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This case study research reports on a small and medium-sized (SME) business-to-business (B2B) services firm implementing a novel new service development (NSD) process. It provides accounts of what occurred in practice and considers the implications for this and other firms’ innovation practices. This longitudinal case study (18 months) was conducted “inside” the case organization. It covered the entire innovation process from the initiation to the launch of a new service. The primary method may be viewed as participant observation. The research involved all those participating in the innovation system in the firm, including decision-makers, middle managers and employees at lower hierarchical levels and the firm’s external networks. Implications for researchers and managers focusing on structured innovation models for the services sector are also presented.

This paper presents an examination of national culture’s influence on perceptions of service quality. Direct measurement based approach towards measuring perceived service quality is adopted and implemented in this research, while national culture is conceptualized using Hofstede’s framework. A review of previous studies linking dimensions of national culture with perceived service quality dimensions is undertaken and used as a basis upon which differences between service quality perceptions between national groups are hypothesized. Empirical research was undertaken using a sample of hotel guests from two national groups. By means of regression analysis, contribution of service quality dimensions in explaining total perceived service quality across two national samples was observed. Analysis of empirical data confirmed hypothesized differences between national samples. Finally, an analysis and discussion of research result’s implications for services marketing theory and practice is provided.

In recent years, the significance of private brands has grown to such an extent that it can not be ignored. Private brands market share in certain countries in Europe is exceeding 40 per cent and is continuously increasing. Although, retailers have started to develop private brands in order to offer customers a cheaper alternative compared to leading manufacturers’ brands, over time their strategy has changed. They have realized that private brands can be a good mean of differentiation and thereby a source of competitive advantage, so they started to focus on improving their quality. However, despite the increase in objective quality, research on customer perception and blind tests have shown that consumers still perceive private brands as inferior compared to manufacturer brands. Those results are not surprising, taking into account the amounts manufacturers are spending on development of all aspects of their brands in order to influence customer perception. Retailers have, in recent years, also started to use this strategy in order to develop strong image of their private brands. Investments in promotion can have positive effects on customer expectations linked to performance and quality assessment of private brands. Nevertheless, it is important to focus private brand promotion on value as an element of product evaluation rather than solely on quality or price because customers tend to have more positive attitude towards private brands when assessing brand value. Positioning and promotion of private brands solely as the cheapest alternative for customers will not result in sustainable competitive advantage for their owners.

This paper tries to find out if the monetary policy shocks influence Croatian banking sector. In order to analyse the impact of structural shocks onto the real economy and feedback effects from banking sector onto the real economy we employ the unrestricted VAR. The analysis is based on a standard monetary VAR including variables real GDP, consumer prices and the 3-months interest rate augmented by a variable that represents the aggregate banking sector in Croatia. The effects of monetary policy shocks are estimated using an agnostic sign-restriction method proposed by Uhlig (2005). The sign restrictions are imposed on the contemporaneous and one-quarter ahead reactions of the variables except on the banking sector variable. The effects of a contractionary monetary policy shocks on banking sector variable are left agnostically open by design of the identification procedure, which is named “agnostic” for that reason, Uhlig (2005). Croatia is a small open economy with banking dominant financial sector and banking loans are dominant financial instrument. Assets of banking sector are predominately related to credit activities (76%) and, in accordance with asset structure, revenue structure of Croatian banking sector indicates that credit activities (interests from loans) are dominant revenue of banks in Croatia. Currently, Croatian banking sector consists of 34 banks. Six largest banks take on 82.2% of total assets of the banking sector. As for the ownership structure, banks in foreign ownership take on 90.6% of the assets of Croatian banking sector, and only 4.2% of the assets relates to state owned banks. The results of our study emphasize the importance of monetary policy for stability of Croatian banking sector as the effects of contractionary monetary policy shocks on credit risk are highly persistent even three years following the shock. This result indicates that contractionary monetary policy shocks worsen the stability of the banking sector.

The purpose of this research was to get an insight into the skills and negotiation behaviour of businessmen in Croatia and to look closely at the factors that affect the negotiation process adversely. Cognitive ability, social and emotional intelligence were chosen as the features that determine the level of negotiation abilities. Often business negotiators encounter obstacles arising from their nature ; limitations and negotiating abilities ; insufficiently developed emotional and social intelligence and negotiator’s biases result in making non-objective and poor in the settlement of conflict. Furthermore, the aim was to detect the level of businessmen’s self- consciousness and self-esteem in negotiation situations in order to detect possible discrepancies when compared to the level of their skills. The quantitative research was conducted on a sample of 80 businessmen in Croatia with the intention to examine the perceptions about their own negotiating skills. The sample consists of highly educated individuals who own small and medium size entrepreneurship and the ones that are employed in companies at the positions that entitle frequent negotiation. The research has shown that Croatian businessmen do not have sufficiently developed emotional and social intelligence in the context of negotiation process but at the same time consider themselves to be successful negotiators with developed negotiation skills. The paper provides useful insight into the perception of businessmen’s skills and abilities in negotiation processes which deserves further research attention.

