Effective management of suppliers is one of the ways manufacturing companies can improve their performance. Typically, it has been argued in the literature that close relationships with suppliers should be developed, in contrast to the traditional price-driven transactional relationships....

Supplier partnerships can be the key in enhancing the performance of manufacturing companies. Consequently, partnership has been strongly recommended by academics and practitioners alike. Surprisingly, the concept of partnership is only poorly understood. Many authors have identified the...

Streamlining the supplier base is a common approach in many US and UK manufacturing companies. However, is this approach being adopted in Germany as fast as it has in the UK? This paper describes research that answers this question and investigates how German companies are managing contacts with...

A key issue for manufacturers is supplier management, i.e. organising the optimal flow of high quality, value-for-money materials or components from appropriate innovative suppliers. Many companies now recognise the central role that supplier management plays in achieving long-term competitive...

In view of the progressive globalization of markets, multinational enterprises (MNEs) are focusing on the need to harmonize their internal brand identities in the interest of long-term strength and coherency. Drawing from organization studies, brand theorists have responded to these developments...

The cultural logic of consumer resistance is our subject. The object of inquiry is a virtual community of car enthusiasts and a series of online discussions of bricolage in the empirical setting of car modification. We open an analytical window on a variety of everyday practices that...

The central idea of the workshop was to facilitate a debate on interpretive research from a critical point of view. Interpretive research concentrates on socio-cultural, experiential, symbolic and ideological aspects of consumption and generates different, highly fragmented approaches presenting...

A traditional industry confronting market change is examined here, for the wine industry is important to the economy of Cyprus. Cyprus had to reinvent itself as a wine producer after receiving a double blow: losing its main product, sherry, as a result of nomenclature protection by the European...

This article makes an initial exploration of whether and to what extent different national values may affect the development of export markets through business to business relationships between entrepreneurs in different countries. It does this by specifically examining the trust between people...

Although web pages and sites consist of a multitude of individual cues, this paper argues that marketers need a gestalt approach to understand how consumers perceive online shopping environments. Following a systematic review of the literature on categorizations of online shopping environments,...