This paper examines the nature of SME (Small to Medium Sized Enterprise) international marketing strategies, using a framework developed by Merrilees and Tiessen (1999). This framework highlights two main types of marketing strategies: relationship‐driven and sales‐driven. The original study...

Owner‐managers of small businesses invariably cite word of mouth recommendations as the principal way in which they attract new customers. Marketing theory is under‐developed in this field with little empirical evidence about the recommending behaviour of small business customers and...

Purpose – A paucity of literature considers a growing trend within the retail space whereby franchise companies and their franchisees market and sell products and services across multiple channels, including company‐owned retail stores. This case study aims to explore the processes used to...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how various sales personas interacted and played a role in the early growth of Ewing Kauffman’s Marion Laboratories in the 1950s. Design/methodology/approach The approach taken is a variation of “retrodiagnosis” – wherein modern psychographic...

Purpose – Prior research suggests that insufficient networking capability of a firm (i.e. the capability to establish, maintain, and leverage ties, contacts and connections) poses a potential barrier to its growth, the causal logic of networking capability and firm performance has not been...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of relationship marketing (RM) in a new technology-based firm (NTBF) and to illustrate how social embeddednesss benefits can be achieved by engaging in RM in a rural resource-constrained bilingual context. Design/methodology/approach...

This study focuses on the potential difficulties in implementing a relationship marketing strategy within a retail context. We suggest that a number of attributes characterise the nature of the service and market structure are influential in an organisation’s ability to implement relationship...

As organizations are striving to increase customer loyalty through relationship marketing programs, more firms are implementing customer penalty policies that impose fees or charges (e.g. airline reticketing fees) on customers that fail to comply with purchase agreements. While penalties are...

Service relationships are often complex, involving multi‐level relationships. Customers can have relationships with the firm and interpersonal relationships with service personnel that vary in terms of strength and intensity. A study was designed to examine the relationship between perceived...

The debate over how services should be advertised and communicated has raged on for decades. Much of the early work on services emphasized the use of tangible cues and was primarily issue and/or profession specific. There are no real communication guidelines that encompass all service marketers....