Both changing competitive intensity and the pharmaceutical industry have become important research topics in economics and marketing. While the economics literature has started to consider the fortunes of generic drug manufacturers, the marketing literature has remained focused on how brand name drug manufacturers should respond to entry and competition from other brand name drugs and from generics. No paper has looked at the marketing actions and their effectiveness for both brand name and generic drug manufacturers. Moreover, research has considered competition and marketing spending within one chemical compound or for a therapeutic class as a whole, instead of distinguishing within-compound from across-compound competition, i.e. among drugs targeting the same therapeutic class with objectively different compounds. This is particularly important for marketing spending allocation because many large brand name and generic drug manufacturers produce several compounds for the same therapeutic class, and thus face a choice of entry strategies and marketing allocation across compounds. Our study uses a Dynamic Linear Model to investigate price response and marketing effectiveness of brand name and generic drug manufacturers. We analyze within-compound and across-compound behavior by incorporating 6 major compound-submarkets of the total antidepressant market.
It is axiomatic that strategic flexibility is a key success factor in generating competitive advantage. Despite this maxim, often peddled in the normative literature, empirical studies have produced inconsistent results for the strength and direction of this relationship. We synthesize these results and provide empirical support for a general, moderate, and positive effect of strategic flexibility on firm performance. Moreover, we find that strategic flexibility indirectly affects financial performance through its positive effects on innovation capability and superior market position, and that strategic flexibility has a negative direct effect on financial performance. Importantly, the meta-analytic evidence also indicates that the strategic flexibility-performance relationship depends on measurement methods, the research context, and certain environmental characteristics. Exploratory analyses regarding the antecedents of strategic flexibility reveal many meaningful differences to the predominant expectations in prior research. Overall, our results provide the necessary nuance to discerning the specific antecedent and consequential effects of strategic flexibility, thereby providing valuable implications for managers, and outlining a research agenda for future inquiries.
Interactive digital media facilitate access to rich user-generated content. The extent to which firms are able to leverage inherent consumer insights for innovation, however, depends on their absorptive capacity to identify, assimilate, and exploit this external information. Using a case study approach, we explain how firms can better leverage user-generated content for innovation. We collected information from 30 informants at two points in time and from various additional sources. Our findings highlight differences in absorption from solicited and unsolicited user-generated content and, thereby, expand extant theories on organizational learning. Besides, the in-depth case analyses shed light on the complex interrelationships between a firm’s organizational structure and its absorptive capacity. To illustrate the rich implications of our findings, we present a refined conceptual framework and derive key managerial levers.
Field evidence shows that only a minority of consumers deliberately configure unique products. We propose that variation in option selection is driven by consumers' narcissistic personalities. In a pilot study and three experiments, we demonstrate that narcissistic tendencies have a significant effect on the uniqueness of the self-customized product.
It is axiomatic that strategic flexibility (SF) is a key success factor in generating competitive advantage. Despite this maxim, often peddled in the normative literature, empirical studies have produced inconsistent results for the strength and direction of this relationship. We synthesize these results and provide empirical support for a general, moderate, and positive effect of SF on performance. Moreover, we find that SF indirectly affects financial performance through its positive effects on innovation capability and superior market position, and that SF has a negative direct effect on financial performance. Importantly, the meta-analytic evidence also indicates that the SF-performance relationship depends on measurement methods, the research context, and certain environmental characteristics. Overall, our results provide the necessary nuance to discerning the consequential effects of SF.
Well-formulated strategies only result in superior returns for an organization when they are implemented successfully. We examine the dissipative processes underlying the role of relationship quality (leader-member exchange and team-member exchange) through to the individual level of the strategy implementation process. We propose a contingent model based on social learning theory using data generated from a retail bank. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we find that social exchange relationships embedded in a work team setting influence individual employee's strategy implementation support. Namely, the higher an employee's leader-member exchange, the stronger is the positive relationship between supervisor modeling behavior and team member strategy support. Additionally, the higher an employee's team-member exchange, the stronger the positive relationship between work team strategy support and individual strategy support.
This study investigates antecedents of a salesperson's cross-functional orientation and its effect on cross-selling success. Results indicate a strong effect of cross-functional orientation on cross-selling success. Moreover, results show a strong influence of salesperson specific variables on cross-functional orientation and cross-selling success.
