Customer Interaction and Innovation in Hybrid Offerings:Investigating Moderation and Mediation Effects for Goods and Services Innovation

Hybrid offerings are bundles of goods and services offerings provided by the same firm. Bundling value offerings affects how firms innovate, interact with customers, and customize their goods and services. However, it remains unclear how customer interaction might drive the innovation performance of various bundled components. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of customer interactions and service customization on both goods and services innovations in a hybrid offering context, using a unique data set of 146 information technology and manufacturing firms. Customer interaction appears beneficial to both goods and services innovation in a hybrid offerings context, but service customization has different direct effects on goods versus services innovation. As a potential mediator, customer knowledge mobilization resources exert different effects on the goods and services elements of hybrid offerings. Furthermore, for high-interaction customers, medium levels of technical modularity lead to most favorable innovation outcomes for services innovation. The results thus suggest that providers of hybrid offerings should foster customer interactions, to drive the innovation performance of the good and service components, while still making sure to implement service customization strategies. These findings have notable implications for service innovation research

Conservation Biological Control of Arthropods using Artificial Food Sprays: Current Status and Future Challenges

The use of artificial food sprays to increase the abundance and impact of natural enemies of arthropod pests has been recognized for over 40 years. Nevertheless, artificial food sprays are applied in relatively few conservation biological control programs, possibly because of inconsistent performance. To consider this explanation, using a hierarchical classification approach ranging from altered foraging behavior at the simplest level to profitability of farm production at the highest level, we quantitatively reviewed 234 trials from 77 publications. The levels of assessment of food sprays most commonly found in the publications were the densities of arthropod pests (59 trials) and their natural enemies (124). Although the density of natural enemies increased in 108 of the 124 trials (or 87% of cases) and pest populations declined in 28 of the 59 trials (or 47%), increased profit was not demonstrated in the five trials where it was examined. The most commonly studied natural enemies belonged to the order Neuroptera (104 trials). Nevertheless, the parasitic Hymenoptera had the highest proportion of positive successes (56 of the 69 trials or 81%). Contrary to predictions, the likelihood of a successful result was not affected by the duration of food spray provision, management intensity, application frequency, or replenishment interval. However, success was more likely as spray concentration increased. When analyzed separately, the Coleoptera showed the greatest response to carbohydrates alone, such as honey and sucrose, compared with a mixture of carbohydrates and proteins. To achieve greater success with artificial food sprays, and therefore overcome a major impediment to their adoption, we contend that researchers should: (i) demonstrate greater success across several levels in the hierarchy, especially profit; (ii) consistently demonstrate success in field trials replicated across regions and years; and (iii) combine artificial food sprays with other compatible elements of an integrated pest management strategy. Until these outcomes are demonstrated, it is envisaged that artificial food sprays will form only a small part of future conservation biological control programs