Christine Moorman

Relationships between Providers and Users of Market Research: The Dynamics of Trust within and between Organizations

The authors investigate the role of trust between knowledge users and knowledge providers. The kind of knowledge of special concern is formal market research. Users include marketing and nonmarketi...

FACTORS AFFECTING TRUST IN MARKET RESEARCH RELATIONSHIPS

Building on previous work suggesting that trust is critical in facilitating exchange relationships, the authors describe a comprehensive theory of trust in market research relationships. This theor...

The Impact of Organizational Memory on New Product Performance and Creativity

Arguing that organizational memory affects key new product development processes by influencing the (1) interpretation of incoming information and (2) the performance of new product action routines...

The Acquisition and Utilization of Information in New Product Alliances: A Strength-of-Ties Perspective

In this article, the authors examine the acquisition and utilization of information in new product alliances. Drawing from research in social network theory with a focus on the strength-of-ties literature, the authors suggest that horizontal alliances have lower levels of relational embeddedness and higher levels of knowledge redundancy than vertical alliances. The authors then suggest that though embeddedness enhances both the acquisition and utilization of information in alliances, redundancy diminishes information acquisition but enhances information utilization. The authors test these ideas using a sample of 106 U.S. firms that recently have participated in new product alliances. Although the results are broadly supportive of the predictions, they are also surprising because they question key underlying assumptions of the strength-of-ties literature. For example, closely tied individual actors are typically assumed to share both high levels of embeddedness and high levels of redundancy, but the present research finds that this assumption does not hold for organizational actors. The authors discuss the implications of these findings specifically for new product alliances and for research on tie strength among organizations in general.

Organizational Improvisation and Learning: A Field Study

An inductive study of improvisation in new product development activities in two firms uncovered a variety of improvisational forms and the factors that shaped them. Embedded in the observations were two important linkages between organizational improvisation and learning. First, site observations led us to refine prior definitions of improvisation and view it as a distinct type of real-time, short-term learning. Second, observation revealed links between improvisation and long-term organizational learning. Improvisation interfered with some learning processes; it also sometimes played a role in long-term trial-and-error learning, and the firms displayed improvisational competencies. Our findings extend prior research on organizational improvisation and learning and provide a lens for research on entrepreneurship, technological innovation, and the fusion of unplanned change and order.

Cross-Sectional Versus Longitudinal Survey Research: Concepts, Findings, and Guidelines

Marketing academics and practitioners frequently employ cross-sectional surveys. In recent years, editors, reviewers, and authors have expressed increasing concern about the validity of this approach. These validity concerns center on reducing common method variance bias and enhancing causal inferences. Longitudinal data collection is commonly offered as a solution to these problems. In this article, the authors conceptually examine the role of longitudinal surveys in addressing these validity concerns. Then, they provide an illustrative comparison of the validity of cross-sectional versus longitudinal surveys using two data sets and a Monte Carlo simulation. The conceptualization and findings suggest that under certain conditions, the results from cross-sectional data exhibit validity comparable to the results obtained from longitudinal data. This article concludes by offering a set of guidelines to assist researchers in deciding whether to employ a longitudinal survey approach.

What Is Quality? An Integrative Framework of Processes and States

Quality is a central element in business strategy and academic research. Despite important research on quality, an opportunity for an integrative framework remains. The authors present an integrative framework of quality that captures how firms and customers produce quality (the quality production process), how firms deliver and customers experience quality (the quality experience process), and how customers evaluate quality (the quality evaluation process). The framework extends the literature in several ways. First, the authors describe important linkages between the three processes, including links reflecting the role of co-production. Second, they point to overlooked aspects of the quality processes that influence how quality is conceptualized and should be managed. These include customer heterogeneity in measurement knowledge and motivation; the role of emotion in quality production, experience, and evaluation; and a new typology of attributes. Third, they propose a quality state residing within each quality process and describe what gives rise to these states, which will enhance decision makers’ ability to measure and manage quality processes. Finally, they offer theoretical and managerial implications derived from their integrative quality framework including 20 strategies to increase customer satisfaction.

The Effects of Stimulus and Consumer Characteristics on the Utilization of Nutrition Information

This research investigates the effect of consumer characteristics (e.g., familiarity and enduring motivation) and stimulus characteristics (e.g., information format and content) on the utilization of nutrition information. Results indicate that both types of charcteristics influence information processing and decision quality. Moreover, stimulus characteristics, in general, were found to facilitate these activities irrespective of consumer differences. Copyright 1990 by the University of Chicago.

Marketing Alliances, Firm Networks, and Firm Value Creation

Prior research has found that the announcement of marketing alliances tends to produce no effect on firm value creation in a high-tech context. This article reexamines this issue and investigates whether the characteristics of a firms network of alliances affect the firm value created from the announcement of a new marketing alliance. The authors investigate whether network centrality, network density, network efficiency, network reputation, and marketing alliance capability influence firm value creation. They examine this question using an event study of 230 announcements for marketing alliances in the software industry. The results indicate that, in general, marketing alliance announcements create value (i.e., abnormal stock returns) for the firm in the announcement period event window. Furthermore, network efficiency and network density have the strongest positive impact when they are moderate; network reputation and network centrality have no effect. These results point to the greater role of relational network characteristics than size-/status-based benefits. Finally, marketing alliance capability, which reflects a firms ability to manage a network of previous marketing alliances, has a positive impact on value creation.

Interfirm cooperation and customer orientation

This article examines the implications of interfirm cooperation for a firms level of customer orientation. Drawing on research in marketing, organizational theory, and economics, the authors suggest that firms engaged in cooperative alliances with competitors will become less customer oriented over time. Using longitudinal survey data, the authors find that firms in alliances dominated by competitors experience a significant decrease in their level of customer orientation. In contrast, the authors do not observe this type of decrease for firms in alliances dominated by channel members. Moreover, the authors find that both behavioral and structural mechanisms influence the relationship between alliance type and customer orientation. Behaviorally, firms in competitor-dominated alliances with weak relational ties with their collaborators exhibit a greater decrease in customer orientation compared with firms with strong ties with their collaborators. Structurally, firms that collaborate with competitors in alliances with a third-party monitor, such as a government agency, experience a smaller decrease in customer orientation than firms in alliances without such a monitor.