Ja-Shen Chen

Service Delivery Innovation Antecedents and Impact on Firm Performance

Service innovation is one means of gaining an advantage in a highly competitive environment. In addition, service delivery has played a key role in interactions with customers in recent years. Yet, research on the link between innovation and service delivery is scant. This article theoretically and empirically examines innovation in service delivery and its antecedents and consequences. The authors identify innovation orientation, external partner collaboration, and information technology capability as the antecedents of service delivery innovation and analyze the impact of service delivery innovation on firm performance. Respondents were managers in the marketing and information technology departments of financial firms in Taiwan. Overall, 298 responses were received (including 123 paired responses from both department managers). Findings indicated that service delivery innovation contributes to firm performance. These results support the crucial influences of innovation orientation and information technology capability on service delivery innovation.

An Empirical Study of the Relationship of IT Intensity and Organizational Absorptive Capacity on CRM Performance

In recent years, e-business has emerged as a mainstream business practice for engaging in global markets. To gain a competitive advantage in these highly competitive markets, many business organizations have turned to customer relationship management (CRM), an integrated system that draws upon the strengths of IT, to allow them to gain greater insights into their customers’ needs. This study examines the relationship of information technology (IT) intensity and organizational absorptive capacity to CRM practices and performance. Data collected through a survey of Taiwanese financial service companies generally suggest that CRM practices mediate the effects of IT intensity and organizational absorptive capacity on CRM performance. Thus, it behooves organizations that seek to compete in global markets to invest in developing both their IT infrastructure and organizational absorptive capacity, and apply these resources toward building their marketing intelligence and innovating products and services that meet their customers’ needs and expectations.

Web-based information service adoption: A comparison of the motivational model and the uses and gratifications theory

This study compares two user acceptance theories: the motivational model (MM), and the uses and gratifications (U&G) theory. While MM arises from the field of information systems and the U&G theory was developed in the field of communication, both are focused on explaining user acceptance of information technologies using intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. We discuss the theoretical roots of the two theories, and use partial least squares (PLS) analysis to test each in an empirical setting. A comprehensive comparison of the results is also presented, including a discussion about the relative strengths and weaknesses of each model under both theoretical/research and practical contexts.

An examination of the effects of virtual experiential marketing on online customer intentions and loyalty

This study examines the relationship between five virtual experiential marketing (VEM) elements (sense, interaction, pleasure, flow, community relationship) and customer browse and purchase intentions and loyalty and the moderating effects between the VEM elements and customer intentions. To test the proposed model, a survey was conducted of customers who frequently visited two online games stores to simulate online shopping and experiential marketing. The results suggest that a business engaged in VEM should focus its web atmospherics on leveraging three of the VEM elements and facilitating the price and convenience motives of consumers to create an emotional attachment to browsing.

Breakthrough innovation: the roles of dynamic innovation capabilities and open innovation activities

Purpose – This study aims to examine the roles of dynamic innovation capabilities and open innovation activities in breakthrough innovation. Drawing from the absorptive capacity perspective, organizational inertia theory, and open innovation, the authors seek to argue that dynamic innovation capabilities have a curvilinear effect on breakthrough innovation that is moderated by open innovation activities.Design/methodology/approach – A mail survey was sent to the top 1,000 firms in Taiwan, the target respondents being senior managers with experience in developing at least three successful breakthrough innovations in the past five years. A total of 218 usable questionnaires were collected, resulting in a respondent rate of 22.9 percent.Findings – The findings support the argument that dynamic innovation capabilities have an inverted U‐shape relationship with breakthrough innovation. Meanwhile, open innovation activities strengthen the positive effects of dynamic innovation capabilities on breakthrough innov...

A framework for investigating the impact of IT capability and organisational capability on firm performance in the late industrialising context

From the viewpoint of the whole organisation, the capabilities of a firm can be classified into technological capability and organisational capability. Nowadays, how to accelerate the rate of building up and accumulating technological capabilities is of vital importance to the latecomer companies in order to catch up with technological frontier companies. Technological capability encompasses the Information Technology (IT) capability and other technical but non-IT capabilities. In this paper we focus on the IT capability and its effect on a firms performance and propose an integrated framework that provides the latecomer firms with a roadmap to build up their capabilities and improve their performance. The purpose is to advance an understanding of the relationship among IT capability, organisational capability, and firm performance.

Measuring CRM effectiveness: Construct development, validation and application of a process-oriented model

The quality of customer relationship management (CRM) is usually evaluated by outcome indicators such as customer loyalty and business performance. To maintain or improve these indicators, CRM managers should regularly evaluate the progress of CRM practices. In this paper, we propose and develop a construct, called CRM effectiveness (CRME), comprising three dimensions: relationship marketing (RM), customer-focused information technology (CFIT) and customer-focused organisational climate (CFOC). The development of CRME followed the three-stage methodology of Churchill (1979). A survey was conducted at 523 financial services institutions and 407 manufacturing companies in Taiwan with 221 usable returns. The survey evaluated reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity and nomological validity of the construct. The results support the proposed construct and its three dimensions. The three dimensions and their measures offer a parsimonious and practical approach for evaluating CRME and identifying its strengths and weaknesses. They reflect the process perspective of CRME and provide a better operationalisation of CRME for businesses and researchers to apply in practices.

Stepwise decomposition approaches for large scale cell formation problems

Cell formation is one of the major steps in cellular manufacturing system (CMS) design. In this paper, two stepwise decomposition approaches are proposed to solve large scale industrial problems. Both of them analyze the part-machine relations, decompose the original system to several large subsystems and then use an optimal solution technique to solve each. Several results are proved to show the conditions under which optimal solutions are obtained.

Market‐creating service innovation: verification and its associations with new service development and customer involvement

Purpose – The present study aims to develop a measure of the market‐creating service innovation (MCSI) proposed by Berry et al., verify the typology, identify the relationship between MCSI and each new service development (NSD) stage, and assess the degree to which the role of customers involved in each NSD stage contributes to each type of MCSI.Design/methodology/approach – A mail survey was sent to service companies in Taiwan, the target respondents being senior managers with experience in developing successful new services in the past three years. A total of 179 usable questionnaires were collected, resulting in a respondent rate of 21.2 per cent. The responses covered a wide range of service industries.Findings – The present study confirms that the four MCSIs proposed by Berry et al. do indeed exist in practice. The degree of association between each NSD stage and each type of MCSI varies according to MCSI type. The statistical weights for customers involved in each type of MCSI are also different.Res...

The influence of interfirm codevelopment competency on e-service innovation

Because of customer demand, rapid product life cycles, and advances in IT, an expanded view of e-service innovation is needed. Our study used concepts from resource dependence and contingency theories to examine the mediating effects of knowledge and technology integration mechanisms (KIMs and TIMs) on interfirm codevelopment competency and e-service innovation, as well as investigating the moderating effect of them on partner match. A field survey was conducted in IT departments of financial and information service firms; we found that companies in these industries emphasized interfirm codevelopment competency in developing e-service innovation but used different types of mechanisms to enhance e-service innovation, which can be viewed as a practice of embodying partner match in interfirm codevelopment competency. We concluded that IT managers should mobilize interfirm codevelopment competency in conjunction with KIM and TIM to achieve e-service innovation. Furthermore, selecting compatibility of partners is crucial in enhancing e-service innovation. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of the findings and conclude with comments on limitations in our study.