Milena Micevski

Firm Innovativeness and Export Performance: Environmental, Networking, and Structural Contingencies

Much scholarly work has explored the benefits firms accrue from innovation activities. Although some research has shown that firm innovativeness is associated with enhanced export success, the conditions under which firm innovativeness activities are most and least beneficial are not well understood. The authors take a contingency perspective and use social capital theory to investigate how internal channel networking capability and structural factors as well as external environment factors affect the innovativeness–export performance relationship. Analysis of samples of exporting firms from Ghana and Bosnia and Herzegovina indicates that innovativeness is most beneficial for firms operating in competitive and dynamic export markets; those in less competitive and static markets do not benefit from their innovation activities to the same extent. Stronger networking capabilities and a more organic structure also enhance the innovativeness–export performance relationship. The findings imply that the management of firm innovativeness is not a straightforward task in which greater emphasis on innovation activities is always beneficial for firms; rather, exporting organizations must match firm innovativeness levels to external environmental conditions and internal capabilities and structures.

Do Marketers Use Visual Representations of Destinations That Tourists Value? Comparing Visitors’ Image of a Destination with Marketer-Controlled Images Online

The study explores visitors’ image of a destination using online visitor-generated photography and compares the findings with images of the same destination that marketers create and control on the Internet. The two studies are conducted with Taiwan as the context-destination. Online visitor-generated photography yielded more than 100 photographs from visitors to Taiwan, and indicates that visitors’ holistic image encompasses notions of Taiwanese uniqueness, ancientness, and authenticity through their perceptions of the natural landscapes, traditional local cuisine, and culture. The second study yielded 1,526 visual image representations of Taiwan collected from a variety of website sources, and findings highlight the disparities between the holistic image construed by visitors to Taiwan and the image created by marketers on the Internet. The findings yield important implications for the effective positioning and promotion of tourism destinations as managers should consider visitors’ holistic images in their attempt to create destination images through online visual representations.

Does improvisation help or hinder planning in determining export success? Decision theory applied to exporting

Exporting enables organizations to diversify risk and generate multiple income streams. In turn, the ability to make good export decisions is purported to be a main determinant of performance. Although substantive export decisions are well researched, little is known about how export decisions should be made in practice and whether different decision-making approaches should be combined. This study addresses this gap using decision theory; the authors assess the interaction of planning and improvisation and examine the impact of these approaches on export responsiveness and export performance. They develop a conceptual model through exploratory research and test it through structural equation modeling. The authors seek insights into the results through post hoc in-depth interviews and conclude that improvisation has multiple dimensions (spontaneity, creativity, and action orientation) and that there is no one “best way” for export managers to make decisions. Furthermore, export planning can enhance economic performance but detract from customer performance. In addition, improvisation improves responsiveness, whereas action orientation leads to greater customer performance and results in greater responsiveness with regard to planning. However, export managers should be wary of spontaneity and creativity, because they detract from planning outcomes.

Consumers’ intention to donate to two children’s charity brands: a comparison of Barnardo’s and BBC Children in Need

Purpose – This paper aims to examine consumers’ non-profit brand image, brand typicality and past behaviour as determinants of intention to donate to two children charity brands. Design/methodology/approach – Data for this study were obtained from two separate studies via a questionnaire, both in the context of two children charities, one for Barnardo’s and the other for BBC Children in Need charity. A theoretical model is developed, tested and compared across the two charity brands. Findings – Findings highlight that different factors influence intentions to donate time and money according to the charity brand. Brand typicality is a key determinant of time donations, while the impact of non-profit brand image dimensions on time and money donations differs across the two charities. Past behaviour affects intentions to donate money in both charities but impacts time donations in only one of the two charities investigated. Research limitations/implications – The study examines specific dimensions of non-pro...

A Scale for Measuring Consumers’ Ethical Perceptions of Social Media Research

Social media have become increasingly seductive as means to collect consumer data without necessarily making consumers fully aware of such data collection practices (Pettit 2011; Poynter 2011). This can raise ethical concerns. Online qualitative methodologies that rely on observations through social media have become increasingly popular among marketing academics (Braunsberger and Buckler 2011; Cova and Pace 2006; Kozinets 2002, 2006, 2009, 2010). But so have various online quantitative data collection methods that use tracking technologies such as cookies (Palmer 2005), and other forms of marketing dataveillance (Ashworth and Free 2006). Despite current academic and practitioner-led debates regarding the morality of online research, to date scant research has been published on consumers’ ethical perceptions regarding how they are currently researched on social media, which is a knowledge gap this research seeks to address. To this end, our research attempts to develop a quantitative instrument that captures consumers’ ethical perceptions of social media research. The following sections present the background, methodology, analysis performed and results.

Performance Implications of the Interplay Between Sales Intra-Functional Flexibility, Customer Orientation and Role Ambiguity

The competitive sales landscape is changing rapidly, moving away from the traditional arms-length transactional exchange and more towards the relational exchange (e.g., Ingram et al. 2001). Within this changing competitive environment, firms need greater flexibility to proactively and quickly reallocate critical resources (Storbacka et al. 2009) in order to meet customers’ changing exceptions. Although it is suggested that salespeople are becoming more interdependent (i.e. dependent on their colleagues) to acquire the necessary resources needed for effective work with customers (Schmitz 2013; Kennedy et al. 2001), research has yet to systematically examine such flexibility in salespeople internal resource exchange.