Market Competence Research Articles

Marketing innovation and sustainable competitive advantage of manufacturing SMEs in Ghana

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to establish how small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in water, beverage, soap, detergent, metal fabrication, wood and furniture manufacturing industries can sustain or improve their competitive advantage by integrating specific resources and capabilities. The paper seeks to offer an alternative framework “resource capability-based view (RCBV)” that provides a strategic marketing direction for SMEs regarding how innovative marketing practices and dynamic marketing capabilities integrate to create sustainable market advantage. Design/methodology/approach This current paper employed a quantitative survey design with a positivist methodological research paradigm. The paper used a multi-stage stratified and simple random sampling technique to collect data from 591 manufacturing SMEs in Ghana. SMEs in water, beverage, soap, detergent, metal fabrication, wood and furniture manufacturing industries were sampled for the study. A structural equation model was employed to test the study hypotheses to arrive at the findings. Findings The study found that product design and packaging innovations, promotion innovations, retail innovations and pricing innovations provide sustainable market advantage for water, beverage, detergent and metal fabrication SMEs. The paper also found that new product designs and packages are the major drivers of sustainable market advantage followed by innovative retail outlets. The paper further originated that integrating marketing competence (marketing resources and marketing capabilities) and innovative marketing activities provides a marginal improvement in competitive advantage. Physical resources may result in market advantage but integrating physical resources with dynamic marketing capabilities provides sufficient competitive sustainability in a competitive market. Practical implications SMEs in water, beverage, soap, detergent, metal fabrication, wood and furniture manufacturing industries should prioritise their key marketing resources and capabilities in product designs, promotion, pricing and retailing innovations in order to sustain market advantage. Old products should not be faded from the market but rather SME managers should employ innovative retail strategies, such as eco-friendly advertising, product re-branding and digital platforms (social network sites and websites), which are important to sustaining market performance. Government must develop targeted policies to bridge the information gap between SMEs and research institutions such as universities through regular subsidised entrepreneurial training and creation of semi-annual industry-academic fairs. The main theoretical contribution of this current paper is the development of “RCBV” as a framework which shows how SMEs can integrate specific resources and capabilities to achieve sustainable market advantage. This framework offers an integrative view of conventional resource-based view and dynamic capability theory (DCT) which are independently examined in the literature. Originality/value This current study has proposed an integrated and elaborative approach to the conventional resource-based view and DCT which does not provide a composite understanding in the literature. SMEs may lack the needed resources and capabilities to introduce new products or extant product lines but this paper has demonstrated that how SME can sustain market advantage of existing product(s) by synchronously using specific marketing resources and capabilities. The proposed framework offers a guide for SMEs to integrate their physical resources and capabilities to sustain their market advantage.

A Study on Management Competency Affecting Organizational Performance

This study is to examine the effects of business management competency, organizational management competency, relationship formation competency, marketing competency, and entrepreneurship, which are perceived by organizational members of social enterprise, on organizational performance, economic performance and social performance. The results of this study are as follows. First, the business management competency of the executives influencing the economic performance, which is the organization performance of the hypothetical social enterprise, was adopted. In other words, the organizational management competency (H1-1), the relationship formation competency (H1-2), the marketing competency (H1-3), and the entrepreneurship (H1-4), which are executive business management competency, have a positive effect on the organizational performance of the social enterprise respectively. Second, Hypothesis 2 indicates that the business management competency of social enterprise executives has a positive effect on organizational performance, social performance, and Hypothesis 2 has been adopted. In other words, the business management competency of the management on the social performance of the social enterprise is in the order of relationship forming competency (H2-2), marketing competency (H2-3), organizational management competency (H2-1), entrepreneurship (H2-4) Showed high influence. The higher the relationship formation competency, marketing competency, organizational competency, and entrepreneurship, which are the business management competency of the social enterprise management, the economic social performance of the social enterprise is more improved..

DAYA SAING SEKTOR PERTANIAN TANAMAN PANGAN DI PROVINSI BANTEN

In order to maximize the potential of the region's topography and availability of natural resources, it would be wise to map the agriculture market competency to predict successful productivity odds in agriculture to support and help increase the economy in the province. Research to analyze the competitiveness of food crop agriculture sector in district and cities in Banten Province. Using quantitative research with descriptive methods, a study was done in Banten Province analyzing data with a methodology called the agriculture competitive quotient (ACQ). The study done in 2017, calculated that there are different competitive index scores in the district and cities in Banten Province locations. The position of the highest food crop agriculture competitiveness is in Pandeglang District with a competitive index score of 1.16, making Pandegelang District the most competitive in food crop of agriculture in the province. While the position of the highest food crop agriculture competitiveness is in South Tangerang City, with a competitive index score of 0.75, denoting that South Tangerang City does not have a competitive sector yet in food crop agriculture

