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This study investigates the relationship between Total Quality Management (TQM) and internationalization in small family firms, focusing on the role that the dimensions of TQM may have as strategic resources to implement successful internationalization strategies.

Building on the Resource-Based View (RBV), the study is based on a single case study, and data were gathered through in-depth interviews with the family owner-manager.

Findings show that small family businesses that aim to operate in international markets have to invest constant attention toward TQM by developing strategies able to achieve excellence. More in detail, for small and medium family firms, TQM represents a driver to internationalize. Therefore, family-owned managers sustain that internationalization success depends on the increasing attention exhibited toward the following dimensions of quality, specifically on three main pillars: relationships, professionalization and long-term vision, which appear to be strategic resources in international markets. An interpretive model is proposed with a set of propositions.

Scholarly implications are threefold. First, findings contribute to the RBV theory by introducing the long-term vision as a strategic resource able to activate a loop between TQM and internationalization success. Second, results contribute to TQM literature, highlighting that it represents a driver to internationalize, and following a long-term perspective, its enhancement is stimulated by internationalization. Third, findings contribute to family business studies, underlining the relevance done of owners on professionalization as a strategic resource to ensure excellence and obtain success in overseas markets. The main drawback refers to the fact that results stemmed from one single case study. Further studies could deepen the analysis on multiple cases.

The proposed case study represents a best practice and can stimulate other entrepreneurs and consultants to invest in TQM to thrive internationalization strategies.

The current study, elucidating that TQM is the driver to stimulate family business internationalization, proposes an interpretive model to study TQM and internationalization in small and medium family firms.

The paper aims to analyse the case of “Sa Panada srl”, a tiny Sardinian family firm, to provide intriguing insights for the study of entrepreneurial orientation in a context that is anchored in an apparent and hostile past.

An exploratory approach is used to analyse a single-case study through a narrative approach. Data were analysed through the hermeneutic trio consisting of three phases: (1) explication – contextualisation, reconstruction and synthesis of the history; (2) explanation – identification, description and understanding of the meaning of the narrative; and (3) exploration – discussion and identification of theoretical and practical implications.

The study introduces novel best practices that help enhance entrepreneurial orientation in a difficult setting based on change reluctance and past anchored culture.

Theoretically, the study contributes to the literature on entrepreneurial orientation, internationalisation and innovativeness of family firms embedded in a hostile context. The main drawback of the study is its explorative analysis of a single case.

For practitioners, the research proposes the case study as a best practice able to inspire successful resilient behaviour and decisions for other firms that experience daily challenges.

The study elucidates the relevance of individual factors of family owners as endogenous elements that can balance contextual obstacles with ambitions of growth and development.

This study aims to explore how customer-perceived quality is affected by innovation in traditional products in the bread, bakery and pastry industry. The study assesses whether innovating traditional products is an effective strategy, especially in traditional industries.

This study followed a quantitative method of analysis. Data were gathered from a sample of 200 Italian bread consumers and analysed using a two-pronged correlation analysis, and two hypotheses were tested using Pearson’s correlation.

The results showed the negative relationship between customer-perceived quality and innovating traditional products in traditional industries embedded in closed contexts.

The study has several academic implications. First, by focusing on the traditional food industry, the study contributes to the theory by answering the call for research in this field; second, the findings contribute to the embeddedness construct and, third, to the studies of customer-perceived quality and to the literature on innovation.

The findings are particularly interesting for entrepreneurs and consultants in traditional industries who make decisions on whether it is better to innovate or to remain anchored to tradition.

The present study clarifies the shadowy side of innovation in traditional industries, such as the bread, bakery and pastry industry, and it reveals how tradition plays a meaningful role in those sectors.

The paper aims to focus on management‐customer relations as a way to understand the competitive advantages of small/medium‐sized family businesses. The aim of this work is to verify whether management perceptions of business strengths and customer perceptions of the same strengths agree, and whether this agreement (perceptive concordance) can become an important factor in maintaining the firm's competitive advantages.

The research is carried out through a single case study with a sample of 120 customers.

The findings indicate that when management and customers agree on certain business issues, performance benefits. Comparing management's perception of strengths and customers' perceptions of the same strengths allow one to relate what the firm thinks of itself to what the customer sees in it.

The research offers useful information about the efficiency of the firm's external communications and demonstrates that a shared language between the firm and its customers does exist and is understood by both entities. Moreover, practical implications are related to customers' degree of satisfaction with respect to management beliefs, and to management's opportunity to correct the weaknesses revealed by the agreement factor.

The paper provides a different perspective on how to analyse competitive advantage inside small to medium‐sized family businesses with cases and specific analyses not considered in depth by the family business literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the “perceptive concordance” – the proximity of perceptions of the business- between key managers and customers of two small family-owned and managed businesses (“FBs”) and two larger non-FBs in Cagliari, Italy as a preliminary basis for understanding how small retail businesses that are typically family owned have continued to compete and thrive in many Western European cities.

The authors asked how small FBs have been able to compete in an advanced European economy despite apparent competitive disadvantages relative to large superstores selling the same products. In addressing this question the authors drew on a qualitative research methodology in which the authors interviewed senior managers and surveyed customers of the four businesses and applied an original statistical model to assess the degree of their perceptive concordance with over 100 customers of each business.

The study's findings suggest a significant difference between key managers and customers of the sampled FBs and non-FBs in the perceptive concordance of the respective businesses held by those managers and customers.

Based on the research in this study the authors have developed a number of scholarly and managerial implications in the way that both FBs and non-FBs may retain old customers and gain new ones by anticipating and not merely responding to their product and service preferences.

This paper extends the literature on customer relations management (“CRM”) in FBs by explaining how small High Street FBs in competitive retail businesses have continued to thrive in Western Europe where owner-managers have developed and successfully leveraged their tacit knowledge of the requirements of repeat customers.