneurs are analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The research results revealed that marketing capability and financial capability (i.e. financial capital access) have a positive significant effect on both dependent measures. Labor shortage also has a negative significant effect on both dependent variables, whereas operations capability does not show a significant effect on the two dependent measures. To a large extent, the results show that the RBV holds true in the Saudi context.

The study contributes to the knowledge about the effects of specific human and financial capital, as well as illuminates how marketing capability, financial capital access and labor shortage impact these dependent variables in the unique context of Saudi Arabia among female entrepreneurs, thereby extending the knowledge of the RBV in different contexts. Furthermore, it extends knowledge of the entrepreneurship literature, especially in the area of gender-based entrepreneurship research in developing countries.

The study aims to explore supply chain influence (SCI) on the linkages among market orientation, innovation capabilities and firm performance (FP), using the resource-based view as a theoretical backdrop.

Survey data from 182 top managers who are involved in strategy formulation and innovative direction of their companies was collected and analyzed using moderated multiple regression analysis.

Results revealed a moderating role of the SCI in that the proactive market orientation (PMO) and FP relationship is stronger when SCI is high, and innovation commercialization capability (ICC) and FP relationship is stronger when SCI is low.

Firms pursuing high PMO strategy must collaborate with supply chain function to achieve the full effect of PMO. Additionally, as supply chain is critical to meeting customers’ needs, these firms should allow supply chain to exert greater influence to enjoy the positive effects of PMO in addition to ensuring full integration into marketing strategy implementation. Also, firms with high ICC need to limit SCI to maximize the benefit of ICC on FP, just as innovation management needs to be cognizant of other functional areas.

The study investigates the potential moderating role of SCI on the relationships among market orientation, ICC and FP. The study fills a gap in the understanding of the nature and role of supply chain in the marketing–supply chain interaction, and the impact on FP.

Investigates the potential of demand artefacts in country‐of‐origin studies using three alternative methodological approaches: hetero‐method replication, non‐experiment and post‐experimental inquiry. The results converge in their support of the plausibility of demand artefacts in the single and multi‐cue list format conditions. However, in the multi‐cue ad format condition, demand artefacts are found to be a less plausible alternative explanation for the experimental results. Discusses the implications of these results and future research directions.

This study is prompted by the growing sales and the acceptance of thrift stores in the USA. It focuses on consumers’ evaluations and attitudes of secondhand, or thrift stores, and specifically examines the effects of store image and general attitude toward secondhand stores on “shopping frequency” and “distance traveled”. Shoppers who held more favorable store specific attitudes and had a positive quality‐availability perception were more likely to shop at a secondhand store and to travel longer distances to patronize that store. No significant relationship was obtained for either general store type attitudes and shopping frequency or general store type attitudes and distance traveled. The paper concludes with managerial implications and directions for future research.

This paper studies how Chinese consumers respond to foreign goods in the post‐WTO era. Specifically, it examines brand sensitivity as a mediator and product cues as moderator of purchase intention. Additionally, it examines consumer preferences for different products and consumption plans for the subsequent five years. The survey sample is drawn from a population of foreign product users from 34 cities in 18 provinces in China. Results provide evidence that brand sensitivity mediates the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention; product cues moderate the effect of ethnocentrism on purchase intention. As the first study to link consumer ethnocentrism directly to brand sensitivity and purchase intention, this research provides some managerial implications. Global marketers can offset the negative effect of ethnocentrism by emphasizing brand image of its products, taking advantage of specific product cues, or by providing more comprehensive after‐sale service to reduce the perceived risk of purchasing imports. Also, price is still a hurdle that prevents Chinese consumers from mass consumption of foreign products. Global firms should not overestimate the purchasing power of Chinese consumers. This study represents a “snapshot” of Chinese consumers’ decision making at a time when their economic system is undergoing rapid change.

This paper seeks to focus on the key underpinnings of African culture and its implications for business marketing practices.

Using Kluckholn and Strodtbeck's and Hofstede's conceptualizations as a backdrop, the paper provides a synoptic view and modal focus of African culture. Covered are the culture's implications for organizational behavior, buyer‐seller interactions, collaborative partnerships and negotiations.

The study shows that African culture promotes the principle of reciprocity. In buyer‐seller interaction, respect for the elderly is an important guiding principle. In collaborative partnerships, preference is for the terms of the collaboration to be reached through consultation and consensus. The foreign company needs to pay attention to the softer issues surrounding the relationship and to send a high‐ranking employee‐team. In negotiations, long‐term relationship and win‐win outcome are preferred and encouraged.

The paper uses the term “African culture” as an overarching concept. However, the fact that to propose a monolithic African culture may be inaccurate because of strong national differences is acknowledged. Nonetheless, there are some cultural dimensions common to the sub‐region, including a hierarchical social structure, the importance of kinship, the primacy of the group, the belief in ancestry and existence of a supreme being, and the value attached to the extended family.

The study provides useful and candid insights into African culture that international marketers may take into consideration when dealing with African business markets. It also responds to Nakata and Sivakumar's suggestions for marketing researchers to deepen the study of culture and its implications for marketing in view of the increasing globalization of markets. It is to be hoped that this study leads to further discussion and research on African culture and its implications for marketing.

Using social cognitive theory as a theoretical backdrop, this paper aims to investigate antecedents and mediators of e-maven propensity and evaluates the transferability of physical market maven to online channel. A conceptual model capturing the links among information seeking tendency, physical market maven, e-shopping attitude and e-satisfaction as determinants of e-maven propensity is developed and tested.

Survey data from 199 adult consumers were collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling with multi-group analysis.

The results show the direct and indirect effects of physical market maven on e-maven propensity. Additionally, the relationship between physical market maven and e-maven propensity is moderated by e-shopping intensity such that the relationship is stronger for the high e-shopping intensity group than for the low e-shopping intensity group.

In a multi-channel environment, being able to share marketplace information across different channels takes on greater significance. Developing a customized strategy in managing e-word-of-mouth and e-maven behaviors within the context of the level of consumers’ e-shopping intensity is needed. E-mavens could be invited not only to serve as co-creators but also as significant influencers for a company’s products and services.

The study draws an interesting parallel between physical mavens and their online characteristics, as well as captures the conditions under which transferability of physical maven behavior to online channel occurs. Two distinct patterns are exhibited depending on the level of e-shopping intensity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore Australian educators’ work with “other people’s children” (OPCs) (Delpit, 2006) from the informal education market of the 1840s to the mass education market in contemporary times.

The paper is structured as a narrative about the expansion of the educational state and the concomitant development of technologies of inclusion and exclusion. Snapshots of various educators’ work with “OPCs” are woven into the narrative.

Notwithstanding contemporary efforts to “confront educational disadvantage” and an ever increasing array of technologies with which to differentiate students, OPCs remain on the margins of Australian education.

This paper is a unique look at Australian educators’ work with “OPCs” over the past 175 years.

The Food Bill has emerged from the Grand Committee on Trade, and will shortly be submitted, as amended, to the House of Commons. Whatever further amendments may be introduced, the Bill, when passed into law, will but afford one more example of the impotence of repressive legislation in regard to the production and distribution of adulterated and inferior products. We do not say that the making of such laws and their enforcement are not of the highest importance in the interests of the community; their administration—feeble and inadequate as it must necessarily be—produces a valuable deterrent effect, and tends to educate public opinion and to improve commercial morality. But we say that by the very nature of those laws their working can result only in the exposure of a small portion of that which is bad without affording any indications as to that which is good, and that it is by the Control System alone that the problem can be solved. This fact has been recognised abroad, and is rapidly being recognised here. The system of Permanent Analytical Control was under discussion at the International Congress of Applied Chemistry, held at Brussels in 1894, and at the International Congress of Hygiene at Budapest in 1895, and the facts and explanations put forward have resulted in the introduction of the system into various countries. The establishment of this system in any country must be regarded as the most practical and effective method of ensuring the supply of good and genuine articles, and affords the only means through which public confidence can be ensured.

Despite evidence largely confirming gender-based differences in service quality perceptions in healthcare, little research has considered patients’ expectations. This study aims to examine the gender-based differences in both the affective and cognitive components of customers’ service quality expectations.

Data were collected through random sampling from three outpatient hospitals in the UAE. Hypothesized relationships between the cognitive and affective components (moderated by gender) were tested by means of CFA and ANOVA.

The results indicate that the differences between male and female expectations of overall service quality as a singular construct were not statistically significant, except for the empathy dimension. However, when measured as affective and cognitive, the results confirm that significant differences do exist between male and female patients.

The research was limited to the UAE. However, identifying gender differences in patients’ expectations would enable healthcare providers to engage and manage patients’ expectations.

This paper provides theoretical and practical implications on how the male and female are different in the cognitive and affective components of service quality expectations.