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Purpose – This study aims to examine the effect of firm-specific customer relationship orientation, technology orientation and the marketing–R & D cooperation on market performance. Although the importance of customer focus in R & D has been widely recognized in the literature, less attention has been paid to customer relationship orientation and the simultaneous effect of the three constructs on market performance. Design/methodology/approach – The hypotheses are tested on a multi-industry survey study of 209 R & D-intensive firms in Finland using hierarchical regression analyses, including both direct and interactional effects. Findings – The findings show that customer relationship orientation has a direct positive effect on market performance and that technology orientation also has a positive, yet non-significant effect. In addition, the effect of both of these strategic orientations is accentuated when collaboration between marketing and R & D departments is high, providing evidence on the significant moderating effects of these types of processes. Research limitations/implications – The implications of the research can be interpreted as being generalizable at least to some extent due to the multi-industry nature of the sample. However, the research is bound to a certain type of firm (R & D-intensive) and to a certain national context (Finland), which poses limitations to the study. Practical implications – The results suggest specific benefits for integrating specialist, complementary knowledge into a firm in terms of R & D and marketing knowledge. Practicing managers across departments should thus consider not only focusing on their specialist areas in markets (e.g. customers or technology) but also utilizing complementary insights within the firm to reap benefits in their fields. Originality/value – The study focuses on the less-researched concept of customer relationship orientation in parallel with the more established technology orientation. It also provides novel evidence on how the effectiveness of these orientations benefits from firm-internal knowledge transfer between the marketing and R & D departments.

Purpose -This study aims to identify the organizational antecedents of intra-organizational customer knowledge dissemination in the context of key account management (KAM). Design/methodology/approach -The data were collected from large industrial companies in Finland by means of a structured survey. Linear hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Findings -The findings of the study show that esprit de corps among employees and the formalization of key account management facilitate customer knowledge dissemination in industrial key account organizations. Moreover, the findings show that the intra-organizational dissemination of customer knowledge is positively related to the supplier's KAM performance and dissemination fully mediates the relationship between esprit de corps and KAM performance.Research limitations/implications -The study contributes to research on key account management in providing quantitative empirical evidence about the antecedents and consequences of the intra-organizational dissemination of key account-related knowledge. Originality/value -Building on previous research on customer knowledge management, market orientation and key account management, the study identifies customer-specific knowledge dissemination as an intra-organizational determinant of the successful management of industrial key account relationships.

This study explores alternative configurations of causes to customer knowledge utilization using a set theoretic approach with fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. The study uses a previous empirical dataset of Salojärvi, Sainio, and Tarkiainen (2010) to assess organizational factors that enhance customer knowledge utilization. The results show that use of key account management teams and customer relationship management systems are core predictors for high degrees of customer knowledge utilization. However, these core causes are not sufficient on their own; they need to be accompanied by different degrees (i.e. high/low) and combinations of other peripheral antecedents, such as customer relationship orientation, top management involvement, and formalization. This study shows that many firms make trade-off decisions regarding the use of these core and peripheral conditions. The present study identifies alternative pathways to customer knowledge utilization, discuss their differences, and suggest managerial implications and future research directions.

Purpose -This study aims to examine what the role of key account teams is in the management of international key account customers in terms of customer knowledge processing behaviours of the supplier, esprit de corps of employees and supplier's key account performance. Design/methodology/approach -Survey data from large industrial firms in Finland are used to compare the differences between supplier firms having a team and those not having a team for managing the key account customer. Findings -The results reveal a higher perceived level of customer-knowledge acquisition, dissemination and utilisation, and of suppliers' key account performance, in the group representing team-based key account management compared with the non-team group. Originality/value -The article is one of the first studies in which the role of teams in the management of international key account customers is examined based on empirical, quantitative data.