ISSN:1045-3172    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8551.1994.tb00124.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

SUMMARYTheoretical and practical studies of ‘consumer innovativeness’ are currently beset by two problems. First is the proliferation of terms referring to ‘innovators’, ‘use‐innovators’, ‘innovative personality traits’ and so on which are both confusing and conceptually inexact. Second is the failure to account for the mass of weak evidence on which the notion of an innovation‐prone personality is based. The paper proposes a more coherent set of terms to designate the behavioural and psychological dimensions of innovative consumer behaviour, after which five empirical studies are presented of the cognitive style/personality profiles related to new brand/product purchasing and the use of computers for novel purposes. Contrary to the literature on adoption and diffusion, while many of the consumers with a propensity for these behaviours showed the cognitive/ personality styles widely attributed to ‘consumer innovators’, a substantial proportion, sometimes a majority, had the obverse profile. In terms of Kirton's adaption‐innovation theory, so‐called consumer innovators might exhibit either adaptive or innovative cognitive styles. Personal involvement with the product field also emerged as a powerful explicator of ‘innovative’ consumer behaviour. Hence purchasers of the highest level of food innovations were adaptors who were also highly involved in the product field; and while the heaviest users of software applications were those who were highly involved, both adaptors and innovators figured strongly among them. The findings suggest a more complicated psychographic composition of consumer innovators than is generally appreciated in managerial prescriptions for new product development and marketing, and in theoretical explanations of consumer behaviour which rely on conceptual abstractions such as ‘inn

ISSN:1045-3172    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8551.1994.tb00125.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

SUMMARYThe symbolic meaning of brands of trainers is explored using a free‐response stimulus‐bound methodology. Gender differences in the meaning of brands are related to thresholds of elaborative processing of advertising messages. Age differences are related to transformational aspects of advertising for fashion products. The implications for meaning research and strategic brand concept‐image management are disc

ISSN:1045-3172    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8551.1994.tb00126.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

SUMMARYThe idea that successful companies should pursue only one strategy and avoid being ‘stuck in the middle’ between several strategies – originally articulated by Michael Porter – has become an important tenet of corporate strategic thinking. This paper attempts to distinguish and appraise several different interpretations of the advice.It is sometimes interpreted as advice about market positioning in a narrow sense; it is sometimes presented as prescribing broad strategic clarity; and it is sometimes viewed more descriptively as a scheme for classifying firms by strategic outcomes.When interpreted narrowly as referring to the appeal of a product to its target buyers, the proposition that firms should not be ‘stuck in the middle’ should not be taken to imply that companies must be down‐market or up‐market, but nothing in‐between. Such a view is belied by the evident success of companies such as Sainsbury's, which earn substantial economic rents in a mid‐market position.Porter can be interpreted more broadly as suggesting that firms need strategic clarity and that they will do better to pursue one or other of cost or quality objectives than to seek a mix of the two. PIMS data and other evidence shows, however, that intermediate positions are indeed profitable and are successfully exploited by many firms.We conclude that ‘don't be stuck in the middle’ is best employed as a classification scheme of strategic outcomes – it says that firms which fail in both cost and quality

ISSN:1045-3172    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8551.1994.tb00066.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

SUMMARYIt has been assumed that strategic decision making and implementation are both achieved through managers' sharing homogeneous cognitions of competition (e.g. Porac and Thomas, 1990). This paper tested the assumption of homogeneity of cognitions of competition, using a sample of 24 managers from the off‐shore pumps industry. A variety of cognitive mapping techniques were used and maps were compared using a self‐rating methodology. The results indicated that managers' mental models of competition are diverse, rather than homogeneous, but that this diversity increases as company boundaries are crossed and as functional boundaries are crossed. Therefore, it is concluded that future cognitive studies of competitive industry structures should assume diversity of cognitions rather than homogeneity. Specific propositions with regard to such research are drawn from the findi

ISSN:1045-3172    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8551.1994.tb00127.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

SUMMARYThe majority of the literature on corporate performance in SMEs has indicated that the absence of formal strategic planning (or inadequacies in its process) can be directly linked with failure, while its presence can be linked to success (Bracker and Pearson, 1986; Stoner, 1983). However, other empirical evidence fails to find a relationship (Robinson and Pearce, 1983). These differences are due to methodological and theoretical problems facing research in this domain. This paper attempts to improve on both issues. The hypothesis that ‘formal planning is not associated with better‐than‐average performance’ is tested on a sample of SMEs, controlled by sector, using a 5‐year operating period. Five measures of financial performance are utilized, including both the arithmetic and geometric measurements of central tendency as appropriate. Moreover, perceptions of CEOs, rather than the aggregation of scale‐based measurements of organizational variables, are used to prescribe the measure of formality used in t

ISSN:1045-3172    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8551.1994.tb00128.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

SUMMARYTo date no study has presented data which systematically considers the detailed activity of UK firms in joint venture formation over a significant period of time. This paper attempts to rectify this position by providing key statistics on the formation of joint ventures between UK firms and partner firms in Western Europe, the USA and Japan over the 1980s. The study examines several dimensions of activity: Trends in UK joint ventures over time, geographic distribution, industry characteristics, joint venture purpose, number of partners, contractual form and the equity share of UK partners.

ISSN:1045-3172    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8551.1994.tb00067.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

SUMMARYThis paper examines some of the complexities involved in crafting evaluation research. In particular, it focuses upon the major methodological issues which confront researchers seeking to evaluate area‐based economic initiatives. It starts by examining the implications for the design of evaluation research of the political context within which it takes place and the multiplicity of stakeholders who have an interest in its findings. It then examines a number of key methodological issues which need to be addressed by evaluators in order to derive reliable assessments of the success of programmes and discusses the ways in which evaluators can communicate findings in order to secure greater influence both upon the academic and the policy‐making communities. We conclude that the need to reconcile applied policy research with the development of theories and concepts has important implications for the conduct and resourcing of evaluations undertaken by management research

ISSN:1045-3172    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8551.1994.tb00129.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

SUMMARYThis paper reports the results of a study into the performance and management practices of 18 autocomponents plants, nine of which were located in the UK and nine in Japan. The study compared the performance of these plants and used quantitative measures to test the use of lean production techniques among the high performers. Five plants displayed high performance on measures of both productivity and quality. All of these were located in Japan. Several measures of management practice provided some support for the lean production model, particularly in the area of process discipline and control; measures of human resource management policy and work organization proved less significant. Contextual factors pointed to the conditions necessary to support lean production; higher performing plants had more stable demand and lower absenteeism.

ISSN:1045-3172    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8551.1994.tb00130.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

SUMMARYShare repurchase announcements are known to be associated with significant positive abnormal stock returns. Past studies have argued that the main explanation of this value creation is that share repurchases signal new (and favourable) information about the repurchasing firms' future cash flows. This paper examines this hypothesis and provides evidence on the nature of the information revealed by share repurchases. Using a sample of 41 repurchase announcements from the USA, we show that the new information signalled to the stock market through share repurchasing is not only about changes in thelevelof future cash flows but also about changes in theriskinessof these cash flows.

ISSN:1045-3172    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8551.1994.tb00131.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY