Alvaro Lopes Dias and Luis F. Lages
The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and operationalize the concept of market-sensing capabilities and analyze its relationship with new product development (NPD) success…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and operationalize the concept of market-sensing capabilities and analyze its relationship with new product development (NPD) success and organic organizational structures. To the authors' knowledge, past measures of market-sensing capabilities have never included opportunity interpretation, through business experience and organizational articulation, as part of the concept.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a sample of over 180 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), market-sensing capabilities constructs and their relationships were tested through academics' and managers' perceptions. The measure was tested using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).
Findings
Findings reveal theoretically sound constructs based on four underlying market-sensing capabilities components: analytical processes, customer relationship, business experience and organizational articulation. Results demonstrate reliability, convergent, discriminant and nomological validity. All four dimensions are positively associated with NPD success and are more likely to appear in organic organizational structures.
Practical implications
The resulting instrument provides managers with a valuable tool to measure firms' abilities to address environmental uncertainty. By using this instrument, managers can assess internal organizational structures and resources allocated to sensing capabilities. By developing sensing capabilities, managers might ultimately influence their NPD strategy. Findings also reveal that sensing capabilities are positively and significantly associated with organic organizational structures.
Originality/value
Existing sensing capabilities measures are focused on environmental scanning, and the essence of the concept is not fully expressed by the traditional measures of analytical processes and customer relationship. The authors' new measure includes opportunity interpretation through business experience and organizational articulation.
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This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.
Abstract
Purpose:
This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.
Design:
This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.
Findings:
New product development is a critical consideration for any business. Utilizing market-sensing capabilities to boost this is key for gaining competitive advantage.
Originality:
The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.
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Luis Filipe Lages, Graça Miranda Silva, Ana Isabel Canhoto, Luis F. Martinez and Sara Jahanmir
Businesses are increasingly called upon to support the improvement of society and the environment, and one way to do so is by expanding into international markets, particularly…
Abstract
Purpose
Businesses are increasingly called upon to support the improvement of society and the environment, and one way to do so is by expanding into international markets, particularly through exports. Despite the importance and recognised challenges of a global approach to sustainable value creation, sustainability research tends to focus on domestic contexts. This paper aims to identify the boundary conditions linking sustainable value creation practices with firm performance in the international context.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors merge the sustainable value creation and the international marketing literature to develop two propositions that capture the emerging nature of the field and the lack of concluding evidence regarding the link between international sustainable value creation practices and firm performance. The authors test these propositions empirically by analysing 519 responses to a survey of exporting firms in Portugal, using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.
Findings
The authors identify seven configurations that support sustainable value creation in an international context. These consist of varying levels of standardised and tailored offers, management experience and competitive intensity.
Practical implications
The identification of seven different configurations helps managers decide whether and how to innovate when pursuing sustainable value creation opportunities in international markets.
Social implications
The authors propose that an effective way for governments to achieve national and transnational social and environmental agendas is to help businesses that pursue sustainable value creation to succeed in international markets. Given that four of the seven pathways to improve export performance that the authors identified require international management experience, the authors posit that an effective way to support the internationalisation of those businesses is through targeted training programmes and knowledge-sharing initiatives.
Originality/value
The authors respond to calls for research to integrate the sustainable value creation and the international marketing literatures, to identify how and when firms can create sustainable value creation in an international context and thus support the resolution of global, social and environmental problems. The finding that there are multiple configurations that support this goal explains why empirical evidence collected thus far is inconclusive and helps identify the boundary conditions of existing theory.
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Luis Filipe Lages, José Luís Abrantes and Cristiana Raquel Lages
The development of marketing strategies optimally adjusted to export markets has been a vitally important topic for both managers and academics for about five decades. However…
Abstract
Purpose
The development of marketing strategies optimally adjusted to export markets has been a vitally important topic for both managers and academics for about five decades. However, there is no agreement in the literature about which elements integrate marketing strategy and which components of domestic strategies should be adapted to export markets. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new scale – STRATADAPT.
Design/methodology/approach
Results from a sample of small and medium‐sized industrial exporting firms support a four‐dimensional scale – product, promotion, price, and distribution strategies – of 30 items. The scale presents evidence of composite reliability as well as discriminant and nomological validity.
Findings
Findings reveal that all four dimensions of marketing strategy adaptation are positively associated with the amount of the firm's financial resources allocated to export activity.
Practical implications
The STRATADAPT scale may assist managers in developing better international marketing strategies as well as in planning more accurate and efficient marketing programs across markets.
Originality/value
This study develops a new scale, the STRATADAPT scale, which is a broad measure of export marketing strategy adaptation.
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Luis Filipe Lages and Vivienne Shaw
Despite the universal recognition of port as one of the most traditional and famous fortified wines in the world, there has been little investigation into this product, in either…
Abstract
Despite the universal recognition of port as one of the most traditional and famous fortified wines in the world, there has been little investigation into this product, in either the field of marketing or strategic management. An empirical investigation into the marketing strategies of port wine companies is presented here. Qualitative data were obtained during early 1998 through internal sources and semi‐structured interviews conducted with the directors of port wine shippers and the chairmen of institutions which play a key role in the port wine industry. Four different types of companies were identified in the port wine industry: companies owned by multinationals (MOCs), British family‐owned companies (BOCs), Portuguese family‐owned companies (POCs) and independent wineries (IWs). This study identifies the key issues faced in relation to each of the components of a marketing strategy. It reveals the importance of key issues involved in the development of marketing strategies of port wine, and in particular, the extent of distribution network, packaging, product quality, price point, value for money, direct marketing and the organisation of special events. It also reveals that the port wine industry is controlled by long‐term orientated organisations (i.e. MOCs and BOCs). Companies that have difficulties in controlling their distribution network (i.e. BOCs and IWs) also have difficulty in establishing long‐term objectives. Generalisations to wine marketing must be made with caution since this investigation was built on a study of a specific wine industry which has particular characteristics.
