When management and customers see eye‐to‐eye: the agreement factor and performance

Abstract

When management and customers see eye-to-eye: the agreement factor and performance Cinzia Dessì Michela Floris Article information:To cite this document: Cinzia Dessì Michela Floris, (2010),"When management and customers see eye-to-eye: the agreement factor and performance", Abstract Purpose -The paper aims to focus on management-customer relations as a way to understand the competitive advantages of small/medium-sized family businesses. The aim of this work is to verify whether management perceptions of business strengths and customer perceptions of the same strengths agree, and whether this agreement (perceptive concordance) can become an important factor in maintaining the firm's competitive advantages. Design/methodology/approach -The research is carried out through a single case study with a sample of 120 customers. Findings -The findings indicate that when management and customers agree on certain business issues, performance benefits. Comparing management's perception of strengths and customers' perceptions of the same strengths allow one to relate what the firm thinks of itself to what the customer sees in it. Practical implications -The research offers useful information about the efficiency of the firm's external communications and demonstrates that a shared language between the firm and its customers does exist and is understood by both entities. Moreover, practical implications are related to customers' degree of satisfaction with respect to management beliefs, and to management's opportunity to correct the weaknesses revealed by the agreement factor. Originality/value -The paper provides a different perspective on how to analyse competitive advantage inside small to medium-sized family businesses with cases and specific analyses not considered in depth by the family business literature.

The Development of Nanotechnologies and Advanced Materials Industry in Science and Entrepreneurship: Socioeconomic and Technical Indicators. A Case Study of Latvia (Part One)

“…In any field, a business activity oriented to the long term is dependent on the business environment and factors that make it up. According to the study by Dessi and Floris (2010), the economic assessment of nanotechnology business development should be carried out taking into account both the Porter five forces model, which is based on external forces, and the resource-based view (RBV), which combines the external or macro-and meso-environmental impact and the capabilities and resources characteristic of the development of company itself or micro environment. The resource approach confirms that enterprises differ from each other in resources at their disposal, and allocation of resources among enterprises is heterogeneous, which makes a difference in business operation [3].…”

“…The research object is nanotechnologies and advanced materials industry in Latvia. To reach the aim of the study -to analyse the most important indicators characterising the level of development of nano-field in quantitative terms in Latvia, the following tasks are defined: (1) to identify the importance of the engineering economic indicators determined for the development of the advanced materials field in science in Latvia; (2) to provide comparison of the economic indicators found with that of other countries if applicable; (3) to generate the data according to the levels of the economic environment; (4) to provide recommendations for business sector representatives and for the improvement of the national support programme for research and science.…”

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