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Consumer product firms renowned for marketing appear to be complementing brand creation, extension and acquisition with minority equity investments in entrepreneurial brand ventures (EBVs) for strategic purposes. Similarly, EBVs are looking for growth and resources that can be accessed via inter-organizational partnerships. This flourishing industry practice and the paucity of empirical research indicates the potential for new studies. The research objective was to examine why and how large incumbents were implementing strategic brand venturing (SBV), and with this understanding to develop a framework useful for descriptive and normative purposes.

This qualitative research study comprised in-depth interviews and multiple data sources across seven case studies drawn from US subsidiaries of global firms within the consumer products industry. Grounded in resource theory, the dimensions of strategic brand equity investments are abductively derived.

The findings delineate 16 process capabilities within four aggregate clusters entailing, the designing of the SBV program, opportunity identification, brand entrepreneur partnerships and venture portfolio management. Prefaced by endogenous and exogenous antecedents, these process capabilities help to contribute strategic and financial value when implemented.

This qualitative research study yielded analytical rather than statistical generalizations. A range of market and economic factors exist in the United States contributing towards a favorable entrepreneurial and brand incubation climate. This may render the SBV concept as contingent and contextual. Furthermore, the view of brand entrepreneurs' regarding the design of the process model were not explicitly sought but inferred from the discourses of the venturing units interviewed.

The article outlines several important implementation imperatives for corporations endeavoring to competitively advantage their brand portfolios via adoption of a minority equity investing strategy in EBVs. Practitioners are cautioned against myopically adopting this process alone as a success heuristic given other factors may impact success such as changes in corporate strategy or upper echelon sponsorship.

Mission preservation for social brand ventures being tethered to a large incumbent may need to be taken into account prior to and during SBV relationships.

The research contributes to the call for greater insights into the investment processes used in venturing relationships as well as coverage of new industry sectors beyond technology industries that often characterize corporate venture capital studies. Several novel findings emerged related to the importance of—the industry ecosystem; symbiosis between the founding brand entrepreneur and brand culture; synchronization of investment strategies with an emerging brand life-cycle model and serendipitous corporate entrepreneurial opportunities.

This paper examines the likely influences on the sourcing of textiles by UK retail buyers. It reports the results of secondary data analyses on the retail market and primary data from personal interviews with 102 textile buyers. The main influence on the British market from changes in international agreements will be a greater opportunity to source from low‐cost markets. This could negatively affect traditional sources such as Italy and Portugal. The structure of the UK market is analysed to provide a basis for the selection of interviewees. Buyers who were interviewed tended to fall into two groups, younger but well qualified and older, less well qualified but more experienced. The younger group included more females. They tended to refer important decisions to others, although this correlated more with experience than with gender. Conclusions are drawn on the implications of the study for textile marketers, particularly those from other EU countries. By enhancing their understanding of the structure of the UK retail sector, suppliers are able to devise strategies that take into account the specific nature of distribution of textiles and clothing in the UK, and consequently increase their ability to compete in this changing market.

Provides an example of the use of judgemental modelling, or multicriteria decision making, as a tool for market analysis. Based on a recent study in a segment of the chemical industry within the United Kingdom, shows how the approach can be used to provide information on both the importance of attributes and the scores of competing suppliers on the same attribute set. Suggests that the approach enables a comprehensive analysis of the positioning of the various suppliers to be undertaken, and provides insights that can be developed into detailed marketing strategies.

Introduces the special issue entitled “The role of information and communications technology in transforming marketing theory and practice”. Outlines the themes discussed in the papers in the issue, which seek to provide insights into how information and communications technology is transforming marketing theory and activities.

Aims to expand the traditional view of marketing to include a wider network of actors, all of which have a role to play in executing transactions. Measurement has traditionally been a stumbling‐block: while the importance of actors other than those forming the traditional dyad is accepted, it has not been easy to determine empirically what it is that the different partners want from the relationship. In this paper we present a possible way forward. The preliminary work presented here is based on the affinity credit card market which has three clear partners in a triad: the bank, the affinity group itself, and the customers that elect to make use of the card. We present some early results that indicate the extent to which these three partners do, and do not, have an overlapping understanding of each other’s needs.