Business Roundup

BUSINESS Business Roundup ShareShare onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail C&EN, 2019, 97 (20), p 13May 20, 2019Cite this:C&EN 97, 20, 13AbstractLotte and Westlake Chemical have completed their $3.1 billion ethylene complex in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The complex includes a 1 million-metric-ton-per-year ethylene cracker and a $1.1 billion ethylene glycol plant that Lotte, a South Korean firm, constructed. Perstorp plans to build a 12,000-metric-ton-per-year plant for granular sodium formate—a deicing material for runways—in Perstorp, Sweden, to open before winter. The material has a lower carbon footprint and less potential to contaminate water than other deicers, Perstorp claims. Archroma has opened a technology and marketing competence center for automotive and synthetic dyes in Korschenbroich, Germany. The new facility joins Archroma centers for special dyes in Barcelona, Spain, and for textile finishing in Reinach, Switzerland. BASF will market water-soluble casein films from the French firm Lactips to the home care and industrial cleaning markets. The partners see an opportunity to replace polyvinyl alcohol detergent wrappers with films made from the milk by-product. HenkelView: PDF | Full Text HTML

What Should SMEs Consider to Introduce Environmentally Innovative Products to Market?

In recent years, companies are challenged not only to develop market competencies but also to deal with environmental issues. Unlike larger companies equipped with abundant resources and sustainable capabilities, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are under relatively constrained conditions to effectively deal with environmental concerns as well as market demands. This study attempts to examine a set of potential factors by which SMEs can overcome such limited conditions and bring novel and environmentally beneficial products to market through their innovative activities. Organization theories, such as organizational learning, social network theory, and new-institutional theory, provide a theoretical framework for this study that SMEs may utilize their resources and capabilities from internal, external, and institutional domains. The hypotheses are tested using the Korea Innovation Survey 2010. The analyses show that the likelihood of the market introduction of new and environmentally innovative products is increased not only when an SME makes more monetary investments on internal innovative activities and experiences more success in general innovation activities, but also when an SME inputs more monetary investments into the search for technological knowledge from the outside and utilizes more diverse external information sources. Interestingly, the findings demonstrate that monetary support from the government do not have significant impacts on an SME’s environmental innovation, while a non-monetary technological support system operated by government raises the likelihood of the market introduction of new and environmentally innovative products. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are discussed.

Social entrepreneurship and organizational performance: A study of the mediating role of distinctive competencies in marketing

Social economy is considered as the option that offers the best response in times of crisis. In this context, social economy companies play an essential role in the promotion of sustainable growth. This research wants to present the importance of social entrepreneurship in the organizational performance of a company. It also aims to show the positive relationship between the extent to which social entrepreneurship is implemented and the creation of distinctive marketing competences, as well as the mediating role these competences have between social entrepreneurship and organizational performance. For this purpose, an analysis of 221 Spanish social-economic entities has been developed from January to May 2014. In order to evaluate organizational performance, a validated scale has been used (Nakata, 2008), since it integrates sociometric characteristics that are necessary for this research. For the two remaining constructs, that is to say, social entrepreneurship and distinctive marketing competences, specific items have been developed by taking into consideration the analysis of their sociometric properties that could lead to the validation of the relationship among the three proposed variables. The results show a positive relationship between the extent to which an organization introduces social entrepreneurship and its organizational performance, social entrepreneurship and the creation of distinctive marketing competences, as well as the influence of distinctive marketing competences as a mediating variable in the relationship between the degree of implementation of social entrepreneurship and organizational performance.

An integrated optimization model for selection of sustainable suppliers based on customers’ expectations

