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Service blueprinting is a service design technique commonly used by for-profit organizations to illustrate and enhance customer experiences. This article describes an extensive service blueprinting initiative conducted at a large public research institution in the U.S. using a case study methodology. The case included the creation of 114 service blueprints by staff members across 29 departments to enhance non-academic student experiences. Data sources included interviews, observations, archival data, and artifacts. The researcher details the methods and benefits of service blueprinting as they apply to services in a higher education context. In addition to describing the case and the short-term and longer-term consequences of the large-scale blueprinting initiative, the article includes a series of recommendations for university administrators seeking to improve student satisfaction and student-centeredness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many brands try to manage customer complaints on social media, helping their customers on a real-time basis. Inspired by this popular practice, in this study, we aim to understand whose and what complaints on social media are likely to have happier resolutions. We analyzed the complaint resolution experience of customers of a major U.S. airline, by exploiting a unique data set combining both customer–brand interactions on Twitter and how customers felt at the end of these interactions. We find that complaining customers who are more influential in online social networks are more likely to be satisfied. Customers who have previously complained to the brand on social media, and customers who complain about process-related rather than outcome-related issues are less likely to feel better in the end. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to identify the key factors that shape customer feelings toward their brand–customer interactions on social media. Our results provide practical guidance for successfully resolving customers’ complaints through the use of social media—an area that expects exponential growth in the coming decade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The boll weevil, Anthonomus grandis Boheman (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), is an infamous pest of commercially cultivated cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L. (Malvales: Malvaceae). Once the most important agricultural pest in the United States, the boll weevil spurred an unprecedented mobilization of federal support and cooperation among stakeholders, culminating in the eventual eradication of the species from 98% of its invasive range in the United States. The US Boll Weevil Eradication Program, a joint effort of local, state, and federal governments and agencies, university and agency researchers, and the cotton producers themselves, is a prime example of a successful implementation of a community-wide integrated pest management (IPM). The program also dramatically reduced the use of insecticides in cotton production which led to further positive economic outcomes for producers and reduced the non-target impacts from those chemicals. Though the boll weevil has been mostly eradicated in the United States, the insect remains one of the most important and impactful cotton pests in Central and South America. In this review, we will revisit the agro-economic history of the boll weevil and examine the success of the US Boll Weevil Eradication Program. In doing so, we will learn how we can apply those lessons to boll weevil management abroad and community-wide management of other agricultural or invasive pests. Finally, we will conclude with a brief summary of the ongoing science that continues in service of eradication today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tepid growth in life insurance premiums, plus the consumer and governmental attacks on the industry, suggest that the status quo of life insurance in the U.S. is changing. It is highly unlikely that the actual need for the product will cease, and no competing solution has been offered which would supplant the life insurance policy. So, while life insurance is unlikely to die, it will need to change if it is to grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we investigate how applying human-like characteristics to customer service chatbots can influence retail outcomes. This is an important managerial question as creating effective chatbot experiences through messaging platforms has proven difficult for organizations. Often, chatbot developers apply characteristics such as giving a chatbot a human name, adding humor, and so on, without knowing how these features influence end user behavior. Implementing a field experiment in collaboration with a dual channel clothing retailer based in the United States, we automate a used clothing buy-back process, such that individuals engage with the retailer's autonomous chatbot to describe the used clothes they wish to sell, obtain a cash offer, and (if they accept) print a shipping label to finalize the transaction. We provide evidence that, in this retail setting, anthropomorphism is beneficial for transaction outcomes, but that it also leads to significant increases in consumers' sensitivity to the offer amount. We argue that the latter effect occurs because, as a chatbot becomes more human-like, consumers shift to a fairness evaluation or negotiating mindset. We study the impacts of "humanizing" artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled autonomous customer service agents (chatbots). Implementing a field experiment in collaboration with a dual channel clothing retailer based in the United