본 연구는 헤어미용실 종사자의 개인특성에 따른 서비스지향성의 차이를 규명하고, 서비스지 향성에 영향을 미치는 헤어미용실의 내부마케팅 요인을 규명하는 것이 목적이다. 하고자 하였다. 연구방 법으로서 실증적 연구를 위한 설문지는 경남의 헤어미용실 종사자로부터 수집하였고, 수집된 설문지를 IBM SPSS Statistics 26을 통하여 분석한 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 헤어미용실 종사자의 개인특성에 따른 서비스지향성의 차이를 분석한 결과, ‘40대 이상’ 집단과 ‘근무기간 10년 이상’ 집단이 다른 집단 에 비해 서비스지향성이 통계적으로 높게 나타났다. 둘째, 내부마케팅과 서비스지향성의 인과관계를 분 석한 결과, 내부마케팅 중에서 복지후생, 보상시스템, 교육훈련 등이 각각 서비스지향성에 통계적으로 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났고, 특히 보상시스템이 서비스지향성에 가장 강한 영향을 미치는 것으로 나 타났다. 따라서 헤어미용실 종사자의 개인특성을 고려한 내부마케팅 활동을 통하여 고객에 대한 서비스 지향성을 향상시켜야 한다. 서비스지향성의 향상은 고객의 재이용의도를 의미함으로 궁극적으로는 헤어 미용업체의 경영성과가 더욱 향상될 수 있음을 시사한다.

The following is not a conversation with a bank clerk. " Instead, let me introduce you to customized credit loans," "Do you want me to connect you to the screen of using COVID-19 support funds and checking balance?" These are the contents of consultations with AI chatbots at financial institutions. Chatbot, which used to be an additional tool for adding convenience to life, is now at the center of our lives.

While market orientation is long evident to be a key contributor to firm performance (Narver & Slater, 1990; Jaworski & Kohli, 1993), firms now increasingly find that proactive market orientation (Narver, Slater & Maclachlan, 2004) may be more appropriate for the rapidly changing market. Not only can it contribute to new product development success, it is proposed that it can enhance the ability to market which is labeled marketing exploration (Kyriakopoulos & Moorman, 2004). In this study, we posited proactive market orientation together with the original market orientation named here responsive market orientation as essential to developing a firm’s marketing exploration capability. As marketing competences reside in the everyday routines and practice related to the marketing function, marketing exploration enables one to update the ability to perform various marketing tasks which is essential capability of the firm to get ahead of the competition. Entrepreneurial orientation is also introduced as a mediating factor between the above relationships with the argument that such posture is related to a firm’s propensity to innovate, take risk and be proactive (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996) which is related to a proactive market orientation. A survey was carried out in China and results show that proactive market orientation is positively related to marketing exploration while responsive market orientation has positive impact on marketing exploration only through entrepreneurial orientation. Marketing exploration in turn positively impact firm performance. Results of this study contribute theoretically in revitalizing the market orientation literature which has been research for almost three decades. While leading customers with a proactive market orientation is getting more salient in this rapidly changing market environment, the original market orientation cannot be ignored. Both orientations are essential to enhance firms’ ability to renew their marketing skills and routines. This is definitely more important than just coming up with new products/services as it enables firms to update its marketing knowledge and skills so is crucial to long term performance.