Due to intensification of market competence and customers increasing socio-environmental concerns, sustainability has become a focal point for most organizations. Thus incorporation of customer sustainable expectations into the conventional supplier selection process has become necessary for manufacturers to sustain in the competitive market. To cope with this issue, it is necessary to model the customers’ opinions and expectations into the strategic supplier selection and order allocation decision making, an area not delved upon much in the literature. Therefore, the aim of the study is to develop an analytical model for manufacturing firm for selection of suppliers based on customers’ expectations which are reflected as retailers’ expectation level and also for bringing in financial and socio-environmental stability to the whole SC. The research methodology adopted involves 1) use of fuzzy-TOPSIS technique using Z numbers for evaluation of suppliers based on traditional as well as social environmental attributes which reflect customer's social and green expectations, 2) development of a novel bi-objective mathematical model for selecting suppliers meeting the expectation levels, allocating orders proportionate to the performance scores of the suppliers, rewarding or penalizing the suppliers as per their sustainable performance, 3) Transformation of the bi-objective model into a weighted goal programming model for attaining a trade-off solution between the objectives of minimization of cost and maximization of sustainable value of purchase. To exemplify the efficacy of the model, case of electronics sector is presented. The findings of the result suggest that penalty and reward value incorporated in the cost objective system is effective in enhancing the sustainable performance of the suppliers and can prove to be an effective strategy for DMs. The study recommends that the proposed mathematical model can considerably aid the manufacturer in integrating supplier selection and order allocation decisions while optimizing the performance of the customer oriented supply chain.

Exploring the role of business relationships in start-ups’ life cycles

PurposeDifferently from previous works that focused on the entrepreneur and on his ability to manage social relationships, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of business relationships in the different stages of the life cycle of a start-up.Design/methodology/approachSince the paper aims to explore startups’ evolutionary phenomenon, it adopts a qualitative abductive methodology, presenting an in-depth study of two innovative Italian start-ups. The research is based on two steps. In the first one, the authors collected secondary data from start-ups’ reports and documents, financial indicators (when available) and processed them to understand their background. In the second one, the authors conducted ten semi-structured interviews, including face-to-face interviews, phone interviews and video conferences.FindingsThe paper presents a relationship-based life cycle model composed of four different stages, depending on the number and role of relationships developed. Indeed, since the beginning, start-ups adopt a relational approach and their evolution involves the shift from the focus on the entrepreneur to the centrality of a network approach based on interconnected relationships. The entering into a new stage of life cycle depends on relationships, mainly based on connected actors and resources shared and combined. Even if a key role is assumed by technology, the main resource is identified in the knowledge concerning the customer/user’s needs that require marketing competencies, human resources, relational capabilities. Thus, the shift from one stage to the next in the start-up’s life cycle is possible thanks to a parallel shift from a focus on the activities to a focus on those strategic and heterogeneous actors that ensure activities.Originality/valueIn a traditional perspective, the start-up’s life cycle depends on activities, financial resources and revenues, as stated by previous life cycle models. In a different perspective, as depicted in our analysis, the evolution of a start-up depends on the portfolio of their business relationships. The role of business relationships is hence to facilitate the interconnections within specialized key actors, which allow start-ups to access strategic resources. These resources are essential in order to develop the activities that characterize the specific stage of the life cycle.

Higher Education Competitiveness: Definition, Assessment and Ways of Growth

The article is devoted to the search and the description of marketing reserves determining perspective competitiveness of higher educational establishments.The study refers to highly efficient institutions possessing the development potential and their own operational and marketing possibilities to comparative ways of growth.The research led to a conclusion that it is necessary to actualize the marketing competence of the Russian higher educational establishments based on the modernization of the educational activity through the development of the full-fledged training and production complexes providing the students with employment experience and real labor activity.

Adaptable Cross-organizational Unstructured Business Processes via Dynamic Rule-based Semantic Network

Rapid online adaptation to the new business requirements can improve innovation level and market competency of collaborative organizations. Complex and unstructured processes are provision e-services in collaborative networks through web service inter-connections, which unanticipated changes made it hard to manage them. In a cross-organizational domain, when partners deal with unexpected changes, the received requests are represented as complex theories, and business process adaptation will be more complicated in the occurrence of concept drifts. Rapid prediction and adaptation to new situations need concept drift detection and novel class prediction mechanism for the overall collaborative network processes in both data and control flows. In this article, a new approach to the online reflection of distributed rule concept drifts of collaborative network reference processes is introduced. The solution to the data-informed adaptation of unstructured process employed managing rule concept drifts and cross-organizational processes restructuring via the distributed model with minor updates. The method could react to the new events via an ensemble prediction mechanism. Its architecture has major components for monitoring, dynamic distributed rule reconfiguration, and partners side components. The paper suggests a service-oriented semantic network of distributed rules for e-services provision, substitution, and replacement via management of choreographed web-services. The approach has been validated and verified with real data belonging to the healthcare domain. The results prove the adaptation mechanism efficiency of the daily changes.