States, we automate a used clothing buy-back process, such that individuals engage with the retailer's autonomous chatbot to describe the used clothes they wish to sell, obtain a cash offer, and (if they accept the offer) print a shipping label to finalize the transaction. We causally estimate the impact of chatbot anthropomorphism on transaction conversion by randomly exposing consumers to exogenously varied levels of chatbot anthropomorphism, operationalized by incorporating a random draw from a set of three anthropomorphic features: humor, communication delays, and social presence. We provide evidence that, in this retail setting, anthropomorphism is beneficial for transaction outcomes, but that it also leads to significant increases in offer sensitivity. We argue that the latter effect occurs because, as a chatbot becomes more human-like, consumers shift to a fairness evaluation or negotiating mindset. We also provide descriptive evidence suggesting that the benefits of anthropomorphism for transaction conversion may derive, at least in part, from consumers' increased willingness to disclose personal information necessary to complete the transaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Sporting goods retailing is a significant sector within the sport industry with the total revenue of this sector reaching $52.2 billion in 2018. Beset with formidable competition, sporting goods stores are compelled to augment their merchandise with service and improve retail quality. The purpose of this study is to investigate retail quality of sporting goods stores (RQSGS). Design/methodology/approach: Based on 27,793 online reviews of 1481 stores in the United States, this study used Leximancer 4.0, a text mining software, to identify critical retail quality dimensions associated with sporting goods stores, and further explored the most salient dimensions among different levels of ratings. Findings: Customer service and store aspects are the two higher-order dimensions of RQSGS; holistic experience, manager and staff are three themes under customer service, and product, B&M store and online–offline integration are three themes under store aspects. Furthermore, extreme reviews focus more on customer service, whereas lukewarm reviews focus more on store aspects. Practical implications: Knowledgeable staff, managers and online–offline integration are instrumental in creating superior retail quality. Sporting goods stores should enhance hedonic and social values for consumers in order to ward off online competitions. Originality/value: This study explored retail quality dimensions that are pertinent to sporting goods retailing utilizing text mining methods. This study to certain extent cross-validated the existing retailing literature that is developed on alternative methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) came into being in response to the housing and debt crisis that accompanied the Great Recession. Created as a means for aggrieved consumers to bring problems to the attention of federal regulators empowered to fine banking and finance companies, the inflow of complaints began late in 2010 and has steadily risen in the years since. This research examines the variable emergence of complaints across 5 years, asking what types of constituencies are most likely to register grievances with the CFPB. The filing of complaints is mostly responsive to the presence of middle and upper income populations with mortgages, though contacts are also high from African American neighborhoods. Government contacting among lower income populations is facilitated by the presence of counseling and consultative services at the grassroots. Notably, legal aid services often present in lower and moderate income neighborhoods are associated with higher complaint frequency for several financial products. Through street-level consultative organizations, the gap in government service provision separating the affluent, who complain on their own, and less privileged, who do not know where to express their grievances, can be reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has the health care delivery paradigm and its integral transactions and interactions been left to muddle through, using archaic, 20th century modes and processes of delivery that are overlaid with byz antine medical record databases that pass for "cut ting-edge" technology? What is stalling the digital revolution in the provision of health care services to consumers? Understanding how and why this has happened requires that we briefly explore the evo lution of health care in the United States. Topics discussed include (1): morbidity and mortality: the public health era: (2) Medicare era: the advance of diagnostic and therapeutic technology; (3) the power of the consumer: patient-centered informatics; and (4) planning and execution of strategic transformation of provision of care informatics. Without an informatics focus, our health care system will continue limping along, costing more money and delivering many years of disability. Our most viable solutions revolve around using informatics to measure, guide and become the transformation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of customer compatibility—the degree of fit between customers' needs and the capabilities of the operations serving them—on customer experiences and firm performance. We use variance decomposition analysis to quantify the relative importance of customer, employee, process, location, and market-level effects on customer satisfaction. In our models, which explain roughly a quarter of the aggregate variance, differences among customers account for 96%–97% of the explainable portion. Further analysis of interaction-level data