Blue ocean strategy seeks to turn strategic management on its head by replacing ‘competitive advantage’ with ‘value innovation’ as the primary goal where firms must create consumer demand and exploit untapped markets. Empirical analysis has been focused on case study evidence and so...

Depending on the shopping context, consumers may develop different mental representations of complex shopping trip decision problems to help them interpret the decision situation that they face and evaluate alternative courses of action. To investigate these mental representations and how they...

Recently, retailers have begun considering which brands they can delist without reducing customer satisfaction, losing category sales, or increasing store switching behavior. Although several studies have considered assortment reductions, none has explicitly investigated the impact of total...

In most western countries, grocery retailers are faced with maturing domestic markets with a year-to-year sales growth close to zero. Moreover, most Western-European markets are characterized by a high concentration rate, with a combined market share of the top five players easily exceeding 70%....

We develop two models to test hypotheses on the specific impact of brand and category characteristics on consumer stock-out responses. Our empirical results show that both characteristics are important determinants. Consumers are more product loyal in hedonic product groups than in utilitarian...

Already for a long time retailers take back products. In this paper we explore the factors contributing to the decision of combining vs. separating inbound and outbound flows during the return handling process. We do so through a comparative analysis of the operations in nine retailer...

In this contribution we develop a theoretical framework derived from the national system of innovation literature and the subsequent criticisms voiced by regional scientists and industry/technology experts who emphasize the importance of the intermediate subnational and sectoral levels to...

In this essay, we challenge the present dominant emphasis in the Dutch Innovation Debate on the creation of technological innovations, the focus on a few core technologies, and the allocation of more financial resources. We argue that managerial capabilities and organizing principles for...

Although informal networks are often emphasized as facilitating knowledge transfer, we use network data obtained from a multi-unit high-tech firm to show that the formal network also significantly contributes to inter-unit knowledge transfer. Individuals centrally placed in a network are, in...

A central feature of innovation systems is that innovation arises from interaction between organizational units. This requires 'cognitive distance' that is sufficiently large to yield novelty of combinations, but not too large for mutual understanding. Two problems and solutions in the transfer...