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This paper attempts to shed light on the effect of educational programmes aimed at entrepreneurs on innovation and business success.

We use as theoretical framework the theory of planned behaviour. We use a sample of 354 entrepreneurs from Castile and Leon, Spain. To estimate the model we use a path analysis (AMOS 7).

Individuals who are concerned about further management education and entrepreneurship education show themselves to be more innovative. Moreover, indirectly, by means of the relationship between innovation and success, specific entrepreneurship education contributes to obtaining better business results. However, to have reached high levels of formal education makes entrepreneurs less conformist regarding the activity of innovation. The existence of a direct effect of innovative behaviour on business success is confirmed.

The limitations which our study presents are principally related to the measurement of the variables. Some of the characteristics of education should be studied more deeply.

The results obtained lead us to recommend that the educational centres and institutions which organise the programmes should give preference to specialised education and less to entrepreneurship education when seeking to reinforce the innovative spirit of the entrepreneurs.

The debate concerning the effectiveness of entrepreneurship educational programmes is still undecided, so much so that both supporters and detractors of entrepreneurship education exist. For that reason, this paper aims to shed some light on the effects of the educational programmes aimed at the entrepreneur.

This paper aims to examine whether order and scale of market entry influence a new product's market and financial performance, and how marketing and R&D resources strengthen or weaken these effects.

Through a mail survey, data were collected on a sample of 136 product launches by Spanish manufacturing firms. A moderated hierarchical regression analysis enabled the assessment of the relevance of order and scale as well as their interactions with marketing and R&D resources to explain a product's competitive position. Moreover, a mediation analysis allowed us to determine whether market entry strategy (indirectly) affects financial performance.

The analyses show that pioneering firms and those entering the market with a full‐scale launch achieve advantages in terms of competitive position, and that this variable mediates the relationship of order and scale with profitability. The empirical results also reveal that such advantages are conditioned by the availability of marketing and R&D resources.

The decisions regarding order and scale of market entry are contingent. Managers involved in the planning of a new product launch should be knowledgeable about their firm's resources and capabilities before determining when and how to enter the market.

Many papers study the effects of order‐of‐entry on market share, but other dimensions of a new product launch strategy, such as scale, have largely been ignored. The research examines the effects of both variables on competitive position and profitability. This is also one of the first studies that explores the moderating effect exerted by resources and capabilities in the launch strategy‐performance relationship.

Customer involvement has been recognized as a key factor for successful service development. One important aspect affecting the outcome of new service development (NSD) projects in whose development customers are involved is the choice of the appropriate participating customer. This study aims to examine the effect of two customer characteristics (relational closeness and lead‐userness) on four indicators of new service performance.

The paper uses data from 102 NSD projects. Covariance‐based path analysis is used to test the model.

The results reveal that involving close customers in the NSD process has a positive direct effect on service advantage and speed to market and a positive indirect effect on market performance. The involvement of lead users, on the other hand, has a positive effect on service newness and service advantage, and a negative effect on market performance.

The focus on Spanish companies puts constraints on the generalizability of the results to other national contexts. Future research should replicate this study in different countries. Also, future research could explore more deeply the performance impact of close customers and lead users by collecting data on the roles that customers can play in NSD.

The findings from this study suggest that firms need to make conscious choices about the types of customers to involve in service innovation as different types of customers affect new service performance differently.

This study makes an original contribution by investigating the effect of customer's relational closeness and customer's lead userness on four indicators of NSD performance.

It has been argued that innovation speed has been inappropriately absent in models of market orientation. The present study seeks to provide new insights into whether and how market orientation's three main components: intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination, and responsiveness affect innovation speed and new product performance, and about the mediating role of innovation speed.

Data were collected from a sample of 247 firms in a variety of manufacturing industries. A mail survey was developed to collect the data.

The results indicate that intelligence generation has an indirect positive effect on innovation speed via intelligence dissemination and responsiveness. Intelligence dissemination influences innovation speed positively, both directly and indirectly through responsiveness. Findings report a curvilinear (J‐shaped) relationship between responsiveness and innovation speed. With regard to the effect of the market orientation's components on new product performance, the findings indicate a positive relationship between responsiveness and new product performance. The parameter estimates for the direct paths linking intelligence generation and intelligence dissemination with new product performance were found to be not significant. Instead, the findings show that intelligence generation and intelligence dissemination influence new product performance indirectly through responsiveness. Finally, a positive relationship was found between innovation speed and new product performance.

The research makes three important contributions to the marketing strategy and new product development literatures. First, by splitting market orientation into the components of intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination and responsiveness, the study provides a closer examination into the effect of market orientation on innovation speed and new product performance. Second, the results indicate that the effects of intelligence generation and intelligence dissemination on innovation speed and new product performance are mediated by responsiveness to market intelligence. Third, findings support the argument that innovation speed partially mediates the effect of market orientation's three main components on new product performance.

The decision concerning the degree of product and service customization is crucial, yet has scarcely been studied for small businesses in business-to-business (B2B) contexts. Although such a decision allows relationships with potential customers to be strengthened, it might involve high opportunity costs given the investment required. This paper aims to analyse the profitability of customization undertaken by small businesses in terms of cost–benefit and examine the drivers of profitable customized projects vis-à-vis the ability to strengthen relationships with clients (relationship investment and customer involvement) and the firm’s resources related to processes and technology (expertise and modularity).

To test the proposed hypotheses, data were collected from 140 small Spanish firms involved in two sectors characterized by the offer of customized solutions: information and professional, scientific and technical services.

