Stavroula Spyropoulou

An analytical review of the factors stimulating smaller firms to export

Purpose – Although exporting can offer many benefits to smaller manufacturers, a large number of these firms refrain from export operations as a result of insufficient stimulation. This paper seeks to critically analyse and creatively synthesise the reasons that may stimulate a smaller firm to export, based on a review of 32 empirical studies conducted in various parts of the world during the period 1974‐2005.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 40 export stimuli were systematically identified from the extant empirical literature, which, for analytical purposes, were divided into internal and external, as well as proactive and reactive. Within each study, stimuli were ranked in terms of their importance, frequency, or intensity, and the aggregate impact of each stimulus in all studies under review was evaluated.Findings – The review revealed that export stimulation stems from a variety of factors, and may vary according to time, spatial, and industry contexts. Irrespective of contextual factors, there...

Integrating the smartphone into a sound environmental information systems strategy: Principles, practices and a research agenda

Smartphones are both green technologies and an integral parts of green information systems that are beginning to make serious contributions toward a sustainable environment. We trace the rise of the smartphone, with particular attention given to the iPhone and its many applications. The fundamental differences between smartphone-based and more common Internet applications, and how these might enhance sustainable strategies for organizations with a green agenda are highlighted. U-Commerce is suggested as a theoretical framework that best explains this, and the four dimension of U-Commerce are employed to illustrate how innovative organizations are using the unique characteristics of smartphones to pursue environmentally sound strategies. A process that might be followed for indentifying applications for sustainable issues, making sure that the applications take advantages of a smartphones unique features, and that contribute to sustainability by using fewer resources, protecting resources, and improving our use of current resources. The paper concludes by identifying a research agenda for information systems scholars to pursue studying the use of smartphones in search of a sustainable information technology agenda.

Drivers and Performance Outcomes of Innovativeness: An Empirical Study

The issue of innovativeness within organizations has attracted considerable attention in the literature. However, limited knowledge exists about the drivers of and their simultaneous effects on innovativeness and the role of innovativeness in enhancing performance. We adopt the resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm and insights from the literature on capabilities to investigate specific capability types serving as antecedents to innovativeness and to examine its performance outcomes. From a sample of 218 Greek manufacturers, the results indicate that managerial, entrepreneurial and technical capabilities facilitate the establishment of innovativeness, which in turn enhances business performance. The study lends support to prior research that highlights the importance of innovativeness in enhancing organizational performance and sharpens understanding of the drivers of innovativeness and the way they collectively operate through innovativeness to boost performance. The study further provides new insights into the role of innovativeness from the perspective of the RBV, while highlighting certain firm capabilities that might both enable and impede competitive advantage and superior performance creation. As such, this study contributes to the effective management of the innovativeness process within organizations.

Assessing the contribution of leading mainstream marketing journals to the international marketing discipline

Purpose – Growing globalization in recent decades has been responsible for the emergence of a new stream of research focusing on international marketing. However, compared to domestic marketing knowledge, this field has received relatively less attention from mainstream marketing journals. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study that assesses the contribution of leading mainstream marketing journals to the international marketing discipline.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 508 international marketing‐focused articles were identified from the top ten mainstream marketing journals during the period 1975‐2004. Each article was content‐analyzed in terms of six major aspects: article nature, authorship characteristics, research design, scope of research, research methodology, and thematic areas.Findings – The paper revealed that: although there was an increase in the number of articles with an international focus over time, in most journals their share was limited; most of the ar...

Matching Modes of Export Strategy Development to Different Environmental Conditions

Despite its increasing importance on current literature, prior research on export strategy development is limited to the examination of the effectiveness of only two strategy-making modes (formal planning and the entrepreneurial mode) in a non-comparative manner. In contrast, this study evaluates and compares the effects of four different strategy-making approaches on export performance and examines which of the four approaches performs better under different environmental conditions. Specifically, the study examines three characteristics of the environment: dynamism, hostility and diversity. Empirical research on a sample of British exporters confirmed that the choice of the strategy development mode is an important element in the determination of export performance and that environmental conditions moderate this relationship. Of the export strategy-making modes examined, the entrepreneurial and adaptive modes appear to be the most successful.

