Increasingly, organizations are pushed to adopt customer value strategies in order to grow profits and ensure long-term survival. Yet little is known about the dynamic nature of how customers perceive value from suppliers. The authors present findings from a grounded theory study conducted in a business-to-business context that sheds light on the nature of customers' desired value change and related contextual conditions. The authors discover that the phenomenon of customers' desired value change typically occurs in an emotional context, as managers try to cope with feelings of tension. The phenomenon extends well past the change itself into strategies customers use to motivate suppliers to meet their changed needs. Customers' value change provides a reason for customers to seek, maintain, or move away from relationships with suppliers.

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Although consumer consumption occurs globally, the value that consumers perceive from buying and using a product or service likely differs across cultures. We show that consumer perceptions of product/service value are determined not only by intrinsic dispositions, but also by internalized cultural values and norms, and external contextual factors. This article conceptually examines how and where culture influences consumer value. Following a review of the literature on consumer value and culture, we offer an integrative model that conceptualizes culture as a metaphorical lens influencing the meaning and relative importance of the content and structure of a consumer’s means-end value hierarchy. We discuss the implications for a future research program.

A framework is proposed to examine the process of knowledge development in marketing and macromarketing. To this end, various approaches for developing new knowledge are specified and discussed: theory applications, effects applications, and replication/extensions. This framework is used to highlight differences between micro- and macromarketing. A content analysis of North American journal articles published over the past 10 years demonstrates where the knowledge development focus has been in recent years and facilitates recommendations to guide future knowledge development.