from banking and quick-service restaurants reveals that customers report relatively consistent satisfaction across transactions with particular firms but that some customers are habitually more satisfied than others. A second set of empirical studies provides evidence that these customer-level differences are explained in part by customer compatibility. Customers whose needs, proxied by differences in demographics and product choices, diverge more starkly from those of their bank's average customers report significantly lower levels of satisfaction. Consistently, banks that serve customer bases with more dispersed needs receive lower satisfaction scores than banks serving customer bases with less dispersed needs. Finally, a longitudinal analysis of the deposit and loan growth of all federally insured banks in the United States from 2006 to 2017 reveals that customer compatibility affects a firm's financial performance. Branches with more divergent customers grow more slowly than branches with less divergent customers. Institutions serving customer bases with more dispersed needs have branches that exhibit slower growth than those of institutions serving customer bases with less dispersed needs. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, the most dominant industry is services, yielding the highest volume of total employment and gross domestic product. Due to this insight, academics and business professionals continue to research and apply strategies to achieve distinctive competitive advantages in the services arena. The steady growth and increasing significance of the service sector in the United States and other developed markets has resulted in a sizeable body of related research addressing a variety of issues such as service quality and its characteristics. Healthcare is an impactful service industry that has received a considerable amount of attention. In the healthcare field, studies have shown that a variety of variables impact the perception of service quality. In a highly competitive healthcare environment, it is in an organization's best interest to provide customers the best service possible to achieve optimal service quality outcomes. This paper asserts that service quality is especially enlightening when measured before and after corrective strategy implementation. This paper applies the SERVQUAL evaluation tool to assess service quality expectations and perceptions in a healthcare setting. Particularly, this study proposes that service quality improves following a correction of service-related issues and demonstrates the significance of evaluating service quality after appropriate changes have been made. Two samples were conducted one year apart in a large Obstetrics and Gynecology office. After the first sample, this paper identifies 4 of 5 areas that needed improvement. Owners and management of the medical office implemented processes to improve weak areas following the initial sample. In the second sample, one year later, the study indicates there is evidence that corrective strategies were effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to identify the differences between email negotiation and face-to-face negotiation with respect to negotiation process, negotiation flexibility, face-saving, level of collaboration, and appropriateness for cross-cultural negotiation. The survey questionnaire was distributed to the sales and customer service employees in many business organizations located in different regions of the United States of America. Data from 519 respondents (including both males and females) were analyzed using the one-sample t-test, two sample t-test, and Pearson Correlation. The findings reveal that the characteristics of face-to-face negotiation assist in smoothing the negotiation process more than that of email negotiation. Participants also tend to cooperate more in face-to-face negotiation than in email negotiation. However, participants prefer using email negotiation because they find it more flexible. They also feel that a face-threatening act is less likely to occur in an email negotiation than in a face-to-face negotiation. The findings also show that email negotiation could be more appropriate than face-to-face negotiation for the purpose of cross-cultural negotiation. This is because communicating via email minimizes the influence of culture on the negotiation process. Age and gender do not have any influence on the perspectives of participants regarding email negotiation versus face-to-face negotiation. The findings have significant implications for both business and dispute resolution. They contrast the differences between face-to-face negotiation and email negotiation and identify the situations in which each of these types could be most appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupational licensing currently affects more than 1,000 occupations in the United States. I use confidential US Census Bureau business micro‐data to shed light on the effect of occupational licensing in cosmetology on key market outcomes and study its effect on the providers of occupational training. Occupational licensing regulation does not seem to affect the equilibrium number of practitioners or prices of services to consumers, but is associated with significantly lower practitioner entry and exit rates. I further find states with more stringent licensing requirements to have more instructors and a larger median size of training facilities, suggesting possible barriers to entry for the training schools. Instructors, however, do not earn more in such states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mexico, the production of guava (Psidium guajava L.) is very representative, since year after year, it is