The advanced information technology leads to network age, making existing competitive advantages such as differentiation and cost leadership powerless in B2B context. The competitiveness of individual firm plays a significant role in enhancing the competitive advantage of a business network that a firm belongs to. The competitiveness of a business network depends on value co-creation, the interaction among firms in a network. Value co-creation has desirable and risky aspects. The increases in profits, brand reputation, and time and cost efficiency, client and supplier learning, etc. are positive aspects. But role conflicts, role ambiguity, and tension, etc. are negative outcomes. How can the industrial firm succeed in value co-creation with its partners in B2B context? The study focuses on the firm’s strategic marketing orientations as an antecedent of value co-creation. Strategic marketing orientations as the values and beliefs of the firm affect the collaboration with other firms during value co-creation. Previous literature assumes that a firm pursues one single strategic orientation. However, the study assumes that an industrial firm has entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation, long-term orientation, and relationship orientation. The study mostly focused on the relationships among those strategic marketing orientations. Based on these inter-relationships, the study proposed a set of value co-creation activity criteria such as information seeking, information sharing, personal interaction, responsible behavior, feedback, helping, advocacy, tolerance. Value co-creation has been evaluated by relationship performance such as trust and commitment. The study examined the relationships between strategic marketing orientations and value co-creation. Data was collected from 159 Korean manufacturers in B2B context and analyzed through structural equation modeling. The study provides evidence that entrepreneurial orientation affects market orientation positively and market orientation has positive effects on long-term orientation and relationship orientation, and long-term orientation and relationship orientation influence value co-creation directly. Value co-creation has a positive effect on relationship performance. The results of the study provide valuable implications to the mangers of industrial firms in B2B context. To succeed the value co-creation, the firm first has to look at the difference between strategic marketing orientations that the value co-creation partners pursue. In terms of selecting value co-creation partner, industrial firm with long-term orientation and relationship orientation will be more effective. Six activities of interactions during value co-creation play an important role in enhancing trust and commitment. The study contributes to the value co-creation literature by identifying strategic marketing orientations as independent variable influencing the value co-creation in B2B context. The study has several limitations that call for future research.

This study intended to exploratively depict both the influence of Environmental Turbulence, Market Orientation, and Learning Orientation of IT companies on Marketing Capability which is one of the organizational performance, and the moderating effects of Learning Orientation and Environmental Turbulence of IT companies on the relationship between Market Orientation and Marketing Capability as well as the relationship between Learning Orientation and Marketing Capability based on respective interactions among related variables. Through this study, several factors contributing to the enhancement of organizational performance such as competitor orientation, shared vision, and open-mindedness were highlighted as major ones, with the fact that competitive intensity, market and technological turbulence of environmental turbulence dimension make effects on organizational performance through interaction effect.

소비자들은 구두를 단순히 발을 보호하고 편안하게 해주는 역할 뿐만 아니라 장식과 자아 이미지를 표현해주는 패션제품으로써 인지하는 경향이 있다. 온라인 시장 분석에서 구두가 소비자들의 일상생활에서 중요한 제품이라고는 하였지만 인터넷 구두 시장을 조사한 연구는 드물다. 본 연구는 인터넷 구두시장에서 구두 e-충동구매과정에 대한 쇼핑성향, 마케팅 자극, 소비자들이 인지하는 위험지각의 영향에 초점을 맞추어 조사하였다. 최근 6개월 동안 구두 e-충동구매를 경험한 적이 있는 대학생들 총 408명을 대상으로 자기기술형식의 자료를 수집하였다. 결과에 의하면, 쾌락적 쇼핑성향이나 브랜드 쇼핑성향이 높은 소비자들은 인터넷에서 제공하는 마케팅 자극(판매촉진 자극이나 제품자 극)을 더 많이 인지하였고, 반면 경제적 쇼핑성향의 소비자들은 마케팅 자극을 더 낮게 인지하였으나 기능적인 위험은 더 높게 지각하는 것으로 나타났다. 구두의 경우, 마케팅 자극이 강할수록 e-충동구매는 증가하였으나 소비자들이 지각하는 위험은 e-충동구매에 아무런 영향을 미치지 않았다. 이러한 연구결과는 소비자의 쇼핑성향에 영향을 받는 마케팅 자극이 구두 e-충동구매를 유발하는데 중요한 요인임을 제안한다.

The need for a co-alignment between internal and external marketing has largely been discussed in the literature. In an attempt to increase the conceptual and empirical body of knowledge, the present study follows a systematic presentation of balanced market orientation. After a brief literature review, it tackles research gaps building on theoretical hypotheses. An empirical examination based on 217 questionnaires, addressed to hotel managers, illuminates the role of culture in this context. Results unveil a significant positive relationship between internal marketing, market orientation and firm performance, irrespective of the underlying culture. Opting for a balanced market orientation, hotel managers gain particular insight into its principal axes and their interrelationships in practice.

