Consumers are increasingly using web-based systems for the search and purchase of products and services. They are, however, also still using traditional, offline channels such as telephone, high street and mail order, on a regular basis. The research presented in this thesis investigated consumer use of e-services in the context of a multi channel environment, with a special focus on voluntary channel choice and voluntary movement between channels. Both multi-channel usage and voluntary movement between channels are currently under-researched topics. The area of research for the study was leisure travel. The travel preparations from a sample of consumers throughout the UK were investigated through interviews and diary studies. Literature from the field of Human-Computer Interaction and Consumer Research informed the methodology and the perspective for the analysis. The findings from the in-depth study show that the participants frequently used multiple channels during their travel preparations. They regularly moved between online and offline channels, and often did so on a voluntary basis. The analysis revealed that the most important driver for multi-channel usage among the participants was the need for control. This research contextualises control as a key characteristic of contemporary consumption behaviour. Its main contributions are the findings that the need for control has six dimensions (time, place, costs, risks, information and personal contact), and that the influence of these dimensions on consumer channel choice varies across specific consumption situations. The study also found that the participants were not consistent in their channel choices over time. They showed fragmented consumer behaviour, dependent on their social roles and external circumstances. The thesis discusses how control and fragmentation are key themes in the explanation of voluntary multi-channel usage and movement between channels. The insights from this research contribute to a deeper understanding of consumer use of e-services and to strategic improvements in the design and management of e-services.

The overall strategic emphasis on new product development is reflected in the exploration and exploitation of value relevant for sustainable competitive advantage. However, traditional management approaches have been inadequate in meeting this strategic imperative taking into consideration the high rate of failure in the creation and capture of sustainable value from new product innovations. Scenario thinking by virtue of its ability to help improve foresight, learning and the probing of the unknown future may serve as a strategic management approach that could help product innovation teams to explore and exploit the much needed value from their innovations. Scenario thinking in this thesis refers to the use of scenario narratives to stimulate actions in the immediate present (also informed by the past) about the possible future aimed at improving understanding of the cost, returns, efficiency and all the requisite information related to the creation and capture of value from new product innovation. From a transdisciplinary perspective this research takes on the phenomenological treatment of practices as advanced by the contemporary turn to ‘practice’ to explore scenario thinking in product innovation teams. It adopts a case based approach with three software organisations and four of their new product development projects serving as the empirical research sites. With emphasis on the meso-level, the product innovation teams represent the sociological level of inquiry with emphasis placed on their everyday practices and their relationships in context. Data for the empirical inquiry were chiefly collected using the qualitative methods of ethnographic interviews, non-participant observation and the analysis of organisational and project archival documents. The thesis makes a contribution to knowledge in three main areas. Firstly, it unpacks scenario thinking, in the form of strategizing and foresighting and how it manifest in the actions of the present by showing that traditional scenario exercises are only a momentary part of the practice of scenario thinking by developing a socially embedded process base model to show how the practice, with no specific conformity, comes to presence in product innovation teams. Secondly, as an empirical process study it shows how and when the practice of scenario thinking in product innovation teams may lead to the identification of opportunities for innovation. Thirdly, it shows why some organisations are more ‘foresightful’ than others VI by identifying those practices and their underlying activities that enable (or impede) the cultivation of scenario thinking in product innovation teams. In relation to practice it is argued that scenario thinking should not be seen as a ‘one-off’ episodic intervention but rather an everyday practice intentionally or non-intentionally engaged in by organisational actors in their situated practice. As an internally and contextually generated competence imbued with routines, values and know-how it is difficult for competitors to imitate and the practice does not necessarily require an external management guru to facilitate. Effective management of those practices identified to enable (or impede) scenario thinking in innovation teams could lead to the identification of novel opportunities for innovation.

