The recent literature suggests a potential tension between market orientation and entrepreneurial proclivity in achieving superior business performance. This is unsettling for marketers, because it could mean that being market oriented is detrimental to a firm that is also trying to be entrepreneurial and successful. To examine this unnerving potential, the authors investigate structural influences (both direct and indirect) of entrepreneurial proclivity and market orientation on business performance. The results indicate that entrepreneurial proclivity has not only a positive and direct relationship on market orientation but also an indirect and positive effect on market orientation through the reduction of departmentalization. The results also suggest that entrepreneurial proclivity's performance influence is positive when mediated by market orientation but negative or nonsignificant when not mediated by market orientation. The authors also provide a discussion and future research implications.

The authors build a model of global brand attitude and purchase likelihood with a nomological net comprised of constructs derived from three theoretical streams in consumer behavior: consumer culture theory, signaling theory, and the associative network memory model. By integrating these diverse theories, the authors provide a conceptual framework, explaining the processes leading to consumers' attitudes toward and likelihood of purchasing global brands. Global brand authenticity, cultural capital, and perceived brand globalness are constructs based mainly on consumer culture theory, and global brand credibility is borrowed from signaling theory. Global brand quality, social responsibility, prestige, and relative price are included as brand associations, deriving mainly from the associative network memory model. These constructs have direct and indirect effects on global brand attitude and global brand purchase likelihood, reflecting the three-dimensional belief-attitude-behavior model in consumer behavior. The authors also introduce self-construal and cosmopolitanism as two pertinent moderators of some of the model paths.

Global brands are faced with the challenge of conveying concepts that not only are consistent across borders but also resonate with consumers of different cultures. Building on prior research indicating that abstract brand concepts induce more favorable consumer responses than functional attributes, the authors introduce a generalizable and robust structure of abstract brand concepts as representations of human values. Using three empirical studies conducted with respondents from eight countries, they demonstrate that this proposed structure is particularly useful for predicting (1) brand meanings that are compatible (vs. incompatible) with each other and, consequently, more (less) favorably accepted by consumers when added to an already established brand concept; (2) brand concepts that are more likely to resonate with consumers with differing cultural orientations; and (3) consumers' responses to attempts to imbue an established brand concept with new, (in)compatible abstract meanings as a function of their own cultural orientations.

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Innovative firms are generally more successful in both industrial and consumer markets. However, factors that make firms innovative are often elusive and complex. Looks at how strategic posture, organization structure, environmental hostility and uncertainty interact and how each factor contributes to an explanation of firm innovativeness. Suggests that strategic posture is a major factor determining the innovativeness of firms while organization structure mediates the effects of strategic posture, uncertainty, and hostility. Hence, for managers striving to make their firms more innovative, a prerequisite is to adopt a proactive strategic posture which gradually leads to a flexible organizations structure ‐ the two factors that have a direct effect in making firms more innovative.

Small and medium size enterprises in both business to business and consumer markets are particularly vulnerable to economic downturns. Concentrating on the Greek economic crisis, one of the toughest and most prolonged on a global scale, the present research sheds light on both anthropocentric and business-centric factors that helped SMEs survive, therefore, providing a valuable survival manual. Per findings of two studies performed under the given economically intense conditions, it is evidenced that the right answer to survival rests upon: (a) the entrepreneurs' personality traits and skills that affect the market and entrepreneurial orientations of SMEs, (b) the adoption of such orientations that keep impacting the firms' performance, and finally (c) the implementation of strategy relevant to reaching higher quality standards for products and services, combined with tactics relevant to downsizing, marketing actions, extroversion, and financial management.

The literature reflects remarkably little effort to develop a framework for understanding market learning at subsidiaries of multinational corporations. This article develops a model that incorporates exploratory and exploitative learning as two capabilities that need to be effectively nurtured and managed in subsidiaries. The authors integrate the organizational-learning and resource-based view of the firm; present field interviews with managers; and propose that resources derived from the parent, the subsidiary, and the parent–subsidiary relationships are related to the creation of new knowledge and the use of existing knowledge in subsidiaries. The authors develop research propositions that capture the differential impacts of each learning capability on subsidiary performance. It is suggested that the turbulence of subsidiary markets moderates the strength of the relationships between market-learning capabilities and performance.

Empirical studies investigating the relationship between marketing standardization and performance have generated mixed results. This study investigates the causal ordering between marketing strategy and marketing structure as determinants of subsidiary performance. The authors propose a multiple contingencies approach that tests both the contingency (e.g., Chandler 1962 ) and the process (e.g., Bower 1970 ) frameworks in the subsidiary context. Findings based on a two-phase longitudinal study provide initial support for the framework that suggests that marketing structure follows marketing strategy. In response to increased target market similarity, companies in the study opted for more standardized marketing strategies. Furthermore, centralization of structure mediated the relationship between marketing strategy and subsidiary performance. The performance impact of centralization, however, was cross-lagged and negative. Results suggest adapting marketing strategies to local markets as a way of enhancing performance.