Gamification has become a popular technique in marketing. Many companies believe that gamification can potentially increase the engagement, awareness and loyalty of consumers with respect to the brand. However, there is current dearth of empirical evidence supporting these beliefs beyond the pervasive hype. In this study we investigated the relationships between gamification, brand engagement and brand equity among consumers (N = 824) of two online gamified brand communities. The results showed that achievement and social interaction -related gamification features were positively associated with all three forms of brand engagement (emotional, cognitive and social). Immersion -related gamification features were only positively associated with social brand engagement. Additionally, brand engagement was further positively associated with brand equity. The results imply that gamification can positively affect brand engagement and further increase brand equity, and that gamification appears to be an effective technique for brand management.

Due to the current shift towards solution provision in many industrial markets, buyers are under increasing pressure to develop sourcing strategies to procure custom solutions for their firm in order to achieve competitive advantage. The question arises as to how buyers can ensure they get the best solutions from their suppliers and whether social capital can be applied to improve solution provision processes and value creation. Existing empirical research, however, has paid only little attention to the antecedents of suppliers’ solution provision performance, i.e., their capability to diagnose buyer needs and to design and implement solutions to meet them. We tested how social capital dimensions (relational, cognitive, and structural) relate to solution provision. The study uses empirical data obtained from a survey of 475 suppliers representing both manufacturing and service industries. Partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM) and polynomial regression were used to analyze the data. The results demonstrate that the availability of social capital in a buyer-supplier relationship is a relevant antecedent to successful solution provision activities. However, the different dimensions of social capital are found to compensate for each other to some extent. Our study further demonstrates that solution provision is not a monolithic activity but can better be understood as a multi-phase process (diagnosis, solution design, and implementation). Different aspects of social capital may have a different impact depending on the phase of solution provision. The successful diagnosis of buyer needs mediates the effect of social capital on solution design and implementation. It is also found that production characteristics of a buyer and the type of a supplier solution affect the role of social capital in solution provision process.

This paper explains the institutional logics of academia, and of practitioners within industry and government, as well as the alignment and misalignment that occurs when these actors collaborate. This is achieved by building on the theories on alignment and misalignment and institutional logics, whilst conducting an explorative case study of a circular economy cluster from the Tampere Region of Finland. This paper offers three main contributions: First, convergence and divergence of institutional logics by industry, government, and academic actors can lead to alignment and misalignment at three levels: actor-type, relationship, and system levels. Second, partial alignment and misalignment are found to be in-between modes of alignment, which challenges the idea that alignment and misalignment are dichotomous. Instead, alignment and misalignment should be seen as the two ends of a continuum. Third, alignment and misalignment are dynamic by nature, because institutional logics change and modify during collaboration. For practice, this paper gives advice on how collaboration between academia and practitioners can be advanced to achieve alignment and avoid misalignment.

Earlier research has highlighted the dynamic nature of influencing in business networks, and shown that firms may vary considerably in their influence, defined as their potential to achieve changes in the activities, resources, or goals of other firms in the business network. There is, however, limited understanding of the specific means of influencing which may allow firms, over time, to increase their influence with other firms in the same network. Drawing on a longitudinal case study, we describe how a firm, through influencing others by the dynamic enactment of network management activities, gradually increased its influence with other firms in the business network. Based on our observations, we offer a processual model for influencing in business networks that links specific network management activities to conditions under which they are used.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to better understand the efficient use of remote monitoring systems (RMS) to create business value for industrial services in manufacturing firms. A business view to RMS is a key prerequisite for the successful application of the Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial services. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative multiple-case study was conducted in six engineering companies. The main source of data was semi-structured interviews with 16 managers. Findings: The findings highlight the role of RMS in enabling manufacturing firms to collect data from customers to complement their limited knowledge about their customers. The study demonstrates the business value of using RMS in industrial services and the necessity of capturing the business value through advanced IT technologies. Research limitations/implications: The qualitative research design and choice of six target companies limit the findings to business-to-business manufacturing firms. Further, the focus is on the manager’s viewpoint. The findings imply new business value through an efficient use of RMS to complement direct customer contact. Practical implications: The study draws attention to the skilled use of advanced RMS and information and communication technology as a prerequisite for the successful application of the IoT in manufacturing firms that provide services for complex solutions and customers dispersed globally. Originality/value: The research shows that using information collected through RMS is an important factor in creating business value in a manufacturing firm’s customer relationships. The study contributes by integrating RMS into the customer information collection process to increase the amount, validity and quality of data.

Initiation is still an unclear phase of B2B relationship development. Here, we build on existing theoretical knowledge derived from relationship development, project marketing and international business literature. We use this to analyze three cases of business relationship initiations between Norwegian and South Korean actors in the shipping industry. By piecing together theoretical and empirical insights, we develop a dynamic model of the relationship initiation process that highlights the role of initiation contributors in international project business. The developed model reveals that multiple entities- such as contacts, rituals and standards-serve as initiation contributors. These trigger or facilitate the focal dyadic relationship initiation, while also preparing future initiations in the focal context. Thus, our key contribution is to bring processual and contextual dimensions to business relationship initiation. Our research also suggests practical insights as to which actors and entities suppliers need to mobilize, in order to initiate new business relationships in international project business contexts.

