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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of invisible communication and its implications in marketing communication. It defines invisible communication and proposes an analytic framework enabling an expanded view of marketing communication.Design/methodology/approachBy explicitly adopting a customer‐oriented perspective, combined with insights from service marketing and relationship communication, the paper extends current models of marketing communication.FindingsThe paper identifies different types of invisible communication and presents new perspectives on marketing communication. The authors outline a framework for understanding how the company can/cannot control different forms of marketing communication and discuss the implications of this.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper concentrates on a conceptual analysis, offering a number of practical illustrations. The conceptual development creates new research issues that should lead to a deeper understanding of customers' meaning creation, actions and reactions.Practical implicationsInvisible communication constitutes a managerial challenge as it is often unrecognized by the management. The paper points to the need to develop methods to reveal the existence and effects of invisible communication as well as to create guidelines for managerial response.Originality/valueThe customer‐based perspective and the focus on invisible communication provide a new approach to analysing and understanding marketing communication. The paper contributes to service marketing and marketing communication research by introducing conceptualisations of invisible communication that have an interest for both academic research and practitioners.

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to discuss how corporate brand images evolve in consumers' everyday life and its implications for the company's branding strategies.Design/methodology/approachA conceptual discussion and a framework are presented that maps four alternative views on corporate brand images and market dynamics in relation to corporate branding.FindingsCorporate brand evolution is suggested as a way of including consumers' everyday brand image constructions and re‐constructions in a company's branding strategy. Corporate brand evolution is based on two new concepts: image heritage and image‐in‐use. A model for understanding evolving strategic corporate branding is proposed.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed view on evolving corporate brands is deliberately developed for understanding open source brand dynamics in ever‐changing markets. This paper is limited to make a conceptual contribution. Therefore, research implications are to develop empirically the understanding of image‐in‐use and image heritage in various business contexts.Practical implicationsAn understanding on how brands evolve over time has two major practical implications for companies. First, companies need to develop new approaches and methods to understanding how brands evolve over time. For example, by investigating the consumer' image heritage of the company. This may enhance considerably possibilities for open branding strategies that meet consumer reality to be developed.Originality/valueThe two new concepts, image heritage and image‐in‐use, and the novel approach of evolving corporate brand images are important as they are based on a new consumer understanding, recognizing that consumers' corporate image constructions are dynamic ever‐changing processes and not static end‐states.

PurposeOne of the causes of change in business relationships comes from incidents that deviate in a positive or negative way from the expected and normal relationship pattern. This introduces the concept of stress that captures the effect of negatively deviating incidents in business relationships.Design/methodology/approachPresents a technique, the negative critical incident mapping (NCIM), for measuring this kind of stress. The technique is used in an industrial service and a business service setting to measure stress in a dyadic manner.FindingsThe results show that not only were all studied relationships burdened with stress to a varying extent but there were also substantial differences in the degree and content of stress. The relationships showed significant differences when seller‐buyer pairs of stress perceptions were matched. Operator‐level perceptions of stress in the relationships corresponded better than manager‐level perceptions. Research and management implications from the new relationship stress concept conclude the paper.Originality/valueThe new relationship‐stress concept is useful for relationship‐dissolution and relationship‐strength researchers since it reveals a hidden risk factor to a business relationship that complements current understanding. For managers the value lies in being able to diagnose relationships at risk of being lost or to detect fundamental relationship problems.

Purpose
This paper aims to identify how, in contrast to a provider-oriented stance where customer value is conceptualised as being controlled by the provider, customer value is formed for business customers beyond what is visible to the provider.


Design/methodology/approach
This paper builds on the primacy of the customer. Customer-dominant logic (CDL) is used as the conceptual underpinning, meaning that the customer, rather than the service provider or the service system, is at the centre. A case study was conducted with seven key users from three customer companies of an information and communications technology (ICT) provider of in-house services. The study used a micro-social level focus by capturing customers' experiences of those activities where value in use is formed.


Findings
The findings indicate that value formation is not related only to direct service interactions and furthermore substantially takes place beyond a service provider's visibility line. Hence, value formation is in large part hidden for the service provider because it is embedded in customers' activities and experiences.


Research limitations/implications
Although the study is limited to one case concerning ICT services, these findings may apply to other service businesses, in particular to knowledge-intensive outsourcing businesses.


Practical implications
Understanding a customer's value formation from the customer's point of view is the key to service development for any business service provider.


Originality/value
Applying a CDL approach, the authors deepen the understanding of customer value formation as it emerges in customer activities. The study provides detailed insight into business customers' value formation processes. The study's findings challenge the current emphasis on interactions and co-creation and instead demonstrate the importance of understanding customer logics and contexts.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to extend current discussions of value creation and propose a customer dominant value perspective. The point of origin in a customer‐dominant marketing logic (C‐D logic) is the customer, rather than the service provider, interaction or the system. The focus is shifted from the company's service processes involving the customer, to the customer's multi‐contextual value formation, involving the company.Design/methodology/approachValue formation is contrasted to earlier views on the company's role in value creation in a conceptual analysis focusing on five central aspects. Implications of the proposed characteristics of value formation compared to earlier approaches are put forward.FindingsThe paper highlights earlier hidden aspects on the role of a service for the customer. It is proposed that value is not always an active process of creation; instead, value is embedded and formed in the highly dynamic and multi‐contextual reality and life of the customer. This leads to a need to look beyond the line of visibility focused on visible customer‐company interactions, to the invisible and mental life of the customer. From this follows a need to extend the temporal scope, from exchange and use even further to accumulated experiences in the customer's life and ecosystem.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is conceptual. It discusses and presents a customer‐dominant value perspective and suggests implications for empirical research and practice.Practical implicationsAwareness of the mechanism of the customer value formation process provides companies with new insight on the service strategy, service design and new service innovations.Originality/valueThe paper contributes by extending the value construct through a new customer dominant value perspective, recognizing value as multi‐contextual and dynamic based on customers' life and ecosystem. The findings mark out new avenues for future research.

