Based on expectancy theory, this study examines the extent to which franchisees share innovative ideas within the franchise system as a function of their expectation that the ideas are adopted (success expectancy), and their belief that such effort benefits their own personal interests (valence) under different service industries. In addition, satisfaction is considered as an additional motivator that may promote the sharing of ideas. We argue how can the decision maker (franchisor) be aware and take advantage of unknown innovative ideas the franchisees may have.

The rapid digital transformation and the ever-changing needs of consumers have provided both academia and practice a stimulating setting and chance for grasping evolving opportunities and reinventing the traditional marketing approaches. Agility is one emergent approach to manage challenges like increasing uncertainty or high volatility. Due to its relative novelty, the extant academic literature on marketing agility is narrow, and although the operationalization of the construct is slowly expanding, there is yet the need for further refinement of the definition, the construct, terminology, and its dimensions. Similarly, in practitioner circles there is a growing “buzz” about implementing agile practices (e.g., continuous feedback-learning cycles, collaboration, flexibility, and speed) in the field of marketing to manage changing market environments. What exactly makes an organization, a department, or a team agile is, however, still blurred.

Firms cooperate not only with complementary partners such as their suppliers and customers, but also increasingly with their competitors which can result in a simultaneous pursuit of cooperation and competition – coopetition (Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 2011). Coopetition is a paradox as it involves firms interacting with two contradictory logics – cooperation and competition, which their contradictory, yet interrelated, demands seem logical in isolation, but absurd and irrational when appearing simultaneously (Peng et al., 2017). The extant research on the role of the competitor as an NPD partner also throws conflicting results; positive and negative NPD performance. This variance could be related to the firm’s internal capability to manage the partnership in NPD activities. This research aims to investigate these issues: Part I examines ‘the paradox of coopetition’ by investigating how firm’s experience of coopetitive relationship influence on firm’s coopetition capability. Part II investigates the key antecedents and outcomes of coopetition capability on the competitor partnership for new product development. The findings suggest a balanced-strong coopetition and alliance management capability are useful to build coopetition capability. In turn, coopetition capability has direct and indirect effects on NPD performances.

This research examines Kang et al. (2016)’s proposal that corporate social responsibility (CSR) reputation, which was operationalized in this paper via consumers’ CSR beliefs about a brand (Du et al., 2007), could moderate the negative effect of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) crisis on firm performance when it is used as a preventive, insurance-like measure. According to Kang et al. most companies unsuccessfully used CSR as penance mechanism to undo negative effects of a prior CSI crisis they caused by their irresponsible behavior. However, using CSR as an insurance tool before any CSI event has happened, in order to mitigate the potential negative future effect, has not been observed yet in practice. The results of this paper show that a completely CSR positioned brand has a competitive advantage over a non-CSR positioned brand. Regardless of crisis severity, the consumers’ stronger CSR beliefs triggered by the CSR brand positioning works like a preventive, insurance-like mechanism, which protects the brand in times of both non-severe and severe CSI crisis. The CSR positioned brand also suffers a damage measured in brand attitude change and negative word-of-mouth, but much less than a brand, which did not care at all about CSR positioning or engaging in any CSR activities. However, the results only hold true for consumers, who regard CSR as important. Most managers still do not even know the effects a reputation in CSR can have in face of a CSI crisis (Lenz et al., 2017). This research sheds new light on this ambiguity.