among the first 10 fruits harvested with higher yields. From 2008, fresh guava began to be sent to the United States of America, aimed at the nostalgia market, complying with the tariff and phytosanitary requirements for the crossing to this country, as one of these requirements is that the cargo is irradiated, which is the elimination of bacteria and pathogens harmful to health. The present work, shows the methodology and procedures before an open market essential for the competitive strategy and the generation of income that improves the planning of the distribution of fresh guava in all the federal entities of Mexico both producing and consuming United States of America; through the formulation in linear programming of a distribution optimization model for this fruit, which minimizes transport costs where it identifies potential consumption centers and recommends that quantities should be supplied to said market, to maintain the balance between the supply and demand of fresh guava, in order to make the products and services available to customers at the time and place, in the desired conditions and forms, in the most cost-effective manner refer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how return policies from online fashion retailers from different countries (USA, China and Western European) support consumer need for uncertainty avoidance and lower negative prefactual thinking in two different markets: China and USA. Design/methodology/approach: A content analysis of eight international online fashion retailers' return policies in both the China and USA markets was conducted. Findings: US, Chinese and Western European online fashion retailers have more detailed return policies in the USA market compared to the China market. The results also indicate that US, Chinese and Western European online fashion retailers are more inclined to offer lenient return policies in the USA market which helps to lower consumer perceptions of uncertainty and negative prefactual thinking. Practical implications: Exploring online retailers' return policies and how retailers respond to consumers' level of comfort with uncertainty and tendencies to engage in negative prefactual within the context of different cultural markets offer valuable insight into standard retail practices necessary to retain profitability. Despite the perception of a "global" marketplace, nonstandardization of customer service is found. Originality/value: Although the ability of online retailers to reach global markets has increased, few scholars have studied return policies within different cultural contexts. This study focuses on return policy as a major influencer of prefactual thinking by reducing anticipated regret and increasing online purchase intention in a global cultural context. The research is not only beneficial to managers who seek to increase the profitability through globally strategic implementation of return policies but also contributes to the consumer regret and risk literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that inseparability is not a universal distinguishing characteristic of services and that the consumption of many services is or can be separated from their production. This research defines service separation as customers' absence from service production, which denotes the spatial separation between service production and consumption. In a series of qualitative and quantitative studies across different services, the authors examine customer reactions to service separation. The results indicate that service separation increases customers' perceptions of not only access convenience and benefit convenience but also performance risk and psychological risk. Furthermore, these effects differ across services. Specifically, relative to experience services, for credence services, the effects of separation on service convenience are mitigated, and the effects on perceived risk are magnified. Subsequently, the convenience and risk perceptions induced by service separation can influence customers' purchase decisions and postexperience evaluations. Customers prefer separation for experience services and when they have an established relationship with the service provider. Finally, the authors discuss the theoretical contributions and managerial implications and offer directions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relationship between multimarket contact and service quality. We offer two hypotheses: (1) multimarket contact negatively affects service quality and (2) multimarket contacts in less competitive markets more negatively affect service quality. We test these hypotheses using U.S. airline on-time performance data to measure service quality. We find that multimarket contact increases delays and that this effect is greater for contacts on more concentrated routes, although the effect diminishes on very highly concentrated routes. These findings provide support for the mutual forbearance hypothesis and suggest that multimarket contact facilitates tacit collusion on quality as well as price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between informal training and job performance among 2,803 telephone operators in a large unionized U.S. telecommunications company. The authors analyze individual-level data on monthly training hours and job performance over a five-month period in 2001 as provided by the company's electronic monitoring system. The results indicate that the receipt of informal training was associated with higher productivity over time, when unobserved individual heterogeneity is taken into account. Workers with lower pre-training proficiency showed greater improvements over time than did those with higher pre-training