Customers play an active role throughout the marketing process. This dissertation concerns itself with customer's co-creation of value for self (co-production) and for other customers (co-consumption) during service production and delivery. With the servuction system as its overarching...

The purpose of the research undertaken for this thesis was to examine management practices relating to new product development processes in small to medium-sized manufacturing firms (SMEs). The thesis topic has its origins in a European Community funded research project carried out during 1997-9...

This project began with the question: What keeps us from achieving sustainable happiness, happiness for ourselves and future generations?I have chosen to focus on the citizen/consumer conflict which occurs when our consumer choices are incongruous with our moral obligations to society. This...

Businesses today face intense international competition, a heightened pace of development and shortened product life cycles. As a result, many researchers recommend firms collaborate and partner with other firms to succeed. With over a decade of research examining alliances and inter-firm...

The study is based on a questionnaire survey of 117 Irish software firms. It finds no systematic relation between product lead time and acquisition of first external funds in new technology-based firms (NTBFs). Contrary to the stage model's predictions, these firms are just as likely to secure...

The key objective of Part I is to synthesize 23 years of innovation research findings from economic, strategy, and marketing literatures and extend the current theoretical knowledge base in these domains through meta-analysis. In general, empirical evidence of the nature of the relationship...

This research was initiated in the belief that new product development requires the integration of diverse knowledge located in different units or organizations. In recent decades, evolutionary scholars have emphasized the importance of coherent systems and regional scientists have highlighted...

The new product development (NPD) process has been long conceptualized as an intense information processing task, yet several questions about the role of information in shaping NPD decisions remain open. For instance, the persistent representation of NPD decisions as a single decision-maker...

Personas, fictional user profiles based on research data, have gained popularity in the design field over recent years. These profiles include names, personalities, behaviors, and goals that are representative of a unique group of individuals. This paper examines the creation and utilization of...

Operations strategies, whether prompted by competitive or regulatory forces, can greatly impact firm performance. While operations strategies cover a wide spectrum of issues - supply chain management, technology choice, capacity allocation, etc. - this dissertation focuses on two such issues,...