The catching-up process of the emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) towards the average income level in Western Europe has driven the marketing strategies of Western multinational companies (MNC) so far. Particularly, the boom years from 2002 to 2008 with an average GDP growth for the region of more than 6% (Becker et al., 2010) fuelled the notion that soon a large European market with similar demand and market structures will exist that will allow Western MNCs to sell their international brands in a highly standardized way in the whole region. The Great Recession of 2008-09 stopped this convergence process and highlighted the still existing differences in consumer behavior (Schuh, 2012). The recessionary developments in the aftermath of the crisis have shown that this is more of a structural problem than a temporary one (Labaye et al., 2013). The Western firms now have to acknowledge that many product markets are not “structural twins” of Western markets with a strong upper- and mid-price segment but that CEE markets are rather shaped like bottom heavy pyramids. By just transferring brand strategies developed for high-income economies to emerging markets they ignore large segments of the mass market. To tap these market segments MNCs have to think how they can make their products affordable to these lower-income consumers, i.e. bring-ing the purchase of a product within the financial means of a consumer or household. The neglect of low-income segments may be either a deliberate decision based on the well-proven inherent business logic of Western branded good marketers (“stick to our success-ful way of doing business”) or a blind spot in the strategic approach to emerging markets (Sheth, 2011). The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, a case is made for the relevance of affordability concepts to CEE markets; second, three case studies of affordability initiatives of leading fast-moving consumer goods companies are analyzed in order to get a better understanding of how these firms approach the affordability issue and what are the success factors of such strategies in CEE. Most of the existing emerging market literature is dealing with very low income consum-ers in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa earning less than US- 2,500 p.a. (Prahalad, 2005; London & Hart, 2011; Khanna & Palepu, 2010). While the coverage of the “bottom of the pyramid” is regarded as an extreme stretch for most Western firms, more attention is paid to the growing middle class in the emerging markets (Court & Narashimhan, 2010). The steady growth of the middle-class in the emerging economies is promising rising sales for the future and at the same time supporting the notion that West-ern MNCs can continue with their business model and just have to “wait for the market”. The rapidly growing middle class consumers in emerging markets include almost 2 billion people with a total spending of US- 6.9 trillion annually which will expand to US-20 trillion within the next decade (Court & Narasimhan, 2010). Surprisingly, lead-ing Western MNCs approach the affordability issues in the context of CEE rather defen-sively and reluctantly (Schuh, 2012). This may be resulting from the belief that the eco-nomic catching-up process will bring CEE consumers to a similar standard of living as in the “old” EU and any investment in products for the lower-segments would be only of temporary value. Therefore, CEE countries are not seen as the typical candidates for affordability strategies. This may be partly true for the most advanced Central European countries and Russia with rapidly rising household incomes in the last decade. But the economic downturn and the following recessionary development has shattered the consumption model that was based to a high degree on credit financing in those markets too. Moreover, studies show that there exists a high share of low-income households and price-sensitive consumers in CEE. According to the “Life in Transition” survey the mid-dle-class ranges from 4% in Albania to 27% in Slovenia – in between you can find Poland with 16% and Russia with 18% (EBRD, 2007). Pfeifer, Massen and Bombka (2007) estimate that 56% of the consumers or 57 million people, in Eastern Europe are low-income consumers (< 10,000 in PPP per year). In addition, in Russia and Ukraine 70% of the populations are falling in this category. A study of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants (2008) on “Consumer Archetypes in CEE” identified seven basic consumer types in CEE. Three out of them – the “self-centered consumers” (18% of population), “minimalists” (14%) and “rationalists” (12%) – can be classified as highly price-sensitive. Together, these three highly price-conscious consumer types make up 44% of the CEE market. What is more, other identified consumer types with less distinct price sensitivity could be taken into account as well. In total, these consumer types whose purchasing behavior is influenced predominantly by affordability amount to 56% of all CEE consumers. Summing up, the studies provide divergent figures of the size of the middle class and low-income segment in CEE. Different methodological approaches, classifications, and data bases are the reasons for these variations (Kharas, 2010). However, the findings show that the market below the middle class in CEE is a large one, accounting for more than 60% of the population of a country. The strategies that are used to address low-in-come consumers are described by the so-called “4 A’s”: affordability, acceptability, availability and awareness (Anderson & Markides, 2007). Affordability as a strategy con-cept can be defined as all measures of a company that aim at bringing the purchase of a product within the financial means of a consumer or household (or business). In the literature you can find different approaches towards this goal. Firms typically start with marginal changes in their marketing strategy (e.g., different packages, single portions). However, to tap the lower-end of these price-sensitive mass-markets and to reach non-consumers of your products changes have to go beyond rebranding and adapted market-ing elements. New business models with deeper and more comprehensive changes in product development and architecture of the supply-chain are needed to be successful in this segment (Johnson, Christensen & Kagermann, 2008). The purpose of the empirical part of this study is to get a better understanding of motives, goals and success factors of affordability initiatives addressing the countries of CEE. A case study approach is the best way to learn about underlying assumptions and considera-tions of managers involved in the decision-making process (Yin, 2009). The cases consist of two parts: a) a general company profile describing businesses, geographic presence and goals; b) the role of affordability for tapping emerging markets and the description of affordability initiatives in CEE countries. Globally active consumer goods companies in the food sector from USA and Western Europe were chosen as target firms: They ex-panded strongly into emerging markets and CEE in the last years, play a pioneer role in tapping low-income markets and exemplify the sought-after strategic constellation for this research, i.e. an MNC expanding from a traditional “premium-position” into lower-price segments. In addition, food companies serving broad segments of the population are faced with social responsibility issues, namely if they legitimately can deny people access to their products. So far three cases of Western companies with an extensive presence in emerging markets are available (see overview in Table 1). The results show that affordability is part of the marketing strategies in CEE of all these selected companies. A considerable share of the product portfolio and overall sales vol-ume in their CEE country organizations stem from affordable products. Higher growth rates of this segment than the overall market prove that there is a demand for this type of products. And it seems that these companies don’t see an insurmountable conflict in pursuing the two-pronged approach as indicated in the literature. All affordability strate-gies are run under a business perspective. They have to contribute to the growth and profitability goals, although social motives are mentioned as strong arguments too. The case of company A nicely shows how the affordability initiative started as a CSR project and then evolved into a business project. During this process they learned that they can make a “sustainable business case” out of it. This step was a break with so far existing concepts in the company, as it involved product development targeted to the demand and financial conditions of low-income households. Country organizations decide individu-ally if and to what degree they use affordability initiatives. In our cases Russian, Polish and Romanian subsidiaries were interested in the introduction of affordable products and looking for support within the group. The establishment of competence centers for affordability initiatives at global headquarters is a clear indication that a central hub is needed which provides basic strategy guidelines, offers assistance in the introduction of such initiatives and spreads best practices in the group. However, differences can be found in the market and branding strategy. While company A is using local brands in combination with the company brand, company C is using a strict two-tier strategy. Inter-national brands are sold parallel to local/regional ones which are used for the entry into the lower-income segment. Company B is covering all price points within a category with the international brand. So the brand stretches from the super-premium, premium and mainstream to the affordability segment. 4,000 “good value for money products” are sold worldwide today, in CEE the affordable category accounts for 25% of total turnover and grows twice as fast as the whole zone Europe. The differences can be explained via the basic approach towards branding: are they following a House of Brands or a Branded House architecture. As far as success factors are concerned all three cases show that the successful introduction of an affordable product range is based on (a) a commitment of the organization to the development of affordable products; (b) deep understanding of consumer behavior, buying patterns, and market situation; (c) utilization of synergies with higher priced brands; (d) focus on volume and scale via covering a large consumer base and (e) radical cost cutting along the whole value chain. In our ongoing research we try to increase the number of companies which run affordability initiatives to be able to cover a greater variety of industry and company types. Our research shows that multi-tier and affordability strategies can be found in other consumer and industrial markets in CEE too. This research shall help to clarify for which type of company it makes sense to ex-pand to lower-income segments. While so far the internal perspective was in the center of our research attention, market and competitive constellations should be covered in the future too.