proficiency. Finally, whether the trainer was a supervisor or a peer also mattered: workers with below-average pre-training proficiency achieved greater productivity gains through supervisor training, while workers with average pre-training proficiency achieved greater productivity gains through peer training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examine the influence of culture on the measurement of service quality and satisfaction in dentists' office settings. Respondents from the United States, Canada, and Japan participated in a 2 ×2 factorial experiment in which the authors manipulated both expectations (high/low) and service performance (high/low) in a series of scenarios. With partial metric invariance, latent mean comparisons revealed that regardless of expectations, Japanese respondents reported lower quality perceptions and satisfaction ratings when performance was high and higher satisfaction ratings when performance was low than did their U.S. and Canadian counterparts. Thus, there is some evidence that Japanese consumers are more conservative in their evaluations of superior service but are less critical (or more forgiving) of inferior service. The authors also discuss managerial implications and future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the theory developed by the Nordic school of service marketing, the authors devise a model that involves the direct effects of technical (physical good quality) and functional (service quality and servicescape) elements of the service encounter on customers' behavioral intentions. They test the model using service customers in the fast-food and grocery industries in eight countries (Australia, China, Germany, India, Morocco, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States). Notable differences exist between fast-food and grocery customers in the eight countries. The relative effects of the technical and functional service elements on behavioral intentions also differ significantly across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes customer satisfaction in buyer-supplier relationships across national boundaries (transnational business relationships) with manufacturing firms on both sides of the dyad. The analysis is based on data from 511 industrial customers from the United States and Germany, 201 of which reported on a transnational relationship. The results indicate that quality and flexibility are important antecedents of customer satisfaction. These antecedents were significantly lower in transnational relationships than in domestic ones. Using equity theory and the confirmation/disconfirmation paradigm, the authors develop alternative models for describing the relationships between customer satisfaction and its antecedents in transnational as opposed to domestic relationships. The findings reveal that there are no structural differences between transnational and domestic relationships regarding the relationships between customer satisfaction and its antecedents. Specifically, a lower level of customer satisfaction in transnational relationships is due to lower levels of the antecedents and does not constitute an effect of transnationality per se. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors examine 308 firms in the United States and four other Western countries to understand how different types of firms relate to their markets. Comparative analysis shows that though there is some support for consumer and goods firms being more transactional and business and service firms being more relational, there are many exceptions. The results also show that firms can be grouped into those whose marketing practices are predominantly transactional, predominantly relational, or a transactional/relational hybrid. Each group constitutes approximately one-third of the sample and includes all types of firms (consumer goods, consumer services, business-to-business goods, and business-to-business services). This suggests that marketing practices are pluralistic and managerial practice has not shifted from transactional to relational approaches per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study profiles the changing demographics and unique consumption patterns of the African-American consumer segment of the financial services market. When it comes to the selection and purchase of financial products and services, African- American consumers differ markedly from their white counterparts. This is especially apparent in the case of relatively high-risk, high-return financial assets, resulting in a diminished rate of wealth accumulation over time in black households. This article offers suggestions to marketers seeking to render more effective service to this attractive and growing segment of the financial services marketplace. For example, promotional materials should reflect the key role of African-American women in determining household consumption patterns. Moreover, successful marketing to African-American households requires a strong educational component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the Association of Research Libraries' pilot project on client assessment of library service quality using a modified version of the ServQUAL instrument called LibQUAL+. Participating academic libraries; Preparation of a customized front-end Web page for the general survey; Addition of two dimensions to the original ServQUAL instrument.

Presents results of Texas A&M University's experience administering SERVQUAL as a performance assessment tool for research and academic libraries in the United States. Measurement of the difference between customers' minimum expectations and their perceptions of those services as delivered; Five customer-valued dimensions of service.

