John L. Graham

The knowledge link : how firms compete through strategic alliances

Why do successful companies let down their corporate walls, exposing their organizations and strategies to competitors? The answer, according to Joseph Badaracco is that corporations enter into strategic alliances to capitalize on knowledge: migratory knowledge, often technical in nature, which can be transferred easily between people or organizations in a formula or product, and embedded knowledge, which defines how a particular company organizes itself to do business. In todays business environment companies need to utilize each type of knowledge to sustain their competitive advantage. The challenge for todays manager is to balance the opportunities offered by open boundaries and free flowing information against the need to protect the corporationss unique advantages. Managing strategic alliances effectively will determine corporate success in the years ahead.

A Dyadic Study of Interpersonal Information Search

Although interpersonal word-of-mouth communication, by definition, takes place between two people, rarely has the phenomenon of word of mouth been studied using both members of the dyad. Building on the literature, this article offers a model of active interpersonal information search that is tested by using a method in which information seeker and source perceptions were obtained. Source characteristics were important determinants of interpersonal influence, but seeker characteristics also played an important role. Interestingly, it proved useful to distinguish between demographic and attitudinal homophily of seeker and source as the former was inversely and the latter directly related to interpersonal influence.

Gaining Compliance and Losing Weight: The Role of the Service Provider in Health Care Services

This research provides and empirically tests a conceptualization of health care services in which customer compliance outside of the service organization is necessary for successful health outcomes. Using data from service providers and customers in a weight-loss clinic, the authors examine the providers role in gaining customer compliance. They find that provider expertise and attitudinal homophily play a role in bringing about customer role clarity, ability, and motivation. This study demonstrates that compliance leads to goal attainment, which results in satisfaction. More important, compliance also leads to satisfaction directly; consumers who comply with program requirements have greater satisfaction with the program.

Testing a Negotiation Model on Canadian Anglophone and Mexican Exporters

In this study, the authors test a previously developed model of negotiations. The structural equations model focuses on the antecedents of problem-solving behaviors and negotiators’ satisfaction. The replication uses two new groups of businesspeople—Canadian Anglophone and Mexican industrial exporters. Similarities and differences in model fit were discovered across the two groups of exporters. Results validated the importance of reciprocity as a social construct in cross-cultural negotiations. The problemsolving behaviors of Canadian and Mexicans were found to be a function of their perceptions of the counterparts’ strategy. Mexicans’ problem-solving behaviors subsequently influenced their expressed satisfaction with outcomes. The impact of bargainer and organizational characteristics varied across the two groups.

Retail buyer beliefs, attitude and behavior toward pioneer and me-too follower brands - A comparative study of Japan and the USA

One potential source of pioneer brand advantage is retail buyers’ preference for pioneer brands. A model of pioneer brand advantage with retailers developed in the USA was tested in Japan, as a replication and cross‐cultural extension. This provides the first empirical study of Japanese retail buyer beliefs, attitude, and behavior toward new offerings, and the first direct statistical comparison of US and Japanese retail buying behavior in the marketing literature. Similarities and differences in pioneer brand advantage with retailers between Japan and the USA are discussed. Results from a survey of buyers from Japan’s largest supermarket chains suggest that pioneer brand advantage is about as strong for them as for their US counterparts, though for somewhat different reasons. The survey’s results were analyzed in two ways (through a multi‐attribute attitude model and a PLS causal model), with results that complement and corroborate one another. Data were standardized to deal with potential extreme response style bias.

A comparison of Japanese and American business negotiations

Abstract The determinants of the outcomes of business negotiations in two cultures are investigated in a laboratory experiment. The most important causal factor in Japanese negotiations was found to be the role (i.e., buyer or seller) of the negotiator. Japanese buyers consistently achieved higher bargaining solutions than Japanese sellers. The primary causal factor in negotiations between Americans was the information content of bargaining strategies. Americans to whom bargaining partners gave information more freely achieved higher bargaining solutions.

Culture's Influence on Business Negotiations in Four Countries

The usefulness of a theoretical model of the determinants of business negotiation outcomes is tested in a simulation with business people from four countries (the United States, Japan, Brazil and Spain). The article is an extension of Graham, Mintu, and Rodgers (1994), and also directly tests Hofstedes and Halls theories of culture. A problem-solving approach results in higher negotiation outcomes for Americans when their partners reciprocate. Role (buyer or seller) is the key determinant of profits for Japanese negotiations; that is, buyers do better than sellers. For the Spanish negotiators, a problem-solving approach actually yielded lower profits. For the Brazilians, interpersonal attractiveness lead to higher partner satisfaction.

Relationship-Oriented Cultures, Corruption, and International Marketing Success

This study explores the general problems associated with marketing across international markets and focuses specifically on the role of corruption in deterring international marketing success. The authors do this by introducing a broader conceptualization of corruption. The dimensions of corruption and their importance in explaining the exporters’ successes in international markets are developed empirically. Partial Least Squares formative indicators are used in a comprehensive model including consumer resources (wealth and information resources), physical distance (kilometers and time zones), and cultural distance (linguistic and values differences) as alternative explanatory variables. Finally, differences in the model’s performance across data from three exporting countries (France, Japan, and the US) are delineated and discussed. For example, the successes of French and Japanese exporters in international markets are in part determined by the levels of corruption in target countries. Alternatively, corruption in target countries does not appear to affect the successes of American exporters in global markets. The conceptualization of corruption in this study extends the more narrow view of corruption solely as bribery.

Values versus Regulations: How Culture Plays Its Role

This study examines the impact of culture on regulation and corruption. Our empirical results suggest that cultural values have significant effects on countries’ regulatory policies, levels of corruption, and economic development. Contrary to the conclusions drawn by others, this study shows no significant relationship between the regulatory policies of countries and their perceived levels of corruption. Thus, evidence of the public choice view toward entry regulation derived in related studies seems to be at least attenuated.

Retail buyer decision-making in Japan: what US sellers need to know

With formal trade barriers in Japan virtually eliminated, attention has turned to the structural or non-tariff barriers that might help explain persistent trade deficits with Japan that the US and many other countries have experienced. In this study, the first empirical examination of its kind, we analyze how the Japanese distribution system serves as a structural barrier to entry. To do so, we surveyed Japanese supermarket buyers about the individual and relative importance of five key factors in their choice of suppliers. In addition, we used similar data from a previous study of retail buyers in the United States to develop the first cross-cultural comparison of retailer decision-making. Important differences in the nature and conduct of business relationships in the two countries suggest several ways that US seller--and indeed, all foreign sellers--might address the disadvantages they face in the Japanese market.