Hillebrand et al. (2011): Customer orientation and future market focus in NSD

15 important questions on Hillebrand et al. (2011): Customer orientation and future market focus in NSD

What are the benefits for organizations that are close to the customer? And why?

It can benefit a firm’s innovation and competitive advantage. It also helps increase perceived quality and customer loyalty.
  • Because firms can receive feedback and learn more from these customers, enabling them to react more quickly and efficiently to customers’ changing wants and needs

What are the benefits for organizations that are close to the customer? And why?

It can benefit a firm’s innovation and competitive advantage. It also helps increase perceived quality and customer loyalty.
  • Because firms can receive feedback and learn more from these customers, enabling them to react more quickly and efficiently to customers’ changing wants and needs

What are the disadvantages of close customer relations for organizations?

  • It served market biases perceptions and enhances management beliefs that can prevent responding effectively to emerging trends and new technologies.
  • It results in a shift towards improved solutions rather than real, more radical innovation that may create new markets
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Explain the conceptual model in the paper by Hillebrand et al. (2011)?

  • On the left side, we have customer orientation and future market focus
  • In the middle we have 3 dimensions of cannibalization
    • Willingness to cannibalize sales
    • Willingness to cannibalize routines
    • Willingness to cannibalize investments
  • On the right, we have firm innovativeness

In this paper the authors test the effects of customer orientation and future market focus through the three dimensions of willingness to cannibalize on firm innovativeness.

How is firm innovativeness defined?

It is the degree to which a firm develops and introduces innovative new products and services on a regular basis

Which 6 hypothesis are fomulated in the paper by Hillebrand et al. (2011)? And are they supported or not?

H1
  1. H1a: Customer orientation negatively influences willingness to cannibalise current sales.
  2. H1b: Customer orientation negatively influences willingness to canniabalise existing routines.
  3. H1c: Customer orientation negatively influences willingness to cannibalise prior investments.

H2
  1. H2a: Future market focus positively influences willingness to cannibalise current sales.
  2. H2b: Future market focus positively influences willingness to cannibalise existing routines.
  3. H2c: Future market focus positively influences willingness to cannibalise prior investments.

All the hypotheses are confirmed, except for H1b (not significant)

What do organizations with a future market focus understand about customers?

They understand that current customers are often incapable of articulating their latent (future) needs and are not a good source
for identifying potentially new customer segments
.

What are the results regaring the baseline model?

The Service R&D Strength and the willingness to cannibalize routines and investments (so: not sales) significantly influence firm innovativeness
  • Innovativeness is the result of both R&D capital and firm’s ability to overcome inertia

What are the 3 main conclusions of the paper by Hillebrand et al. (2011)?

  • Future market focus helps service organizations to overcome inertia to innovate
  • Customer orientation breeds (fokken/broeden) inertia, whereas future market focus increases the willingness to cannibalise, which in turn stimulates firm innovativeness.
  • Firms need a mix of a focus on current customers as well as on future ones since both radical and incremental innovations are needed to perform well in the long term.

What is at the heart of successful programs that enable firms to constantly improve their offerings to customers?

Customer orientation

What is at the heart of successful programs that enable firms to constantly improve their offerings to customers?

Customer orientation

What is the most important implication for managers?

When managers are planning to improve their organisations’ abilities to develop radical innovations, they should not only focus on serving current customers, but also on building a future market focus.

A future market focus prevents a firm from..... (2 aspects)?

  • Becoming myopic (kortzichtig, gefocust op korte termijn)
  • Inert and stimulates it to move forward

What is the aim of the paper by Hillebrand et al. (2011)?

To investigate the differential effects of customer orientation and future market focus, through a firm’s inertial forces, on firm innovativeness in the context of B2B for SME’s involved in new service development.

What are the 3 main conclusions of the paper by Hillebrand et al. (2011)?

  • Future market focus helps service organizations to overcome inertia to innovate
  • Customer orientation breeds (fokken/broeden) inertia, whereas future market focus increases the willingness to cannibalise, which in turn stimulates firm innovativeness.
  • Firms need a mix of a focus on current customers as well as on future ones since both radical and incremental innovations are needed to perform well in the long term.

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