Sustainable international business model innovations for a globalizing circular economy : a review and synthesis, integrative framework, and opportunities for future research

The global imperative has increased in recent years for international firms to respond to major threats such as unintended environmental, social, and economic problems arising from ecological destruction, population growth, and economic activity. To respond to this confluence that has created an emerging existential crisis, we identify that a globalizing circular economy (CE) is required and subsequently define a new construct: sustainable international business model innovations. In doing so, we introduce circular inputs, sharing platforms, product as a service, product use extension, and resource recovery as business models that contain the potential to reply to these grand challenges. Based on CE principles, the innovations and designs introduced are contrasted with the traditional linear economic model and are presented as actionable standardization/adaptation alternatives for companies responding to differing informal and formal international institutions. Based on the theoretical underpinnings of the resource-based, dynamic capabilities, and international business model innovation perspectives, we introduce an integrative framework that is accompanied by a series of detailed research questions to provide future research opportunities for the domain. This conceptual approach holds that international resource design influences marketing capabilities adaptation which, in turn, impacts international performance and offers a foundation from which to build the literature.© The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

A Theory o f Market- Based Sustainability : Integrating Economics-Based Supply a nd Demand Theory with Doing Good, Warm Glow, and Price Fairness

A variety of entities are increasingly concerned with sustainability (e.g., customers, firms), and these entities will often increase their sustainability actions if there is a performance and/or quality-of-life incentive to do so. But such a simplistic portrayal of sustainability leaves out the boundaries of what firms would opt to do given certain market conditions and what customers (and other stakeholders) would be willing to sacrifice, if anything, to be sustainable. In response, we develop a theory of market-based sustainability and delineate its core tenets. The theory facilitates a deeper analysis of sustainability actions for firms and customers (but also other primary and secondary stakeholders) – via a focus on sustainability levels and changes – involving direct (doing good), indirect (warm glow), and synergy-related sustainability impacts as well as price fairness. Without such integrative theorizing, firms will likely allocate cost estimates (and price points) that are too high for the undertaken sustainability actions or impact estimates that are too low, or both, instead of achieving a maximum point of sustainability yield

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI): A sample dataset and description

This article provides a sample of survey data collected by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Using online sampling and stratified interviewing techniques of actual customers of predominantly large market-share (“large cap”) companies, the ACSI annually collects data from some 400,000 consumers residing across the United States for more than 400 companies within about 50 consumer industries.For this article and the data depository, consumers’ perceptions of their experiences with individual companies included within four consumer industries as defined and measured by ACSI – processed food, commercial airlines, Internet service providers, and commercial banks – are included in the dataset. These industries were chosen to represent and illustrate a cross-section of data from differentiated sectors, not because they are representative of the larger economy or larger ACSI dataset per se. The survey items reflect a diverse array of customers’ perceptions regarding prior expectations, perceived quality, perceived value, customer satisfaction, complaint behavior, and customer loyalty. These are also the core latent factors modeled in the so-called ACSI model since 1994.The ACSI model is continuously analyzed using a proprietary and patented Partial Least Squares structural equation modeling approach (PLS-SEM). Detailed firm- or brand-level results from the ACSI data are used by individual companies for strategic organizational decision-making and in the aggregate to forecast trends in the U.S. national economy. ACSI data have been analyzed in thousands of peer-reviewed academic and practitioner journal articles

Modeling Heterogeneity in the Satisfaction, Loyalty Intention, and Shareholder Value Linkage: A Cross-Industry Analysis at the Customer and Firm Levels

© 2016, American Marketing Association. This study examines the relationship between customer satisfaction, loyalty intention, and shareholder value at the firm and individual customer levels. The authors also explore industry differences by using a multilevel and random-effects approach in which individual customer scores are nested within firm-level data and the estimated Interrelationships are treated as random coefficients that are explained by industry characteristics. They compile a unique and detailed data set, which covers 10 years of information on 137 firms and includes a matched sample of 189,069 customers from multiple sources, such as the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the Center for Research in Security Prices, and Compustat, to yield three important insights. First, aggregate firm-level effects may overestimate the impact that satisfaction has at the individual customer level. Second, a consideration of loyalty Intention or repurchase intention as the mediator can improve our understanding of the satisfaction-shareholder value relationship and the fact that this relationship can vary across firms. Finally, the Influence of satisfaction and loyalty intentions on shareholder value varies by industry. The authors discuss implications of findings for researchers, managers, and investors.status: publishe

—The Economic and Statistical Significance of Stock Returns on Customer Satisfaction

According to Jacobson and Mizik [Jacobson, R., N. Mizik. 2009. The financial markets and customer satisfaction: Reexamining possible financial market mispricing of customer satisfaction. (5) 810–819], excess stock portfolio returns for firms with strong customer satisfaction are small and statistically insignificant, and if there is any above-market performance at all, it is due to a small set of firms in the computer and Internet industries. But their data seem to suggest the opposite. The returns are actually both exceptionally large and significant. Using monthly data, their portfolio consisting of strong American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) firms outperformed the market by 0.0053, corresponding to 6.4% cumulative risk-adjusted above-market returns on an annual basis over a 10-year period—a performance that would beat at least 99% of all large-cap U.S. stock funds tracked by Morningstar. Using a different treatment of risk, their annualized risk-adjusted return is a whopping 8.4% better than market. After eliminating computer, Internet, and utility companies, they find that the monthly risk-adjusted abnormal returns drop to 0.0045, which corresponds to an annual above-market return of 5.4%. This too is better than 99% of all actively managed stock funds in the population. Yet Jacobson and Mizik conclude that these returns are not statistically significant and that there is no evidence that stock returns from firms with strong customer satisfaction outperform the market over the long run. The failure to reject the null hypothesis is probably due to a lack of statistical power in Jacobson and Mizik's analysis. We discuss why this is likely the case and then present new data updating the results from our original article [Fornell, C., S. Mithas, F. Morgeson III, M. S. Krishnan. 2006. Customer satisfaction and stock prices: High returns, low risk. (1) 3–14]. The above-market returns persist and are both economically and statistically significant.customer satisfaction, stock prices, stock returns, risk, market value, stock portfolios

Turning Complaining Customers into Loyal Customers: Moderators of the Complaint Handling–Customer Loyalty Relationship

Firms spend substantial resources responding to customer complaints, and the marketing profession has a long history of supporting that enterprise to promote customer loyalty. The authors question whether this response is always warranted or whether its effectiveness instead depends on economic, industry, customer–firm, product/service, and customer segment factors that may alter the firm’s incentives to compete on complaint management. To consider this question, they integrate economic and marketing theories and investigate factors that influence the complaint recovery–customer loyalty relationship via a sample of 35,597 complaining customers spanning a ten-year period across economic sectors, industries, and firms. Overall, the authors find that the recovery–loyalty relationship is stronger in faster-growing economies, for industries with more competition, for luxury products, and for customers with higher satisfaction and higher expectations of customization. Conversely, the recovery–loyalty relationship is weaker when customers’ expectations of product/service reliability are higher, for manufactured goods, and for men compared with women. The authors discuss implications of these results for managers, policy makers, and researchers for more effective management of customer complaints