Strategic alliances in the retail sector are based on cooperation in a variety of activities, ranging from supply and marketing to knowledge sharing and branding. For their members, they are a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Ever since the 1990s, a growing number of firms from the retail sector have attempted to improve their performance through participation in strategic alliances. The objective of this paper is to explore how participation in strategic alliances influences profitability of firms in the retail sector. A dynamic panel analysis is applied to the data on nearly 3,700 firms obtained from Amadeus, a large firm-level database, for eight countries (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Hungary and Estonia) for the 2007-2012 period. The results of the investigation suggest that participation in strategic alliances positively influences a firm's performance.

Survival of firms requires continuous search for new and a restructuring of the existing competitive advantages. These can come either from firms' internal factors or from cooperation with the environment. Cooperation among firms commonly takes place through the formation of strategic alliances. However, such form of cooperation presents only one stage in the integration of business entities. In the long run, strategic alliances can cease to exist or transform into a higher form of association based on capital integration. The objective of this paper is to explore the determinants of capital integration among strategic alliance member firms in retail sectors of several Central and Southeast European countries. Overall, the obtained findings suggest that business entities engage in integration with the aim of reaching hidden knowledge and skills, accessing distribution and supply channels, and developing new products and services. Integration is also driven with the aim of risk diversification and possible better market positioning, achieving the economies of scale, and improving organization and marketing.The opportunistic behavior of partners and limited managerial control represent its strongest barriers.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to identify the impact of service innovations on firm performance in the hospitality industry in Croatia during the 2012-2014 period. Methodology -The study uses data from the most recent round of Community Innovation Survey, a confidential dataset compiled by Eurostat on innovation activities of firms in the EU member states. With means of the nearest neighbour matching treatment analysis it first explores the determinants behind the ability of firms to introduce service innovations before it explores whether firms that introduce service innovations outperform their rivals. Findings -The results of investigation suggest that service innovations emerge predominantly through transfer of knowledge and skills between organizations, through intra-firm channels and other spillover mechanisms. In addition, there is little evidence of internal organizational and marketing innovations as drivers of innovation in services. Contribution -Rising importance of services in world economy suggests that service innovations are important for firm performance and competitiveness. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no attempt to address determinants of innovation in general and service innovations in particular in the hospitality industry in Croatia, whose economy largely depends on tourism, in post crisis period. To this end, our study makes genuine contribution to the existing literature that can translate into concrete policy recommendations.