Sustainable Export Marketing Strategy Fit and Performance

Despite the growing global importance of sustainability issues, scant research has examined marketing strategy sustainability issues in international settings. Although significant prior work has examined drivers and performance consequences of adaptation/standardization of marketing strategies in international markets, researchers have yet to apply this avenue of inquiry to sustainable marketing strategies. Building on contingency theory and the concept of strategic fit, the authors develop a model of drivers of sustainable export marketing strategy adaptation and explore the circumstances under which such a strategy affects export performance. Using a sample of U.K. exporters, they find that various macro- and microenvironmental factors are responsible for sustainable export marketing strategy adaptation, which shapes the nature of sustainable export marketing strategy fit and its export venture performance outcomes. The results indicate that sustainable export marketing strategy adaptation is the outcome of the differences between home and export markets in terms of economic and technological conditions, competitive intensity, customer characteristics, and stakeholder pressures. Moreover, the performance relevance of sustainable export marketing strategy adaptation requires adequate fit with these macro- and microenvironmental factors.

An examination of branding advantage in export ventures

Purpose – Globalization has rendered international expanding activities increasingly important for the survival, growth and success of modern firms. Drawing on the resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm, the purpose of the present study is to investigate the antecedents and performance implications of branding advantage in export ventures.Design/methodology/approach – A mail survey was used to collect data from exporting manufacturers. Further, a series of qualitative interviews with export managers was conducted. The unit of analysis is the export venture. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to assess the measurement properties of the study constructs. Structural equation modelling using a full information estimation approach was performed to test the research model.Findings – The results of the study indicate that both export venture financial and experiential resources promote export venture communication capabilities, and financial and experiential resources and communication capabilities are con...

Price as a variable in online consumer trade-offs

Purpose – To determine the impact of price on consumer decision making in online environments.Design/methodology/approach – Uses a conjoint experiment to investigate the trade‐offs customers make when choosing and to establish their relative weights in online and offline situations.Findings – Finds that customers expect prices to be lower in an online environment than in a traditional sales channel.Research limitations/implications – Despite acknowledged limitations of experimental design and student samples, the findings have both theoretical and practical implications.Practical implications – Marketing planners can use the intelligence gained from conjoint studies such as this to improve the design and implementation of online retail experiences.Originality/value – Compares online and offline shopping environments with specific regard to the importance of price in each in the consumer decision‐making processes, a hitherto overlooked issue in marketing research.

How Well are Business Schools Managing their Brands? A Research Note

This research note reports on a study using a previously published checklist to assess the brand management practices of business schools. Indications are that the perceptions of a sample of senior administrators regarding how well their institutions manage their brands are not positive, and that there is much room for improvement. While the checklist used seems to possess the characteristic of reliability, further development needs to be done on aspects of its validity and underlying structure. Implications for managers and further avenues for research are identified and discussed.

An Integrated Framework of Newspaper Advertising: A Longitudinal Analysis

The article develops an integrated framework for analysing newspaper advertising, based on extant theoretical and practical knowledge on the subject. The framework is subsequently used to examine changes in 100 elements of newspaper advertisements over time. For this purpose, 2,250 illustrated advertisements were systematically extracted from national newspapers published in Cyprus during the period 1900-1974. Each advertisement was content-analysed by independent coders, based on a coding frame focusing on three major parts: copy (headlines, subheads, and body copy), art (illustrations, identification marks, and typography), and layout. The analysis revealed that: (a) certain advertising elements are systematically used more frequently than others, irrespective of time; (b) there are significant variations in the use of most of the advertising elements examined among different time periods; and (c) while the use of some of these elements increases systematically over time, others show a steady decrease.