This article presents a review of the current body of academic literature concerning gamification of production and logistics to understand the status quo and provide suggestions for future research. The findings indicate that the execution and control of production and logistic processes has been addressed most often in the current body of literature, which mostly consists of design research. Objectives and goals, points, achievements, multimedial feedback, metaphorical or fictional representations, and levels and progress are currently the most often employed affordances within this field. Research has focused in the given context on examining or considering motivation, enjoyment and flow, as the main psychological outcomes of gamification, while individual performance and efficiency are the most commonly examined or suggested behavioral and organizational impacts. Future studies should employ more rigorous designs within new subdomains of production and logistics and should firmly ground research designs and discussions in management theory and critical studies.

Key account management (KAM) has strengthened its relevance as a managerial process in business-to-business (B2B) markets. In many companies, the success of KAM initiatives often rely on individual-level achievement, that is, the performance of key account managers. Despite the relevance of research on individual-level KAM, these topics are largely neglected. This research addresses the problem by developing and testing a structural equation model of personality, motivation, and key account manager job performance. Our results show that two motivational constructs—learning orientation and performance orientation—play major roles in key account manager job performance. In addition, relationships between personality traits and motivational constructs are observed: Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability are found to have significant relationships to motivational constructs. Two of the personality traits, extraversion and conscientiousness are linked to both learning orientation and performance orientation. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications of our findings and finally provide future research directions.

Crowdsourcing has been attracting the attention of both academics and practitioners over recent years. The aim of this article is to contribute to the current body of knowledge on innovation in networked contexts by systematically analyzing various crowdsourcing configurations available to industrial firms. We first develop a categorization of crowdsourcing in industrial firms comprising four distinct configurations: internal crowdsourcing; community crowdsourcing; open crowdsourcing; and crowdsourcing via a broker. We then proceed to draw from the literature on industry networks to further deepen our understanding of how these four distinct configurations can contribute to business and innovation activities of a focal industrial firm. Specifically, we focus on the structural properties, nature of collaboration, and governance of crowdsourcing networks. This novel combination of crowdsourcing and network research delivers new insights that enrich current understanding on various options available to industrial firms operating in networked contexts to facilitate their innovation processes.

Needs, market structures, business models, and relationships concerning radical innovations (RIs) are unpredictable and, consequently, firms face critical challenges in commercialization. Therefore, this study examines the commercialization of RIs as a process complicated by divergent challenges. By drawing on the literature on innovation management, RIs, and the commercialization and adoption of innovations, and by analyzing six longitudinal cases, the study generates its contribution: a dynamic process model for the commercialization of RIs. The model captures the iterative and partially unpredictable commercialization process comprising transits back and forth between three main zones: strategic marketing decision making, market creation and preparation, and sales creation and development. Over this probing process, a firm faces major commercialization challenges: 1) choosing a feasible strategy in conditions of uncertainty, 2) understanding the benefits of innovation from the customer's perspective, 3) creating credibility, 4) acquiring support from stakeholders and the ecosystem, 5) overcoming adoption barriers, and 6) creating sales. For managers, the results suggest diligence in the neglected market creation and preparation zone instead of attempting rushed sales creation.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to provide understanding on how the buyer can mobilize experience-based information scattered around the business network, by means of customer references, word-of-mouth and reputation, and how this facilitates the buying process. Design/methodology/approach: The qualitative study scrutinizes eight cases comprising buyers of knowledge intensive services and technology innovations. The paper draws on the literature on buying and purchasing, customer references, word-of-mouth and reputational information. Findings: The findings identify the different roles of references, word-of-mouth, collegial advice networks, and reputation, and suggest that experience-based information provides information on offerings, suppliers and the problem solving situation in complex buying per se. Research limitations/implications: The article's contribution is to provide a framework depicting the employment of experience-based information in complex buying, which ensues through focal and continuous buying processes. Insights from this research are broadly applicable to the contexts of knowledge intensive, innovation and solutions business. Further qualitative research should aim to form constructs and define their interrelations to be tested in subsequent quantitative research. Originality/value: This study generates new understanding on how buyers gather and use experience-based information to solve complex problems in buying. It contributes by merging references, word-of-mouth, collegial social networks, and reputation as sources of experience-based information, identifying information embedded in those means, and exploring how the information and means are used throughout the complex buying situation.

