Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Resources

PurposeDrawing on the resource-based view of the firm, this article explores the influences of market intelligence on the development of small business marketing capabilities, with reference to specialized marketing capabilities, architectural marketing capabilities and dynamic capabilities.Design/methodology/approachThe conceptual framework and propositions present and interpret the resource–capability complementarity between market intelligence and small business marketing capabilities and outline the relationship between individual capability sets.FindingsMarket intelligence is shown to be crucial in the development of small business marketing capabilities and in the implementation of more formalized marketing strategies that allow small businesses to create value for customers and improve their performance. However, the level to which market intelligence is utilized and marketing capabilities are developed is found to be considerably influenced by the small business owner-manager...

Purpose The role of marketing as a business function is rapidly changing in China. Consequently, their views on marketing orientation – whether it is accepted, rejected, modified or reframed – have been seriously impacted. This paper aims to report on the results of a survey among Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) managers and their perceptions of the market-orientation philosophy. In particular, emphasis was placed on three dimensions of market orientation: intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination and responsiveness. The effect of market orientation on business performance was also examined. Design/methodology/approach The authors collected data from 214 managers from SMEs. These businesses were located in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The commonly used market orientation (MARKOR) measure was used to test the hypotheses. Findings Consistent with the extant literature, the findings provided empirical support for the three dimensions...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to address the recent calls for an in-depth investigation of the entrepreneurial marketing () practices of small businesses and a further conceptual development of under market uncertainty. Drawing on the mix (i.e. person, purpose, practices and process), the authors aim to conceptualise under market uncertainty through principles of effectual networking. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted an in-depth case study of an owner-manager who networks with many different stakeholders to create new markets for wool in the Norwegian wool industry. Findings Situated within the creative and craft-based industries, the study demonstrates that market uncertainty can be reduced through effectual networking to produce highly beneficial outcomes for small businesses. The findings give rise to a new model of the mix under uncertainty, emphasising the role of the owner-manager (i.e. person) and the purpose as the outset and...

The article is aimed at studying the market of on-line ad platforms in Ukraine, as well as the opportunities that it provides to small businesses in the sphere of product promotion and sales. When analyzing and generalizing the scientific works of scholars, it was found that they do not consider the on-line ad platforms as an instrument that can give a new impetus in the commercial activities of small businesses and private entrepreneurs. Given the protracted economic crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the use and research of these platforms appears to be all the more topical issue. The common characteristics of the on-line ad sites as categories are allocated, the related marketplaces are examined. The presented in Ukraine electronic bulletin boards, their features, differences, strengths and weaknesses are researched. Mechanisms for using these platforms in commercial activities of enterprises are proposed. A comparison of on-line ads with the creation of an own website and...

Competition on the market means that the accounting firms that wish to maintain their position on the market, must seek ways to convince their customers that the services they offer are competitive to those offered by their competitors. An accounting firm must convince the company that it will meet all its needs and it will quarantee proper quality. This article aims to identify the factors determining the quality of services provided by accounting firms. The first part of the study contains a review of the literature on service quality and satisfaction as an important factors of its development. The second part contains the results of an anonymous survey conducted among the companies that benefit from accounting outsourcing. The five-level Likert scale was used in the questionnaire. The survey indicated that the respective factors affect the quality and satisfaction of accounting services provided by accounting firms to a different extent.

Competition among firms yields many benefits but can also encourage firms to engage in corrupt or unethical activities. We argue that competition can lead organizations to provide services that customers demand but that violate government regulations, especially when price competition is restricted. Using 28 million vehicle emissions tests from more than 11,000 facilities, we show that increased competition is associated with greater inspection leniency, a service quality attribute that customers value but is illegal and socially costly. Firms with more competitors pass customer vehicles at higher rates and are more likely to lose customers whom they fail, suggesting that competition intensifies pressure on facilities to provide illegal leniency. We also show that, at least in markets in which pricing is restricted, firms use corrupt and unethical practices as an entry strategy. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.

Customer satisfaction is a necessity to be efficient and competitive at the current time, because the reputation of organizations depends on it to a large extent. The present work is carried out with the purpose of evaluating the satisfaction of customers in service companies. In a first stage, the service cycle and moments of truth are determined in each of the companies, which allows managing the client's contact with the organization; subsequently, a survey is applied to a randomly selected sample, resulting in 39% of customer dissatisfaction, so these companies must implement improvement actions immediately.

Selling strategy that enables market segmentation and operational flexibility.•Key characteristic is that details are decided by the seller after the sale.•Independently researched in strategic operations management, empirics, and operations management.•Integrated, exhaustive survey of literature with introduction to each community.•Tabular overview and detailed description of all papers. Today's technology facilitates selling strategies that were unthinkable only a few years ago. One increasingly popular strategy uses incompletely specified products (ICSPs). The seller retains the right to specify some details of the product or service after the sale. The selling strategies’ main advantages are an additional dimension for market segmentation and operational flexibility due to supply-side substitution possibilities. Since the strategy became popular with Priceline and Hotwire in the travel industry about two decades ago, it has increasingly been adopted by...

A report-writing assignment for students is used to develop good business writing skills in preparing business reports and various types of business correspondence. About four weeks are spent teaching the students techniques and principles involving planning, composing and revising business letters, and then giving them three letter writing assignments. In each of the three assignments the letters are graded and mailed. The three letter assignments form the basis for a report-writing assignment where the students analyze the effectiveness of the letters written.

