Edwin J. Nijssen

Integrating Branding Strategy Across Markets: Building International Brand Architecture

Brands play a critical role in establishing a firms visibility and position in international markets. Building a coherent international brand architecture is a key component of the firms overall international marketing strategy, because it provides a structure to leverage strong brands into other markets, assimilate acquired brands, and integrate strategy across markets. The authors examine the way firms have developed international brand architecture and the drivers that shape the architecture. The authors discuss implications for the design and management of the firms international brand architecture.

Determinants of the adoption of new product development tools by industrial firms

Abstract Despite the fact that failure rates of new products remain high, research shows low levels of penetration for tools and techniques to aid new product development (NPD). The objective of this study is to increase our understanding of the determinants of the adoption and diffusion of NPD tools and techniques. Empirical research was conducted in The Netherlands using a sample of 70 industrial companies. The results show a significant influence of innovation strategy, the number of interactions between departments involved in the NPD process, the number of departments involved in the NPD process, prior adoption of tools, and the number of NPD stages on tool adoption. The results and managerial implications are discussed.

Consumer World-Mindedness, Social-Mindedness, and Store Image

As advances in communications technology shrink the impact of geographic distance, consumers are likely to become more aware of and familiar with products and services in other parts of the world, as well as global social and ethical issues. Retailers have responded to these trends (termed here “consumer world-mindedness” and “consumer social-mindedness”) by adapting their positioning and product assortment. The authors develop measures of consumer world-mindedness and social-mindedness and examine their relationship to exposure to other cultures and store image using a survey of 191 consumers in the Netherlands. The authors examine images of three types of stores: the Body Shop, fair-trade stores, and a grocery store with an imported food products section. The results confirm that consumers’ exposure to foreign cultures increases consumer world-mindedness and social-mindedness and that both have a significant impact on store image. The authors conclude with a discussion of implications for retail and international marketing management.

Conjoining international marketing and relationship marketing: Exploring consumers' cross-border service relationships

Research on international marketing constructs, such as consumer ethnocentrism and country-of-origin effects, typically focuses on consumers’ initial evaluations of foreign products but ignores consumers’ emerging cross-border exchange relationships with foreign service providers. The influence of international marketing constructs on the development of these relationships also seems to be largely ignored. The authors call for new research on cross-border service relationships and integration of relationship marketing with international marketing models. They introduce an exploratory test and develop a research agenda that identifies several avenues for further research. The empirical test involves a study of German consumers who regularly cross the German–Dutch border to attend to their accounts with a foreign (i.e., Dutch) bank. Loyalty to the foreign financial service provider may be explained using substantive relational antecedents, such as satisfaction, trust, and value, and international marketing antecedents, such as consumer ethnocentrism and consumer beliefs about the industry. The results show that the international variables complement the relationship model. The authors discuss the managerial and research implications and provide avenues for further research.

Consumer World-Mindedness and Attitudes Toward Product Positioning in Advertising: An Examination of Global Versus Foreign Versus Local Positioning

In recent years, increasing interest has emerged in examining global consumer culture and its impact on consumer product preferences and choices, lifestyles, and exposure to mass media from other countries. In turn, this has sparked interest in concepts such as consumer world-mindedness and its impact on attitudes and behavior. The current research examines differences in consumer response to advertisements reflecting a global consumer culture positioning (GCCP) versus a foreign consumer culture positioning (FCCP) or a local consumer culture positioning (LCCP) and the relationship with consumer world-mindedness. In Studies 1 and 2, the authors examine the impact of world-mindedness, while controlling for ethnocentric attitudes. In Study 3, they examine the interactions of world-mindedness, international travel, and preference for authenticity. The authors develop several hypotheses and examine them using two surveys of 90 (Study 1) and 100 consumers (Studies 2 and 3) in the Netherlands. The results demonstrate, for example, that advertisements for brands with FCCP and GCCP are nomologically different and evaluated differently.

Alternative mechanisms guiding salespersons’ ambidextrous product selling

Ambidextrous product-selling strategies, in which companies’ salespeople concurrently pursue the sale of existing and new products, are hard to implement. Previous studies have addressed this issue for relatively simple consumer settings with the manager in close proximity to the salespersons and focusing on different levels of control and autonomy to resolve this issue. However, little is known about how field salespeople can be influenced to pursue such dual goals proactively for more complex business-to-business products. In this study, the authors distinguish between salespeople’s proactive selling behaviour for new and existing products, and study the impact of two alternative mechanisms: a situational mechanism (i.e. perceived manager product-selling ambidexterity) and a structural mechanism (i.e. salesperson organizational identification). Using a time-lagged, multisource data set from a large ambidextrous company, the authors demonstrate that both mechanisms contribute to salespeople’s proactive selling of new and existing products, but also act as each other’s substitutes. The results suggest two most likely strategies for salespeople to obtain overall sales targets: focusing on existing product selling; or acting ambidextrously. The latter approach offers the benefits of better achieving ambidextrous company sales goals and of greater performance stability, and is thus preferred.

