Robert C. Fink, William L. James, Kenneth J. Hatten and Lynn Bakstran
The purpose of this research is to understand factors related to increased customer purchases from suppliers during different stages of the customer‐supplier relationship.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to understand factors related to increased customer purchases from suppliers during different stages of the customer‐supplier relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey of 372 professionals in the paper industry was conducted to investigate how customer performance outcomes, supplier quality and delivery performance, the presence of relational norms and customer perspectives of environmental uncertainty vary in their influence on increasing customer purchases over time.
Findings
The results indicate the variables influencing increased customer purchases vary over the duration of the customer‐supplier relationship. It is also shown how the variables influencing increased customer purchases from suppliers are different from the variables leading to increased customer commitment to suppliers over time.
Research limitations/implications
Data were collected from the customer perspective only and involved the exchange of one type of product. Similar studies need to be conducted in other industries involving other types of product exchanges that capture both customer and supplier perspectives to verify these findings.
Practical implications
Supplier sales and marketing managers need to understand the factors related to increased customer purchases and how they change over time to create appropriate sales and marketing strategies for different stages of their customer relationships.
Originality/value
One of the most important sales and marketing objectives is to increase customer purchases; however, it has received limited attention in prior research. This paper adds value by focusing on both the variables related to increased customer purchases and how these factors change in their influence over the duration of the customer‐supplier relationship.
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Robert C. Fink, William L. James and Kenneth J. Hatten
The purpose of this research is to understand what pricing, purchasing, product defect and late deliveries factors are associated with the decisions of small, medium and large…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to understand what pricing, purchasing, product defect and late deliveries factors are associated with the decisions of small, medium and large size customers to enter into closer customer‐supplier relationships with their suppliers.
Dessign/methodology/approach
The study involves a survey of 372 professionals in the paper industry to investigate the linkage between pricing, purchasing efficiencies and reductions in product defects and later deliveries and relational exchanges across customers of different sizes and resources.
Findings
The results indicate that the pricing, purchasing, product defect and late delivery factors associated with relational supply chain exchanges are different for small, medium and large size customers.
Research limitations/implications
Data were collected from individuals’ perspectives of the customer‐supplier relationships within customer organization only and involved the exchange of one type of product. Similar studies need to be conducted in other industries involving other types of product exchanges that capture both customer and supplier perspectives to verify these findings.
Practical implications
Supplier sales and marketing managers need to understand that different sized customers with different resources may have different performance objectives when entering into relational exchanges. These varying customer performance objectives should help supplier marketing managers to better segment their relational exchange customers and help them in assessing their ability to satisfy varying customer relational exchange performance goals.
Originality/value
While the linkage between closer customer‐supplier relationships and pricing, purchasing, product delivery has been studied in prior research, this is one of the first studies to show that different customer performance factors are associated with different sizes of customers and their relational exchanges. This paper also suggests that further research grounded on a resource‐based theory (RBT) of the firm would be valuable in better understanding the factors associated with different customers' relational exchanges.
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Robert C. Fink, Linda F. Edelman and Kenneth J. Hatten
This study aims to test both customer and supplier performance benefits associated with closer relational exchanges in light of both resource and technological environmental…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to test both customer and supplier performance benefits associated with closer relational exchanges in light of both resource and technological environmental contingencies.
Design/methodology/approach
The research involved a survey of 1,170 managers in the pulp and paper industry to understand their relationship with their primary supplier of process control equipment (PCE). Each respondent was asked to provide their views on the closeness of their supplier relationship, the performance gains realized from their supplier relationships, and the linkage between their performance gains and improvements in supplier performance.
Findings
The results indicate that although customers may be achieving better performance through closer relationships, suppliers may not always be reaping reciprocal benefits. Specifically, improvements in customer purchasing performance did not result in improved supplier performance, but customer improvements in production performance resulted in supplier performance gains.
Research limitations/implications
The study focused on the exchange of one product line, PCE, within one industry. Further research is necessary to investigate customer‐supplier relationships involving other products such as parts and material incorporated into the customer's end product and crossing multiple industries. In addition, further research is needed to develop and test other potential performance outcomes and environment contingencies.
Originality/value
Since mutual performance improvements may not always be achieved in relational exchanges, this study suggests some critical considerations for suppliers making decisions to pursue closer customer relationships. These important considerations include the competitive nature of the supplier's market, the customer's desired performance improvement, the customer's level of internal expertise or knowledge, and the supplier's ability to provide differentiated products, services and knowledge.
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William F. Crittenden, Victoria L. Crittenden, Melissa Middleton Stone and Christopher J. Robertson
The research presented here contributes to our understanding of strategic planning and its relationship to performance in nonprofit organizations. Based on a sample of 303…
Abstract
The research presented here contributes to our understanding of strategic planning and its relationship to performance in nonprofit organizations. Based on a sample of 303 nonprofit organizations, the study emphasizes individual and diverse elements of the planning process. Multiple measures of performance highlight a nonprofits need to garner resource contributions from several constituencies. Using factor analysis and canonical correlation analysis, we find a positive association between scope of planning and executive satisfaction and a negative association between administrative informality and volunteer involvement. Our results suggest that two critical resource contributors, executive directors and donors, may not value formalized decision-making and planning to the extent previously assumed.