Analysis reveals that customer involvement in the customized solution, even when it requires investing in equipment, time or human resources has a positive effect on customization and ultimately on profitability, as the cost of this customer interaction is lower than the revenue it provides. Likewise, supplier investment in the relationship allows for a solution that is adapted to the client, although it requires a cost associated with investing in specific assets. Such costs cancel out the positive indirect effect through the customized solution. Finally, expertise enables appropriate use of the flexibility derived from modularity to satisfy customer requirements, with both being key company resources for driving profitability through customized solutions.

This study makes a contribution to the domain of customization. The authors extend current knowledge on B2B customization by proving that small firms can use their available capabilities and knowledge to achieve a successful customization strategy.

This research is primarily concerned with studying the impact of brand workers' problems on brand deletion (BD) outcomes. The authors also analyze how the level of consensus achieved during BD adoption and implementation influences the impact of brand workers' problems on BD outcomes.

A questionnaire was designed to obtain data from a representative sample of 155 real cases of BD.

Findings indicate that in contexts where workers feel their jobs are threatened or challenged, BD success may be undermined. However, the company does possess one important mechanism that can alleviate the negative impact of brand workers' problems: empowering them to pave the way toward consensus-building. Results do not support a negative effect of brand workers' problems on BD time efficiency or any effect of BD time efficiency on BD's contribution to a firm's economic performance.

Managers must be aware that problems derived from brand workers' actions are especially harmful for the company when there is no consensus, such that managers must prevent deletion from occurring under these circumstances.

This pioneering study proposes and empirically validates the relationship between brand workers' problems and BD success and BD time efficiency, moderated by consensus.

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether and how the perceived organizational support (POS) influences emotional labor and the relationship between emotional labor and flight attendants' outcomes.

Structural equation modeling analysis provided support for the hypotheses from a sample of 256 flight attendants in South Korea.

The results showed that POS has a positive effect on deep acting. Furthermore, it was found that surface acting has a positive influence on emotional exhaustion, whereas deep acting has a negative influence on emotional exhaustion. In addition, emotional exhaustion has a negative influence on organizational commitment, while organizational commitment has a negative influence on turnover intention. Furthermore, POS moderated the relationship between deep acting or surface acting and emotional exhaustion.

The current study broadened the conceptual work and laboratory studies in emotional labor by examining the role of POS on emotional regulation strategies related to emotional exhaustion. In addition, this study sheds new light on customer service management within the airline industry by examining flight attendants' emotional labor, particularly interactions with POS.

The current research aims to analyze antecedents and consequences of using the information provided by customers involved in new service development (NSD). It also seeks to examine the moderating effect of technological turbulence on the antecedents and consequences of information use.

Data were collected from service firms in a variety of industrial sectors. Unit of analysis was a NSD project in which current or potential customers were involved during its development process. A self-administered mail survey was used to collect the data. A total of 102 complete questionnaires were returned. The proposed model was tested using partial least squares.

The results indicate that the instrumental use of the information collected from customers involved in NSD can lead to higher service advantage and service newness and in turn to higher market performance. Findings reveal that higher recording and reviewing of information collected from customers involved in NSD result in greater use of the information during the NSD process. An important result is that under technologically turbulent environments, recording and reviewing information from customers involved in NSD is less likely to result in a higher instrumental use of such information. Finally, the authors' results show that when technological turbulence is high the instrumental use of information from customers involved in NSD has lower value for both service advantage and service newness.

Findings confirm the importance of customer involvement for NSD in a business context. Using the information from customers involved in NSD to resolve specific problems or make decisions regarding NSD projects can result in enhanced service performance. Moreover, information processing capabilities are key antecedents to instrumental information use. Finally, managers should be aware of the potential negative effect of technological turbulence.

The current study examines the negative moderating effects of team’s prior experience and technological turbulence on the antecedents and consequences of using information provided by customers involved in new service development (NSD). It also examines one way to mitigate the proposed negative effects.

The unit of analysis was NSD projects in which customers had been involved during the development process. A self-administered mail survey was used to collect the data. The proposed model was tested using hierarchical path analysis.

Results show that team’s prior experience reduces the extent to which recorded and shared information from customers involved in NSD is used for project-related decisions during the development process. Findings also reveal that technological turbulence can reduce the positive effect of using information provided from customers involved in NSD on new service advantage and service newness. Finally, results show that involving lead users in NSD can help reduce the negative moderating effects of team’s prior experience and technological turbulence.

The literature on information use suggests that availability of information does not guarantee its use. In keeping with this argument, the current study reveals that for NSD projects with customer involvement, team’s prior experience and technological turbulence are part of the challenge of making effective use of the new knowledge that customers bring to the development project. Firms are advised to collaborate with lead users as a way to attenuate this problem.

The purpose of this article is to present a model that compares the switching costs that consumers face when they buy pioneering and follower products.

A study of 255 new products indicates that switching costs are actually higher when switching from an existing product to a pioneering product.

The study shows that people who buy a pioneering product may also face switching costs, if the pioneering product is launched in an existing category where consumers are already familiar with similar products.

The results help to reinforce the view that first movers have advantages and demonstrate that switching costs do not lead to a higher level of consumer retention.

This study provides interesting managerial implications on how to launch new products more effectively when they suffer from switching costs..

Researchers commonly view switching costs as a barrier to market entry that protects enterprises that launch pioneering products and gives them a competitive advantage over those that launch follower products. The underlying idea is that people only experience switching costs when they change to a different follower product, rather than when they purchase a pioneering product instead of the product that they usually purchase.