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This paper aims to investigate two seminal market-scanning frameworks – the five-forces analysis and PESTEL environmental scanning tool – to assess their readiness for anticipating market-shaping acts.

Drawing on the market-shaping literature that conceptualizes markets as complex adaptive systems, this conceptual paper interrogates the underlying assumptions and “blind spots” in two seminal market-scanning frameworks. The paper showcases three illustrative vignettes in which non-industry actors catalyzed market change in ways that these market-scanning frameworks would not be able to anticipate.

Marketing strategists can be “blindsided” as seminal market-scanning frameworks have either too narrow an interpretation of market change or are too broad to anticipate specific types of market-shaping acts. The assumptions about markets that underpin these market-scanning frameworks contribute to incumbents being slow to realize market-shaping acts are taking place.

The authors extend market-scanning to include a type of managerial myopia that fails to register the socially embedded, systemic nature of complex contemporary markets. Furthermore, the paper provides an “actors-agendas-outcomes” scanning framework that offers awareness of market-shaping acts.

This paper is the first to consider market-scanning frameworks from a market-shaping perspective.

This chapter draws on the concept of orders of worth to generate understanding into how sustainable, good markets might be enabled at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP). Through an ethnographic study of the efforts of a non-government organisation (NGO) to create spaces where values and value at the BoP are unearthed, articulated, contested and translated into market-making practices. Insights are generated into how interventions to make-markets in sites of extreme poverty become ‘worth the effort’. In keeping with the market studies literature, the authors explore how multiple, contested and reframed needs generate insights into the efforts (and practices) that shape orders of worth in economic life. Orders of worth are the everyday practice of social values that constitute economic value and are framed through the moral values of social worlds as these values are put to work to calculate economic value. This work provides a contribution to the market studies literature through our understanding of the relationship between social and economic values in the creation of orders of worth, by showing how this happens at the BoP. Second, the authors contribute to the BoP literature by showing how places and spaces can be created and used to enable markets to unfold and happen. Finally, the findings contribute to our understanding of the types of practices and market-making devices that interventions might adopt and adapt in order to prod potential actors into action. The chapter identifies three types of enabling practices that make markets possible: connecting, integrating and reclassifying.

The aim in this paper is to describe and explain the flexibility offered by different business models adopted by different firms as they strive to achieve higher levels of business performance.

Cross‐sectional research is used to investigate a matched pair sample of 20 high‐performing and 20 low‐performing firms in the UK. The relationship between business model architectures and focus are examined and their implications for flexibility are illustrated and discussed.

The flexibility offered by different business models is explored through the way organisations select and integrate three inter‐related elements to devise flexible business models, i.e. network influence, transactional relationships, and corporate ownership. Affected by situated practices in each business network and the market position or business size, companies select and integrate various configurations of these elements to respond to the constantly evolving demands of end‐customers.

Although based upon a cross‐sectional analysis of a matched pair sample, the concept of “flexible business models” has far wider managerial implications. The efficiency of the proposed approach is achieved through the reduction into three inter‐related elements that allow flexible configuration and re‐adjustment.

Companies can use the flexible business model approach to examine their own selection and integration of network influence, transactional relationships and corporate ownership and scrutinise their flexibility and performance in the marketplace.

The contribution of this paper is the development of the flexible business models concept, based on an empirical investigation of firms in the UK.

Firms face the challenge of working with other firms in their business network so as to increase the value of products and services offered to end customers and consumers. This often requires managers to invest in developing strong and effective business‐to‐business relationships. While an extensive literature examines the different dimensions of successful business‐to‐business relationships, little research examines how perceived corporate identity is likely to influence market relationships. This paper aims to explore how a buyer and supplier draw on their own identities and the identities of each other in ways that enable them to develop a basis on which to conceptualise and operationalise a strategic sourcing relationship. Specifically, the paper seeks to investigate the emergent relationship identity that results from buyer‐seller interactions.

The paper uses an in‐depth, longitudinal case study of a buyer‐supplier relationship which involves an engineering buyer and design services supplier.

The study suggests that the corporate identity of companies involved in a relationship has a prominent role in informing and moulding the relationship. Further, the strategic scope of the analysed business relationship adds to the significance of corporate identity in informing the relationship and, ultimately, the business policy. Finally, a key contribution is the notion of “relationship identity”. Relationship identity conveys the idea that when companies develop a continuous relationship, the relationship itself has a unique identity.

The research findings are based on a single case study. Additional research across multiple case studies is needed in order to verify the findings reported.

