Making Markets: The Practice of Business Models
The press is replete with stories suggesting that the way firms develop business models (that interact with and shape markets) is likely to affect their ability to compete internationally. Yet we know very little about the micro, firm-level practices that underpin business models. Government policy initiatives have done much to promote macro-economic management and provide a helpful regulatory environment for business to prosper. However, the key to improvements in firm productivity lies in understanding what goes on inside productivity processes and how this links to the external macro environment. That is, we need to understand more about the process of ‘translating’ a firm’s market vision and business strategy encapsulated in their business model into localised, contextualised and enacted market practices. The aim of this research is explore and identify promising practices that enable managers to make markets through the development and adaptation of business models.
This research is supported by: AIM and the ESRC
The Practice of Business Models and the Role of Corporate Identity
Research suggests that business models are co-created by the interactions of firms within a network. The purpose of this research is to explore how the different firms within a network percieve their own Corporate Identity and the Corporate Identities of those firms they have dealings with. Further, the study sets out to explore how these differing percieptions of Corporate Identity influence management and marketing practices.
This research is supported by: Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
Research Area: Making Markets: the Practice of Business Models
Awarding Body: AIM
Research Area: The Practice of Business Models and the Role of Corporate Identity
Awarding Body: Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
Research Area: Flexible Business Models in the Service Sector
Awarding Body: Lancaster University Management School Pump-Priming Grant
Research Area: An exploartion of the impact of horizontal mergers and acquisitions on buyer-seller relationships.
Awarding Body: Lancaster University Small Grant Scheme
AIM Visiting International Fellows:
Undergraduate Studies: Marketing Part One: 101 Marketing Innovation. Marketing Part Two: MKTG 315 Marketing Innovation
Postgraduate Studies: MSc Advanced Marketing Management: Dissertation Supervision and Project Supervision.
BA (Hons) Management and Marketing (Wolverhampton), MA International Marketing (Greenwich), PhD (Warwick)
My research interests originate from work experience in industry. This experience drove my PhD research which explored the relationship between how firms structured and managed their supply chains and the level of market orientation they achieved. Today, my research continues in this broad area as I endeavour to explore the issues that drive successful business networks.
My research now focuses on understanding how managers develop promising market-making practices through business model innovation. Understanding the practices of markets and business models requires an exploration of the different elements of business models and the interactions between these elements; specifically the network, knowledge, revenue, relationship and market architectures. Such archetictures frame the mechanisms and processes that cross organisational boundaries as firms attempt to co-ordinate and manage their strategic business networks.
Currently, I’m working on variety of projects including a project on the co-evolution of supplier relationships and their business models. This project explores how firms develop and change their relationships over time and follows an international network of firms embarking on the establishment of a long term relationship, as a design activity is outsourced for the first time.
Other projects I am currently engaged in explore the effect of corporate identity on business-to-business relationships (with Claudia Simões at the University of Minho) and the effect of communications typology on task success in a business-to-business environment (with Sheena Leek at the University of Birmingham). These projects are united by a common theme: how managers institute and administer successful and dynamic organizational networks in multiple contexts.
Following completion of my first degree I worked as marketing manager for a company manufacturing fire-fighting vehicles for the home and international markets. I then worked for a firm of international publishers marketing legal services directories worldwide. The issues raised within these practical work environments required that I understood how firms developed and maintained inter-firm relationships. As I watched the frustrations of the sales and marketing teams, the realisation that the classic marketing tools presented in marketing texts that I studied as an undergraduate, were useful in a consumer setting but seemed far removed from the issues being grappled with by managers in a business-to-business setting, left me wondering. This ultimately brought me to my research. Having completed my PhD at Warwick in 2002, today, I continue to pursue research in the field of inter-firm relationships and business networks here at Lancaster as part of the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group.
