Businesses, Volume 2, Issue 2 (June 2022) – 11 articles

The automotive sector is undergoing radical changes. New trends such as electrification, autonomous driving, connectivity, and car-sharing—to name a few—are disturbing the carmakers, which must satisfy their clients while meeting the increasingly strict environmental regulations. This pressure also falls on automotive parts suppliers, which now are asked to manufacture high-added-value integral systems, while struggling to keep a very adjusted price. As traditional automotive components evolve into electronic systems, suppliers must gain digital mastery to remain competitive. This paper presents different ways of introducing e-skills in a company and illustrates this with some examples from the Basque automotive industry. The aim is to encourage corporations to take the step towards digitalization, providing different options for them to choose the one that best suits their current scenario. For this study we have analyzed the literature and the press releases of the component manufacturers and interviewed staff from some of them. This research seeks to provide solutions so that the automotive sector remains competitive, as it is a strategic sector for the economy and employment. Full article

No industry is immune to digital transformation. Social media is empowering individuals everywhere and driving a democratization of personal access that is fundamentally different from the top-down communications associated with traditional mass-media at the outset of globalization. Social media, social sharing, and social business have been accelerated by COVID-19. The rise of e-commerce has materially affected not only how people buy, but also how people research their purchase decisions. Marketing has not kept up with this paradigm shift, and by simply viewing digital as another media channel misses the shift in consumer power and the imperative to engage rather than advertise. Narratives are part of our everyday, and popular stories affect individual and community behaviour. We demonstrate how big data and AI can track the narratives that are shaping our world. Engaging with these narratives can improve marketing decision-making by addressing what people feel is important and result in better outcomes to grow and sustain brand equity in our contemporary, digital world. Full article

Women’s leadership development in entrepreneurial business is critical to improving women’s participation in management and businesses in Bangladesh. Research shows that only seven percent of all business establishments in Bangladesh are women-owned and women-headed. This limited ownership and development of women’s leadership behavior is a clear gap to be filled. Thus, the study aims to identify women’s leadership behavioral factors (WLBFs) and examine the causal relationship between WLBFs and women’s leadership behavior practices (WLBPs) in line with path–goal leadership theory. We conducted causal research, applying systematic sampling techniques in selecting participants and conducting interviews with 366 women entrepreneurs from the Bangladesh Women Chamber of Commerce and Industries database under seven administrative divisional headquarters. We analyzed data through exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling techniques. The results show that the factors internal to women as entrepreneurs (including entrepreneurial attitude, intentions, and workplace learning culture), the factors external to women as entrepreneurs (such as training and education), and sociocultural factors are significantly related to the development of WLBPs. The external organizational behavior context was not significant. WLBPs help develop directive, supportive, participatory, and achievement-oriented leadership practices among women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh. This study suggests that policymakers, implementing managers, training service providers, and women entrepreneurs focus on entrepreneurial attitude, intention, education and skills development training, workplace learning culture, and sociocultural support among women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh. Full article

This paper considers management education and specifically how student learning has been impacted by the online replacement teaching offered by universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study utilizes a learning gain model which considers the students’ own perception of their learning, and separates the provision of theoretical explicit knowledge (distance travelled) from that of practical tacit understanding (journey travelled). In 2019, data were collected from a cohort of marketing students studying for an undergraduate UK business studies degree. In 2021, data were again collected from a new cohort of students studying the same business studies degree course, but this time during the COVID-19 period. A comparison was undertaken to identify any differences in learning gain. Overall, a drop in perceived learning was reported, although in a few areas, an indication of stronger learning was identified. Interestingly, female students reported the most significant drop in their learning related to journey travelled, whereas for male students, it related to distance travelled. Full article

The production of underexploited small fish species has surpassed that of bigger and more valuable species, such as Oreochromis species. However, profitability and efficiency of the key players in the marketing chain and system associated with these small fish species are yet to be understood. Therefore, this article aims to analyze the profitability and efficiency of Diplotaxodon spp. (an example of a small fish species) fish marketing systems in Malawi. The analysis was based on data collected in 2019 through field surveys from 265 respondents, which included fishers, processors, wholesalers, and retailers. Gross margin, return on capital employed (ROCE), and the Acharya and Agarwal’s market efficiency index were used in our empirical strategy. The results reveal that Diplotaxodon spp. trading was profitable to all actors. Firm-level efficiency showed that all actors used their capital efficiently, except for fishers, who had lowest return on capital employed, while retailers had the highest return on capital employed. All marketing channels identified were inefficient, due to high marketing margins and low fisher’s share of the consumer price, attributed to high transportation cost. The study concludes that, unless efforts are taken to improve efficiency of Ndunduma marketing system, through improving marketing margins and fisher’s share of consumer price, Diplotaxodon spp. will continue to be under-exploited, thereby sustaining or exacerbating the fish supply gap. Full article