The strategic orientation of a firm contributes positively to its business performance. However, there are still many unexplored facets of strategic orientation of a firm and its antecedents, thus preventing researchers and practitioners from fully understanding how this contribution takes place. Strategic orientation assumes corporate-level perspective, where differences in perspective can be expected between marketing-driven and finance-driven organizations. If strategic orientation is placed in the context of today’s Big Data era, marketing analytics becomes an increasingly important tool in shaping strategic orientation. Hence, this paper has two objectives: (1) to investigate how marketing-driven and finance-driven organizations achieve long-term strategic orientation and (2) to examine the role of marketing analytics for long-term strategic orientation. The participants in a quantitative survey were managers responsible for marketing from a cross-industry sample. The results indicate that marketing-driven organizations achieve long-term strategic orientation indirectly through marketing analytics. Finance-driven organizations are not significantly related to long-term strategic orientation. Authors confirm a positive relationship between long-term strategic orientation and business performance.

This paper is exploring the role of market orientation adoption by the Sales managers in the creation of effective cross functional relationship between Marketing and Sales and in company performance. Based on data collected from both Marketing and Sales managers in 132 consumer packaged goods companies, the study shows that higher levels of market orientation by the Sales managers are reducing the level of Marketing-Sales conflict as perceived by the Marketing managers and enhancing important performance metrics. The implications of the study for both theory and practice are discussed.

The main aim of this research study is to compare the Relationship Marketing Orientation (RMO) between public and private commercial banks in Sri Lanka. Thus, the findings of this study can possibly be useful to promote application of Relationship Marketing Orientation in both public and private banks in Sri Lanka. The theory of social exchange provides a theoretical base for this study. Trust, bonding, communication, shared value, empathy and reciprocity were considered as dimensions of the RMO. The data obtained from 1002 customers of Sri Lankan commercial banks were analyzed to test relevant hypotheses. The findings revealed that Relationship Marketing Orientation of private banks is significantly higher than that of public banks. In particular, in terms of individual dimensions of the RMO, Bonding, Shared Value and Empathy of the private banks seemed to be significantly higher than those of the public banks. Nevertheless, public banks were more trustworthy than private banks. Based on these findings, we have provided interesting implications and recommendations to the both private and public banks.

Purpose – Market orientation is a key factor for business performance in today’s fluctuating conditions. This study investigates whether the employment of innovation can improve the innovative capability and increase the performance by gaining competitive advantages or not. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects of market orientation on the performance of small and medium size distributer enterprises (SMDEs) in Iran. Research design, data, and methodology – Customer orientation, Competitor orientation, and Inter-functional coordination have been regarded as market orientation indices to determine the effects of these indices on marketing innovation, gaining competitive advantages, and companies’ performance as well. Data were collected from managers and experts in SMDEs in Iran. The structural equations modeling are used for analysis. Results – The results indicated that marketing innovation has been improved in competitive companies that enjoyed a high level of Inter-functional coordination among the various units. Besides, marketing innovation resulted in gaining competitive advantages regarding cost management, concentration, and differentiation in these companies. In addition, it was observed that SMDEs that obtain competitive advantages are equipped to reap superior performance. Conclusions – With cost management, differentiation and concentration are more likely to enhance the enterprise efficiency and effectiveness than other companies. Additionally, competitiveness, inter-functional coordination, and marketing innovation in SMDEs have a positive impact on marketing innovation.