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Despite the availability of many metrics and tools for marketing performance measurement, the way in which firms use their marketing metrics remains underexplored. This study aims to address this gap by empirically establishing the differing effects of the diagnostic and interactive uses of marketing metrics on firms’ market-sensing capability, contingent on competitive intensity and focus on market-related metrics.

This study builds on survey data collected from 210 Irish-based firms, complemented by 21 in-depth interviews with business managers. Survey data are analysed using regression analysis.

This study finds that firms using marketing metrics interactively to communicate organizational focus are better able to sense their markets, especially under high competition. The authors observe a positive impact of the interactive use of metrics on market-sensing capability, but a U-shaped impact of their diagnostic use, the magnitudes of which further depend on competitive intensity and firms’ focus on market-related metrics.

This study provides a nuanced view of marketing performance measurement (MPM) practices within firms, particularly focussing on diagnostic versus interactive uses of marketing metrics. It also sheds further light on how two diverse uses of marketing metrics – diagnostic and interactive uses – influence a firm’s market-sensing capability. Moreover, the identification of boundary conditions also contributes to the discussion of contextuality in MPM, highlighting the importance of aligning a firm’s uses of marketing metrics with its business environment.

This study provides novel insights into how diverse uses of marketing metrics may benefit firms. The differing effects of diagnostic and interactive uses of marketing metrics on market sensing highlight a primary need for developing the latter and for using the former only with caution. It establishes that all firms would equally benefit from an interactive use of marketing metrics that is pivotal to improving their ability to anticipate, detect and sense market changes.

This study provides novel understanding of the role of marketing metric uses in firms’ market-sensing capability and contributes to the discussion of contextuality in marketing performance measurement. It highlights the importance of aligning a firm’s use of marketing metrics with its business environment.

This study has two objectives: (1) to identify gaps in the citizen scholar framework by comparing and synthesizing the relevant pedagogical literature and (2) to illustrate how 21st century graduate capabilities can be cultivated through teaching practices using the citizen scholar framework.

We briefly synthesize the relevant citizen scholar pedagogical frameworks and approaches. We use two case studies in two large classroom settings in Ireland and Australia to demonstrate how the citizen scholar attributes can be developed through curriculum design and multiple forms of assessment.

We identify that there is a need for digital literacy to be placed as a fifth attribution cluster in the citizen scholar framework. We also demonstrate that these graduate competencies can be developed at scale by embedding the citizen scholar framework in teaching practices.

We offer a practical implementation mechanism for cultivating 21st century graduate competencies, which will help further embed citizen scholar in pedagogy strategies, thus empowering learning at scale in business education.

The current study makes the first attempt to identify significant attribution gaps in the citizen scholar framework by synthesizing and mapping the relevant approaches. Detailed examples of curriculum design from the two countries also offer new insights into the implementation of a citizen scholar framework.

Driven by the growing pressure to justify the contributions of marketing activities, marketers have shown considerable interest in improving their marketing performance measurement systems (MPMSs). The purpose of this study is to examine the neglected mediating effect of marketing capabilities on the MPMS–firm performance relationship and to focus on specific aspects of MPMSs that have been largely omitted in the prior research, namely, the comprehensiveness and uses of MPMSs.

A survey was conducted with marketing and senior managers from 210 Irish-based companies. The proposed research model was tested by using the SPSS Process macro and structural equation modeling in AMOS 24.

The three characteristics of MPMSs influence firm performance in different manners: while the diagnostic use of MPMSs hinders the development of market-linking capability and thus negatively influences firm performance; the comprehensiveness of MPMSs positively influences firm performance through its impact on architectural marketing capability; and the interactive use of MPMSs via externally focused learning and market-linking capabilities.

Although this study used objective firm performance data to validate subjective data, the use of single-informant and self-reported measures may still be a concern, as the strong relationships between variables may be because of single-informant bias.

This study provides insights into how companies can use a comprehensive MPMS to cultivate specific crucial marketing capabilities and thereby enhance firm performance.

This study contributes to the marketing performance measurement literature by proposing and empirically validating the mediating effect of marketing capabilities on the MPMS–firm performance relationship.

A holistic understanding of sources that evoke customer emotions is essential for creating a positive emotional customer experience (ECX). Despite a significant focus on the cognitive aspect of customer experience and traditional customer behaviours (e.g. loyalty and satisfaction), limited attention has been paid to ECX and co-creation behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to address this important knowledge gap by identifying different emotions and prominent sources of ECX (i.e. emotion triggers and constructors) during service interactions. By doing so, key customer co-creation behaviours are also identified, which help enhance positive customer experience.

A combined application of the appraisal theory and thematic analysis was used to explore ECX, its sources and co-creation behaviours as observed from 1,063 TripAdvisor customer reviews of luxury hotels in Ireland.

The results show that a single service interaction can evoke multiple emotions during the interaction process. The findings capture prominent emotions that customers experience and various important emotion triggers (physical environment, service management and offerings and human interaction) and constructors (customer expectation, accumulated service experience and culture fusion and authenticity). Three main customer co-creation behaviours (reinforcing intention, active and resourceful behaviours), which help facilitate the co-creation of positive customer emotions, are also identified.

