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Maintaining good relationship quality (RQ) with customers is crucial for supplier firms to remain competitive. Yet, empirical evidence linking RQ with supplier-firm performance remains inexplicably vague. Drawing on social identity theory and the relationship marketing literature, this study therefore examines the role of customer identification—a customer firm's sense of shared connection with a supplier organization—in bridging the gap between RQ and outcomes beneficial to the supplier firm. A study involving 389 CEOs and directors of Australian firms finds that customer identification mediates the effects of affective RQ-dimensions (i.e., benevolent trust and affective commitment) on customers' willingness-to-pay premium price (WTP) and positive word-of-mouth (WOM) behaviors. Further, the mediating effect of customer identification is moderated by organizational distance and supplier's relationship-specific investments (RSI), such that the indirect effects are stronger when the organizational distance between the supplier and customer firm is low and supplier's RSIs are high. Moreover, while cognitive RQ has direct effects on WTP, its influence on WOM is mediated by customer identification. By identifying the role of customer identification in facilitating the link between RQ and supplier-firm performance, our findings provide valuable insights for supplier firms to optimize their relationship marketing efforts.

The object of this scientific-theoretical research consists in public relations emerging during investment of finances into bank deposit from the perspective of profitability factors, security and liquidity. The author analyzes the novelties introduced into the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, including those pertinent to new types of bank deposits. The work discussed all-round state control over the movement of finances in bank deposits, justifying the examination of a number of responsibilities of public commercial banks. The article analyzes legislative regulating relations by bank deposit agreement, which includes not only norms of private law, but public law as well. Research is carried out on the legal problems associated with the changes and termination of bank deposit agreement. The legislative array regulating these relations, is being examined as a complex legal institution, combining norms of civil, financial, and administrative law. The legislator protects not only the rights of investors, but also performs a supervisory and stimulating policy in the financial market, ensuring stability of the entire economic space of the Russian Federation. The article makes a number of recommendations on improving civil legislation aimed at protection of the rights of bank investors.

This study pertains to whether and how employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors toward customers (OCB-C) influence customers’ citizenship behaviors (CCB) directed toward the firm, employees, and other customers. Drawing on a social exchange perspective, this study proposes that a dual identification mechanism—spanning customer-employee identification (C-EI) and customer-firm identification (C-FI)—mediates the social exchange relationship between OCB toward customers (OCB-C) and CCB. Service climate as a key contextual factor moderates the mediating mechanisms of identification. With data collected from a field survey and an experiment, the findings confirm that the dual identification mechanism mediates the effect of OCB-C on customers’ reciprocation with CCB. The results also reveal a moderating effect of service climate, such that the positive effect of OCB-C on C-EI and C-FI grows stronger when the service climate is at low and high levels, respectively. In addition, the empirical results demonstrate that the underlying motive attribution explains the moderating effect of service climate. This work paints a more nuanced picture of the missing link in the OCB-C-CCB interface by identifying a mediating mechanism and boundary condition. To promote CCB, managers should leverage their employees’ OCB-C as well as their firms’ service climate.

Public distribution scheme is a structure promoted by government and includes chain of shops. This scheme aims to provide food grains and commodities to people at affordable price. Public distribution scheme ails at many factors such as availability, overcharge, timing, undersupply illegal smuggling of goods and corruption. Intelligent Public Ration Distribution System (IPRDS) is similar to an Automated Vending Machine which allows customers to complete purchases and transactions of basic ration commodities with ease. The customer identification, distribution of commodities, billing and data updation etc. are automated. The customer identification is done by the finger print verification. The system was prototyped and tested to distribute three major commodities; rice, wheat and kerosene. The proposed scheme can be directly implemented in the existing ration shops and thereby reduce the labor works associated with distribution of commodities. Since all the activities will be monitored by the food supplies department, all activities takes place in accordance with the rules and regulations.

This study proposes that loyalty programs lead to customer–company identification (CCID) formation. The empirical results show that non-financial benefits from loyalty programs can promote CCID by inducing customers' feelings of status and belonging in a company-initiated community. Relationship marketers interested in building customer identification with loyalty programs therefore should design proper non-financial investment portfolios to strengthen and confirm customers' feelings of status and belongingness.

The article examines the fraud and money laundering risks that arise in the regulated e-gaming sector and describes the kinds of measures taken by the sector itself against such risks. It establishes that the e-gaming sector uses a broad set of techniques to reduce the risks of fraud and money laundering and that, compared to methods of customer identification and monitoring in the off-line gaming and financial services sector, the scope for substantial abuse of e-gaming for laundering purposes is modest, both for those crimes that generate cash and for those that do not.

Despite the importance of data mining techniques to customer relationship management (CRM), there is a lack of a comprehensive literature review and a classification scheme for it. This is the first identifiable academic literature review of the application of data mining techniques to CRM. It provides an academic database of literature between the period of 2000-2006 covering 24 journals and proposes a classification scheme to classify the articles. Nine hundred articles were identified and reviewed for their direct relevance to applying data mining techniques to CRM. Eighty-seven articles were subsequently selected, reviewed and classified. Each of the 87 selected papers was categorized on four CRM dimensions (Customer Identification, Customer Attraction, Customer Retention and Customer Development) and seven data mining functions (Association, Classification, Clustering, Forecasting, Regression, Sequence Discovery and Visualization). Papers were further classified into nine sub-categories of CRM elements under different data mining techniques based on the major focus of each paper. The review and classification process was independently verified. Findings of this paper indicate that the research area of customer retention received most research attention. Of these, most are related to one-to-one marketing and loyalty programs respectively. On the other hand, classification and association models are the two commonly used models for data mining in CRM. Our analysis provides a roadmap to guide future research and facilitate knowledge accumulation and creation concerning the application of data mining techniques in CRM.

