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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the important role of training (specifically, training relevance and training transfer) in enhancing franchisor-franchisee relationship satisfaction, and its influence upon customer performance (e.g., customer satisfaction, quality service), all driven by an internal marketing (IM) culture.

An empirical study consisting of a questionnaire was conducted on a final sample of 157 individuals who are members of the franchise system. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the research hypotheses.

The results reveal that IM culture has a direct influence on training relevance; likewise, training relevance provides a positive and significant effect on training transfer, which does directly affect franchisor-franchisee relationship satisfaction and at least also impacts indirectly on customer performance.

In order to ensure the success of the franchise system and customer satisfaction, all franchise parties should take a proactive role in the configuration of the training programmes. This proactive role should be conformed based on an IM culture developed properly by the franchise to strengthen a successful long-term relationship.

This paper provides an innovative approach to strengthen the franchisor-franchisee relationship through training based on the IM culture. This exploratory study integrates different theoretical frameworks that, to our knowledge, have not been linked, such as IM culture and franchise literature, considering the franchisee as an internal customer who has an influence on external customer satisfaction, with training and training transfer as essential key factors.

The strong regulation of the Spanish pharmaceutical sector encourages pharmacies to modify their business model, giving the customer a more relevant role by integrating 2.0 tools. However, the study of the implementation of these tools is still quite limited, especially in terms of a customer-oriented web page design. This paper aims to analyze the online presence of Spanish community pharmacies by studying the profile of their web pages to classify them by their degree of customer orientation.

In total, 710 community pharmacies were analyzed, of which 160 had Web pages. Using items drawn from the literature, content analysis was performed to evaluate the presence of these items on the web pages. Then, after analyzing the scores on the items, a cluster analysis was conducted to classify the pharmacies according to the degree of development of their online customer orientation strategy.

The number of pharmacies with a web page is quite low. The development of these websites is limited, and they have a more informational than relational role. The statistical analysis allows to classify the pharmacies in four groups according to their level of development

Pharmacists should make incremental use of their websites to facilitate real two-way communication with customers and other stakeholders to maintain a relationship with them by having incorporated the Web 2.0 and social media (SM) platforms.

This study analyses, from a marketing perspective, the degree of Web 2.0 adoption and the characteristics of the websites, in terms of aiding communication and interaction with customers in the Spanish pharmaceutical sector.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of hospital leaders and high-performance work practices (HPWPs) in intensive care units (ICUs) in organizational agility and its impact on healthcare personnel satisfaction.

This study was carried out in three ICUs of an important Spanish public hospital, one for adults, one paediatric and one neonatal. The unit of analysis was ICUs personnel (324 individuals: 14.5%, 48.8% and 36.7% from the categories of doctors, nurses and nurses' aides, respectively) who were invited to participate in the study. The sample had 248 individuals, with a sampling distribution by categories that was quite similar to that of the population. To test the hypotheses proposed, structural equations modeling (SEM) were used as the maximum likelihood estimation method.

The results confirm the proposed model and reveal the importance of the human dimension in ICUs on hospital agility and performance in terms of satisfaction of the clinical staff working in this area.

This paper is original because it analyses units of high complexity, such as ICUs from a management and non-clinical perspective. In addition, it studies the role of hospital managers and HPWPs on employee outcomes, as well as in-hospital responsiveness in a very dynamic context that demands agility on the management approach.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of high-commitment human resources (HR) practices on organisational performance through the commitment and satisfaction of both managers and supervisors.

An empirical study was carried out, based on the perceptions of 68 managers and 296 supervisors at four- and five-star hotels in Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain).

The results obtained reveal that: high-commitment HR practices have a positive and significant effect on the commitment and satisfaction of both groups; managers’ commitment and satisfaction do not lead to improved organisational performance; however, supervisors’ commitment and satisfaction do lead to better economic results because of an improvement in customer results.

This research revealed that it is important for hotel companies to adopt high-commitment HR practices because these practices contribute to managers’ and supervisors’ affective connection to the company, leading them to feel positively satisfied with their jobs. In addition, hotels should focus on supervisors because they feel more customer-oriented and tend to stay longer in the company, which probably leads them to better meet the needs of customers, allowing hotels to obtain better economic results.

This study contributes to HR management in the hotel industry by obtaining the views of two key informants – managers and supervisors – about the implementation of HR practices and their own levels of commitment and satisfaction.