The adoption of specific marketing strategies is related to several factors in an organization including the organization's mission, objectives, resources, and market orientation. We report an exploratory study in which we define relationships between market orientation and marketing strategy in a high technology environment--the telecommunications industry in the United States. Market orientation is defined as a culture that influences how employees think and act. Our results indicate that a market orientation provides a context for the implementation of specific marketing strategies by serving as a moderator of operational marketing strategy. For example, those organizations who possess a strong market-oriented culture (high-spirited cultures) engage in value creation strategies such as market segmentation, developing new products/services for new markets, and product or service customization. Those organizations possessing low market orientations (ineffectual cultures) generally practice less aggressive and internally focused strategies such as charging lower prices, providing limited customer service, product/service standardization, and undertake limited market research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides a partial test of the authors' options-based model of career mobility in professional service firms (Malos & Campion, 1995). After clustering a sample of 117 high-grossing U.S. law firms into two configurations suggested by strategic options analysis, the authors found internally consistent relationships among career mobility practices and career-related outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the IBM's Human Resource Service Center ( HRSC) methods to train customer service representatives and program specialists as well as the training challenges. The key elements of success for the Human Resource Service Center (HRSC) are: people, technology and customer-driven processes. IBM has recognized the importance of combining these elements to produce effective training for a constantly changing environment. Located in Raleigh, North Carolina, the HRSC uses networking technologies to deliver human resource information to IBM managers, employees, and retirees across the United States. The HRSC's employees have access to workstation platforms, applications, and tools including Lotus Suite applications. HRAccess allows employees and managers to view and retrieve HR-related information as well as perform HR transactions such as salary increases, address changes, etc. Voice Response Unit applications and Skill Base Routing further enhance the ability to meet customer requirements. All employees handling calls have their skills documented within the Skill Based Routing system based on experience and area of expertise.

Increasingly, strategy scholars are exploring the relationships between innovation, competition, and the persistence of superior profits. Sustained high profitability may result when a firm repeatedly introduces valuable innovations that service previously unmet consumer demands. While the returns to the firm from each innovation may erode over time, innovation ensures that, overall, the firm maintains a high performance position. At the same time, sustained high profitability may also accrue to firms that innovate less often, but effectively avoid the competition that otherwise erodes high returns. This paper elaborates these relationships before presenting an empirical analysis of the effects of differential innovative propensities and differential rates of competition on pharmaceutical firms' abilities to sustain profit outcomes that are above those earned by competing firms. The analysis, which is situated within the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, finds support for the expected relationship between high innovative propensity and sustained superior profitability, but no support for a link between persistence and the ability to avoid competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post Office is a customer service facility forming part of a national portal system. Prior to the advent of Postal and Zip Codes, postal system would route items to specific post office for receipt of delivery. The evolution and genesis of postal system is a very significant and important subject matter of study which dates back to 2400 B.C. The most powerful countries of the world like the United States of America, the Egypt and the United Kingdom were the pioneer in this line. In India too, the genesis of the postal system is a very important and interesting subject matter of study. During the process of development, the Postal system has evolved greatly affected by factors known and unknown. Here in this present study, an effort has been made to visualize the different factors which are responsible for evolution of the postal system around the globe and of course in India both pre and post independence. It is worth mentioning that the Postal system has evolved along with development of modern digital system. The whole postal system has ramified with the latest development of postal banking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision of credit unions in the United States to adopt transactional web-based services is consistent with profit-maximization behavior. Credit unions adopt transactional internet banking services when they provide a higher proportion of consumer loans and when there is increased competition from other financial institutions. They adopt transactional internet banking to attract new customers. The larger the credit union the higher the probability of adoption of transactional internet banking. The probability of adoption of transactional banking is directly related to credit unions’ efficiency and indirectly related to loan delinquencies. We also find that the probability of credit unions offering transactional internet banking is positively related to the percentage of the young population in the counties where credit unions are located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the practical aspects of developing a customer service pledge at the libraries of Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Lessons learned on customer service from corporate settings; Goals in developing a customer service plan; Staff reaction to the formation of a customer service pledge; Effect of the pledge on the libraries' administrative operations.