Digital music file sharing has had a significant negative financial impact on the recorded music industry, causing multi-billion dollar losses over the past decade. In a world where file sharing is now an activity that can be carried out with ease, industry stakeholders are continuously looking for ways to profit from changing consumer behaviour. To date, literature has looked at why people illicitly download (e.g. motivations, ethical considerations), the financial impact of file sharing (e.g. lost revenue), legal approaches to combatting file sharing (e.g. what approaches work, if any), and new business models for paid services (e.g. price sensitivity, value propositions). Academic literature has thus far largely focused on how to eliminate file sharing and convert illicit downloaders to paid platforms, but has not examined the potential for converting illicit downloaders to a free legitimate, platform. This thesis is the first piece of academic literature to consider free legitimate adsupported music download services as a way of monetizing downloaders’ free consumption behaviour, specifically by identifying key service characteristics that influence consumers' attitudes toward using such services, and providing a rich contextual understanding of the perceived importance and value of such characteristics. A sequential mixed methods approach was used to explore this topic and develop and validate a conceptual model. The primary research stages consisted of in-depth interviews, group interviews, and an online survey. This thesis shows there is potential for mainstream consumer adoption of free legitimate ad-supported music download services, with the caveat that the services be as good as or better than those (free services) already used. Several characteristics were found to be important influencers of attitudes in this regard. Some characteristics were found to be very important (perception of a large enough music catalogue, freedom of use of downloaded files, delays caused by advertising not being perceived as excessive), some were found to be less important (ease of navigation/use, perceived trustworthiness of the service), and some were found to be not at all important (ability of the service to recommend music, social networking facilitation via the service). While this thesis identifies what an ‘ideal’ service looks like for consumers, it also finds that tension exists in the economic relationship between consumer behaviour and ideals, and what industry is able to viably deliver in an adsupported service. The structure and conditions of today’s marketplace are such that the fundamental economic viability of free ad-supported music download services is brought into question, irrespective of whether such a service can meet consumers’ needs. While this thesis is specifically concerned with music download services, the model developed within it could be tested for other online content services such as streaming music or video, and video download services.

This thesis examines the development of Saudisation practices in the Saudi private sector. The focus of the empirical research is five supermarket firms operating in Saudi Arabia. The thesis investigates the development of Saudisation practices over time with a particular focus on the period between 2003 and 2007. Methodologically, this research adopts the mixed methods approach to data collection by using both quantitative and qualitative data. The study applies explanation-building and pattern-matching techniques to analyse the data collected. Theoretically, the study draws on analytical models from institutional theory, in particular from the work of Greenwood, Paauwe, Scott, Oliver and others. The thesis makes a further contribution to existing work by scholars of contextual human resources management and the Dutch HR network. The research findings show that Saudisation practices are an institutional field. The field has prime actors such as the Ministry of Labour, leading supermarket chains and young Saudis. Those primary actors and other secondary ones apply regulative, normative and culture-cognitive pressures. The result of these pressures is the isomorphism of Saudisation practices, in which practices are diffused in the industry. This study shows that under limited and contradictory institutional pressure, practices are not diffused. However, Saudisation practices are diffused under extensive pressure or where there is potential return for the business. This research also suggests that the leading firms tend to have a common demographic composition, both as entire organisations and also, in part, in their senior management teams.

Business-To-Business electronic Marketplace (B2B e-Marketplace) is an electronic platform for buyers and sellers that provide a new dimension in facilitating the marketers to work more effectively when making critical marketing decisions. However, Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) especially in the Asian B2B marketplace who are keen to compete in the electronic environment remain concerned about how their businesses can benefit from the B2B e-Marketplace. This study focuses on the SMEs operating in a number of Asian economies, specifically in China, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and India. The rational for choosing these countries is based on their advanced and well-developed B2B e-Marketplaces. This study employed a triangulated methodology containing both quantitative (online survey) and qualitative (interview) data collection mechanisms. A key finding is the development of a theoretical framework for SMEs, emerging from the analysis of 406 companies from various industrial sectors. Based on the findings, an e-Marketing (electronic marketing) framework derived from B2B e-Marketplace, termed as B2B e-MF, was developed for practising e-Marketing in SMEs. The framework emerged from a review of literature in the fields of e-Marketing and the B2B e-Marketplace and was empirically tested from SMEs who participated in the B2B e-Marketplace. The analysis performed in this study shows that interaction with the B2B e- MF is an important dimension and has a positive and significant impact for the business efficiency and service improvement of Asian SMEs. The findings indicate that B2B e-MF is essentially the refinement of e-Marketing practices for SMEs in order to achieve performance advantages.