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Yoel Asseraf, Luis Filipe Lages and Aviv Shoham
The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test a new conceptualization of international marketing agility (IMA). Importantly, the empirical test includes agility’s…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test a new conceptualization of international marketing agility (IMA). Importantly, the empirical test includes agility’s drivers, outcomes and boundary conditions for its impact on international market performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw on the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities theories to develop a model and test it quantitatively via structural equation modeling with survey data from 195 Israeli exporters. In addition, the authors seek insights into the findings through post hoc in-depth interviews.
Findings
The results indicate that IMA enhances international market performance directly as well as indirectly through exporter’s new products advantage. Interestingly, while promotion adaptation strengthens the positive effect of IMA on new products advantage, product adaptation does not.
Research limitations/implications
Managers need to develop and improve marketing planning and flexibility maintenance capabilities. Furthermore, while maintaining an emphasis on marketing planning, they need to guard against inertia by embracing outside views, a wider range of solutions and a greater awareness of others’ decision-making styles to develop flexibility maintenance capability and achieve superior IMA.
Originality/value
A new conceptualization and operationalization of agility specific to an international marketing context is tested empirically. The complementary role of marketing planning capability and flexibility maintenance capability is demonstrated. Importantly, the vital role of new products advantage as a mediator between agility and performance is examined and the moderating role of international marketing strategy adaptation is investigated.
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Le patrimoine est la totalité du passé, ce que nous ont transmis nos anctres. C'est également ce que nous transmettrons aux générations futures.
Irwan Usman, Haris Maupa, Muhammad Idrus, Siti Haerani and Nurjanna Nurjanna
This paper examines how market orientation and competence of knowledge reinforce the innovation and in turn improve the business performance.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines how market orientation and competence of knowledge reinforce the innovation and in turn improve the business performance.
Design/methodology/approach
This research applied research design with quantitative approach based on positivism philosophy, that is, research aimed to test the theory and data which is general to produce findings that are special through hypothesis test. This study was supplemented by field studies as a necessary source of data in the form of trends, attitudes, opinions, perceptions of owners, managers or senior employees of SMEs in the textile industry in Bali, related to the variables used in this study.
Findings
(1) Market orientation influences business performance, (2) competence of knowledge moderates the influence of market orientation on business performance, (3) innovation moderates the influence of market orientation on business performance.
Originality/value
(1) Novelty of this research is developing the concept of competence of knowledge associated with business performance in which this relationship has not yet been expressed. (2) Building the concept of innovation development of small-scale industry based on the market orientation. (3) Developing the concept of innovative development of small and medium enterprises of textile industry based on competence of knowledge. (4) Investigating the concept of market orientation and competence of knowledge in an integrated and holistic way to strengthen the innovation and business performance of SMEs of the textile industry in Bali.
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José Pinheiro, Luis Filipe Lages, Graça Miranda Silva, Alvaro Lopes Dias and Miguel T. Preto
Shifting demand and ever-shorter production cycles pressure manufacturing flexibility. Although the literature has established the positive effect of the firm's absorptive…
Abstract
Purpose
Shifting demand and ever-shorter production cycles pressure manufacturing flexibility. Although the literature has established the positive effect of the firm's absorptive capacity on manufacturing flexibility, the separate role of the innovation competencies of exploitation and exploration in such a relationship is still under-investigated. In this study, the authors examine how these competencies affect manufacturing flexibility.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use survey data from 370 manufacturing firms and analyze them using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB–SEM).
Findings
The results indicate that absorptive capacity has a strong, positive and direct effect on exploitative and exploratory innovation competencies, proactive and responsive market orientations, and manufacturing flexibility. The authors’ findings also demonstrate that the exploitative innovation competencies mediate the relation between responsive market orientation and manufacturing flexibility. Essentially, these exploitative innovation competencies produce a direct positive effect on manufacturing flexibility while simultaneously being a vehicle for absorptive capacity's indirect effects on it. An exploration innovation strategy does not significantly affect manufacturing flexibility.
Originality/value
This study contributes by combining key strategic features of firms with manufacturing flexibility, while providing new empirical evidence of the mediation of the exploitative innovation competencies in the relation between responsive market orientation and manufacturing flexibility.
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Luis Filipe Lages and David B. Montgomery
The article aims to test how pricing strategy adaptation to the foreign market mediates the relationship between export assistance and annual export performance improvement. It…
Abstract
Purpose
The article aims to test how pricing strategy adaptation to the foreign market mediates the relationship between export assistance and annual export performance improvement. It also aims to consider the effects of management international experience and export market competition.
Design/methodology/approach
Structural equation modelling with WLS estimation is used to test the direct and indirect influences of the variables on short‐term export performance.
Findings
Surprisingly, the findings reveal that the total effects of export assistance on annual export performance improvement are non‐significant, because although export assistance has a direct positive impact on performance, there is a negative indirect impact through export pricing strategy adaptation.
Research limitations/implications
These surprising results suggest that future research is required to incorporate and test the intervening and indirect effects among variables.
Practical implications
The findings also indicate that both export assistance and short‐term export performance improve with management international experience and export market competition.
Originality/value
Since both managers and public policy makers are often short‐term oriented, it is urgent to develop research to better understand determinants of short‐term performance as well as the antecedents of managerial and public policy resource allocation in the short term.