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The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of ingredient advertising. Specifically, the authors consider the question as to whether ingredient advertising can increase derived demand and favorably influence purchase intentions and attitudes toward the host product that incorporates the advertised B2B ingredient.

They conduct experiments in two host product categories using a three-group, between-subjects experimental design.

The findings of the study are revealing about the impact of ingredient advertising on the demand for host products, in which the advertised ingredients are incorporated. It is demonstrated that consumer advertising positively affects the attitude and purchase intention toward the host brand that incorporates the advertised industrial product. It is also found that the higher the importance of the advertised ingredient as an attribute of the host product, the greater the advertising effects on the consumer brand.

The findings imply that ingredient advertising can help marketers to stimulate derived demand in the sense that it makes consumer brands incorporating the advertised industrial product more attractive to consumers. The positive influence of ingredient advertisements is greater for industrial products that are perceived by consumers as very important ingredients of the final product as consumers are more prone to search for and process ingredient-related information and are also more likely to respond to it.

Despite the implementation of ingredient advertising campaigns by many B2B brands and the vast literature on conventional B2C advertising, there has been no previous attempt to investigate this issue in the empirical literature. This empirical study shows how ingredient advertising works and how it can benefit both buyers and suppliers of the advertised B2B products.

An empirical examination of the product elimination decision‐making processes in American and British manufacturing firms was presented. Specifically, two areas of the product elimination decision‐making process are presented: (1) the precipitating circumstances which “triggered” the product elimination decision‐making process to begin; and (2) the variables used to make the elimination/retention are reviewed. It was concluded that the decision making processes were similiar in the two countries.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into how service firms price the services that they render in the market. In particular, the association between the pricing objectives that they pursue and the organizational and environmental characteristics that influence pricing decisions are investigated.

Data are collected from 170 companies operating in six different service sectors in Greece through personal interviews. Moreover, qualitative research through 26 in‐depth interviews is also conducted.

Following the classification scheme put forward by Avlonitis and Indounas, it can be concluded that a combination of different organizational and environmental characteristics leads to each one of the eight pricing objectives examined in the study.

The above findings indicate the need to treat pricing decisions using a contingency approach. Formulating a specific pricing objective requires an examination of certain organizational and environmental concerns. The significance of these findings notwithstanding, the context of the study (Greece) is the most important caveat, since it limits the ability to generalize the results to other countries.

This paper represents the first attempt to empirically examine the potential association between the aforementioned pricing objectives and characteristics.

The reason for this study is to help increase understanding concerning the service elimination decision and implementation since it remains a highly under‐investigated topic. In doing so, an empirical investigation of the successful vs not‐so‐successful elimination practices from eight service industries were examined.

The data were secured by means of a lengthy and structured questionnaire, instrumented through personal interviews as part of a much wider examination of the service elimination decision‐making process in Greece entitled “Project ServDrop”. The companies included in the sample were drawn from a population of 1,964 service companies listed under selected service sectors, namely, insurance, banking, advertising, professional services, freight forwarding, marine, telecommunications and lodging.

The analysis reveals that treating the elimination as a strategic issue, considering how resources can be more effectively re‐allocated, paying attention to market consideration regarding the consequences of a potential elimination and adoption of a systematic behavior, building interdisciplinary teams to deal with the decision and keeping the time between the making and the implementation of the decision short, are all important dimensions of “successful elimination”.

However, the findings should be cautiously adopted because of the limitations of the study: the use of a retrospective methodology in the data collection, the use of the key‐informant approach, the limited number of variables included in the conceptual framework are issues that cannot be neglected. Nonetheless future research that will be directed towards tackling these limitations may dispel these concerns.

Despite its limitations, this study has significant implications for practitioners. It mainly points to the strategic nature of the elimination decision and its implications. Also, it unveils certain behavioral changes that must accompany the effort to treat the elimination decision as part of the greater strategy for managing the firm's offerings. Thus, the contribution of this study is twofold. For academia, it is a step forward towards a stronger understanding of the service elimination issues, while, for practitioners, it helps to clarify certain important issues that can help improve the outcome of the decision to drop a service from the firm's portfolio.

The paper aims to offer a preliminary insight into the issue of whether service providers eliminate their offerings in various stages of their life cycle, and if so, whether elimination decision‐making differs depending on the service's life cycle stage.

Data were secured by means of a structured questionnaire which was completed through personal interviews. Respondents answered all questions having a recently eliminated service in mind. The initial calls and follow‐up efforts generated 164 usable responses (49.8 per cent response rate).

A service may be eliminated from a service provider's portfolio in any stage of its life cycle. Further, in terms of precipitating circumstances, evaluation factors and elimination strategies, the service elimination process differs depending on the stage of the service life cycle that the elimination decision is taken.

The most important implication is service providers eliminate services not only as a response to a crisis possibly caused by drops of sales volume, but also for other reasons. In this respect, service portfolio rationalization and particularly service elimination may result as a consequence of strategic management decisions taken for positive (e.g. development of a new service) or negative (e.g. competitive actions) reasons. Within this framework, the service life cycle (SLC) model, as a strategic tool for analysis and decision‐making, may well serve to guide the rationalization process.

The research questions of the study have been examined for tangible products, but this is the first relevant study that is conducted in a service context.

Introduction One aspect of product line management that is receiving increasing attention in industry is product elimination. It is clear that “stagflation” is forcing an increasing number of consumer as well as industrial goods companies to re‐evaluate and prune their product‐mix offerings.

While significant empirical work exists around the conceptualization of the notion of market orientation, as well as its relation to company performance, little empirical work has attempted to sketch how a firm's behavior alters when the principles of market orientation are adopted. In this study, the authors investigate empirically the notion of market orientation continuum, according to which companies can be classified depending on the degree of adoption. Next, the behavioral implication of the company's position on the continuum is investigated. Moreover, the role of the company's market environment in explaining the degree of market orientation adoption and its classification along this continuum is also assessed. Finally, the behavioral consequences of this classification are considered.

This research focuses on the weak product evaluation and decision‐making stage of the product elimination process. In comparison with previous works in this area, this research provides a more complete listing of weak product evaluation factors generally used by management and affords a richer explanation of why particular evaluation factors are considered important by management during the weak product evaluation process.

Describes the results of a survey of Bulgarian companies as part of a larger project funded by The European Commission. Investigates the marketing attitudes and approaches of Bulgarian companies using a mailed questionnaire based on a set of preliminary in‐depth interviews and analyses the results using a cluster analysis. Results show the existence of four clusters: the first, where marketing is virtually non‐existent; the second and largest cluster, where companies are primarily production oriented; the third, where companies are primarily sales oriented; and the fourth, where there is full marketing implementation. Compares these Bulgarian clusters with those found in the UK, and indicates that Bulgarian companies have made little progress towards full marketing implementation. Explores the barriers to the adoption of marketing.

This research represents the first attempt to examine the product elimination decision over the Product Life Cycle (PLC). Two research hypotheses were put forward proposing that: (a) a product may be dropped from a company′s product line irrespective of its position on the PLC, and (b) the stage of the PLC does influence the product elimination process. These exploratory propositions were assessed against data from a cross‐sectional sample of British manufacturing companies. The data were secured by means of a mail questionnaire and involved 156 recently discontinued products. The results of our study confirm both research hypotheses. Products may be eliminated irrespective of their position on the PLC and the elimination decisions made at the early stages of the PLC are triggered by different problem situations and involve different evaluation factors and elimination strategies than those made at the later stages of the PLC.