PurposeThe present increasingly tough economic climate has uncovered the need to go beyond the prevailing seller‐oriented models and company practices in order to capture the factors that essentially drive buyer companies. What is needed is a genuinely customer‐side concept that corresponds to offering. The purpose of this study is to develop a new concept labeled "customer needing" which emerged from the material collected in an industrial service setting.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reports a case study of a typical high‐technology industrial service with a strong outsourcing trend. The empirical data consist of interviews with eight representatives from the seller company and 16 interviews from different customer companies.FindingsA needing is based on the customers' mental models of their business and business strategies that affect their priorities, decisions, and actions. It is itself a mental model of how the customer conceives the fulfillment of a specific task. In this paper the needing is operationalized as a profile of three dimensions containing six functions that represent desired value in use for the customer: the doing dimension comprises a relieving and an enabling function; the experiencing dimension has an energizing and a sheltering function; and the scheduling dimension contains a time‐framing and a timing function. Empirical data are presented to illustrate the new concept.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a case study but the ensuing concept provides a framework for further research on value in use and mental models in an industrial service setting. The studied offering was a complex business service representing an outsourced function and the buyers were functional experts and higher‐level executives, all of them experts in the service in question.Practical implicationsThe concept of customer needing extends knowledge of value in use and consequently represents an important tool in developing successful seller offerings. The shift of focus from offering to needing can explain why some sales attempts fail and can thus reveal new business opportunities.Originality/valueIn addition to highlighting the mental models driving companies' priorities and behavior, the study offers insights into value in use in an industrial service setting. The concept customer needing helps to analyze and describe value in use and provides a new buyer‐side concept corresponding to the offering concept.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework for and an initial understanding of critical times in business relationships.Design/methodology/approachThe authors define "critical time" as a period of time with increased sensitivity in a business relationship that may change the actors' attitude and/or behaviour in the relationship. The authors review previous research, present the theoretical framework and present the findings from two explorative empirical studies concerning companies' relationships with information technology consultants and advertising agencies. The focus is on the factors driving the flow of critical times.FindingsThis authors introduce the concept "critical time" as a period of stress and raised sensitivity in a relationship that may change it. Critical times are built up by three elements: initial state of the relationship, the flow of critical time and outcome state of the relationship. The authors contribute with the critical C‐model: competence, communication, and clock.Originality/valueThis is the first study focusing on critical times in business relationships. The authors study two categories of knowledge intensive professional services. A new theoretical framework for, and an initial understanding of, critical times in business relationships are suggested.

Purpose– This paper aims to explore and demonstrate how an ethnographic research approach can reveal new aspects of the dynamics of service innovation processes. In contrast to the retrospective research approach found in most service innovation research, the ethnographic approach captures the innovation process as it unfolds.Design/methodology/approach– An ethnographical investigation of an incremental service innovation at a bank was conducted. The innovation activities were performed jointly by a team of bank members from various functions and external business partners. This was a formal project with a pre-specified plan, budget, and timetable.Findings– The ethnographical approach, capitalizing on its real-time, multi-methods, longitudinal, and up-close characteristics, made it possible to capture unforeseen events and issues at the micro level. The authors suggest that such critical events determine what direction the innovation process takes. The initial intentions and plans were partly realized; new issues emerged during the innovation work and were realized, while other emergent issues were finally not realized.Research limitations/implications– The study suggests a framework that can be used to identify four categories of micro-level processes. Critical events in the micro-level processes represent potential turning points and are important foci in practice and remain issues for further research.Practical implications– Managers may benefit from being open to including emergent issues and understanding the micro-level dynamics of the innovation process.Originality/value– This study illustrates how the ethnographic research approach captures the dynamics of innovation processes and the potential challenges and possibilities for innovation managers. This finding suggests the need to address micro-level dynamics.

Purpose
– This paper aims to extend understanding of business-to-business relationship dynamics by introducing and discussing the phenomenon of a "negative critical wave" (NCW), defined as a disturbance in a relationship that emerges and develops within or beyond individual working relationships.


Design/methodology/approach
– The dynamics of working relationships in two manufacturing firms in Finland and Sweden were studied by analysing the narratives of unstructured personal interviews with 16 middle managers and 14 operational executives, who recalled experiences of relevant situations over three years, with emphasis on unexpected disturbances, challenges and problems.


Findings
– Respondents discussed 77 NCWs, the development and effect of which proved to depend upon the original "locus", "magnitude" and "amplitude", and embedded "energy". Waves could be distinguished as: "silent compact", "silent extensive", "intense compact" or "intense extensive".


Research limitations/implications
– The wave metaphor for relationships dynamics, consistent with but distinct from established notions of "critical time" and "critical incidents" and the associated classification system are a useful starting point for further research into the phenomenon. Though the qualitative methodology achieved richness, the small sample and restricted scope place limits on the objectivity and generalisability of the findings.


Practical implications
– The NCW framework offers strategists and managers a holistic understanding of the dynamic process of criticality, synthesising the complexities of relationship dynamics and pointing to ways in which to absorb the energy of negative waves.


Originality/value
– More is now known about the domino effects of critical incidents in internal and external business-to-business relationships.