This paper’s aim is to provide an insight into when and for what type of innovation are different types of customers most effective participants in the NPD process (Gemser & Perks 2015). Most of prior research has not considered type of innovation or only focused on one stage of NPD process, although both innovation type and each NPD process are critical factors to the NPD performance in the customer co-development context (Chatterji & Fabrizio 2014). Even though some research has examined all stages of NPD process, they also did not specify users or innovation types to compare them. Thus, we will examine the effect of customer participation on NPD performance considering both innovation and user types in terms of each NPD process. The specific research questions are 1) In the NPD process, will the impact of customer participation on NPD performance differ by user-type (lead users vs. ordinary users)? And the NPD stage?, 2) If so, when we consider both user-type and NPD stage, will the impact of customer participation on NPD performance differ depending on the type of innovation (Incremental vs. radical)? The hypotheses are developed as a basis for the subsequent research. This research has several theoretical contributions. First, we discover more appropriate user type in each NPD stage in the customer participation process. Second, we also find more appropriate user characteristics depending on the type of innovation. Third, if lead users are involved rather than ordinary users, customer participation in the development stage can generate positive impact on NPD performance, which is the opposite result compared to previous research (e.g., Chang & Taylor 2016). Finally, we show practical implications and limitations.

The marketing scholars and practitioners start to consider a new concept, which pay attention to the government policies and company methods would cause a deep influence to develop a sustainable marketing. Because of the customer equity take a more and more importance place in consumer research, companies have become aware of the importance of sustainability, but customers may not realize the significance of this factor. When companies cannot obtain the feedback from the customers, they can not meet the needs as well. Nevertheless, researchers have attempted to determine whether sustainable marketing customer equity, both in positive and negative ways. Using algorithms of configurations of antecedent condition s to refine the shortcomings of symmetric variable hypotheses (McClelland, 1998; Woodside, 2015). Sustainable marketing includes environmental, economic, and social dimensions, in addition to the ethical management dimensions that guide sustainable marketing strategies through CSR (Lii et al., 2013).The environmental dimension requires to build a eco-friendly image, the economic dimension requires to achieve short- and long-term economic goals(bansal 2005); The social dimension requires that companies enhance social and human wellbeing (Kim et al, 2015; Sun et al., 2016). When marketing research has turned to customer lifetime value (CLV) (Rust et al.,2004), they find the future profit is value equity, brand equity, and relation equity has been accepted by most researchers as major drivers. This study bases on models of which factors can influence value of customers and which are not. Structural equation modeling (SEM) has been used to show that sustainable marketing has positive effects on customer equity drivers (Sun, Garrett, & Kim, 2016). However, it has shortage in most empirical behavioral science and business research, in order to lessen influence of the method limitation; a subset of qualitative comparative analysis called faQCA is applied to study. This study make a general conclusion that in the cross-culture, customers can not accept companies lose anyone dimension, even though they perform at normal level in others. Nevertheless if a company achieve a high goal in one dimension, it is also can be admitted by consumers. This research adapts two different countries as the sample to define their value and motivations. And the Adidas as the sample brand to be used in the study. Using the fuzzyset Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) attempts to find a new point to explain configural antecedents, to verify the finding and to overcome the shortages. The result of this study is aimed to find the way to narrow the gap between companies, customers and sustainable concepts.

With the fast pace of technological change, the role of innovation on a firm’s survival has received increased scholarly attention. This study investigates the relationship between a firm’s strategic orientations, exploration and exploitation, on innovation activity. Also, the synergy effects of four types of innovation: product, process, marketing, and organizational innovation are examined with the consideration of the level of innovativeness and the firm’s industrial category. The OECD Oslo Manual (2005) and the standard of OECD (2011) classification are used as a main source to define four different types of innovation and the industry category into high-tech and low-tech. This study uses data from 856 firms taken from the Korea Innovation Survey (KIS) 2014 which is the Korean version of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). Since most of the measures are composed of multiple items, their reliability and the underlying dimensions of each measure are tested by principal component analysis (PCA). Structural equation modeling (SEM) is then used to carry out a simultaneous test the relationships among the constructs. The moderating effects of marketing and organizational innovation are examined through multi group analysis. Results indicate that exploration and exploitation have positive impacts on the product innovation and process innovation respectively. Also, a new process encourages firms to develop radical product innovation. In case of the moderating effect of marketing and organizatioanl innovation, there are some differences between high-tech and low-tech industry. For high-tech firms, the positive relationship between a new product and firm performance is increased with the introduction of marketing innovation. In case of low-tech firms, process innovation has direct and positive impacts on a firm’s performance with organizational innovation. The findings show that the synergy effect of innovation exists and its significance could be changed depending on an industrial category.