Jamil Anwar, S.A.F. Hasnu, Irfan Butt and Nisar Ahmed
The purpose of this paper is to find out the most influential journals, articles, authors and the subject areas where Miles and Snow typology is used. The study identifies the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to find out the most influential journals, articles, authors and the subject areas where Miles and Snow typology is used. The study identifies the opportunities for future research as well.
Design/methodology/approach
Review is based on 196 journal articles selected through a systematic and rigorous search process from the four databases: ProQuest, Business Source Complete, Willy and Science Direct. Total Citation, threshold citations, fractional citation and citation per year techniques are used for analyses.
Findings
Strategic Management Journal (SMJ), Academy of Management Journal (AMJ) and Journal of Marketing (JOM) are the most influential Journals. The most influential and prolific articles on the subject are from Hambrick (1983), Conant et al. (1990), Doty et al. (1993), Sabherwal et al. (2001), Desarbo et al. (2005) and Fiss (2011). Management, strategic management and marketing are the most studied subject areas.
Originality/value
Although there have been many reviews of the literature on this typology, the systematic review on Miles and Snow typology to find out the most influential journals, authors, articles and subject area has not been done before.
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The purpose of this case study is to examine the impact of regional culture and family dynamics on firm survival and longevity. Secondary issues include operations management in a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this case study is to examine the impact of regional culture and family dynamics on firm survival and longevity. Secondary issues include operations management in a retail grocery, hardware, and building supply store.
Design/methodology/approach
The author performed in‐depth qualitative interviews with the business owners and visited on site. The tape‐recorded interviews followed a formal list of questions, but were semi‐structured in nature.
Findings
Although the store was remotely located, wise management and intelligent leadership have contributed to business success and survival into the fourth generation of family ownership.
Research limitations/implications
As an exploratory qualitative case study, there are limitations concerning generalizability. Additionally, the findings here relate particularly to small family businesses.
Practical implications
Family firms possess a business side and a family side. In this case, success factors on the business side included merchandising skills, responsiveness to customer needs, profitable sales margins, and reinvestment in facilities. On the family side, success factors included harmonious relations among family members, the incumbent leaders’ desire for succession to occur, incumbent leaders’ financial forbearance or sacrifice, solid education of successors, mentoring of the next generation, and willing and able successors.
Originality/value
This case analyzed characteristics that lead to long term survival, examined the process of succession, and assessed the two‐sided nature – business side and family side – of a small family business.
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This paper reflects on the evolution of implicit and explicit behavioral ideas in the field of strategic management using Herbert Simon’s scholarship as a starting point, that is…
Abstract
This paper reflects on the evolution of implicit and explicit behavioral ideas in the field of strategic management using Herbert Simon’s scholarship as a starting point, that is, his emphasis on empirically driven; interdisciplinary theorizing allowing and enabling two-way street learning. We argue that historically, there were plenty of behavioral ideas embedded in the field and, together with the recent movement towards explicit “behavioral strategy,” these provide several possible paths for future developments in strategic management research. In the spirit of broadening the tent for behavioral strategy in the future (Hambrick & Crossland, 2018), we suggest some topics and approaches for behavioral strategy in empirically driven, interdisciplinary directions which allows also for two-way street learning between concepts and real-world strategic phenomena.
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Literature on strategic planning and management is prolific. Articles deal with various aspects of strategic planning, its definition, process, and application. However, many of…
Abstract
Literature on strategic planning and management is prolific. Articles deal with various aspects of strategic planning, its definition, process, and application. However, many of these articles concentrate on the theory and on the strategic planning models rather than deal with practical application or problems experienced at implementation levels. My interest in reviewing this literature is to identify studies which offer significant key approaches and relate them to the field of education planning. Can we learn something from the way in which strategic plans are formulated and implemented in the business world and apply this knowledge to planning and operation of academic institutions?
The purpose of this paper is to organize the semantics jungle of marketing strategy approaches, terms and concepts into a logically coherent framework using the history of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to organize the semantics jungle of marketing strategy approaches, terms and concepts into a logically coherent framework using the history of marketing thought to inform current marketing research and practice.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper takes the form of an intensive literature review tracing the three streams of marketing strategy terms and concepts from their roots in the literatures of early marketing management, managerial economics and corporate management to the present.
Findings
Along with marketing ideas, strategy concepts from managerial economics and from corporate management were absorbed directly into the corpus of strategic marketing thought. These three streams of research have converged into the current state of marketing strategy – an eclectic mixture of both complementary and conflicting strategic approaches, terms and concepts. By systematically following the evolutionary development of major contributions to strategic marketing thought and by redefining terms and refining concepts the various approaches to strategy can be integrated into a comprehensive conceptual framework for organizing and choosing among individual marketing strategies.
Originality/value
The framework offers conceptual and practical value. It provides a researcher with a consistent set of terms and concepts to build upon. The framework also provides a strategic toolkit for the marketing manager, based upon organizational and environmental conditions, to choose from among the feasible alternatives the most effective marketing strategy to achieve management's goal(s).