Is the loop, which provides customers with access to the switched network, a service in its own right, or is it purely an input into the production of the final service, which is usage of the switched network? Agreeing with Kahn and Taylor that the question of whether the loop is an economic good is irrelevant to the pricing issue, this paper goes on to claim that pricing at marginal cost is not an appropriate welfare maximization rule due to network externalities that make the private benefit of access less than the social benefit. Socially efficient pricing is likely to involve pricing below the marginal cost of access to some consumers and above the marginal cost of access to others. One implication is that a contribution to the local loop from Interexchange Carriers (IXCs) or IXC customers may be optimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes an organizational intervention jointly sponsored by the United Automobile Workers and the Ford Employee Involvement Executive Committee. The intervention was needed to rejuvenate the existing employee involvement (EI) process which had been in existence since the early 1980s. The EI process had achieved its purpose of making significant cultural changes at Ford, but was viewed as narrow in scope in light of existing organizational problems of quality, customer focus, and productivity. An organizational intervention was designed jointly by a committee of union and management personnel using the Competing Values Framework as a diagnostic tool to examine the current organizational gaps in the majority of Ford's manufacturing facilities. The article discusses the overall process and the significant results at four major plant facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the marketing concept is the cornerstone of the marketing discipline, businesses typically describe only limited success in implementing it. An examination of the core pillars of the marketing concept points to limitations in the first pillar, the customer focus. This pillar is directed at the external customer, the person purchasing the firm's products and services with no attention to the internal customer, the employee. Whereas much attention has been directed to human resource practices in total quality management, marketers have overlooked its importance. This article describes an exploratory study based on in-depth interviews with corporate executives from a broad range of American organizations, which phenomenologically assesses the characteristics of the marketing concept and the employee activities that foster its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides a controlled statistical analysis of changes in Federal Reserve membership status on commercial bank performance. The comparative performance impact of both entry into and exit from the U.S. Federal Reserve System is evaluated. The findings are assessed from the standpoint of public, banking and regulatory interests. The methodology of the study consists of a before-and-after analysis of the impact of Federal Reserve membership status on commercial bank performance. To hold constant, the influence of such other factors and to isolate the impact of a change in membership, each bank changing membership status is paired with a control bank of similar size, located in the same city or town as the sample bank.

The article reports on the profession of industrial distributor in the field of marketing in the U.S. The author focuses on analyzing the results of a study, conducted in 1975, which focused on examining the role an industrial distributor plays in the marketing strategies of manufacturers. The key responsibilities of distributors, such as initiating contact with customers, delivering goods, and managing inventories, are discussed in detail. The professional relationship between salespeople and the industrial distributor is also examined. It is suggesting that the role of industrial distributor is undergoing a professional transition.

This article, based upon a limited survey, summarizes the job functions, satisfactions, and problems of the newly designated heads of consumer affairs departments. It focuses on the need to meet certain long-term responsibilities, as well as the need to improve corporate day-to-day operations. Special attention is given to the conceptual problems faced by the new consumer affairs person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bank branch employees and customers from 23 branches of a large commercial bank responded to questionnaires designed to assess issues regarding employee perceptions of management's orientation to service and employees' own orientation to service. A causal relationship was evidenced between service orientation discrepancy, role stress, and employee outcomes. Positive employee outcomes were found to be significantly related to customers' perception of service quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is a new type of market-based performance measure for firms, industries, economic sectors, and national economies. The authors discuss the nature and purpose of ACSI and explain the theory underlying the ACSI model, the nation-wide survey methodology used to collect the data, and the econometric approach employed to estimate the indices. They also illustrate the use of ACSI in conducting benchmarking studies, both cross-sectionally and over time. The authors find customer satisfaction to be greater for goods than for services and, in turn, greater for services than for government agencies, as well as find cause for concern in the observation that customer satisfaction in the United States is declining, primarily because of decreasing satisfaction with services. The authors estimate the model for the seven major economic sectors for which data are collected. Highlights of the findings include that (1) customization is more important than reliability in determining customer satisfaction, (2) customer expectations play a greater role in sectors in which variance in production and consumption is relatively low, and (3) customer satisfaction is more quality-driven than value- or price-driven. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of ACSI for public policymakers, managers, consumers, and marketing in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a causal modeling methodology to examine competing methodological and theoretical hypotheses concerning the effects of product quality on direct costs and business unit return on investment (ROI). Results show that the PIMS' measures under study exhibit high reliability across all samples. The findings fail to support the widely held view that a high relative quality position is incompatible with achieving a low relative cost position in an industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]