Objective: We analyzed the number of deaths due to poisoning by pesticides over 38 years through vital statistics published annually by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of the Japanese government, from 1968 through 2005. Materials and Methods: Data not published as vital statistics were obtained from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Statistics and Information Department. The vital statistics provide the numbers of deaths with individual causes of death classified by sex and 5-year age group. We also calculated age-adjusted death rates by this classification, using a direct method based on the 1985 Japanese model population. Results: Deaths from pesticide poisoning increased rapidly beginning in 1982, reached a peak in 1986 (death rate per 100,000 population: 2.6 in males and 1.7 in females) and declined gradually thereafter. In the most recent several years, these figures have declined to levels previously unseen (death rate per 100,000 population: 0.4 in males and 0.3 in females). A difference in death rates between the sexes was observed at every age level, with death rates of males approximately 1.1-1.5-fold those of females. In the 1985-1987 data, these figures were highest in the three prefectures of northern Kanto (Tochigi, Gunma, and Ibaraki Prefectures; crude death rates per 100,000 population: 6.8, 6.8, 6.2, respectively), followed by that in Kagoshima Prefecture (5.0). In the 2003-2005 data, the figure was highest in southern Kyushu (Miyazaki Prefecture; crude death rate per 100,000 population: 1.9), followed by Tochigi (1.6), Ibaraki (1.4), and Kagoshima (1.4). Conclusions: Deaths from pesticide poisoning were extremely well correlated to the history of paraquat. Through the 1985 Advisory Resolution on Paraquat Regulations by the Japanese Association of Rural Medicine and other public health-oriented efforts, the concentration of highly fatal paraquat formulations was reduced, leading to discontinuation of its production, customer identification was strictly enforced when purchasing pesticides, and people's safety consciousness regarding pesticides improved. We regard and these developments as having had the greatest contribution to the reduction in deaths from pesticide poisoning.

The Money Laundering Regulations 2003 came into force in the early part of 2004 in order to implement the EU Second Money Laundering Directive. They are much wider-ranging than the 1993 Regulations, which had preceded them: in addition to banks and other financial institutions, which were already covered, and bureaux de change and money transmission offices, added in 2001, they also apply to, inter alia, lawyers, accountants, estate agents, casinos and dealers in high value goods, such as jewellers and art dealers.\ud \ud Dealers in high value goods, however, are only covered in respect of transactions which are of a value of at least €15,000 and, moreover, in cash. That customers will be dealt with differently, in respect of the same transaction, depending on how payment is made, is unfortunate. A threshold stated in sterling would also be preferable: jewellers are often less well used to dealing in other currencies than financial institutions. More generally, if particular care is seen as required in relation to cash transactions, the threshold should arguably be lower.\ud \ud The actual requirements imposed have, however, changed little: the only major change is that certain types of business now need to be registered with Customs & Excise.

While total quality management has been adopted by many organizations world‐wide, its implementation in non‐profit organizations, such as higher education institutions, presents more challenges and difficulties than those encountered in business organizations. A critical step in TQM implementation is the process of customer identification. In addition to customer identification, there are other issues such as leadership, cultural, and organizational issues that tend to create difficulties for TQM implementation in higher education. These issues along with the role of students from a quality perspective and performance measures for higher education are discussed, and suggestions are made for their resolution.

This paper proposes a comprehensive classification framework applicable to the analytical Customer Relationship Management (CRM) problem domain of customer identification. Effective data mining tools have for long been anticipated in CRM as a promising technique to extract from historical data the knowledge that improves the quality of all CRM functions. However, standardized CRM data mining processes are yet to be developed. The proposed methodology provides quality solutions to most challenges encountered during a typical analytical CRM project, and has been tested on the difficult task from the UC San Diego Data Mining contest. The result outperforms some prevalent data mining techniques in the CRM domain.

This paper explores the feasibility of using machined vision based cash register system in a university cafeteria and automatically determine price of the food items that are contained on a cafeteria food tray. The idea is to take an image of the food tray, identify all the food items on the tray, and display the total food cost. A fully automated version of the system is envisioned to use a standard biometric technology for customer identification and for automatic debit process of the food cost from the customer's pre-registered account. The analysis method uses shape and size analysis to identify food items that are served on distinct type dishes and color analysis for those items that are served in similar type dishes. The paper explains prototype of a developed system and experimental results for 10 types of meals served at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University Cafeteria to justify the validity of this approach.

The paper analyzes what it means to be personally identified in markets in an age of ubiquitous database technology, digital monitoring and unobtrusive surveillance, as a basis for conjectures about strategies for identity management by consumers and by firms. Identity is defined. Four levels of customer identification are distinguished, transitory, persistent, role-specific and self-expressive identification. We discuss implications of each for consumer behavior and the operation of markets.

This is the seventh article in a series which has used characters from the plays of William Shakespeare to illustrate the systems approach to management, a methodology derived from the author's practical experience in applying the techniques espoused by W. Edwards Deming. The main elements of the system are: a management philosophy; education of the workforce; a system of measuring processes; determination of the causes of variation; identification and involvement of customers; and a structured quality organisation. This article summarises all elements of the system and shows how they must be applied in an organised manner.