Our study aims to investigate the mechanisms leading to focal firm’s innovation performance through the coopetitive relationships. Specifically, we argue focal firm’s two capabilities, coopetition capability and NPD capability, play a crucial role as a mediator of interfirm coopetition and its innovation performance. In order to provide new evidence on this subject, we contribute to this stream by developing a conceptual model. We argue that coopetitive behaviors of partners will influence the focal firm’s coopetition capability, which will then influence the focal firm’s NPD capability, although we assume NPD capability will have an impact on coopetition capability as well. We also argue NPD capability will not only lead to new product advantages, NPD process advantages as well, as a result of them, financial performance at the end. This paper reports the development of this model.

Understanding the types and dynamics of drivers on customer equity has been the subject of marketers’ attention for decades, however it is only recently been suggested that cultural or national contexts play a role in this understanding. Much of this research has been centered on the differences between the West and the Asia with many differences being found. Confucianism is often used to explain these differences. This comes as no surprise as Confucianism is argued to be the dominant cultural philosophy, or mode of thought, influencing East Asian individuals’ and entities’ roles in society and with each other. The philosophy has spread from its foundation in China to influence many other key societies in East Asia, such as Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. The general assumption in most of the literature is Confucianism will act similarly in every society it has spread to, but is this the case? What is not understood, therefore, is if the influence of Confucianism is equal among different East Asian societies? This exploratory study therefore seeks to contribute to knowledge by identifying if Confucianism is an influential force on customer equity drivers? And if so, are there differences between East Asian societies? Given the growing economic clout and importance of East Asia and the rising East Asian diaspora, marketer’s adherence and understanding of Confucian principles may be key to their success of managing their customer relationships, underscoring one of their key assets, their customer equity. With most cross-national research taking an umbrella view of the role of Confucianism as an explanatory variable on the behaviors of East Asian consumers, such as the Chinese and South Koreans (e.g. Bond, 1996; Hofstede, 1980), they are ignoring the behavioral and attitudinal variations that exist between East Asian Societies (e.g. Kim & Leung, 2007; Zhang et al., 2013). There is debate suggesting that Confucianism is having less effect now due to globalization, digitalization and capitalism (Leidner, 2010) potentially creating new hybrid value systems (Ralston, 2008). In China, arguments suggest Confucian influence is lessening due to the systemic philosophical changes in the nation’s society over the twentieth century, with the move from traditional Confucius philosophy to Maoism to socialist capitalism (Chiu 2002, Whitcomb et al., 1998). Other East Asian societies however may have moved away from Confucianism much quicker than China, due to their much earlier global exposure than China’s open door globalization policy in the late 1970s. In spite of this, there is wide agreement that Confucianism remains a strong influence in both China (e.g., Zhao & Roper, 2011) and other East Asian societies,such as Korea (Sung & Tinkham, 2005; Lee et al, 2009). The nexus of our paper therefore is that Confucianism does still have an influential role, but what this role is, and how this role differs between societies should be explored. In its purest form, Confucianism is composed of five constant virtues (e.g. Zhang et al., 2005): Benevolence: kind, sympathetic, compassionate, tolerant and respectful of others; Righteousness: the power to protect justice and goodness; Propriety: following societal regulations and laws; Wisdom: having good knowledge, intelligence and systems to provide excellence; and Trustworthiness: fulfillment of promises. Although the foundations of Confucianism goes back millennia, the use of the virtues to guide commercial operations stems from the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644). How adherence to each of the virtues by modern marketing organizations influences their relationships with the modern customer however, has not been explored fully. We argue that each of the virtues will have a positive effect on the key customer equity drivers; value equity, brand equity and relationship equity (Lemon et al., 2001; Rust et al., 2004), and thereon customer lifetime value. Using a sample of young Chinese and Korean consumers, the Confucian five constant virtues, benevolence, righteousness, propriety, trustworthiness and wisdom are measured and their relationships explored on the three dominant drivers of customer equity; value equity, brand equity and relationship equity. The results show that the benevolence, righteousness and wisdom virtues have significant positive relationships on the three drivers. Trustworthiness and propriety virtues however have negative significant relationships. Chinese and South Korean results are then compared. The results show that the Confucianism constant virtues drive different customer equity drivers in these two societies. The five constant virtues have stronger effects for young Chinese customers than their Korean counterparts. The equity drivers of CLV also vary, with brand equity significant in the Chinese sample and value equity significant in the Korean sample. Additionally, some significant paths to the equity drivers differ between Korea and China. Benevolence has a significant negative effect on value and relationship equity drivers (opposite to China) and righteousness a significant effect on value equity (not observed in China). These results support our proposition that a national effect on the manner and influence of the Confucian drivers may vary by society.