In recent years, online shopping has become a popular choice for purchasing goods and services. The Office for National Statistics (2012) reported that 83.5% of the UK population now have access to Internet. Furthermore, adults who indicated that they had purchased or ordered goods or services online within the past twelve months has reached 32 million which represents 66% of the UK adult population (Office of National Statistics 2011). With the growth of Internet purchasing, recent studies have found various influences that can affect th online purchasing behaviour of consumers. Consequently, this represents a desirable marketing opportunity for businesses. Past research in online shopping is quickly becoming outdated and hence there is a need to update and extend these studies (Delafrooz, Piam and Khatibi 2010; Doolin et al., 2005; Haque, Sadeghzadeh and Khaibi, 2006). As technology continues to improve and new trends start to form, it is important to develop a better understanding of the current online shopping population. Some past studies focused on a specific issue of online consumer behaviour but they differ in emphasis, hence there is a necessity for an integrated model of consumer behaviour with supporting empirical evidence. The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of the various influences that affect the decision of online shoppers to purchase in the United Kingdom. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data in order to gain a detailed understanding of the various factors. Following the exploratory study (semi-structured interview), an online survey consisting of 983 respondents was conducted as the other data collection method for this study. The findings from literature review (secondary data), semi-structure interviews (qualitative data) and questionaire (quantitative data ) reveal main influencing factors that affect a consumer's decision to purchase online. The factors were identified as convenience, social, risk, product and merchant factors. Through the analysis of the data, evidence was found to support the presence of relationships between factors and online shopping, and the significant differences between the consumer's demographics and the vaious factors. Furthermore, the results suggest that different types of online consumers (casual,regular,and frequent) perceive the importance of each factors in a different manner. The findings in the study help facilitate in the development of the Integrated Model of Factors Influencing the Online Consumers. This model integrates the findings from the literature, semi-structured interviews, and the online survey to capture the factors that influence the online shoppers, this model can help online retailers and marketers to target their marketing activities and to develop appropriate strategies to convert potential consumers into actual buyers.

The motivation of this research emerged as a reaction to imbalances in the UK grocery retailing market. In 2012-2013, total grocery retail sales amounted to £163.2 billion (bn), of which £5.6bn (3%) was generated through the online channel. Offline sales which amounted to £157.6bn are greater than all total combined non-grocery retail sales for the same period. Notably, online grocery sales of 3.4% posted the lowest percentage compared to all other segments of non-grocery e-retailing. The problem lies with challenges associated with managing supply and distribution of e-groceries, which constitute one of the greatest barriers to grocery e-retailing. These challenges led Somerfield to close its e-operations. This further heightens the online-offline grocery imbalances as only few grocery retailers are able to sustain their online operation. Of the 24 grocery e-retailers with more than ten stores in the UK, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and Waitrose (ASTW) continue to stamp their authority in the market. Studies that examined the e-operations of ASTW attribute their cutting edge practice in grocery e-retailing to an overwhelming difference in resources (stores). It is the fundamental principles such as store assets that have seen Tesco’s pioneering in-store model outperform rivals in penetrating the market. These findings more than anything, have galvanized this research interest into deeper understanding of stores and managerial capabilities from a resource-based view (RBV). The study examines the four case studies (ASTW) using a mixed method approach to reduce the methodological challenges inherent in the RBV theory. Respondents were purposively sampled and responses were elicited using semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal the value of the resources from RBV perspective, and the prominence and interdependence of chain resources in creating sustainable competitive advantage (SCA). The study developed a resource-based strategy that may minimise some of the challenges, especially the cost of supply and distribution. Although the findings provide a RBV of stores and managerial capabilities in grocery e-retailing, the extent of value is limited to access and disclosure of sensitive information. Future studies must assess SCA, in partnership with the organisation to avoid the latter limitations. It is anticipated that the findings will pave the way for future research in e-retailing through contribution to both knowledge and practice. From the perspective of knowledge contribution, the research empirically tested the robustness of RBV using mixed method in the context of the grocery sector. Meanwhile, the developed strategy is also highly valuable in practice, in that it could offer useful insights for practitioners to better improve the efficiency and resilience of their e-retailing adoption.