This paper is concerned with the influence of the internet on communication in general, and especially on business communication. The use of the internet has brought about many changes to the world, particularly on how contemporary business is being operated. Due to the great technological progress, product development has become faster and better and business process are more systematized. The introduction of the internet to several industries has paved the way for greater progress in the future. In the music industry, for instance, the use of the internet has been an important marketing aspect, specifically in business communication.

The cost budget and resources of a business are limited. In order to be competitive sustainably in the market, it is necessary for a businesses to discover the improvement priorities of their product/service features effectively and allocate their resources appropriately for higher customer satisfaction. Online customer review mining has been attracting increasing attention for businesses to discover priorities of product/service improvement from online customer reviews. Despite some prior related studies, their methods have several limitations, such as simply using the frequencies of mentioned product features in reviews as an indicator of importance; neglecting the market competition; and focusing only on the static importance and performance of the target product/service features. To address those limitations, this study proposes a novel approach to discovering a product/service's improvement priorities through dynamic importance-performance analysis of online customer reviews....

Quality of products / services is key to organizational success. For this quality to be appreciated by customers, the organization must implement a number of quality strategies. These include the organization staff’ development strategy. The staff has an important role in achieving product and services quality, but also in improving the quality of all organization’s activities. This paper presents a plan for staff training to SC REDPLAST S.R.L.Braşov as a strategy within the quality management system.

This article examines the impact of product, process and organisational innovations on two alternative dimensions of business performance: finance and operations. Two indicators capture financial performance: sales increase and production cost reduction. Operational firm performance is captured by two alternative indicators: productive capacity augmentation and quality improvement of product/service provided by the firm. Using a wide-ranging sample of Spanish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), our findings highlight the significant impact of innovation upon both these dimensions of business performance, although they differ regarding the type of innovation and the performance indicator considered. Furthermore, our results indicate that the relationship between innovation choices in SMEs and business performance should be analysed from a multi-dimensional approach. These findings reveal significant implications for innovation policies and strategies for SMEs. ...

In the context of an economy placed on ”fast mode”, how a company can stay in line with an accelerated trend of entrepreneurial innovation and change and how a company can approach the customers’ management? In order to facilitate the companies’ activity on the market and preserve customer relationship, recent technological innovations created management systems based on three key activities: gathering customer information, information dissemination in the organization and information use for product and service innovation and improvement. The present paper tries to provide an answer to the above mentioned questions using an overview on current approaches in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) by introducing the concept of CRM, where it all started, how it currently works and which are its future trends.

Efficient IT service management is a current area of concern and the focus of on-going improvement for both business and science. The high dynamics of the software market, globalisation and delivery of high quality IT services are challenges that small and medium-sized enterprises must face. The drive towards innovation in the SME sector cannot concentrate only on the product but also on the process and organization. ITSM frameworks and good industry practices are an effective tool to help support innovation in providing IT services. This article aims to identify barriers to and benefits of ITSM implementation in SMEs of the Polish ICT sector and interpret the obtained results in the context of creating innovation. The article present the results of primary data collection among 345 small and medium-sized enterprises of the ICT sector in Poland.

The main aim of this research focused on a set of concerns regarding the role of SME senior manager in planning/development of initiatives directed towards quality continuous improvement. These concerns ended up in the research's main focus and got materialized throughout the following purposes: (i) to explore the relationship between senior managers' characteristics within SME, and firms' propensity to develop quality improvement programs' implementation; (ii) to compare leadership related initiatives in small firms to those from medium-sized ones. Attending to these purposes and other arguments and concerns highlighted throughout research focusing on both SME and quality management literature, the following hypotheses were formulated: (i) Senior managers with specific training in quality management themes play a role more preponderant in planning and performing quality improvement programs; (ii) Among SME, firms' dimension influences leadership related initiatives. For this purpose, a questionnaire based, on previous case studies and a deep literature review focused on quality management and SME management was mailed to 600 Portuguese SME randomly selected from the pan-European AMADEUS database. From the sample, around 16% of questionnaires were completed and returned. Results suggest that if some specific characteristics, like senior manager's nature, time running the business, or his participation or not in SME creation, doesn't seem to influence firms' propensity to quality improvement; some other characteristics may play a significant role. For example, factors like age or specific training on quality management may determine, or at least influence, somehow, senior manager's attitude and commitment towards quality improvement. Furthermore, attending to SME hierarchical structure characteristics, leadership issues assume high importance in quality improvement practices in such organizations. Moreover, results suggest that current leadership initiatives assume a higher preponderance in smaller firms.

Poor marketing is widely accepted as one of the key reasons to explain success and failure of small firms. There is less agreement, however, about whether these types of business should adopt a classic strategic management approach to marketing. Some writers are now proposing that an entrepreneurial marketing style is more appropriate in the smaller firm. Although this concept is gaining acceptance, there apparently exists no quantitative evidence to support the hypothesis that an entrepreneurial style will definitely enhance the overall performance of the small firm. Covin and Slevin (1988) have tested this hypothesis for large firms in the USA. Presents a project which aims to repeat their study in the UK SME sector and gain further understanding of the relationship between performance, style, structure and organizational capabilities. Demonstrates that a move towards being more entrepreneurial and adopting an organic management structure may assist overall performance. Reinforces...