Supermarkets in China : entry limitations and strategic dilemmas

Since their 1992 introduction supermarkets have already established a visible presence in Shanghai, with 700 stores and 21 supermarket chains. The role supermarkets play in food retail modernization, the problems encountered at the entry stage and the strategic dilemmas faced by the supermarket sector as it moves to the next development phase are discussed and evaluated. It is concluded that while entry was suprisingly fast and smooth the supermarket sector is still small and highly fragmented. The key for take-off is the appearance of large supermarket chains but supermarket companies face major obstacles in increasing volume and expanding their operations. Consequently progress in the second phase can be expected to be more difficult

Beyond the final consumer: The effectiveness of a generalist stakeholder strategy

Purpose: Managers often face a number of dilemmas with respect to their stakeholders: Who are the most salient ones? How many should they target? How to allocate attention/efforts among them? Based on stakeholders and market orientation research this paper aims to address these dilemmas. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on a survey of managers in a cross-industry sample of 115 firms. The authors first identify a specific group of salient stakeholders - those providing the firm with revenues and financial support. The article then studies the conditions under which firms should adopt a key approach to stakeholders' management - a "generalist" stakeholder strategy, that is, deal with a larger number of revenue and funding producing stakeholder types, and/or more evenly spread attention/efforts among them. Findings: The findings suggest that a generalist stakeholder strategy has a positive effect on firms' performance among resource-rich firms and among firms who face dissimilar ("unrelated") stakeholders. Also, degree of environmental volatility was not found to moderate the relationship between a generalist stakeholder strategy and firms' performance. Research limitations/implications: The study contributes to the marketing and stakeholder literatures by identifying and studying a group of important stakeholders beyond final consumers - those providing the firm with revenues and financial support, and by studying the conditions under which firms benefit from one key approach to stakeholders - a "generalist" stakeholder strategy. The study's limitations characterize most cross-sectional survey research (e.g. single informants, subjective performance assessments). However, substantial efforts were made to ensure the validity and robustness of the findings. Practical implications: The study offers managers insight into the organizational and environmental conditions under which firms should adopt a generalist stakeholder strategy. Originality/value: This is one of the few papers that integrate into the marketing literature the study of stakeholders. Specifically, it introduces the concept of a generalist stakeholder strategy

Stages in the development of market orientation publication activity: A longitudinal assessment

Purpose: Market orientation (MO) is at the center of the marketing discipline and has been the focus of one of the longest and richest research efforts in the field. This paper aims to study the development of the MO research area and changes in its nature, and the implications these have for MO research in particular as well as for the marketing discipline as a whole. Design/methodology/approach: The study is guided by sociology of science research and studies of the history of the marketing discipline. It is based on a review of all MO articles and references in the period 1957-2005. Findings: The findings reveal three periods in the development of MO research: 1950s-late 1970s, late 1970s-early 1990s, and early 1990s until today. In terms of diffusion over time, MO research has diffused from marketing mostly to management, from generalist to specialist journals, from higher to lower quality journals, and from the USA only to Europe. Over time more scholars have become involved in MO research and the number of co-authored MO articles has increased. The paper also finds that the MO research knowledge base and impact continue to be limited to marketing and management. Research limitations/implications: While the study involves a large effort to collect longitudinal data on MO publication activity, its main limitation is its descriptive nature. Originality/value: Unlike previous research in marketing that has typically studied articles, authors and reference data to gain insight into the intellectual developments of specific marketing journals, here the authors use these sources for studying the structure and evolution of a specific and important research area such as MO. Also, the study is based on rich and longitudinal data, enabling a variety of longitudinal analyses. The link between the MO area and the marketing discipline is of value, showing how the development of MO mirrors key developments in the marketing discipline at large and is influenced by many of the same forces that shape the discipline

Characterizing the technology firm: An exploratory study

Technology firms occupy a central position in modern economies. They drive economic growth, productivity gains and have created new industries and innovative products. Many will agree that technology firms are distinguished from others in their emphasis on technological activities. Since this observation is too general, researchers suggested a variety of specific criteria and definitions. A number of definitions of technology firms appear in the literature but many are arbitrary and simplistic and none gained wide acceptance. Similarly, the number of characteristics suggested is large, reflecting a variety of perspectives and interests. In this case too no agreement exists as to which are the important ones. Also, many seem to be interrelated capturing different aspects of the same underlying concepts. This paper is concerned with the issue of definition and classification of technology firms. We demonstrate the usefulness of a different approach to the definition and classification problem. We rely on executives' evaluations of their firms' technology profile and level. An analysis of these evaluations reveals the underlying dimensions the executives used in making their judgments. We regard the dimensions we uncover as capturing the essence of technology firms and use them to classify the firms we study. The specific characteristics the executives used to evaluate their firms were derived from a systematic scan of the literature. Thus, the list represents the set of characteristics early researchers viewed as describing and defining technology firms. The connection to early work enhances our findings' validity and lends some credence to our belief that the three dimensions we uncover (R&D activities which are closely associated with a set of organizational elements and market conditions, product strategy, and corporate culture) can be used by others to define technology firms and classify firms according to their technology level. In our study we use these three dimensions to classify the firms studied. We show that the commonly used practice of classifying firms as high and low technology according to the industry to which they belong is flawed. Our goal in this study is not to offer a "new" or "better" definition and characterization of technology firms or to offer the "best" approach to the generation of the classification criteria. Rather, we demonstrate here the usefulness of a different approach to the problem. While our approach does suffer from limitations it has important advantages. We hope future studies will confirm not only the usefulness of our approach but also the general applicability of the specific criteria we identify in this study

Innovation and performance outcomes of market information collection efforts: The role of top management team involvement

Research on organizational market information processing in marketing has not yet examined a key issue associated with information collection: the role of top management team (TMT) involvement. Research in marketing has typically studied market information collection efforts from the perspective of employees and market research companies, overlooking the role that the TMT plays in these efforts. While prior research on top managers suggests that they are often not active participants in the collection of market information, this study examines whether and under what conditions TMT involvement in market information collection efforts can contribute to a firm's innovativeness and performance. The key contribution of the study involves the development and testing of a model that shows (1) the positive effect of TMT involvement in market information collection efforts on firm innovativeness above and beyond employees' market information collection efforts; (2) the moderating effect of firm size and industry context (i.e., high-technology versus low-technology) on model relationships, indicating that the relationship is stronger for smaller firms and high-technology companies; and (3) the mediating effect of firm innovativeness on the relationship between TMT involvement in market information collection efforts and overall business performance. We test our model in a business-to-business context