Why did they do it? How customers’ self-service technology introduction attributions affect the customer-provider relationship

Purpose – Customers often think that innovations, such as self-service technologies (SSTs), are introduced by service providers to cut costs rather than extend customer service levels. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customers use such attributions to adjust their perceptions of relational value. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on attribution and relationship marketing theories, this study proposes a conceptual model that includes benefit and cost attributions, their antecedents, and consequences. Survey data came from customers of a supermarket that recently introduced self-scanning technology. Findings – Attributions mediate the impact of SST performance on relational value. This value is highest for customers with high-benefit and low-cost attributions; customers with low-benefit and low-cost attributions exhibit detrimental effects on the exchange relationship with the firm. Characterized by low self-efficacy, low education, and low spending, these latter customers appear ambival...

Technology Trajectories and the Selection of Optimal R&D Project Sequences

Given a set of R&D projects drawing on the same underlying technology, a technology trajectory refers to the order in which projects are executed. Due to their technological interdependence, the successful execution of one project can increase a firms technological capability, and help to efficiently and effectively develop other projects from this set. In this paper, we present a model for determining the optimal sequence for performing such projects. Based on Huchzermeier and Lochs real-option value model, we demonstrate that accounting for interproject learning and discount rates has: 1) a positive effect on the maximum option value that different project sequences can achieve; and 2) the maximum value of the technology trajectory is particularly sensitive to the selection of the first project.

Balancing modularity and solution space freedom: effects on organisational learning and sustainable innovation

Many technology-intensive (TI) firms find it challenging to leverage customisation and achieve sustainable innovation. Although some firms use modularity to tackle this challenge, mixed effects on sustainable innovation have been reported. This study uses organisational learning and ambidexterity theory to provide insights into how TI firms can achieve ‘win-win’ situations where sustainable innovation is increased through customisation. First, we argue that customisation should be viewed two-dimensionally and identify both modularity and solution space freedom as important dimensions. We argue that modularity reflects knowledge specialisation and solution space freedom reflects knowledge variety. Both of these dimensions affect organisational learning and, in turn, sustainable innovation. Second, we argue that the relationship between customisation and organisational learning is affected by supplier characteristics, specifically supplier sophistication. Survey data from 166 managers were used to empirically test the conceptual model and hypotheses. Polynomial response surface analysis confirms that customising by balancing high degrees of both modularity and solution space freedom results in superior organisational learning. High levels of supplier sophistication do not strengthen these effects. Rather, our results show that combining high degrees of modularity with constrained solution spaces increases learning for TI firms working with less sophisticated suppliers. In addition, organisational learning fully mediates the effect of customisation on sustainable product and process innovation.

Brand advocacy in the frontline: how does it affect customer satisfaction?

Purpose Many organizations expect their service engineers, or frontline employees (FLEs), to behave as brand advocates by engaging in favorable communication about the brand and its offerings toward customers. However, this approach is not without risk as customers may be disappointed or even frustrated with brand advocacy behavior in many service encounters. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of FLEs’ brand advocacy on customer satisfaction with the service encounter, and identify the conditions under which the effects are detrimental. This paper specifically considers service issue severity and product newness as contingency conditions. Design/methodology/approach Building on social identification theory, the paper builds a conceptual model, which is empirically tested using a data set that matches data from service engineers, customers, and archival records from the after-sales service department of a globally operating business-to-business print and document management solutions provider. Findings This paper finds that brand advocacy behavior harms customer satisfaction especially in service encounters that involve simple service issues (e.g. maintenance) for products that are new to the market. Fortunately, brand identification can compensate this negative effect under many service conditions. While the joint effect of brand identification and advocacy is most beneficial for severe service issues of new products, no effect on customer satisfaction was found for established products. Practical implications This paper identifies those service situations in which brand advocacy is advisable and guides managers toward achieving more favorable customer evaluations. Originality/value Past research has considered several FLE branding activities in the frontline but the effects of brand advocacy have not been isolated. In addition, most studies have assumed the effects of employee brand-related behaviors on customer satisfaction to be universally positive rather than negative and focused on antecedents and not on moderators and consequences.