Rami Olkkonen

The role of communication in business relationships and networks

Owing to the strong position of traditional marketing communications (especially advertising) research and consumer marketing related theories in the general field of marketing, the prevailing concepts of communication can be labeled as “mass communicative” in current marketing discourse as a whole. However, along with the rise of various “relational approaches” in marketing, the focus of marketing research seems to shift from products and firms as a central unit of analysis to people, organizations and the social processes that bind actors together in ongoing relationships. In these interactive relationship/network contexts, the nature of communication is hardly mass communicative. This article aims at presenting a theoretical framework on the role of communication in business relationships and networks. The interaction/network approach to marketing means moving from the current perspective of marketing’s mass‐communicative effects and consequent communicative behaviors of organizations to the “lower level” of interpersonal communication processes occurring within business relationships and networks.

Case study: The network approach to international sport sponsorship arrangement

Offers a discussion on the interorganizational network approach as an interesting, alternative avenue for the development of sponsorship research. An example of how to describe and analyze a sport sponsorship arrangement case, using the interorganizational network approach as a theoretical frame of reference, is presented. Researching sports sponsorship from a network perspective extends the interorganizational network thinking from a traditional industrial/marketing channel context to the context of sponsorship formed by actors from the fields of sports, media and business. The phenomenon of networking is quite visible in the case of NMP‐FIS sponsorship arrangement. NMP has entered into relationships with various types of organizations in order to more effectively gain benefits from its sponsorship investment. Actors of the NMP’s focal snowboard sponsorship net possess different kinds of resources linked to public relations management, sports management and distribution of television rights. Different network actors bring to the arrangement not only their own resources and capabilities, but also their own networks of value adding relationships. Consequently, when planning international sponsorships companies need to assess not only the sponsored event/organization (its resources) but also its corresponding network (ability to link activities and tie resources with those of other actors), i.e. the “network identity” of the sponsored. The case presented clearly demonstrates the appropriateness of the network approach to sponsorship and other service‐oriented situations different from the “traditional” production situations. Further research could continue to add examples from other kinds of sponsorship relationships and networks, for example, from different kinds of sports and arts sponsorship arrangements. Furthermore, longitudinal perspectives are needed in order to gain understanding of the development processes of sponsorship relationships and networks.

Sponsorship as relationships and networks: implications for research

Despite the fact that commercial sponsorship nowadays is a common phenomenon with salient effects on different aspects of developed societies at large (e.g. sports, the arts, the public sector, the media), academic research interest in this closely marketing‐related field seems to be rather low. Although there have been significant changes in marketing thinking during the 1990s, current research on sponsorship seems to be “stuck” in the more traditional, marketing‐mix management – and mass communicative effects‐based discourse. This paper aims at presenting a theoretical overview of how current sponsorship research could be developed further by applying the basic ideas and concepts provided by the interaction/network approach to the study of sponsorship‐related phenomena. Adopting an interaction/network perspective means that, instead of measuring the mass‐communicative effects on various audiences, the focus is on understanding the development of sponsorship relationships and networks, as well as on interpersonal communication processes going on between the sponsorship parties.

Brand building in software SMEs: an empirical study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to increase the knowledge of brand building in software SMEs.Design/methodology/approach – The empirical method used is a multi‐case study. Data were collected from 20 companies in the software industry through in‐depth interviews. The data were analyzed using systematic coding and categorization of qualitative evidence.Findings – The study identified five special characteristics of brand building in software SMEs, relating to goals and perceived benefits of brand building; resources in brand building; external and internal cooperation in brand building; means and communication in brand building; and the process of product brand building and its connection to software product development.Research limitations/implications – The scientific contribution of this empirical study relates to two aspects of brand management: branding in software business and branding in SMEs. A vast amount of literature exists on “brands”, “software business” and “SMEs”, but there is very li...

Understanding relationship fading in cultural sponsorships

Purpose – To describe, analyse, and understand relationship fading between a business sponsor and a sponsored museum in the context of cultural sponsorships.Design/methodology/approach – The empirical study uses a longitudinal and a dyadic approach to analyse the temporal development of a three‐year cultural‐sponsorship relationship.Findings – This study tackles the phenomenon of relationship fading in cultural sponsorships. The triggers of relationship fading are first elaborated into structural and situational triggers. These triggers are further categorised into structural predisposing triggers, situational precipitating triggers, situational attenuating, and structural attenuating triggers.Research limitations/implications – Most of the triggers of relationship fading are passive and indirect. Consequently, the triggers of fading affect the development of the relationship by gradually reducing the sponsors motivations to invest and develop the cultural‐sponsorship relationship.Practical implications ...