Cross-cultural promotional competence: a comparison of student and DMO marketing text

ABSTRACTThis paper considers whether an inductive, collaborative information and communication technology-based approach to learning promotional language may help non-native English speakers produce destination material that can be effective in a real-world context. At a Japanese university, tourism communication students collected examples of professional language from the web in a shared database which they subsequently consulted in producing domestic destination websites in English. Text written by students for a destination was compared in a survey to text from an official English website for the destination. The survey measured the reaction of potential tourists in terms of trust in accuracy, expectations of service, and destination interest. Results indicate that the student material engendered stronger overall destination image, based on source credibility, interest in travel to the destination, and higher service expectations. The study considers implications of the results in terms of the effect of writing quality on destination image, and argues for the importance of cross-cultural marketing competence in tourism education.

Sustainable Production Scheduling in Open Innovation Perspective under the Fourth Industrial Revolution

This research addresses a specific issue in the field of operation scheduling. Even though there are lots of researches on the field of planning and scheduling, a specific scheduling problem is introduced here. We focus on the operation scheduling requirements that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has brought currently. From the point of view of open innovation, operation scheduling is known as the one that is using the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Big Data, and Mobile technology. To build proper operation systems under the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it is very essential to devise effective and efficient scheduling methodology to improve product quality, customer delivery, manufacturing flexibility, cost saving, and market competence. A scheduling problem on designated parallel equipments, where some equipments are grouped according to the recipe of lots, is considered. This implies that a lot associated with a specific recipe is preferred to be processed on an equipment among predetermined (designated) ones regardless of parallel ones. A setup operation occurs between different recipes of lots. In order to minimize completion time of the last lot, a scheduling algorithm is proposed. We conducted a simulation study with randomly generated problems, and the proposed algorithm has shown desirable and better performance that can be applied in real-time scheduling.

Brazilian State Forest Institutions: Implementation of forestry goals evaluated by the 3L Model

More than half of Brazilian territory (54%), or approx. 463 million ha, is covered by forests. Public forest ownership dominates with up to 80%, private forests cover cca. 20% and cca. 8% is unclaimed. In public forests the practice of concessions is growing, with the expectation of reducing the problem of Amazonian illegal loggings. Private forests are mainly under plantation management, which generates 5.5% of the country’s industrial gross domestic product. Relevance of both is accordingly high, although not dominant in forest share. A key question for forest policy is how successfully the state regulates both issues in practice. Our paper accordingly focuses on the Brazilian Forest Service and the Ministry of Agriculture, which are state forest institutions in charge of forest concessions and planted forests. We look at their performance against legally based forestry goals and rely on primary (participatory observation, semi-structured personal interviews and questionnaire) and secondary sources (documents) for empirical evidence. The 3 L Model serves as a theoretical basis. It was selected while applying criteria and indicators for evaluation of public institutions´ comprehensive performance with respect to sustainable forest management. The results show that Brazilian forest policy strives toward sustainable forest management, as an overall goal. In more particular, the performance of both examined state forest institutions is more market (than public demand) oriented and moves towards strengthening market competences. At the same time, there are constrains in sustaining forest stands. Due to permanent and strong conflicts related to land use changes in Brazil, the relevance of a mediator, aiming to harmonize all different interests related to forest protection and use, is high, but this role is still not taken, at least not by the evaluated state forest institutions. This represents new task for the forestry practice, while facilitating diverse interests in Brazilian forests could not only be a contribution toward conflict management between environmental, forestry and agribusiness actors but could also grant stronger political role to respective state forest institution(s). For attending this role, the performance evaluation of the whole and rather complex forest-related institutional setting in Brazil could provide relevant science-based policy arguments. This paper shows that the 3 L Model could be applied for such evaluation, as it was possible to adapt it to a non-European country and get a comprehensive overview of Brazilian plantation and concession forestry in practice.

A new framework to assess industry convergence in high technology environments

The process of convergence, from science and technology convergence to that of markets as well as entire industries can be witnessed in a range of different high technology environments such as IT and NanoBiotech. Although this phenomenon has been subject of analysis in an increasing number of studies, the notion of industry convergence – the final step of a full convergence process - still lacks a common definition. The missing conceptual definition of what industry convergence really is and how it can be assessed impedes both analyses and monitoring - let alone its anticipation. To address the missing conceptual definition of the final step in convergence, this paper seeks to develop a framework based on novel indicators that enable identifying and monitoring trends of industry convergence in high technology environments. Building on indicators in the domain of collaboration, a framework, which distinguishes different stages and types of industry convergence is developed. Subsequently, the newly developed framework is empirically illustrated in the area of stationary energy storage based on publicly available data. To this end, the full text database Nexis is used to conduct a search in news reports on collaborations in the domain of stationary energy storage. The study contributes to the growing body of convergence literature by providing a novel framework allowing the identification of not only industry convergence as the final step of the convergence process but also the classification of its type. Practical implications include an orientation for companies in converging environments on when and how to close the resulting technology and market competence gaps.

