The Influence of Product and Facade Design towards Consumer Preferences

The façade is an architectural element that is to show the functional and meaning of the building. The façade design of a house is generally on the of the basic considerations for consumers to buy. In addition, the face design has always been a promotional information in the marketing mis that used by housing developers. This study was intended to identity the effect of product and façade design towards consumer preferences in lower-middle housing. The object study was Pondok Indah Matani housing in Kupang, NTT. This study used experimental approach by manipulating research variables. The manipulated variables were product and façade design, while the influenced variables were consumer preferences. The determination of sample used purposive sampling method with a technical survey using a questionnaire. The result of study stated that the product and façade design had a significant effect on consumer preferences, through (1) the application of contrasting colors, (2) the firm boundaries in transition area in front of the house and (3) the complexity of the product dan façade design should be not too complicated so that it was easy to care post purchase.

Resource Redeployment

Firm resources and capabilities provide a basis for competitive advantage over rivals. By providing a platform for profitable expansion or contraction of firm boundaries, they also underlie corporate advantage—where a corporate parent creates more value than its individual businesses could generate if they were not part of the corporate parent. This article clarifies our current understanding of resource redeployment—one mechanism through which resources might contribute to corporate advantage. Resource redeployment involves a partial or complete withdrawal of resources (and capabilities) from one use and reallocation to another opportunity inside the firm. It typically refers to redeployment of non-financial resources, such as tangible, intangible, and human capital, as we do so here. Capital might also be redeployed, but since its redeployment entails few or no sunk adjustment costs it deserves separate attention, and is only discussed briefly below to highlight similarities with resource redeployment. Resource redeployment represents an explicit preference for internal markets over external markets. Flexibility is a primary benefit for firms having potential for resource redeployment, if they can pursue opportunities more efficiently than firms relying on external markets. Having more flexibility to redeploy should inspire firms to enter markets at lower levels of expected performance and exit markets at higher levels of expected performance. More generally, firms should expand and retrench from markets more fluidly than firms lacking potential for efficient resource redeployment. While this mechanism for corporate advantage has been recently explicated in the literature, it has important precedents. Empirical examination of resource redeployment is just underway. Finally, it is important to clarify how corporate advantage tied to resource redeployment differs from other determinants of corporate advantage. Each of these issues is discussed below, along with future research opportunities.

The role of boundary management in open innovation: towards a 3D perspective

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to investigate the role of boundary management when firms should implement open innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe relevant literature on strategic management, firm boundaries and open innovation fields is revised and critically assessed. An interpretive-qualitative methodology is applied to analyse empirical data obtained from a questionnaire and subsequent interviews of a sample of Italian listed firms. By critically integrating literature review and empirical analysis, a framework is provided with the objective of supporting open innovation implementation.FindingsThe study shows that on the one hand, open innovation and many modern paths of growth are connected to a firm's boundaries and that on the other hand, boundary management plays a key role in the implementation of open innovation.Practical implicationsThe paper has implications for practitioners by driving them to shift the focus of open innovation implementation towards the management of boundaries, in which boundary capabilities and activities play a key role.Originality/valueThis paper sheds light on the advantages and risks that can jeopardize a successful opening up innovation processes without the effective management of boundary studies. Thus, the authors identify and propose causes for reflection and tools maximizing potentiality and reducing risks in the implementation of such processes.

FDI, Multinationals, and Structural Change in Developing Countries

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the extant knowledge linking activities of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and structural change in developing countries. The balance of payments approach, which focuses on investment, is criticized. The exact configuration of the MNE will result from the interaction between the ownership of assets of the firm and the location-specific assets of countries, and the extent to which the firm perceives it to be in its best interest to organize these assets within the firm boundaries, that is, to internalize the market. The East Asian experiences suggest that FDI is just one of the possible vehicles of knowledge acquisition, and that the investment development path could be redefined in terms of technological catching-up. Cross-country differences in the FDI–structural change nexus seem to be associated with the financial development and the level of control of corruption of the countries but not with trade openness.

Art Work as Life Work: Lu Märten's Feminist “Objectivity”

“Art Work as Life Work: Lu Märten's Feminist ‘Objectivity’” highlights the feminist stakes of German feminist-materialist art historian Lu Märten's interventions in the interwar discourses on art and labor, on objectivity (Sachlichkeit), and the new media of film and radio. The essay argues that Märten's contributions to these areas sit squarely within more familiar narratives of materialist aesthetics and Weimar culture (from Walter Benjamin's epochal Artwork Essay to the Bauhaus) and that they do so on account of her heterodox reading of Marx and commitment to Spinoza's monism. In Märten's view, this non-binary materialism offered an alternative, non-Hegelian route to a materialist conception of art or as she preferred to say, form. In contrast to art history's academic formalism, Märten espouses a notion of form that does not maintain art's autonomy but instead connects art to other social fields. Here form always evolves out of informality. The essay traces the close bond between art work and life work across Märten's multiple publications, including her theoretical magnum opus Essence and Transformation of Forms/Arts and her studies on The Economic Conditions of Artists and The Female Artist. In so doing, the text contributes to revisiting the firm boundaries that art history has drawn between objects and communities.

Explicating the business model from a knowledge-based view: nature, structure, imitability and competitive advantage erosion

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the business model (BM) from a knowledge-based view (KBV), to interpret its nature and knowledge structure and to investigate the relationship between its imitability and the erosion of firm’s competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach Based on a systematic literature review, this study builds an integrated framework to explicate the nature and structure of the BM from a KBV. Moreover, on the analysis of two contrasting cases, the argument concerning the relationship between BM imitability and its strategic value is proposed, analyzed and supported. Findings The main finding of this study is that a BM can be viewed as a structured knowledge cluster that contains explicit and implicit parts. Its imitation is a dynamic process of knowledge diffusion across firm boundaries. Ceteris paribus, with a lower proportion of implicit knowledge, a BM is more likely to be imitated and the adopter’s competitive advantage is more likely to be eroded, and vice versa. Practical implications The proposed framework could provide managers with a deeper understanding of the nature and structure of the BM and help potential adopters develop a successful entry strategy by avoiding BMs that seem profitable but are incapable of maintaining competitive advantage. Originality/value As a complement to previous studies, the research conceptualizes the BM as a “structured knowledge cluster” to explicate its nature and knowledge structure from a KBV. The implicit part of the BM is explored, and its importance for the adopter’s competitive advantage is discussed and verified.