Marketing activities in tourism are conducted in tourist companies as well as in tourist destinations. In the latter, marketing activities are organized through the functioning of the so-called destination marketing organizations. It is a common name for different organizational forms, given that it could be a single company which has developed a resort, an association of tourist companies or an organization established by the public sector. In this respect, destination marketing organizations differ among themselves by a greater number of criteria, which determine their functions, methods of functioning, etc.
There are now available a number of new subscription services that comprise a dual pricing system of a monthly access fee rental and a per-minute usage charge. Examples include cellular phones, the...
The literature on cross-national diffusion models is gaining increased importance today due to the needs of present day managers. New product sales growth in a given nation or society is affected b...
The increasing availability of customer information is giving many firms the ability to reach and customize price and other marketing efforts to the tastes of the individual consumer. This ability ...
We argue that: (1) whether articles contain numeric data should be irrelevant to the evaluation process; (2) the desirability of numeric real, numeric synthetic, or nonnumeric data depends on the research objective; (3) assumptions can and should sometimes substitute for additional data; and (4) equal scrutiny should be given to data collection procedures, regardless of whether the researcher influences the collection or not. Finally, rather than focusing on data, evaluation of research should focus on whether the research provides compelling evidence for the conclusions.
The service-profit chain (SPC) is a framework for linking service operations, employee assessments, and customer assessments to a firm's profitability (Heskett et al. 1994). The SPC provides an integrative framework for understanding how a firm's operational investments into service operations are related to customer perceptions and behaviors, and how these translate into profits. For a firm, it provides much needed guidance about the complex interrelationships among operational investments, customer perceptions, and the bottom line. Implementing the SPC is a pervasive problem among most service firms, and several attempts have been made to model various aspects of the SPC. However, comprehensive approaches to model the SPC are lacking, as most studies have only focused on discrete aspects of the SPC. There is a need for approaches that combine data such as measures of operational inputs, customer perceptions and behaviors, and financial outcomes from multiple sources, providing the firm with not only comprehensive diagnosis and assessment but also with implementation guidelines. Importantly, an approach that is sensitive to and can accommodate the strengths and weaknesses of such data sets is required. We outline and illustrate such an approach in this paper. Our approach has the potential to both identify and quantify the benefits of implementing a service strategy, especially for firms having multiple units (e.g., banks with branches, retail outlets, and so forth). The implementation approach is illustrated using data from a national bank in Brazil. We used customer surveys from more than 500 branches of the bank. Each individual customer's marketing survey data was linked to a number of operational metrics. First, behavioral measures of retention, such as the length of the customer's relation with the bank, the deposit amount, and number of transactions with the bank, were obtained and merged with the survey data. Second, the main branch used by each customer was identified and operational inputs (e.g., number of employees, number of available automated teller machines (ATMs)) used at that branch were obtained and merged with the data set. This data set was used to model the SPC at a strategic and operational level. The strategic analysis consisted of a structural-equation model that identified the critical conceptual relationships that parsimoniously articulate the SPC for this bank. For instance, from among a variety of attribute-level perceptions, the bank was able to identify those perceptions that were critical determinants of behavioral intentions. Similarly, from a variety of available behavioral metrics, the bank was able to identify those behaviors most relevant to profitability. The operational analysis utilized Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and provides customized feedback to each branch in implementing the strategic model. It provides each branch with a metric of its relative efficiency in translating inputs such as employees and ATMs into relevant strategic outcomes such as customer intentions and behaviors. Our illustration shows how top management can use the strategic and operational analysis in tandem. Whereas the strategic model provides the key relationships and metrics that are needed to ensure that all subunits of the firm follow a consistent strategy, the operational analysis enables each branch to benchmark its unique position so that the branch can implement the strategic model in the most efficient way. Thus, simultaneously implementing the strategic and operational model enables a firm to have a centralized focus with decentralized implementation. For this bank, the operational analysis shows that for a branch to achieve superior profitability, it is important that the branch manager not only be efficient in achieving superior satisfaction (as indicated in positive behavioral intentions) but also be efficient in translating such attitudes and intentions into relevant behaviors. In other words, superior satisfaction alone is not an unconditional guarantee of profitability.
