Reverse logistics (RL) has strategic importance. However, little is known concerning what motivates firms to adopt RL systems. Drawing on stakeholder theory formulations, organizational slack, and the manager's strategic stance concept, this article develops a model that proposes external, internal, and individual factors that affect the implementation of RL programs. Our framework considers three major explicative variables: the attributes of the stakeholder (power, legitimacy and urgency), organizational slack for RL programs, and the manager's strategic posture. The study draws on a sample of 118 Spanish companies and uses a probit model to determine the influence of these factors on the probability of firms to implement RL systems. The study finds that customers, employees, and the government salience in terms of RL activities and manager's progressive posture have a significant influence on the final decision of implanting RL programs. Conversely, the study finds that shareholder salience negatively impacts the decision.

Previous studies have found that market orientation significantly predicts economic performance. The present study attempts to provide a necessarily partial model for how this impact takes place using innovation degree, innovation performance and customer loyalty as intermediate variables. The study targets the insurance industry in the European Union. The sample accounted for 22 percent of the companies and 17 percent of the insurance premiums in this market. The results suggest that the addition of these variables improves predictions of objective economic performance 52 percent over what is explained by market orientation alone. Furthermore, the study found that the effects of market orientation on economic performance are completely channeled (mediated) through these variables, particularly through innovation degree and innovation performance. Based on the results the paper provide guidelines for improving the market share, premium growth and profitability of European Union insurance firms. In a time characterized by increasingly rapid change in consumer preferences, even faster technological progress, and growing competitive rivalry, it becomes essential for companies to develop mechanisms within their organizations to generate market information, analyze it, and respond accordingly. The set of activities developed by companies permanently to monitor, analyze and respond to these market changes is referred to in the Marketing literature as "market orientation". Over the last decade there has been a growing interest in the construct of market orientation (Webster

This study develops a model that explains export sales volume by destination based on a company's export marketing strategy. A seemingly unrelated regression model (SURE) simultaneously estimates the explanatory value of the different elements of the marketing strategy, as well as company characteristics, such as experience, size and motivation to export, on entry decisions to six different regional markets made by exporting companies in a southern European country. The data were collected from a sample size of 2,264 exporting companies. Findings confirm the importance of exporting experience and proactiveness in determining high export sales volumes in every regional market except for those psychologically close. Nevertheless, different marketing strategies depending on the region lead to high export sales volumes. For example, low price strategies in the case of Latin America or differentiation strategies based on the augmented product in the case of the USA generate high export sales. Promotional expenditures are of higher importance for distant markets, but for closer markets channel development is the key. IntroductionExporting represents one of the most common entry modes to international markets. As a consequence, exporting and export behavior have been a primary area of interest in the international marketing field and the focus of extensive marketing literature (Aaby and Slater, 1989;Bilkey, 1978;Cavusgil and Nevin, 1981;Douglas and Craig, 1992;Leonidou, 1995Leonidou, , 1998Leonidou and Katsikeas, 1996). However, the majority of empirical studies in this area give little attention to the effect of export destination on export behavior and performance (Katsikeas, 1994). This study analyses export performance determinants in different regions using data from exporting companies in a Southern European country. Conducting this kind of research will help refine our understanding about how the strategy-performance relationship depends on the environmental context (Katsikeas et al., 2000). It will also allow us to assess the reliability and generalizability of past findings.

Purpose COVID-19 is expected to enhance hospitality robotization because frontline robots facilitate social distancing, lowering contagion risk. Investing in frontline robots emerges as a solution to recover customer trust and encourage demand. However, we ignore how customers perceive these initiatives and, therefore, their efficacy. Focusing on robot employment at hotels and on Generation Z customers, this study aims to analyze guests’ perceptions about robots’ COVID-19 prevention efficacy and their impact on booking intentions. Design/methodology/approach This study tests its hypotheses combining an experimental design methodology with partial least squares. Survey data from 711 Generation Z individuals in Spain were collected in 2 periods of time. Findings Generation Z customers consider that robots reduce contagion risk at hotels. Robot anthropomorphism increases perceived COVID-19 prevention efficacy, regardless of the context where the robots are used. Robots’ COVID-19 prevention efficacy provokes better attitudes and higher booking intentions. Research limitations/implications The sampling method used in this research impedes this study’s results generalization. Further research could replicate this study using random sampling methods to ensure representativeness, even for other generational cohorts. Practical implications Employing robots as a COVID-19 prevention measure can enhance demand, especially if robots are human-like. Hoteliers need to communicate that robots can reduce contagion risk, particularly in markets more affected by COVID-19. Robots must be employed in low social presence contexts. Governments could encourage robotization by financially supporting hotels and publicly acknowledging its benefits regarding COVID-19 prevention. Originality/value This study combines preventive health, robotics and hospitality literature to study robot implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on Generation Z guests – potential facilitators of robot diffusion.

Despite the increasing research importance of market orientation in the marketing literature, few comparative studies between the European Union and the USA have been conducted. This limits the understanding of marketing orientation strategy in global markets. Investigates the influence of competitive environments on the uses of market orientation in insurance firms in the EU and the USA and the effects of market orientation on innovations. Using Lambin's conceptualization of market orientation, our results indicate that, although EU and US insurance firms analyze and react to their environment differently, which in turn is reflected in a differential impact on their degree of innovation, this, however, does not translate into overall market orientation differences across markets, differential relations across markets between overall market orientation and innovation degree and innovation performance. Furthermore, there is a positive impact of overall market orientation on insurance firms' innovation degree and innovation performance in both the US and EU markets. The managerial implications of these findings seem clear: the magnitude and the effectiveness of the innovation activities of a firm can be enhanced through the adoption of market orientation principles. IntroductionThere is a growing interest in the concept of market orientation, as empirical evidence shows that companies with higher market orientation obtain better economic and commercial results. Researchers have extensively collected evidence of the positive effect of market orientation on business performance. We have attempted to summarize these empirical results in Table I. However, it is not yet clear why there is such effect and how it operates (Lambin, 1996). The most recent literature suggests that one of the keys to understanding this phenomenon lies in market orientation's positive effect on businesses' degree of innovation