The study proposes a new framework that provides unique insights into ECX to guide service improvement and innovation. A novel approach of applying the appraisal theory to a netnographic study is used to develop an ECX framework, which integrates various emotion triggers and constructors, and subsequent customer co-creation behaviours in the hotel industry.

The Chinese government launched the “going abroad” policy in 2001 to encourage Chinese companies to invest and create Chinese brands in international markets. However, the perceptions of Chinese brands among Western consumers have been shown to be consistently low, especially among European consumers. This research aims to investigate the Irish consumers' perception of Chinese brands and how to improve the “Made in China” image. This paper also investigates consumers' perceptions and attitudes when making purchase decisions for Chinese brands based on gender, age, and nationality. The paper provides important recommendations for Chinese companies who plan to enter the European, and more particularly, the Irish market.

The relationship between socially responsible leaders, the key driver of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, and organizational financial performance is a salient issue in the global context for both CSR scholars and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to provide much-needed insights into the interplay of responsible leadership, CSR practices, and organizational outcomes.

It analyses 85 CEOs’ behaviors and their companies’ performance in a two-year database. It thereby enriches understanding of how leaders’ socially responsible decisions impact upon CSR engagement and firm performance.

The results suggest that socially responsible leaders were positively related with organizational performance of return on equity (ROE). The aspects of integrity, morality, and stakeholder relationship aspects of responsible leadership are closely related to CSR. However, CSR practices were negatively related to ROA and ROE. It implies that in China CSR activities could not boost organizational performance in the short term, at least in two years.

Our research has clear limitations. First, most selected firms are renowned large corporations, state-owned, or private enterprises. Foreign-owned enterprises are excluded. Second, the evaluation of CSP is based on the content analysis of firms’ annual CSR reports. Our research has clear limitations. First, most selected firms are renowned large corporations, state-owned, or private enterprises. Foreign-owned enterprises are excluded. Second, the evaluation of CSP is based on the content analysis of firms’ annual CSR reports.

Our research has practical implications for the business world. First, CSR practices in China shall be conducted in a strategic way. Second, responsible leadership is of significance for the Chinese MNCs that are overseas to build trustful stakeholder relations with local stakeholders.

Based on the data analysis, this study provides in-depth discussion of CSR situation in China and its relationship with firm performance, which is one of the first studies to examine responsible leadership in Chinese context and investigate the relationship between responsible leadership and organizational performance.

This paper aims to present a novel structural reliability analysis scheme with considering the structural strength degradation for the wing spar of a generic hypersonic aircraft to guarantee flight safety and structural reliability.

A logarithmic model with strength degradation for the wing spar is constructed, and a reliability model of the wing spar is established based on stress-strength interference theory and total probability theorem.

It is demonstrated that the proposed reliability analysis scheme can obtain more accurate structural reliability and failure results for the wing spar, and the strength degradation cannot be neglected. Furthermore, the obtained results will provide an important reference for the structural safety of hypersonic aircraft.

The proposed reliability analysis scheme has not implemented in actual flight, as all the simulations are conducted according to the actual experiment data.

The proposed reliability analysis scheme can solve the structural life problem of the wing spar for hypersonic aircraft and meet engineering practice requirements, and it also provides an important reference to guarantee the flight safety and structural reliability for hypersonic aircraft.

To describe the damage evolution more accurately, with consideration of strength degradation, flight dynamics and material characteristics of the hypersonic aircraft, the stress-strength interference method is first applied to analyze the structural reliability of the wing spar for the hypersonic aircraft. The proposed analysis scheme is implemented on the dynamic model of the hypersonic aircraft, and the simulation demonstrates that a more reasonable reliability result can be achieved.

This study aims to focus on the optimal green R&D of a capital-constrained supply chain under different channel power structures as well as the impact of capital constraint, financing cost, channel power structure and cost-reducing efficiency on green R&D and supply chain profitability.

A two-echelon supply chain is considered. The upstream firm engages in green R&D but has capital constraints that can be overcome by external financing. Green R&D is beneficial to reduce production costs and increase consumer demand. Based on whether or not the upstream firm is capital constrained and dominates the supply chain, four models are developed.

Capital constraints significantly lower green R&D and supply chain profitability. Transferring leadership from the upstream to the downstream firms leads to higher green R&D levels and downstream firm profitability, whereas the upstream firm's profitability is increased (decreased) if green R&D investment efficiency is high (low) enough. Greater financing costs reduce green R&D and downstream firm profitability; however, the upstream firm's profitability under the model in which it functions as the follower increases if the initial capital is sufficient. More importantly, empirical analysis based on practice data is used to verify the theoretical results reported above.

This study reveals how upstream firms in supply chains decide green R&D decisions in situations with capital constraints, providing managers and governments with an understanding of the impact of capital constraint, channel power structure, financing cost and cost-reducing efficiency on supply chain green R&D and profitability.

The major contributions are the exploration of supply chain green R&D by taking into consideration channel power structures and cost-reducing efficiency and the validation of theoretical results using practice data.