Today's business customers expect sellers not only to respond effectively to their expressed needs but also to understand their business sufficiently well to proactively address their latent and future needs. Yet, research shows that many firms underestimate, misunderstand, or overlook these customer expectations. To draw clarity to this discrepancy, this study explores the notion of proactive customer orientation and examines the degree to which this capability offers an opportunity for competitive advantage. While research in recent years has explored the role of proactive customer orientation in new product performance, empirical investigation in this stream of market orientation literature is significantly underdeveloped. We assess the impact of the proactive customer orientation construct on value creation by taking a novel approach that examines the proactive customer orientation → value → satisfaction → loyalty chain using data from 800 business customers in India, Singapore, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We find that, relative to other firm capabilities, proactive customer orientation is the most consistent driver of customer value across our multinational data set. Results also show robust effects for the interaction of proactive and responsive customer orientation to create superior value. Several moderating conditions further frame the impact of this capability: intense levels of customer value change, a global relationship scope, and a transnational relationship structure. Overall, findings significantly advance the understanding of the proactive dimension within market orientation and provide marketers with insights for voice of the customer processes.

In global business‐to‐business markets, shared resources between buyers and suppliers often result in competitive advantages and enhanced relationships between firms. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of research regarding learning capabilities between business partners in a cross‐border setting. This study takes the approach to integrate customer value literature into interorganizational learning theory and adopts the often‐neglected theoretical perspective of transaction value by contextualizing inter‐firm collaboration in terms of relationship learning and value co‐creation viewed by both the buyers and sellers in one single study. Through the development of a conceptual framework that examines how global environmental and inter‐organizational conditions influence learning capabilities, the study investigates how relationship learning influences relationship value for both supplying and buying firms. Using a survey of 126 cross‐border dyads in the industrial chemical, packaging, consumer durable, and apparel industries, the authors show how relationship learning is valued by both buyers and suppliers, and how it is critical when viewing the “supplier as a customer.” The results indicate the strategic nature of relationship learning in maintaining cross‐border business‐to‐business relationships. Simultaneously, the findings provide evidence that cultural distance is not a significant influence on the firm's propensity to share knowledge with its global partners. It helps advance our understanding of the significance of cultural‐pollination in the era of globalization.

Firms make investments in human capital, i.e., people, in order to improve their market competitiveness (Elsdon 1999). The skills and knowledge of individual employees can be leveraged to increase the ability to efficiently and/or effectively produce market offerings and enhance firm performance (Hunt 2000). The "people dimension" is especially critical to achieving most supply chain objectives (van Hoek, Chatham, and Wilding 2002). The challenge is to hire the best employees.The current research was undertaken to address the crucial issue of developing human capital, specifically developing valuable logistics managers. What can firms do to help build competencies in the form of logistics manager human capital? What should they be looking for? Specifically, how do education, experience, and job skills influence manager performance? And, subsequently, how does logistics manager performance impact the perceived worth of an employee, i.e., do employers place more value on managers with higher performance? In the following sections, relevant background literature is reviewed and the research project and results are detailed.

The search for strategic fit has become a core concept in normative models of strategy formation. The issue of strategic fit is becoming increasingly important in global supply chain relationships as managers and academics examine the effectiveness of culturally founded relational governance strategies across multiple supply chain relationships. This study empirically examines the performance implications of strategic fit of relational norm governance strategies in global supply chain relationships between US firms and their primary Japanese and US partners. The performance implications of fitting relational norm governance strategies (i.e., information exchange, flexibility and solidarity) across culturally diverse partners are tested. Results indicate that firm performance is enhanced when the relational norms of information exchange and solidarity are fit to culturally founded norm expectations across culturally diverse relationships simultaneously. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. Journal of International Business Studies (2005) 36, 254–269. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400131