The authors address the role of marketing in hypermedia computer-mediated environments (CMEs). Their approach considers hypermedia CMEs to be large-scale (i.e., national or global) networked enviro...

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Marketing in Hypermedia Computer-Mediated Environments: Conceptual Foundations

The importance of developing and maintaining enduring relationships with customers of service businesses is generally accepted in the marketing literature. A key challenge for researchers is to identify and understand how managerially controlled antecedent variables influence important relationship marketing outcomes (e.g., customer loyalty and word-of-mouth communication). Relational benefits, which have a focus on the benefits consumers receive apart from the core service, and relationship quality, which focuses on the overall nature of the relationship, represent two approaches to understanding customer loyalty and word of mouth. This article integrates these two concepts by positioning customer satisfaction and commitment as relationship quality dimensions that partially mediate the relationship between three relational benefits (confidence benefits, social benefits, and special treatment benefits) and the two outcome variables. The results provide support for the model and indicate that the concepts ...

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Understanding Relationship Marketing Outcomes An Integration of Relational Benefits and Relationship Quality

The appropriate resources are necessary but insufficient to achieve a competitive advantage. Resources must also be managed effectively. Herein, we develop a resource management process model composed of three components that can lead to a competitive advantage. These components include the resource inventory (evaluating, adding, and shedding), resource bundling, and resource leveraging. We examine resource management in family firms and thus explore the unique characteristics of five resources and attributes of family firms that provide potential advantages over nonfamily firms. The resources are human capital, social capital, patient capital, survivability capital, along with the governance structure attribute.

Managing Resources: Linking Unique Resources, Management and Wealth Creation in Family Firms

The Resource-Based View (RBV) of competitive advantage provides a theoretical framework from the field of strategic management for assessing the competitive advantages of family firms. The RBV isolates idiosyncratic resources that are complex, intangible, and dynamic within a particular firm. The bundle of resources that are distinctive to a firm as a result of family involvement are identified as the “familiness” of the firm. This approach provides a research and practice method for assessing the specific behavioral and social phenomena within a firm that provide an advantage. Using a familiness model for assessing competitive advantage overcomes many of the problems associated with the generic claim that family companies have an advantage over nonfamily companies. It also provides a unified systems perspective of family firm performance.

A Resource-Based Framework for Assessing the Strategic Advantages of Family Firms

Managing Resources: Linking Unique Resources, Management, and Wealth Creation in Family Firms

The fact that customers participate in the specification and delivery of the services they seek represents an important potential point of potential leverage for services providers as the nature and intensity of customer participation is within their ability to manage. Important questions, however, need to be raised and resolved. Does increased customer participation result in higher perceptions of quality and satisfaction or in greater repurchase? Are relationships between participation and repurchase affected by the type of service being provided or the length of the prior relationship? This paper traces the antecedents of participation in the services marking literature, outlines point of distinction between participation and the related construct of involvement, and employs empirical evidence drawn from two professional service settings to address the research questions. Results confirm that participation is strongly associated with repurchase and referrals in some service settings, and a research agenda is proposed.

Customer Participation In Service Specification And Delivery

Owners of businesses represent an interesting case in the study of the intersection of personal and corporate philanthropic values. Because individuals who own businesses have the means and the ability to act on philanthropic motivations through the medium of their businesses, it is interesting to explore the extent to which their corporate contributions to nonprofits are philanthropic in nature or instrumentally motivated, as in the instance of cause related marketing. The trade-offs between cause related marketing and corporate support of nonprofits are complex. Although larger firms are increasing their investments in cause related marketing, the extent of and motivations for adoption of cause related marketing among privately held businesses is less well understood. This study of 478 businesses which are supporters of arts organizations shows that privately held businesses of medium size (300 to 500 employees) are participating in cause related marketing to a significant degree. The adoption rate of cause related marketing is about 40%, and the primary benefits sought are company image enhancement and product marketing support. Adoption of cause related marketing among privately held and smaller enterprises will grow as CEOs exhibit satisfaction with the results of their program, intend to engage in positive word of mouth about it, and plan to allocate more resources to it.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/25073987

Cause Related Marketing and Corporate Philanthropy in the Privately Held Enterprise

Considers which interactive marketing behaviours will result in the broadest word‐of‐mouth or the largest volume of new client referrals. Suggests that the intensity and variety of client participation during the service delivery process is predictive of positive word‐of‐mouth and referrals. Reports on a study examining participation during service delivery which highlighted four key factors – tangibility, attendance, empathy and meaningful interaction. Maintains that these results support interactive marketing management in the field of complex services and can help the creation of a specific service delivery system.

Interactive Marketing: The Influence of Participation on Positive Word‐of‐Mouth and Referrals

(1994). Word-of-Mouth Effects in Professional Services Buyer Behaviour. The Service Industries Journal: Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 301-314.

Word-of-Mouth Effects in Professional Services Buyer Behaviour

Although many streams of management research address leadership, succession, and executive development issues, significant gaps in the literature remain. In particular, few studies have systematically explored the systems by which the future leaders (successors) of family firms are developed. This research presents a descriptive study in which the successor development approaches of small to medium-sized family and nonfamily firms are compared. The findings indicate that (1) family firms favor more personal, relationship-centered approaches to successor development; (2) nonfamily firms prefer formalized, task-oriented development approaches; and (3) company size has no real effect on successor development.

Russ Alan Prince

Papers

Customer Participation In Service Specification And Delivery

Cause Related Marketing and Corporate Philanthropy in the Privately Held Enterprise

Interactive Marketing: The Influence of Participation on Positive Word‐of‐Mouth and Referrals

Word-of-Mouth Effects in Professional Services Buyer Behaviour

A Comparison of Successor Development in Family and Nonfamily Businesses