Public health care institutions same as private health care institutions are present in almost every city in Croatia. Public health care institutions provide stability, security, and most of all they are traditionally among the people in Croatia. Private health care institutions are basically young and modern institutions with new and different management system. They focus their service on the highest quality while public institutions are more based on the higher number of the patient’s examinations in one day. Those differences in management and organization and in quality of provided services bring the morale question of humanity and it brings both patients and doctors in difficult position. Patients that have more financial ability are able to afford better health care service in private health care institutions and financially less supported have no choice than to be cured in public institution. In most cases same doctors work in both public and private institutions. In this paper we are presenting management abilities and disabilities of both sides ; patient that can or can not chose where to get their health treatment, and doctors to have an ability to choose in which institution to work.

There are more and more papers on the importance of customer relationship management (CRM), actually there are so many that the entire area of study has reached saturation point. With an increase of interest in the strategy of CRM, the problems concerning its implementation have become more evident. The most frequently mentioned elements concerning the implementation of the CRM strategy are people, process and technology. However, the question which arises from this is whether that is enough. According to one source, the percentage of failed CRM strategy implementations is on average 60%. This paper suggests other important elements for the implementation of CRM strategy. The importances of the other elements are followed by primary and secondary sources. Qualitative research was carried out for collecting primary information, while the secondary sources are taken from books and scientific articles from CRM area of study. For the research in-depth interviews were used and a topic guide was the instrument of the research. The sample consisted of experts from top companies in Croatia, who took part in the implementation of the customer relationship management strategy.

Until recently, private labels were considered to be a phenomenon limited to fast moving consumer goods in mature markets of economically developed countries. However, analysis of data on value shares and private label growth rates on the global level indicates that this is no longer the case. Private labels have become real competition to manufacturer brands which can no longer be ignored. Due to the rapid growth of private label market share researchers have looked into different influential factors in attempt to comprehend reasons behind their success. Existing research on private label management have made a significant contributions to the development of theory and practical strategies, however, the problems of managing private labels at the level of individual categories is still not sufficiently explored, although the differences among the product categories are highlighted as critical source of differences in private label success. On the other hand, consumers reflect the demand side of the purchasing process so their perceptions and characteristics critically affect decisions on brand selection and therefore performance of the brand. The primary purpose of this paper is to define category and consumer level factors which affect consumers’ attitudes about private labels and consequently their purchase intention in emerging markets and to propose an adequate conceptual model.

Experts in the field of food marketing today recognize the growing importance of the Halal certificate even in those countries (like Croatia) that are not primarily Muslim. The certificate serves in those countries as an important attribute and provides added (new) advantage in positioning a certain product on the food industry market. The process of certification, that some Croatian companies have already completed, serves as yet another proof of their quality and commitment to fulfill their customers’ needs, even on new markets. The production of Halal products means a lot more than merely filling a market niche for the Croatian food industry, as well as for the small and medium producers of food products. It provides an opportunity to enter larger market segments, in the region, as well as on the global market. In addition, by producing Halal products, Croatian companies enrich the gastronomic offer of the region, which is very important for Croatia as a tourist destination. Certified Halal products carry an added meaning based on the certificate, and the buyers will buy them because they express the buyers’ positions and desires. The Halal certificate plays an important role in building and maintaining the image of the consumer.

The appearance of private labels (or private brands) in Croatia happened in the mid 90-ies. The business policy and the aim of creating private labels basically relates to the highest possible margin to be achieved by the retailer. This is possible to realise by negotiating a much lower, i.e. a significantly lower purchase price of the product. Retail chains find private labels very acceptable and profitable, for the margin achieved by their sales provides enough space for investing funds into marketing activities. Lower prices lead to the increase of product turnover. To sum up, the fundamentals of the private labels' policy are: setting up a price lower than the price of brands, which means mostly a significantly lower price, increasing product turnover, achieving a higher margin, ensuring a better shelf space for the product and conducting marketing activities through advertising in catalogues, various promotional activities and sales promotion. Today, private labels are increasingly developing and expanding into almost all assortments of food products, so one can say that there is an alternative in private labels for almost all those products. With the further development of private labels and continuous pressure on producers regarding competition, retail chains arrived at undesirable situation. Producers who had to meet unceasing demands for achieving the lowest possible production price were at some point forced to change the recipe of products they produced. They pursued realising a lower price by reducing product quality. Not taking into account the quality, many retail chains reduced their premium brand to the B brand, i.e. the product of a lower quality. This is particularly harmful to the product programmes in which different products are purchased under the same label name but only one or two products in the assortment are of a lower quality. Because of those few products consumers perceive all other products in the assortment as products of a lower value and quality, so that in time the quantity of purchased products decreases. Having led their own private labels to an unfavourable position and in a way undermined them through their business policy, those retail chains started to change that policy and tried to preserve the labels by creating premium and B brands. The premium brand is the more recognizable one which is under constant quality control or whose name is used for products whose quality cannot be easily affected. The other private label, the so called B brand, is the one whose quality can be easily affected. This is largely a brand of a lower quality targeted at consumers of lower living standards. As private labels enhance their quality and consumers earn more trust in retail chains, so there will develop an increasingly stronger competition between private labels and national brands.