Customer insight is fundamental for market oriented organizations to understand their markets. However, the use of customer insight in marketing decisions is poorly understood, partly due to the difficulties in obtaining research access within organizations. But in part because under the perspective of market-based learning (MBL) theory, knowledge is a fixed asset so while there has been interest in insight acquisition, there has been less interest in the processes of insight use. This doctoral research focuses on managers’ use of customer insight within the organisation. It applies the case research method within two organisations using multiple sources of data, including interviews with multiple individuals and real-time experience tracking over a period of time. A framework of the process of insight use is developed from a review of literature and then explored and expanded upon through case study analysis. The emergent framework provides a more granular understanding of the multiple stages of the customer insight use cycle within an organization. It identifies that the insight use process is a perpetual feedback loop learning mechanism and involves several stages identified as: acquiring, filtering, transforming, sharing, analysing/interpreting, actioning and storing. The study finds that some phases are more likely to involve an individual manager while others are more likely to involve managers working collectively. For instance, the stages of acquisition and transforming tend to be individual while the stages relating to interpretation and actioning of insight tend to be collective. Managers may also opt to store insight as their next step for potential actioning at a later stage after any of the process stages. In addition to identifying the stages of insight use, this study identifies the pivotal role of organizational memory in the insight use process. Enablers and blockers of insight use are identified including that managers may respond to perceived information overload by (consciously or unconsciously) blocking information. A key contribution of this thesis is that it incorporates the first use in an organizational behaviour context, of the real-time experience tracking (RET) method. This pioneering use of RET demonstrates that this method may address some of the limitations that plague traditional participant observation techniques in organizational settings, such as active or moderate participation. It demonstrates that RET can be used to track the insight use process of individuals in organizations over time, helping to understand their individual and collective insight use processes. This multi-informant, multi-method study of customer insight use thus provides a deeper understanding of the processes of customer insight use than most previous MBL studies, which have typically employed single-informant, cross-sectional survey approaches. Practitioner implications include that new individual competencies in information use may be needed and that organisations may need to foster a new code of etiquette for information sharing and feedback between peers in organizations operating in today’s information rich environment.

Markets exist within a world of constant exchanges which form the basis for changes and the creation of new markets. Therefore, it is important to research these exchanges. One of the areas in which market creation can be observed is interorganisational collaborations, as firms increasingly collaborate to create markets. In market creation practice, however, interorganisational tension and conflict can form from divergent approaches and vested interests of the partners. Interorganisational tension represents the opposing intentions of interorganisational forces, and conflict is generated through disagreements. The aim of this research is to investigate interorganisational tension and conflict on market creation practice. Specifically, it attempts to: (i) expand interorganisational tension and conflict and provide insights to these concepts, as well as establishing a two-dimensional interorganisational tension (productive and unproductive) understanding, (ii) explore the interactions between interorganisational tension and conflict, (iii) develop a conceptual framework that explains the level of market creation depending on the effects of interorganisational tension and conflict, (iv) develop a typology of partnering firms based on interorganisational tension and conflict practice. To achieve this aim, and to respond to the research calls, this study follows a grounded theory approach which intends to expand the understanding of interorganisational tension and conflict. According to the findings, a major characteristic of interorganisational tension is its two dimensions: productive and unproductive. However, it is the intertwined nature of tension and conflict that influences market creation. Fundamental to these are the six interorganisational tension and three conflict types revealed by the findings of this study. The core theoretical contributions of the study are a dynamic framework that portrays the dynamic interactions between interorganisational tension and conflict on market creation practice, and a typology of market-creating partnering firms. Collectively, they explicate the development of market creation practice, and firms’ reactions to interorganisational tension and conflict.

Firms’ contemporary selling practices often not only demand that salespeople meet sales quotas, but also that they build strong, profitable relationships with customers. Given the belief that relationship-building activities can develop closer customer ties and improve sales performance, scholars have increasingly studied salesperson behaviors aimed at nurturing buyer-salesperson relations. However, while previous sales research has investigated the effects of a number of relational activities on performance outcomes in isolation, knowledge about their effectiveness in comparison to other important performance drivers is virtually absent. The present study provides some first theoretical and empirical insights into this research gap by simultaneously examining the role of specific salesperson relationship-building activities, and product-focused variables, in retail buyers’ new product purchase decisions. Following an extensive literature review, a two-part qualitative field study was conducted to explore salesperson relationship-building activities that are regarded as important by retail buyers. Two key relational behaviors were suggested by the customer-centric and retail industry-specific data; salesperson consultation (communication-based) and salesperson helping behavior (action-based). Drawing on this as well as extant literature, a conceptual framework was developed concerning the influences of these relationship-building activities and other product-focused factors on retail buyers’ new product acceptance. The study’s quantitative component contained a mail and web survey of U.S. retail buyers, resulting in a total dataset of 192 responses. After a comprehensive measure validation process, the theoretical hypotheses were tested using logistic regression analysis. Contrary to existing assertions, the results suggest that salesperson relationship-building activities themselves do not directly and/or indirectly influence purchase decisions, but instead can moderate the effects of product-focused determinants on retail buyers’ new product selections. Data on actual purchase decisions provide a high level of external validity to the findings. The study closes with a concluding discussion, including theoretical and managerial implications of the findings, limitations of the research, and directions for future inquiry.