There are amount of researches study about corporate competition sustainability, find the way to survive in the competition. But sustainable development has been launched for many years. Sustainable marketing aims to balance among economic, environmental, and social goals. Marketing methods of one company should be innovated with fast development. Marketing practitioners and researchers should follow the idea to sustainable marketing base on the hot issue of sustainable issue. Because sustainable marketing can increase firms’ profit and improve the environment such as nature environment and society. Customer equity is the sum of customer lifetime value, comes from value creation based on profits, costs, cash flow, customers, and customer relationships. Customer equity has been defined as value of future profits that might be acquired from customers, excluding corporate costs (Berger & Nasr, 1998), as profits created when companies allocate resources appropriately to acquire and retain customers (Blattberg & Deighton, 1996), and as the sum of all customers’ discounted lifetime value (Lemon et al., 2001). In this research studied the relationship between sustainable marketing and customer equity. Customer equity has been the key for companies’ sustainable competitive advantage. The company can make proper marketing strategy with customer equity which can both satisfy consumers and make a profit for the company (Lemon et al., 2001). Also test customer attitude to sustainable marketing in different culture. Based on the results this study gave both academy and practice implications.

The emergence of peer to peer systems such as online auction websites is a major element in e-commerce yet relatively little is known about what influences its adoption and use in different parts of the world. Using an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), user attitudes and behaviors from three national environmental contexts, Korea, Germany and New Zealand, are examined and compared to determine the factors influencing the adoption and usage of this system. The key questions this paper addresses are: Are there national differences affecting the ability for the TAM to predict OAWS acceptance, and if so, in what way? And are differences observed between heavy and light user motivations and perceptions of the medium and how these differ across national environments? Answers to these questions will increase the understanding for future marketers and developers of peer-to-peer systems. An extended TAM model was developed from which a number of hypothesized relationships are posited. We use the Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw (1989) core TAM model extended by our arguing for two key influencing factors on a user’s attitude to using a new technology, perceived risk and computer affinity. We contend the drivers of perceived risk are: perceived enjoyment, trust in intermediary, perceived reputation system effectiveness, and positive past experience. Additionally we address the limited understanding in the literature of the national environment effects on technology acceptance. National cultural effects such as uncertainty avoidance and individualism, along with technological heritage and country innovativeness may need to be understood to determine potential differences in consumer activity and the robustness of the theoretical model. We also considered usage behavior to be important. Research for example, identifies heavy users as influencers on other potential adopters; thus important targets for developers and marketers of new technologies. Results suggest that although the core TAM is somewhat robust for the three nations along with the extended model for the respondents from South Korea, there are some key differences in the extended model between New Zealand and Germany. Specifically the relationships: Positive Past Experience and Perceived Risk are not supported in NZ or Germany, and “computer affinity” and “attitude to using” unsupported in Germany. We similarly found differences in the attitudes of light and heavy users between the samples, especially the Korean sample with the others. Our findings highlight that national environmental variations, especially between the “eastern” and “western” samples are important, which could be attributed to both uncertainty avoidance and individualism. Key conclusions and recommendations will be given.