The financial services market is currently undergoing tremendous change, due to the twin influences of developments in the field of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and changes in the legislation determining how banks will be allowed to operate after 1992. Describes research whose objective was to evaluate the viability of introducing a new service to handle cross‐border payments, undertaken for a large multinational bank, and focused on respondents from a variety of firms within the European Community. Uses a combination of a PC‐based judgemental modelling package and in‐depth interviews to develop a clear understanding of the needs of both the originators′ and the vendors′ requirements. Although based on a relatively small sample, the detailed findings permit development of an effective approach to segmenting the market for the particular service.

Assesses the influence that certain retail buyer characteristics have on how the buyers approach their buying task. By examining five different buyer characteristics and the relative importance that individual buyers place on six different product attributes, draws some pertinent conclusions as to how the buying task is approached. A total of 100 interviews were conducted with UK retail buyers of textiles and clothing in 35 companies, covering 62 separate divisions. The context for each interview was that of a new buy where the options were to source locally or from an international source. A PC‐based package (judgmental analysis system, or JAS) was used to assess the importance of six buying criteria derived from the literature and perceived to be relevant in organisational buying. The results confirm what have been largely theoretical ideas of linkages between buyer characteristics and the importance that they place on different criteria during the decision‐making process. Clear correlations exist, and these can be explained and supported by the qualitative data gathered during the study.

There have traditionally been different ways in which to view the marketing task, distinctions that have been drawn to facilitate the level of insight available to managers involved in marketing the firm's offer. A traditional distinction has been between business‐to‐consumer (B2C) and business‐to‐business (B2B) marketing. More recently, much has been written on whether the appropriate perspective of marketing should be transaction‐based or relationship‐driven. This paper argues that a different view is more useful: that the marketing task has moved beyond being transaction‐ or relationship‐driven, and that it can and should increasingly often be viewed as an information‐handling problem. First identifies what are considered to be the main tasks facing a marketing manager, and then interpret how these tasks may be managed in each of the transaction‐, relationship‐, and information‐driven approaches. By using three different case study vignettes, provides evidence of the applicability of these ideas.

The aim of this paper is to identify how companies mobilize other companies in their surrounding network to work within the plans they develop.

A conceptual model is developed and its applicability is illustrated by a case study involving a manufacturer‐retailer network within Europe.

The study identifies five different challenges that managers need to consider when attempting to mobilize other actors in their networks: developing network insight; introducing new business propositions; concluding the deal; developing the social contract; and achieving sustained mobilization.

Although based on a manufacturer‐retailer network, it is believed that the proposed model has far wider managerial implications, achieved through the identification of the different challenges.

The model is explained in some depth, and its practical implications explained via the case study.

The development of a theoretical model of network mobilization based on a network view of business‐to‐business relationships.

There has recently been an increase in interest in the notion of “network pictures” amongst researchers in the field of business‐to‐business marketing. Network pictures are managers' subjective mental representations of their relevant business environment. They are posited to work as “sense‐making” devices, and consequently shape managerial decisions, actions, and evaluations. However, while interest in this concept has been reported in a range of literature that is here identified and discussed, there has been no attempt to rigorously conceptualise the underlying dimensions of such pictures. This paper aims to address this issue.

Based on an extensive review of previous work, this study proposes a parsimonious set of interrelated dimensions, and initially tests this approach.

This article shows the model's face validity, but also argues that not all dimensions are perceived as being equally useful: utilisation of the different dimensions is determined more by what it is that managers wish to represent.

The implications of the concept of network pictures, as well as further research propositions, are discussed.

As researchers develop their interest in network pictures, so one needs to develop one's understanding of what their underlying dimensions are. A parsimonious set of such dimensions is developed and tested.