Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Volume 27, Issue 2.
I am proud to announce that the APJML is now indexed on SCOPUS. On this note, I would like to thank all contributors for your continued support and dedication to publishing high-quality papers with the APJML. This privilege would not have been possible otherwise.
Moving on, this second issue of the APJML presents a series of high-quality papers covering a diverse range of topics and countries. These include social and destination marketing, services in higher education, as well as supply chain and management insights on export marketing, market orientation and technology transformation. We are also proud to introduce an industry spotlight section which we hope encourages a focus on industry-based research.
The issue opens with two papers on social and destination marketing. Dallenbach, Kusel and Rod, first delve into the online relationships between musicians and their fans on social networking services; and how the relationship dynamics affect fans’propensity to legally purchase music and refrain from online piracy. Their research provides insights into the intricacies of online relationships, and how record managers can better handle these relations. Next Allameh, Khazaei Pool, Jaberi, Salehzadeh and Asadi, explore the sports tourism scene in Iran, and identify the factors that encourage tourist revisit intentions. They found that for sports tourism in Iran, destination image, and the perceived quality and value of the services provided were key factors in predicting revisit intentions; and suggest ways to enhance these factors to encourage revisits.
Moving onto services and education sector, Choudhury investigates students’ perceptions of service quality in higher education institutes, and assesses the performance of these institutes. Conducted in India, Choudhury reinforces the notion that service quality is a complex and multidimensional construct; and develops a scale that allows institutional managers to better identify service areas for improvement, using Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution.
The next series of papers give insight into the management of industry change and orientation. Li, Zhao and Yu first employ the technology-organisation-environment framework to investigate the factors influencing small-medium enterprises’ decision to move to cloud services. Surveying senior management in China, they found that trust had a direct effect on intentions to move to cloud services. These findings give perspective on how trust between cloud service vendors and firms can be encouraged,and the pivotal role that regulatory measures play in stimulating the cloud services market. Racela then presents a study exploring how differing configurations of customer, entrepreneurial and information technology orientations affect new product development and performance. Surveying managers in Thailand, the study provides insight on how firms in Thailand have trouble reducing new product development costs; and suggests various strategy configurations enhance new product development efficiencies.
Continuing this theme, Zhang, Jiang, Shabbir and Duan investigate the impact of perceived institutional pressures on Chinese firms’ market orientation and competitiveness. Surveying B2B manufacturing firms, their study broadens our understanding of the impact of institutional theory and environmental pressures on firms’ market orientation. Further, they shed light on how managers can take a more proactive approach to analysing and manipulating these driving factors of market orientation. Kahiya and Dean then explore how exporters’ perceptions of export barriers evolve over time. This quasi-longitudinal study conducted in New Zealand, bridges our understanding of the relationship between firm-level export development and the perceived business confidence in the export environment. It further revealed a clear shift in the influence of export barriers over time, and calls for policy makers to remain current on these shifts.
Food is always an interesting talking point, and Poniman, Purchase and Sneddon present a highly current paper on the Western Australian Halal food industry. Specifically, they investigate how facilitating organisations perceive the Halal idea logic;and how traceability systems, from the institutional perspective, may be used to facilitate the integrity and authenticity of Halal food. This qualitative study suggests key managerial and policy implications for improving the integrity and authenticity of Halal food in Australia.
Closing this issue is an industry spotlight paper by Kumar, Shankar and Momaya. They investigate the competitive dynamics of the mobile communications industry in Myanmar. Specifically they evaluate the trade-offs between time-to-market and coopetition market strategies. Using systems dynamics modelling, they found that in Myanmar, a time-to-market approach may appear attractive,but may be stymied by unpredictability in success. They suggest coopetition as a longer-term strategy and present suggestions for managers and policy makers to encourage coopetition between service providers.
I hope this issue has provided interesting perspectives and unique insights to stimulate future research. Also, with the introduction of the industry spotlight feature section, we endeavour to bring you more quality papers and industry research insights in the coming years. I thank the reviewers and EAB for their timely reviews and contribution to the APJML; and the authors for submitting manuscripts of exceptional calibre.
Ian Phau
