Olivier Furrer

The Relationships Between Culture and Service Quality Perceptions Basis for Cross-Cultural Market Segmentation and Resource Allocation

The authors argue that perceptions of service quality vary across cultural groups, as defined by each culture’s position on Hofstede’s dimensions. They explicitly map the relationship between service quality perceptions and cultural dimension positions and draw the implications for international service market segmentation. They also test the hypotheses constituting their theoretical analysis. They show that the importance of SERVQUAL dimensions is correlated with Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. They also used the correlation coefficients to compute a Cultural Service Quality Index that could be used to segment international service markets and allocate resources across segments.

The structure and evolution of the strategic management field: A content analysis of 26 years of strategic management research

This paper analyses 26 years of strategic management research published in Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly and Strategic Management Journal. Through a content analysis, it studies the relationships between the subfields of strategic management. A multiple correspondence analysis provides a map of keywords and authors, and a framework to track this literature over the 26-year period. A discussion of future pathways in the strategic management literature is also provided.

The Relationships Between Culture and Behavioral Intentions Toward Services

Some recent studies have shown that culture influences how consumers perceive service quality. Others have shown the relationship between perceived service quality and behavioral intentions. In this article, the authors study how culture influences behavioral intentions toward services on the basis of services marketing and cross-cultural psychology literature. They tested and found that customers from cultures with lower individualism or higher uncertainty avoidance tend to have a higher intention to praise if they received superior service. On the other hand, the same groups tend not to switch, give negative word of mouth, or complain even if they received poor service quality. Customers from cultures with higher individualism or lower uncertainty avoidance tend to switch, engage in negative word of mouth, or complain if they received poor service quality. But they do not tend to praise when they received superior service. Managerial implications, contribution, and future research directions are also discussed.

Conceptualising and Measuring the Equity of Online Brands

Although brand equity is an important source of competitive advantage online, previous conceptualisations and measures overlook the unique characteristics of the internet that render consumers co-creators of brand value. In view of this, a threephased research programme was undertaken to identify the facets of online retail/service (ORS) brand equity and then develop and validate a scale for its measurement. ORS brand equity was found to be a second order construct with five correlated yet distinct dimensions: emotional connection, online experience, responsive service nature, trust, and fulfilment. A series of tests showed that the ensuing 12-item scale has strong psychometric properties. The implications of this research for marketing researchers and practitioners are discussed.

To Localize or to Standardize on the Web: Empirical Evidence from Italy, India, Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland

With the growth of worldwide e‐commerce, companies are increasingly targeting foreign online consumers. However, there is a dearth of evidence as to whether global consumers prefer to browse and buy from standardized global web sites or web sites adapted to their local cultures. This study provides evidence from five different countries as to whether global consumers prefer local web content or standardized web content. The study also measures how the degree of cultural adaptation on the web affects consumer perception of site effectiveness.

The impact of cultural intelligence on communication effectiveness, job satisfaction and anxiety for Chinese host country managers working for foreign multinationals

Cultural intelligence (CQ) is an important construct attracting growing attention in academic literature and describing cross-cultural competencies. To date, researchers have only partially tested the relationship between CQ and its dependent variables, such as performance. In this study, the relationship between CQ and communication effectiveness and job satisfaction is measured in a sample of 225 Chinese managers working for foreign multinational enterprises in China. The results show that CQ plays an important role in reducing anxiety and influencing both communication effectiveness and job satisfaction positively. Another outcome is the unexpected influence of anxiety on job satisfaction but not on communication effectiveness. These findings contribute to the development of theory with regard to the CQ construct.

Internet marketing research: opportunities and problems

The Internet is promised a brilliant future among the favorite tools of marketing researchers. Develops a typology of Internet marketing surveys showing the existence of eight different designs that can be used by marketers. However, researchers who plan to develop research using the Internet need to be aware of several problems related to this new tool. In particular we show that the nature of the Internet creates different sampling problems. To identify these problems, a seven‐step procedure following the steps of the sampling process is proposed. Several practical problems are then discussed.

The antecedents of response strategies in strategic alliances

Purpose – Strategic alliances involve uncertainty, interdependence, and vulnerability, which often create adverse situations. This paper seeks to understand how alliance managers respond to these adverse situations by examining the influence of four exchange variables on response strategies.Design/methodology/approach – A scenario‐based experiment provides empirical support for a typology consisting of seven conceptually and empirically distinct response strategies: exit, opportunism, aggressive voice, creative voice, considerate voice, patience, and neglect.Findings – The results indicate that economic satisfaction, social satisfaction, alliance‐specific investments, and the availability of attractive alternatives differentially and interactively affect response strategies.Research limitations/implications – The study offers two main contributions to alliance literature. First, the seven response strategies accurately represent reactions that alliance managers use to deal with adverse situations. Second,...

The rivalry matrix:: Understanding rivalry and competitive dynamics

In this paper we present a framework, the rivalry matrix, outlining a range of viable approaches which businessmen, modelers, and consultants can use to frame problems and issues in competitive rivalry. We then discuss the rationale of each of the main modeling approaches contained in the matrix. We follow this discussion with case examples, which illustrate the processes involved in modeling competitive dynamics within each of the four cells of the rivalry matrix. We conclude with the description of a practical process for analyzing competitive dynamics.

Research on the strategy of multinational enterprises: Key approaches and new avenues

Over decades, research on multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) strategies has been anchored in internalization theory. Strongly grounded in transaction cost economics to explain foreign market entry, it hardly explains how MNEs can build and sustain a competitive advantage. Thus, this paper aims at understanding how the nature of strategic thinking has influenced the research in the field of MNEs’ strategy. A content analysis of 1116 papers was conducted. The intellectual structure and dynamics of research to date are provided, without losing sight of the key foundations of strategy and strategic management. The links between human capital and knowledge are the factors on which to underpin the explanation of the MNEs’ strategies and support the coevolving theory. This theory is a promising avenue of research under the umbrella of RBV and KBV approaches. The context-dependency of strategy implies that different contexts require different approaches. Accordingly, we provide insights for future research by combining main schools of strategy thought.