Alessandro Arbore

Broadband Divide Among SMEs The Role of Size, Location and Outsourcing Strategies

While the digital gap between large and small firms is a fairly well-known phenomenon, this article focuses on the divide within SMEs. Specifically, the aim is to analyse factors that may explain the differences in broadband adoption among SMEs and to explore their significant interrelations. The investigation relies on a two-step procedure: first, using a tree-based technique, relevant variables and interactions are explored; then, through a binomial logistic regression, their impact on broadband diffusion is estimated and tested. Findings confirm that the relative size of the company (a proxy for firm’s internal resources) is still relevant among SMEs; in addition, the geographical area where SMEs are located (environmental resources) can act as a further obstacle especially for the smaller companies of the sample; finally, specific ICT organizational strategies - namely the outsourcing decisions - proved to be an important mitigating factor for size and location-based broadband disadvantages.

Rejuvenating importance‐performance analysis

Purpose – Importance‐performance analysis (IPA) is a simple marketing tool commonly used to identify the main strengths and weaknesses of a value proposition. The purpose of this paper is to propose a revision of traditional IPA prompted by intuitions arising from the three‐factor theory of customer satisfaction. The ultimate goal is to propose a decision support method, which is as simple and intuitive as the original IPA, but more precise and reliable than the solutions proposed thus far.Design/methodology/approach – In order to estimate indirect measures of attribute importance, the study uses the coefficients of a multiple regression with overall satisfaction ratings as the dependent variable. Additional calculations are then introduced in order to manage non‐linear effects.Findings – Using empirical data from a survey among 5,209 customers of a European bank, the authors show how the proposed method can be more accurate than other solutions, especially as disregarding non‐linear effects can prompt su...

Understanding Personal Mobile Technologies: Decomposing and De-Averaging the Value of a Smartphone

ABSTRACT: The study focuses on the multifaceted motives for adopting personal technologies. Specifically, it uses earlier models of technology adoption to develop a model of smartphone acceptance. The model is unique in that it decomposes attitudinal beliefs into three components: functional value, hedonic value, and symbolic value. Latent class analysis facilitates the identification of three user types. The analysis shows that value drivers, control beliefs, and normative beliefs play different roles for determining smartphone acceptance, depending on three different individual characteristics (i.e., playfulness, public self-consciousness, and innovativeness). The paper makes a contribution to the information systems literature by providing an analysis of the drivers of overall value perceptions for multipurpose information appliances and of the role of individual differences among potential users in forming these attitudes.

Loyalty building, relational trade‐offs and key service employees: the case of radio DJs

Purpose – Interpersonal relationships can be a key success factor in many service businesses. A capable disc jockey, for example, may help a radio station in improving customer satisfaction. But does he/she help in building customer loyalty too? What happens if this employee leaves the organisation? The purpose of this paper is to assess the overall net effect that customer satisfaction with a key service employee may have on customer loyalty to a service firm.Design/methodology/approach – The radio industry is selected as a specific case where a key service employee exists. A conceptual model is developed and tested on a sample of radio listeners using structural equation modelling.Findings – The results confirm that customer satisfaction with a disc jockey increases personal loyalty to this employee. That outcome, in turn, cancels out part of the positive effects on customer loyalty to the radio station.Research limitations/implications – The model is tested within a specific service industry and the fi...

The Movement Game: Breaking Down Orthodoxies

What makes a new fast-growing market? How is such a market created? The answer in many cases is almost blasphemous: it’s a gift “from on high.” The reality is that rapidly expanding markets are often created in mature markets by firms which successfully identify incipient, latent, or existing needs that are inadequately met by other companies. The take-away pizza or hamburger markets are examples of Movement Games initiated in the mature restaurant industry. The personal computer market was invented in the mature mainframe computer market. Couriers such as Federal Express and DHL set a Movement Game in motion by exploiting unsatisfied needs in the mature postal market. The list goes on and on, further substantiating our initial assertion. Many mature markets are primed and ready for a firm to come along and convert some part into a new rapidly developing market. This maneuver clearly represents an indirect attack, one that allows the aggressor to win without a fight, as in Sun Tzu words (see above). From the examples above, we can infer that new technology may represent an “enabling factor” in the Movement Game, but it is not sufficient for — and nor is it essential to — success.

The Revolution of the Competitive Games

The “revolution” in the title of this chapter is meant in the astronomical sense, that is, the movement of a body (a competitive arena, in our case) which makes an elliptical orbit, ending its journey where it began. Revolution is also intended in the etymological sense, with the prefix “re” denoting an orientation toward a new state, along with a sense of abrupt change, severing all ties with the past.

The Imitation Game

The success achieved by a firm that starts a Movement Game, be it low- or high-impact, spurs the competition to pursue the innovator, thus activating the second game: imitation.

The Maneuvers of the Movement Game

The idea that firms and people must change is not new. In fact, all our lives we hear from our parents, teachers, friends, colleagues — basically every thinking person — that change is necessary. So why is it that today the word “change” means something different than what it used to? It’s not that we have finally embraced the meaning of change and the benefits it brings about. Instead, we are waking up and looking at a new world that is rapidly emerging around us, shaping our businesses, our institutions, and our communities. What we are looking at is not simply a world that is evolving as it always has. We are witnessing the emergence of something very new and radically different. What’s changing is our paradigms, rationale, formulations, quantifications, and how we deal with probabilities and predictions.

The Barriers to Change

The high- and low-impact maneuvers of the Movement Game, as illustrated in the previous chapter, are based on the firm’s ability to overcome the natural inertia that keeps us anchored to the status quo. Orbital inertia, according to physicists, is what enables a body to maintain its elliptical trajectory without any additional effort. Unfortunately, however, in the business world long-term competitive advantage actually depends on the ability to break loose from old trajectories. Referring back to our original metaphor: the greater the desired orbital shift (high-impact Movement Game) the greater the energy required; the more quickly we want to accomplish this shift (surprise effect), the greater the energy required; the greater our success in the current orbit, the greater the energy required to change it; and finally the lesser the current financial tension, the greater the energy required to overcome orbital inertia.

The Final Frontier of Value

In the previous chapters we rediscovered an ancient truth: “You cannot step into the same river twice, because everything flows.” Situations that have been apparently static for years sooner or later are destined to flow toward the only two possible outfalls of the Position Game: a new Movement Game (an environmental shock), or the implosion of the sector — that is, the state we call the final frontier of value. A sector reaching this state, after many competitive cycles of innovation and imitation, is like a train that after many runs reaches its final station: the end of the line.