Anne Maarit Jalkala and Joona Keränen
Despite increasing interest in customer solutions, and the importance of brand management in the B2B context, prior research provides little understanding on brand positioning…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite increasing interest in customer solutions, and the importance of brand management in the B2B context, prior research provides little understanding on brand positioning strategies adopted by solution providers. The present study aims to examine the possible brand positioning strategies for industrial firms providing customer solutions.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical part of the present study consists of a multiple case study, involving four industrial firms providing customer solutions. Primary data was gathered by semi-structured interviews from a total of 22 business managers from the case companies.
Findings
The present study identifies four possible brand position strategies for industrial firms providing customer solutions: customer value diagnostic, global solution integrator, high quality sub-systems provider, and long-term service partner. The identified strategies highlight the tendency of solution suppliers to position their brands around different capabilities that are needed at different phases of the solution delivery process.
Research limitations/implications
The present study was conducted from the industrial supplier's perspective and is context-bound to companies operating in solution-oriented process and information technology industries.
Practical implications
Managers need to identify the capabilities that are central to delivering customer value and acquire and/or develop capability configurations that differentiate their brand positioning from competitors.
Originality/value
Existing literature on branding lacks understanding about the specific characteristics of building brands in solution-oriented B2B contexts. The present study identifies four brand positioning strategies that illuminate the special characteristics of branding customer solutions.
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Hung Nguyen and Norma Harrison
Nowadays, companies compete and win based on the capabilities they can leverage across their supply chains. With unpredictable and turbulent business environment, supply chains…
Abstract
Purpose
Nowadays, companies compete and win based on the capabilities they can leverage across their supply chains. With unpredictable and turbulent business environment, supply chains are seeking to customer knowledge as sources of competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test a conceptual framework to investigate the roles of customer leverage (CL) on process innovation and the relationships to performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing upon the knowledge-based view, this study argues that CL is the sources of firms’ process innovation. This study also posits that process innovation mediates the relationship between CL and performance based on transaction cost economics. This empirical study employed 650 manufacturers across different regions.
Findings
This study showed that strong association exists between a manufacturing firm’s CL capability and its process innovation and performances. Process innovation play critical mediating roles in absorbing and transforming customer knowledge in supply chains. In a more dynamic market, CL strengthens the positive impacts on process innovation.
Research limitations/implications
This study further highlights the need to emphasize both strategic and CL capability in dynamic environments as these may be needed to enable the firm to seize market niches that may open up in such environments. Similarly, managers should emphasize CL capability and process changes in competitive environments as they are more difficult to imitate from competitors in regards of new product or services.
Practical implications
These results extend the limited existing research on global manufacturing context that the customer knowledge are effective sources for increasing innovative processes. The higher the market turbulence, the stronger the pressures for CL demanded by process innovation. The findings also confirm that process innovation plays a mediating role in absorbing and transforming customer knowledge in improving costs and financial measures. This is an important result that highlights the mechanism by which customer knowledge can influence a firm’s bottom line.
Originality/value
This study examined the linkages between a marketing concept and operations and supply chain management.
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Joona Keränen and Anne Jalkala
The strategies to assess potential and realized customer value have received surprisingly little attention in management literature. The purpose of this paper is to examine…
Abstract
Purpose
The strategies to assess potential and realized customer value have received surprisingly little attention in management literature. The purpose of this paper is to examine potential customer value assessment strategies for business-to-business (B2B) firms and their special characteristics.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical part of the study draws from an exploratory, two-part field study involving three pilot firms, and seven best practice firms in customer value assessment. The research design followed an inductive, discovery-oriented grounded theory approach. Primary data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 35 business managers from ten B2B firms.
Findings
The study identifies three customer value assessment strategies adopted by firms in business markets: Emergent value sales strategy; Life-cycle value management strategy; and Dedicated value specialist strategy. These strategies highlight different ways of managing and coordinating organizational units in different phases of the customer value assessment process.
Research limitations/implications
The study was conducted from the supplier's perspective and is context-bound to firms operating in B2B markets.
Practical implications
Managers need to select an appropriate strategy for customer value assessment depending on market and offering characteristics, and assign clear responsibilities for value potential identification, baseline assessment, and long-term value realization.
Originality/value
The extant literature on customer value lacks understanding on customer value assessment strategies. The present study identifies three strategies that illuminate the required resources and organizational units at different phases of the customer value assessment process.
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Minna Oinonen and Anne Maarit Jalkala
Innovations in business-to-business markets often result from co-development activities between multiple actors, all of which have their own goals for the collaboration. The…
Abstract
Purpose
Innovations in business-to-business markets often result from co-development activities between multiple actors, all of which have their own goals for the collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to study how the actors’ divergent goals reflect on their perceptions of the supplier-customer co-development process.
Design/methodology/approach
A grounded theory approach is adopted to reveal the actors’ perceptions of eight studied supplier-customer co-development processes, of which, four also involve an expert partner.
Findings
The findings suggest that because of the supplier’s aim to commercialize the resulting product, a supplier has a wider ranging perception of the co-development process, whereas the customer and expert partner focus on those phases that support their goals to improve the efficiency of the process or to develop new technology.
Practical implications
As each actor operates according to its own goals and is involved in those phases of the process that facilitates their achievement, the study recommends that managers consider each actor’s goals which are reflected on their perception of the co-development.
Originality/value
This is among the first studies to focus on the co-development process from multiple perspectives and include data from various actors involved in the process. The paper contributes to the co-development literature both by presenting actors’ divergent perspectives on the process and proposing an empirically grounded dyadic framework of the supplier-customer co-development process.