Fading configurations in inter‐organizational relationships: a case study in the context of cultural sponsorship

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to describe, analyze, and understand the fading configurations in inter‐organizational relationships in the context of cultural sponsorship.Design/methodology/approach – A dyadic case study investigates a long‐term cultural‐sponsorship relationship between a business sponsor and a sponsored museum.Findings – The triggers of relationship fading are broadly elaborated into structural and situational triggers. These triggers are further categorized into negative and positive structural triggers and into negative and positive situational triggers. Negative triggers accelerate the fading of cultural‐sponsorship relationships, whereas positive triggers hinder such fading.Research limitations/implications – The perceptions of the business sponsor and the sponsored museum are combined into a configuration matrix of relationship fading in cultural‐sponsorships relationships. The configuration matrix can be used to analyze the composition and the dynamics of perceptions during...

Cognitive styles of contractually integrated retail entrepreneurs: a survey study

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the cognitive styles of contractually integrated retail entrepreneurs with respect to marketing decision making. The study addresses two research questions: How can the cognitive styles of these retail entrepreneurs be classified? If there are differences in the cognitive styles of retail entrepreneurs, how are these differences reflected in their business performance?Design/methodology/approach – Following a literature review and conceptual analysis, a questionnaire on cognitive styles is developed on the basis of Jungs “typology theory” and the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator. A quantitative internet survey study is then conducted among 226 retailers contracted to the K‐alliance of Finland. The results are then subjected to statistical analysis.Findings – The study reveals that the cognitive style of most of the studied K‐retailers is in accordance with the style of salaried managers, rather than that of “entrepreneurs”. The study also finds no clear relationship be...

Interactive value formation in interorganizational relationships: Dynamic interchange between value co-creation, no-creation, and co-destruction

The article builds a framework for interactive value formation (IVF) in interorganizational relationships. The framework describes IVF as interplay between resource integration and a multilevel service system, which manifests in interaction episodes accumulating into a relationship. The interplay generates outcomes in which the actors are better off (co-creation), worse off (co-destruction), or indifferent (no-creation) to value gained. The framework is demonstrated in an empirical case of a cultural sponsorship relationship where the co-destructive and no-creative interaction episodes dominated co-creative instances, finally accumulating into a relationship outcome of value no-creation for both parties. The framework and the launched novel conceptualization of value no-creation contribute to the research on service systems, resource integration for value, and failure in value co-creation. The research on failure in value co-creation, that is, value co-destruction, is scant. This article further elaborates this research stream and bridges to the research on co-creation.

The potential of network pictures for international alliance and network research

International alliance and network research has largely focused on finding one-dimensional correlation between alliance/network characteristics and internationalization variables. This has resulted in a dearth of holistic studies to increase our understanding on co-evolving network processes and structures. In this chapter, we discuss the limitations of the research domain, and assess how network pictures could advance international business (IB) network research. The notion of network pictures builds on and encapsulates wide areas of literature with regard to sensemaking, cognition, and mental maps, with an aim to further understanding on the dynamics between individual network actors, their intentions and actions, and the structural and processual elements of their surrounding business networks. In particular, we focus on how network pictures could advance IB network research in terms of managerial sensemaking, multi-level research and temporal dimension. This consideration provides a basis from which to outline a systematic, general research framework for international alliance and network studies, linking together the (cultural, national, organizational, and network) context, network pictures and networking activities underpinning the international network development. We describe the possibilities for utilizing the broad network picture framework in various IB-related studies, that is, we discuss the potential use of network pictures in further international alliance and network research.

With or Without Super Platforms? Analyzing Online Publishers’ Strategies in the Game of Traffic

Given the dominance of online platforms in attracting consumers and advertisers, online publishers are squeezed between declining traffic and advertising revenues from their website content. In turn, super platforms, the dominant content dissemination platforms, such as Google and Facebook, are monetizing online content at the expense of publishers by selling ad impressions in advertising auctions. In this work, we analyze publishers’ possibilities of forming a coalition and show that, under a set of assumptions, the optimal strategy for publishers is cooperation against a super platform rather than posting content on the super platform. Not choosing to publish on a super platform can yield the whole coalition more traffic, enabling some individual publishers to recoup the lost traffic. We further show that if the coalition does not forbid diversification, most publishers choose both coalition and super platform.