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The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test a model investigating the relationship among inter-departmental communication, buyer innovativeness, and retail competitiveness. The authors also explore whether a retail strategy of supply base diversification for managing suppliers moderates the association between innovativeness and competitiveness.

Hypotheses were tested using a structural equation model and survey data drawn from general merchandise managers of 149 supermarket retailers in Japan.

The results indicate that inter-departmental communication between merchandising and store divisions drives innovativeness among retail buyers and ultimately strengthens firm competitiveness. Moreover, when buyer innovativeness is evident and less actively the retail buyers utilize supply base diversification, the stronger is the retailer’s competitiveness. The study failed to find any direct impact of inter-departmental communication on retail competitiveness.

This study offers managerial insights into the roles that buyer innovativeness, inter-departmental communications, and supply base diversification play in developing effective competitive strategies.

This study makes two key contributions. First, it is novel in using inter-departmental communication to explain the antecedents of buyer innovativeness. Second, drawing on the power-dependence theory, the authors extend the well-established innovativeness-performance linkage by exploring the moderation effect of supply base diversification.

This paper aims to examine empirically whether and under what organisational design conditions retailers can benefit from private label (PL) merchandising improvement.

The study tests hypotheses using a structural equation model and data obtained from general merchandise managers at 190 supermarket retailers in Japan.

The results reveal that both centralised merchandising authority and store cooperation between merchandising and store divisions motivate PL merchandising improvement, which strengthens PL competitiveness. In addition, outcome-based merchandiser control strengthens the positive relationship between store cooperation and PL merchandising improvement. However, regarding centralised merchandising authority, it is found that outcome-based control had no significant moderating effect.

To generalise the findings, it may be desirable to reflect data from store divisions for at least two constructs of interdepartmental structure and coordination. Also, it will remain a challenge to produce objective financial outcomes, such as sales, profits or market share, of PL merchandise to empirically test PL contributions to a retail store or company.

It is important for retail managers to understand their merchandisers’ efforts and behaviours to continuously improve PL merchandising activities. It is strongly recommended that retail managers continue to find ways to motivate their merchandisers.

Drawing on the philosophy of continuous improvement, this study suggests a novel approach to retail merchandising management that investigates how organisational design can influence better PL merchandising. To highlight the growing role of retail merchandisers, often ignored in the PL literature, this study advances this knowledge about the organisational design–strategic behaviour linkage by empirically testing interactions between different aspects of retail organisation design.

The purpose of this study is to develop and empirically test a model investigating the relationship between conflict with private label (PL) suppliers and retailers’ PL performance. The study also examines differences in the relationship based on two PL types, namely, price-oriented and differentiation-oriented PLs.

Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and data obtained from a survey of general merchandise managers in 190 supermarket chains in Japan.

The results indicate that conflict with PL suppliers can have negative effects on retailers’ PL performance. Moreover, the use of price-oriented PLs leads to higher levels of conflict with PL suppliers than the use of differentiation-oriented PLs.

This study offers managerial insights into the importance of sophisticated conflict management in relation to PL suppliers and the efficacy of premium PLs, which may cost less in terms of conflict management than price-oriented PLs.

Considering the influence of conflict with suppliers on retailers’ PL performance, this study suggests a novel approach to examining conflict between PL suppliers and retailers by classifying PLs into two types, namely, price-oriented and differentiation-oriented PLs.

Prior research has produced conflicting results on the relationship between firm-level patenting activity and financial performance. To identify a factor that impacts the results, this study tests whether the level of customer-base concentration (defined as focusing on a small number of major customer sales transactions) changes the relationship between firm-level patenting activity and financial performance (return on assets: ROA).

Using a longitudinal secondary dataset from Japanese manufacturers from 1991 to 2016, this study investigates the interaction effect between firm-level patenting activity and customer-base concentration. With additional analysis using multiple profitability measures, this study provides robust evidence that customer-base concentration is an important factor in changing the relationship between firm-level patenting activity and financial performance.

The analysis results show that there is a positive relationship between firm-level patenting activity and ROA. In addition, this relationship is positively moderated by the customer-base concentration. This means that suppliers can improve the performance of the patenting activity by concentrating on their customer base.

By identifying a moderating factor between patenting activity and financial performance, this study advances the interpretation of conflicting results in patent research. Moreover, this study reveals a situation where customer-base concentration, which has a direct negative impact on financial performance, leads to better financial performance. This also indicates that firm-level patenting activities may compensate for the negative aspects of customer-base concentration.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the negative impact of horizontal conflict on vertical conflict in a triadic configuration, which is based on the supposition that buyers who experience horizontal conflict due to competition with other buyers are motivated to limit vertical conflict to better cooperate with store staff.

This study tests the hypotheses with an AMOS-based structure equation model based on survey data of 236 merchandise managers at Japanese retailers.

The study’s findings demonstrate that process conflict concerning resource and role allocation, negatively affects the task conflict and relationship conflict involved in vertical interactions. The results suggest that conflict between buyers is an accelerative mechanism affecting the construction of cooperative relationships between buyers and store staff.

Previous studies have discussed the possibility of positive effects arising from process conflict. In this study, the authors found that horizontal process conflict tolerates vertical conflict statistically and identified a new positive effect of process conflict.

This study aims to clarify how companies should manage exploration and exploitation in the long term, and particularly whether companies should dynamically change their resource allocation related to exploration and exploitation activities.

To demonstrate the effect of shifts in focus between exploration and exploitation on financial performance and market evaluation, an empirical examination was conducted using secondary panel data for Japanese manufacturers from 2000 to 2014, which was analyzed by fixed-effect estimation with a control function approach considering the problem of endogeneity.

The empirical results suggest that companies should change their resource allocation related to exploration and exploitation in the long term. Long-term focus shifts between exploration and exploitation activities enhance not only future financial performance (return on assets and return on sales), but also future market evaluations (Tobin’s Q).

This paper showed a pathway connecting technological knowledge searches to the company’s future performance. With reference to the discussion of existing research, it remains unclear what kind of management is required for company activities related to exploration and exploitation. This study showed that companies can improve their profitability and market evaluations by changing their resource allocation for exploration and exploitation activities over time.

While most research on exploration and exploitation is from a static perspective, this study simultaneously incorporated focus balance and focus shifts into the empirical model and thereby examined exploration and exploitation from a dynamic perspective. Even when considering the effects of balancing exploration and exploitation, this study confirmed that organizational vacillation will improve financial performance and market evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate retailers’ power-dependence management through the lens of supply chain diversification, and explore how it is linked to their logistic arrangements in managing suppliers and their retail performance.

Hypotheses are tested using a structural equation modelling based on survey data from 186 merchandising division heads at Japanese retail companies.

The results reveal that quick-response inventory replenishment is positively related to retailers’ use of power-dependence management. This management practice leads to enhanced retail competitiveness and, thus, higher sales growth in supply chain relationships.

This study contributes to understanding how retailers’ logistic arrangements work by modelling power relations within supply chains, drawing on power-dependence theory. The authors propose an alternative view of logistics systems to that of the widely adopted transaction cost theory. The authors find that supplier investments in quick-response inventory management may not be a relationship-specific asset.