Much scholarly work has explored the benefits firms accrue from innovation activities. Although some research has shown that firm innovativeness is associated with enhanced export success, the conditions under which firm innovativeness activities are most and least beneficial are not well understood. The authors take a contingency perspective and use social capital theory to investigate how internal channel networking capability and structural factors as well as external environment factors affect the innovativeness–export performance relationship. Analysis of samples of exporting firms from Ghana and Bosnia and Herzegovina indicates that innovativeness is most beneficial for firms operating in competitive and dynamic export markets; those in less competitive and static markets do not benefit from their innovation activities to the same extent. Stronger networking capabilities and a more organic structure also enhance the innovativeness–export performance relationship. The findings imply that the management of firm innovativeness is not a straightforward task in which greater emphasis on innovation activities is always beneficial for firms; rather, exporting organizations must match firm innovativeness levels to external environmental conditions and internal capabilities and structures.

The present study proposed and tested a conceptual model incorporating perceived service quality, customer-perceived value, and repurchase intention in a higher-education context. The main purpose was to empirically investigate the relationships between these concepts; thus, three hypotheses were postulated. Empirical data were collected among undergraduate students in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. A total of 735 cases were used to assess the overall fit of the proposed model and to test hypotheses using covariance-based structural equation modelling. The results support the proposed conceptual model, showing that perceived service quality and customer-perceived value have a positive and significant influence on repurchase intention, as well as that perceived service quality has a positive and significant impact on customer-perceived value. Therefore, the study contributes to the existing literature reporting the findings on quality and value in an educational context, with evidence from South Eastern Europe. Implications of the results are discussed, and recommendations for future research are made.

The goals of this study were to identify groups of health-related behaviors among young adults (N = 314, Mage = 21.94, SD = 6.53), gauge the relation between emotional intelligence and health behaviors in this population, and assess health consciousness as mediator of said relation. Latent class analysis identified two mutually exclusive health behavior groups, which according to response patterns were labeled as Healthy and Unhealthy. The Healthy group (56%) was composed of individuals who had a healthy diet (i.e., low fat and high fiber), exercised regularly, and who frequently engaged in behaviors that prevent oral and skin-related diseases. In contrast, the Unhealthy group (44%) rarely engaged in these health-promoting behaviors. Using structural equation modeling we found a negative relation between emotional intelligence and unhealthy behaviors relative to health-promoting ones. Mediation analyses indicated that the mechanism explaining said relation was through increments in health consciousness, with large standardized indirect effects ranging between -0.52 and -0.78. As health behaviors during early adulthood are salient predictors of health outcomes in old age, the results have clear implications for the inclusion of emotional intelligence training in programs seeking to raise health awareness and cultivate health promoting behaviors in young adults, in so much as to seek to reduce the risk of chronic ailments later in life.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the linkages among emotional intelligence, relational selling behavior and salesperson performance. Although existing research acknowledges the importance of emotional facets in business relationships, the role of emotional intelligence is poorly understood in the literature on salesperson performance. Design/methodology/approach Two data sets from business-to-business salespeople in various industrial and service sectors were analyzed with structural equation modeling. Mediation hypotheses were cross validated through a bootstrapping approach with bias-corrected confidence estimates. Findings The results suggest that two focal types of selling behaviors – namely, adaptive selling and customer-oriented selling – fully mediate the positive relationship between emotional intelligence and salesperson performance. Practical implications The study offers new insights to sales and marketing managers on how individual capabilities (such as emotional intelligence) can be transformed into high sales performance. Originality/value Drawing on the ability view of emotional intelligence and highlighting its conative facet, the current research posits that emotional intelligence affects salesperson performance through relational selling behaviors.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to disentangle the effect of life equilibrium on organic food purchase intentions through a consideration of the evaluation of intrinsic and extrinsic food quality attributes. Furthermore, the study examines the role of health consciousness in achieving life equilibrium. Design/methodology/approach The conceptual framework was developed based on previous research and tested through a quantitative study with end consumers. The hypothesized relationships were tested using structural equation modelling. Findings The results obtained from this study show that the perceived quality associated with the intrinsic attributes of organic food mediates a positive influence of life equilibrium on consumers’ organic food purchase intentions. The study also confirms that life equilibrium mediates the effects of health consciousness on the evaluation of intrinsic and extrinsic food quality attributes. Research limitations/implications The theoretical contributions of the paper lie in uncovering the complex relationships that exist among health consciousness, life equilibrium, perceived organic food quality dimensions and purchase intentions and providing new evidence showing which perceived intrinsic organic food quality dimensions are relevant in shaping consumers’ purchase intentions. Practical implications The research results suggest that organic food managers should focus on developing stronger value propositions that are based more on intrinsic food quality characteristics and less on extrinsic ones. Originality/value This study recognizes the relevance of life equilibrium as a specific consumer lifestyle form, which drives organic food consumption through extrinsic and intrinsic food quality attributes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the curvilinear effects of firm innovativeness (i.e. product, organisational and marketing innovation) on international expansion as well as the effect of expansion on performance in the developing countries (DCs) setting.,Research hypotheses are tested using survey data obtained from firms located in four South-East European DCs. Covariance-based structural equation modelling is used to test the proposed conceptual framework.,Empirical findings support the hypothesised U-shaped relationship between product innovation and organisational innovation and the level of international expansion of firms in developing markets. The authors found an inverse U-shaped relationship between marketing innovation and the level of international expansion. Furthermore, the existence of a strong positive link between the level of international expansion and firm performance is also confirmed.,While this research utilises a sample of firms from a homogenous group of DCs, further research could use a more heterogeneous sample and thus control the model for various contingency effects (e.g. environment turbulence, market structure and competitive dynamics).,When it comes to product and organisational innovation, international expansion is achieved only with a higher level of innovativeness. On the contrary, beyond a certain level, further investments in marketing innovation do not have additional positive effects on international expansion.,This study is one of the first that explicitly focuses on examining the non-linear effects of innovativeness on international expansion in the DC context.