George Bedinelli Rossi

Strategic alliances in medium size firms: a study in the sector of industrial automation of automobiles in Brazil

This article presents inquiry on clarifying factors for the formation of strategical alliances formation among medium size fi rms of the sector of automotive industry. The process of the strategical alliances formation is analyzed under the perspective of the Resource Based View Theory. This theory asserts that the strategical alliances are formed as a means to provide to the organization the resources that are internally scarce or absent. The data come from the analysis of nine cases of fiof automotive industry sector located in Sao Paulo (Brazil) that they possess strategical alliances. The data collection took place in 2005 by means of interviews, which were recorded, transcribed and studied according to the content analysis technique. The main conclusion is that, by identifying the scarcity in relation to the resource “production technology”, the studied companies create strategic alliances to stabilize and to assure the access to this resource, at the same time they reduce the fi xed costs and keep a clean structure.

How far is World Champion from World Class? Institutional effects on a Brazilian non-profit sports organization

The objective of this research is to identify the main factors for the internationalization of Brazilian soccer teams via the strategic networks and institutional view approaches. The literature review unveils that ties and connections to the access and acquisitions of inimitable resources, learning races and being a leader or occupying an important position in a network are the main factors for the network formation to achieve internationalization. We adopted the single case study method, and data collection was done by in depth-interviews with ten key respondents. The main findings revealed that resource acquisition capabilities, the organization’s size, brand and image reputation and institutional environment are relevant factors for the internationalization of a firm by networks. As a theoretical contribution, firms that have strong brand and image reputation with resources that will strength network are an important factor for a firm entering a network or developing one. Regarding managerial perspective, a main contribution is to propose a sequence of factors to be used in a specific way.

Evidence of the reluctance to purchase Chinese cars by low-income consumers in the Brazilian market

In this paper, our objective is to explain why Brazilian low-income consumers are reluctant to buy Chinese cars by using the path dependence analysis approach, and the country effect considering social, instrumental, and emotional facts. For this, Chery Motors is the object of study of this research. The sample was selected by judgment and homogenous. Data collection took place through focus group interviews and were analysed by content analysis. Findings were that, the country effect is an important factor, as Chinese brands are seen as of low-quality and as of low status, and by introducing cheap cars Chery breaks with the dominant pattern in Brazil, whose preference is either for premium cars or those perceived as of high quality, by being the first to be launched by automakers settled in Brazil. The main finding of this research is that a firm will fail if it starts on a different path from the main players.

CONSTRUÇÃO E VALIDAÇÃO DE UMA ESCALA PARA A SELEÇÃO DE FORNECEDORES DO SETOR ELÉTRICO BRASILEIRO POR EMPRESAS SEDIADAS NA AMÉRICA LATINA

The goal of this study was the construction and validation of a scale on suppliers’ selection factors in the Brazilian electricity sector by companies based in 16 Latin American countries and the existing relationship with the responses obtained from the Brazilian suppliers. First done is a review of extensive literature and five interviews with specialists in the sector, which were identified 32 variables used for the preparation of a Likert scale and a factorial design of six constructos. Subsequently, the scale was applied to 191 respondents, which form 86, companies in 16 Latin American countries and 105 from Brazil. Finally, the validation process, the scale was statistically validated by the method of Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The analysis of the results shows an excellent adhesion to the model of five constructos.

Service Consumers’ Value Perception: Evidence from Restaurants in the City of São Paulo

This research aims at creating a model that could explain consumers’ value perception of restaurants attended on Sundays in the city of Sao Paulo. The research was carried out in two phases. The first was an exploratory research – a focus‐group type with two groups of eight individuals each, whose objective was to discover the main variables that impact the value perception of consumers who attend restaurants on Sundays. Thus, a balanced Likert‐type scale was generated, with seven levels of concurrence. The scale was submitted to five experts for a theoretical validation and was applied to a nonprobabilistic sample pursuant to the judgment of 360 consumers with the same profile as of those of the focus group. Then, in a second phase, validation of the scale by the confirmatory factor analysis method was provided as well as the building and analysis of five causal models by the method of structural equation modeling and the five‐hypotheses test. The final model with a better adjustment (hypothesis 1) was composed of PRICE as an endogenous variable and ENVIRONMENT, SERVICE, FOOD, and HYGIENE as exogenous variables. Such conclusions allow the perception of the decision process in relation to restaurant selection in two phases: (1) when a group of restaurants is chosen, and (2) the moment when the PRICE variable takes over the role of defining the value offered by each restaurant, which will motivate the selection.