An Evolving Model of the Use of Feature Films in Undergraduate and Graduate Business Curriculum: The Education Awakens

This paper/exploratory analysis presents an evolving model for enhancing the use of full-length, feature film as a tool in undergraduate and graduate business curriculum. This model includes processes for determination of student perceptions of the efficacy of the use of feature film to teach business, including marketing and human resources competencies. Therefore, this work considers student perceptions of the use of film in undergraduate and graduate business education and their final outcomes. Awareness of students' views of this tool can be valuable information during the design of business curriculum. To date, limited research has coupled the business students’ perceptions of film in business curriculum along with implementation of feature films in business pedagogy. Therefore, the evolution of a working model aims to contribute to the understanding of students' expectations when film is used in business curriculum. There is a dearth of literature that covers the use of popular, full-length films in Marketing and in MBA Human Resource courses. This paper helps to fill that gap.

The Impact of Export Promotion Programs on Firms’ Export Competencies and Performance in a Transition Economy: The Case of Russian Manufacturers

This study evaluates the effects of export promotion programs (EPPs) in Russian manufacturers. It examines a multi-dimensional set of subjective and objective indicators including the level of awareness, use, the perception of usefulness, as well as different intermediate export marketing results, and final performance indicators. The results show that most EPPs are successful in attaining their goals as to improving firms’ export marketing competencies. Though, at the same time, they point to clear problems, regarding program awareness, availability, and accessibility. The paper concludes with a discussion about managerial and public policy implications.

Understanding the space of nursing practice in Colombia: A critical reflection on the effects of health system reform.

Worldwide, healthcare has been touched by neoliberal policies to the extent that it has some of its characteristics, such as being asymmetrical, competitive, dehumanized, and profit driven. In Colombia, Law 100/93 was created as an ambitious reform aimed at integrating the social security and public sectors of healthcare in order to create universal access, and at the same time to generate market competence with the objective of improving effectiveness and responsiveness. Instead, however, Colombian health reform has served to generate competition which has aggravated inequalities among people. Within this context, we practice nursing. As nurses, our responsibility is to advocate for our patients. We cannot ignore what is happening worldwide in hospitals and community health settings because our responsibility is to promote health, prevent disease, and care for human beings. So, today, when the world pushes for economical profit and competence on one hand, and, on the other, for moral compromises to care, respect, and advocacy for all human beings, being a nurse in the Colombian health system represents a challenge for us. This challenge is especially significant because harm and benefit, justice and injustice, respect and disrespect are separated by a fine line that is easy to transgress.

Frontline workers' competency in activation work

Frontline workers play a crucial role in implementing activation policies. Nevertheless, research on what competencies are required for activation work is limited. We explored activation competency based on a survey of 1,735 frontline workers in the Norwegian labour and welfare administration. Factor analysis revealed two distinct underlying dimensions in activation competency: market competency and user‐oriented competency. We found that the social workers in the study viewed themselves as having significantly less market competency and slightly more user‐oriented competency than non‐social workers have, but the differences were small. The results also indicate that these effects are partially mediated by attitudes towards conditionality. The results give reason to treat activation competencies as twofold and raise the question of whether social work education improves frontline workers' competency in activation work compared with frontline workers with other educational backgrounds.

Studying Role of Marketing Competence in the Firm Level Competitiveness

Based on the composite score index methodology, the study measures the role of the marketing competence in the competitive performance of a firm. It describes the competitive performance and marketing competence for the small and medium enterprises. The study inquires into the association and effect of the marketing competence on the competitive performance of the agro-food processing units in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), India. The results of the present study reveal a positive relationship between the marketing competence and competitive performance. Further, for understanding the competitive position of the surveyed firms, each firm has been positioned in relation to the other firms on competitive performance and marketing competence index. The study has managerial and policy implications for the strategic growth and development of the agro-food processing industry in J&K.

Studying role of marketing competence in the firm level competitiveness

Based on the composite score index methodology, the study measures the role of the marketing competence in the competitive performance of a firm. It describes the competitive performance and marketing competence for the small and medium enterprises. The study inquires into the association and effect of the marketing competence on the competitive performance of the agro-food processing units in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), India. The results of the present study reveal a positive relationship between the marketing competence and competitive performance. Further, for understanding the competitive position of the surveyed firms, each firm has been positioned in relation to the other firms on competitive performance and marketing competence index. The study has managerial and policy implications for the strategic growth and development of the agro-food processing industry in J&K.