This paper addresses a gap in the literature concerning the areas of the role of corporate identity in business relationship development. The findings are important to research and practice with regard to how companies develop successful business‐to‐business relationships.

Firms face the challenge of developing learning capabilities that enable them to work as part of an effective business network. While an extensive literature examines learning capabilities within the firm, little attention has been given to shared learning that occurs between networked firms. This study aims to explore how a manufacturer and businesses services provider learn to develop their supply network. Specifically, this research investigates four areas of shared learning that are central to supply network success, and discusses the development of shared learning capabilities within a supply network.

The paper presents an in‐depth, longitudinal case study of a supply network that involves an engineering company and two business services suppliers.

The study suggests that developing shared learning capabilities in four key areas is imperative for network success: business relationships, customers’ desired values, firm boundaries, and network structures. Furthermore, there are three distinct types of shared learning that were common to all four areas of shared learning identified. These are: strategic shared learning, operational shared learning, and exchange shared learning.

The research findings are based on a single case study. Additional research across multiple case studies is needed in order to verify the findings reported.

The four learning areas have significant managerial implications for the way managers develop mechanisms to capture and share learning associated with developing supply networks.

This research addresses a gap in the literature concerning the areas of learning capabilities for developing a supply network. The findings are important to research and practice with regard to how companies develop learning capabilities.

Although much has been written about the antecedents and consequences of market orientation, and previous studies have generated useful insights into different “forms” of market orientation, little is known of the emphases placed on different dimensions of market orientation, and no published research to date has explicitly focused on the environmental factors that may contribute to the development of particular orientation emphases. Accordingly, the study reported here aims to explore the divergent varieties of emphasis in practice, and to identify the environmental factors that contribute to that variation.

This paper begins with a comprehensive review of the literature of market orientation. The study it then reports adopted a realist perspective and used techniques usually associated with qualitative research and “grounded theory”, a departure from the positivist approach and survey methodology typically found in published studies of market orientation. Data were collected in 114 face‐to‐face, in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews in more than 50 UK‐based firms.

Results uncover four variations of market orientation, each of which exhibits a different emphasis, linked to environmental factors at the micro, meso and macro levels. The emphasis placed on the different dimensions of market orientation appears to be dynamic, and driven by changing environmental factors.

Marketing planners need to consider which emphasis of market orientation is most suited to stated strategic objectives. After instituting strategic change, managers need to ensure that the form of market orientation developed continues to reflect and respond to environmental conditions.

This paper offers interesting insights to practitioners concerned with the wider implications of market orientation.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the articles presented in the Special Issue on the topic of “Marketing and flexibility”, and to discuss key issues associated with major debates relating to flexibility in order to position the articles within a wider context and highlight some key issues for further research.

Themes in prior research relating to “Marketing and flexibility” are documented and the growth of research interest into strategic flexibility is tabulated. The contributions of each article are briefly discussed.

There has been a steady growth of research interest into flexibility. To provide an example of this growth, the increase in the number of articles published on the topic of strategic flexibility in scholarly journals is highlighted over a 20‐year period. Key issues in prior research such as alternative definitions and the different postulated relationships between market orientation and strategic flexibility are revealed, as are issues for future research.

Key issues relating to research into flexibility for marketing scholars are revealed.

Recent marketing research provides conceptual models to investigate the well-being of collectives, but service system well-being (SSW) remains untested empirically. This research conceptualises and develops a measure for SSW at the micro, meso and macro levels.

Using a series of studies, a multidimensional SSW scale is developed and validated to ensure its generalisability. After the development of preliminary items, Study 1 (N = 435 of service employees) was used to purify items using factor analyses. Study 2 (N = 592 of service employees) used structural equation modelling (SEM) with AMOS and SmartPLS to test the scale's dimensionality, reliability and validity.

The results confirm the validity and reliability of the nine dimensions of SSW. The measure was validated as a third-order micro-, meso- and macro-level construct. The dimensions of existential and transformative well-being contribute to micro-level well-being. The dimensions of social, community and collaborative well-being contribute to meso-level well-being. Government, leadership, strategic and resource well-being drive macro-level well-being. In addition, a nomological network was specified to assess the impact of SSW on service actor life satisfaction and customer orientation.

The study contributes to services literature by theorising SSW as a hierarchical structure and empirically validating the dimensions and micro-meso-macro levels that contribute to SSW.

The SSW scale is a useful diagnostic tool for assessing levels of well-being across different systems and providing insights that can help develop interventions to improve the well-being of collectives.

The research is the first study to theorise the micro, meso and macro levels of service system well-being and operationally validate the SSW construct.