CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS AND BRAND EQUITY IN CHINA'S BANKING SERVICES

Despite tremendous interest in brand equity and relationship marketing, little conceptual development has addressed whether relationships exist between these important marketing issues. Based on existing frameworks (customer-based brand equity and relationship marketing), this paper forwards customer relationships as a branding-related initiative critical to creation of brand equity. This paper presents exploratory research to develop an initial understanding of the constructs of customer relationships, the dimensions of brand equity and the associations between them. The data illustrate that both consumers and providers in Chinese banking services sector perceive that brand equity can be influenced by customer relationships. A conceptual framework and a number of hypotheses for further study are propose

Building the Born Globals: Evidence from Bulgarian Manufacturing Family Firms

The purpose of the paper is to explore the internationalisation of family firms in the manufacturing sector of the Bulgarian economy, answering the questions: why and how these firms internationalise. A qualitative approach was adopted for the study and data were collected via face-to-face interviews with the owner-managers of family firms. The derived information was coded so that the case firms would be analysed using the same approaches. Research findings show that the early internationalisation of the case firms makes them fall into the category of born globals. The main reasons for the early internationalisation of the studied firms were found to be rooted mostly in the protective behaviour of their owners-managers, their personal characteristics and contacts, the specificity of the transitional context and the market limitations among others. This study is pioneering in transition contexts and is expected to be useful for academics, practicians and policy decision-makers

Knowledge-based network ties in early rapidly internationalising small firms: a missing link?

This paper sets out to establish the sources of the relationships underpinning Early Rapidly Internationalising Small Firm (ERISF) cross border activities, the main characteristics and specific functions of these relationships, and their process of development. Using interview data from ten South African firms, the findings show that the founder's pre-firm knowledge pools are important in establishing the source of the initial hierarchical knowledge-based interpersonal ties. ERISF internationalisation is enabled by an initial prior interpersonal network tie set, which is composed of predominantly strong knowledge-based contacts. The ERISF acts as the source that provides the technical information and knowledge, which is then adopted by their network partners. This means that the ERISF's product and technological capabilities drive the international knowledge creation process. The findings provide a holistic characterisation of the concept of knowledge in ERISF internationalisation. Within their interorganisational relationships, ERISFs are involved in knowledge creation, knowledge transfer and knowledge adoption activities. Network ties developed in existing knowledge pools are extended to new knowledge pools enabling the leveraging of limited resources