The modern history of technical progress is relatively short, as it encompasses merely around 250 years. Within it, we can distinguish four time periods called industrial revolutions. The fourth one of these, which is currently ongoing, is characterized by such ground-breaking inventions as advanced robots, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, 3D printing, automated guided vehicles, cloud technology, augmented reality, big data, blockchain, nanotechnology, and biotechnology. The author argues that under the influence of these inventions, industrial production is gradually becoming fully digitalized, automated, and autonomous. As a consequence, it will be carried out more speedily, flexibly, effectively, and transparently and will be more environmentally friendly. The quality of products will be higher and the costs of their manufacturing lower, and it will be strictly adjusted to the tastes of the consumers. This means that, contrary to the traditional view, represented by Porter, that companies at a given time can only use one of the basic strategies of competition, i.e., low cost, high quality, and market niche, they are able to implement production that meets all three criteria simultaneously. The emergence of the new production paradigm is stimulated by expected economic and environmental benefits as well as political, social, and natural factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic. These factors contribute to the breakdown of global supply chains, which causes a tendency to insourcing, which is conditioned by the implementation of intelligent production. Full article

Despite various initiatives and investments in youth entrepreneurship and start-ups, youth participation in agribusiness has not significantly increased. Therefore, this study analyzed the perceived effects of entrepreneurial traits on youth’s willingness to exploit agribusiness opportunities in Nigeria. A total of 3600 respondents were randomly selected across Nigeria using an online well-structured questionnaire. The data were analyzed using a binomial logistic regression among other tools. The study found that, although only 17% of the respondents were exploiting agribusiness opportunities as of 2020, about 77% of the respondents were willing to exploit agribusiness opportunities in the next 2 years. The study found that entrepreneurial traits had no significant influence on youth’s willingness to exploit agribusiness opportunities until each of the traits was moderated by an individual’s entrepreneurial intention. The implications of the findings are discussed in the study. Full article

Nowadays, we live in the age of Marketing 4.0. Historically, marketing has often depended on changing consumer habits and needs. Thus, it is necessary to understand the new habits and needs of the consumer to make companies more and more effective. Currently, social media marketing (SMM) is ubiquitous in organizations, and is seen as a tool to achieve strategic goals. Therefore, SMM is important for companies to adapt their approach to customer relationship management and advance new marketing competencies to enable customer satisfaction. To drive customer satisfaction and improve customer experience, managers are loading social media applications into their current customer relationship management (CRM) systems. This study seeks to understand the feasibility of implementing SMM in business to business (B2B) companies and how this affects CRM and customer knowledge management (CKM). For this study, data were collected from two Portuguese micro-companies. The methodology used was exploratory qualitative in nature through a multiple case study, wherein semi-structured interviews were applied. It was found that SMM cannot be used in the B2B companies under investigation because CRM needs are much more dependent on CKM than on the mass interactions and indirect communication with the customer that can potentially exist in SMM. In these companies, communication with the client can be adjusted on a case-by-case basis through SMM, without the need for mass communication with all clients. This paper provides implications for the management of micro-enterprises regarding social media marketing. It also contributes to the development of the literature on SMM, CRM and CKM. Full article

The global market is experiencing stagnation and recession in the “untact era”, and the emergence of the metaverse provides platform support and presents a new paradigm. This study aims to provide a framework for content creators and marketers to verify the effectiveness of metaverse marketing. An analysis was carried out of the fit of the model and the hypotheses between the metaverse seamlessness, presence, interoperability, concurrence, and economic flow (SPICE) model factors, customer satisfaction, and purchase intention. In the test, 9 out of 11 hypotheses were accepted. In conclusion, the data are meaningful, and this study presents the value of music content marketing in the metaverse through the metaverse SPICE model. Full article

Web-based idea management systems (IMS) have helped many organisations to adapt their creativity processes to the new way of working in response to the global pandemic. IMS provide a systematic and manageable idea generation and evaluation process in the virtual environment. Many well-known organisations in various industries, for example, Etsy, Panasonic, Sony, Electrolux, and Volvo, use IMS. In this paper, the authors identified a clear research gap—what kind of ideation tasks creates the best idea quality and quantity. The aim of this research is to find out how the different ideation task elements influence the quality and quantity of generated ideas. The following methods were used to fill the gap: (1) literature review (data collection: systematic data collection from scientific databases; data analysis: through content analysis) and (2) global survey of n > 500 organisations with web-based IMS experience (data collection: survey; data analysis: statistical inference). The results provide insight into: (1) correlations between the number of created ideation tasks and idea quality and quantity, (2) how results are affected by the duration of ideation tasks, and (3) analysis of different ideation task types and their impact on results. Full article

In the contemporary business world, digital transformations have undergone vast and important developments over the last several decades, and they have aided in the development of the virtual team concept, in which geographically dispersed team members work to achieve a common goal. Virtual teams, according to the literature, suffer from process losses more frequently than their face-to-face counterparts. Although just a few studies have looked at the effects of individual differences in virtual teams, this study fills in the gaps by examining the impact of individual differences: age disparity (AD), gender disparity (GD), language competency (LC), and IT competency (ITC) from the management perspective on virtual team adaptation in the Sri Lankan private sector. A survey was used to collect data from a sample of 175 private sector companies in Sri Lanka during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the data was analyzed using partial least squares path modeling (PLS) to test the study’s hypotheses. The results indicated that the hypotheses were statistically significant only in the language competency and IT competency and their effects were in the expected direction. Future research could benefit from the perceptions of employees in public sector organizations. Full article