Successful commercialization is of great importance to innovative firms, and the recent literature has increasingly acknowledged that networks make a contribution not only to research and development but also to commercialization. However, research on networks facilitating the commercialization of innovations is scattered across divergent disciplines. A single company is rarely capable of generating successful diffusion in the commercialization of an innovation; success often requires cooperation between individual actors and organizations, and support from stakeholders. Consequently, the network aspect of commercialization is crucial. The aim of this study is thus to integrate the knowledge on how current research and business has employed the network approach in commercialization, and how contributors external to the innovator firm can facilitate the commercialization of innovations. On the basis of an extensive metatheoretical literature review and a qualitative and quantitative content analysis on articles linking networks explicitly to commercialization, this study produces a conceptual synthesis on network actors' contribution potential to commercialization. The analysis identified divergent network approaches to commercialization and gathered extant knowledge on "commercialization networks" from the multidisciplinary literature of innovation management, marketing, management, technology, entrepreneurship, and other relevant disciplines. Networks for commercialization have been linked to divergent network approaches, such as industrial networks, social networks, strategic networks, and entrepreneurship networks. According to the findings, customers and users, distributors, complementaries, suppliers, investors, associations, public organizations, and policy makers and regulators can support commercialization by performing practical commercialization tasks, facilitating innovation adoption/diffusion and creating markets. We also identified four modes of contribution. In terms of methods, qualitative research dominates current examinations on the topic while longitudinal research and investigations from multiple network actors' perspectives are almost absent. The results also indicate a need to develop coherent conceptualizations and accumulate knowledge that would strengthen the theoretical basis of the research. A pivotal contribution of this article is that it is the first to generate an integrative framework and a research agenda on networks for commercialization - a theme that is emergent, multifaceted, and crucial to innovative companies.

Radical innovation (RI) barriers are a complex phenomenon on which our understanding remains rather limited. Through a systematic analytical review on the extant research on RI barriers comprising a content analysis of 103 articles, this study develops a classification of barriers covering external barriers grouped by firms' influence potential, and internal barriers grouped by, for example, distinct RI competences. External barriers related to customer resistance and an undeveloped network and ecosystem, and the internal barrier relating to restrictive mindset have the widest influence. The results reveal that innovation barriers do not differ between radical innovations with different degrees of novelty, but that they vary according to the characteristics of firms, markets, and along the innovation process. This article contributes by generating an integrative framework of RI barriers, providing several propositions for further research, and developing implications for overcoming the barriers.

During recent years, the addition of game mechanisms to non-game services has gained a relatively large amount of attention. Popular discussion connects gamification to successful marketing and increased profitability through higher customer engagement, however, there is a dearth of empirical studies that confirm such expectations. This paper reports the results of a field experiment, which gamifies a utilitarian peer-to-peer trading service by implementing the game mechanism of badges that users can earn from a variety of tasks. There were 3234 users who were randomly assigned to treatment groups and subjected to different versions of the badge system in a 2 × 2 design. The results show that the mere implementation of gamification mechanisms does not automatically lead to significant increases in use activity in the studied utilitarian service, however, those users who actively monitored their own badges and those of others in the study showed increased user activity.

The research on research and development (R&D) networks is plentiful but network relations in commercialization of innovations attract surprisingly little attention. This study analyzes how firms combine resources and utilize their relations in order to ensure the success of their innovations. The theoretical basis combines literature on innovation, industrial networks, and innovation networks. The study includes two cases on commercialization networks. The results indicate that an innovating firm needs resources to engage in customer education, distribution, marketing communication, relationship mediation, and credibility building when moving from R&D tasks to commercialization tasks. To acquire these resources, the firm needs to experience changes in network relations. Accordingly, the innovating firm needs particular commercialization competence in terms of accessing, mobilizing, and organizing relational resources.

The continuous development of theoretical and methodological approaches provides novel insights into how to conceptualize and empirically study multilayered and multi-actor network processes. This theoretic-methodological article shows how network processes can be conceptualized, and how the narrative approach advances the empirical study of these processes. The study builds an agency-structure meta-framework that conceptualizes the emergence of network processes in terms of interaction between individuals from different network actor organizations. The narrative research approach is put forward to implement the study of network processes into empirical reality. The narrative approach allows capturing the relevant actors, their multiple motives, interests and activities, and the mutual interplay of these elements with the contextual levels, thus providing an essential understanding of various types of network processes.

This paper examines the collaborative process of value co-creation in the context of knowledge intensive business services. Through 120 qualitative interviews with suppliers and buyers of knowledge intensive services, the extensive exploratory study analyzes the activities, roles and resources of buyers and suppliers in the reciprocal value co-creation process, and their implications for the resulting value-in-use. The paper draws on the literature on value creation, solutions and professional services marketing, and service-dominant logic. It provides a framework depicting value co-creation that occurs through a dyadic problem solving process, comprising activities such as diagnosing needs, designing and producing solutions, organizing the process and resources, managing value conflicts, and implementing the solution. The framework serves as a managerial tool to determine critical resources and roles for suppliers and customers, facilitate joint activities, and optimize resource utilization. Insights from this research are broadly applicable to the contexts of knowledge intensive and solutions business.