Marketing channel interactions typically feature three characteristics that have not been incorporated together in an analytic study: (1) the parties can do business repeatedly over time, often under different terms of trade (e.g., prices may vary), (2) the terms that the seller offers one buyer may be different from those she offers another, giving each interaction the flavor of bilateral monopoly bargaining, and (3) the buyer and seller come to the interaction uncertain about the valuations each holds for the good, but they do know each other's reputation for valuation. The seller might, for example, come to the bargaining table aware that the buyer has a strong reputation for being willing to pay only low prices, and the buyer might come aware that the seller is strongly reputed for high cost and is, therefore, willing to offer only high prices. The latter characteristic raises an interesting question: When engaged in a marketing channel interaction, what type of reputation is best for a buyer or seller to take to the bargaining table? In this paper, we answer that question by incorporating each of the characteristics that typify channel interactions in a formal game-theoretic bargaining model. We determine how the reputations that buyers and sellers bring to the bargaining table affect their equilibrium strategies and payoffs. Our analysis shows that, in general, the best reputation for the seller to take to the bargaining table is one that makes the buyer nearly certain in his belief that the seller's cost is high, a result that matches intuition. The best reputation for the buyer, however, is counterintuitive. We show that an increase in the buyer's reputed willingness to pay can actually cause the seller to offer a lower price. The best reputation for the buyer to take to the bargaining table is, therefore, one that makes the seller believe that there is a significant chance that he is willing to pay a high price. This result is new to the literature and brings with it immediate managerial implications that we discuss. Our analysis also shows that modeling the buyer as a forward-looking strategic player yields different results than does following the normal convention of modeling the buyer as a nonstrategic price-taker. We discuss why future research on channels and on reference-dependent utility theory should consider these differences.
In a recent article, Broniarczyk et al. (1998) report an interesting finding that the availability of consumers’ most preferred alternative in an assortment positively influences their perceptions of assortment size. This finding points to the impact of a hitherto unexplored retail strategic dimension, what we call, commitment to assortment consistency. So far, researchers have been examining retail strategies that pertain to assortment width and depth. The consistency factor featuring in the assortments offered by some retailers has largely gone unnoticed or ignored in the extant literature. We seek to address this dimension in our research. By consistency in assortment we mean the tacit promise made by a retailer to carry a given set of brands, sizes, flavors, colors, etc. from one period to next, so that a consumer who looks for his preferred brand (or size, flavor, etc.) will be able to find that brand for sure at that retail store. Of course, not all retailers commit themselves to carrying a consistent assortment. For example, if someone walks into a warehouse club such as Sam’s Choice, he may be able to buy a branded product at a lower price but not the brand or the size (or color, flavor, etc.) he looks for. One reason for this inconsistency is that these stores make a bulk of their purchases during trade deals that are offered by the branded manufacturers and hence have less say on what they can carry in a given period. In the apparel market, an example of a store that does not carry a consistent assortment is Ross Dress for Less. If we draw a continuum from a point of no commitment (to assortment contents) to a point of full commitment, it is rather obvious that one can locate retailers such as Sam’s Choice at its low end and retailers such as Macy’s at its top end. While it is obvious that the mere existence of the consumer segment that looks for consistent assortments will drive some retailers to adopt such commitments to consistent assortments (C2C for short), what is less obvious is that this strategy is affected (negatively) by supply side factors such as the availability of trade deals. This is because while opportunistic buying helps a retailer to reduce his acquisition costs, it introduces inconsistency in the assortment. It is also important to note that although consumers may seek particular brands, their final choice of a retailer is affected also by price and location of the retailers. Thus, it is not clear how a retailer would react in a competitive environment even if a sizable segment of the market seeks consistent assortment. Apart from adopting C2C strategy, offering a service oriented shopping environment (such as having more knowledgeable store personnel and a well-lit parking lot) is another way by which a retailer can increase the store traffic. Our research question is: In a market served by two retailers, what supply and demand conditions would enable one or both retailers to adopt C2C and/or offer service? Out of the various retail market structures possible, one particular structure is of importance to us. This is the market where only one retailer adopts C2C and offers service as well. Our focus on this market structure is motivated by two factors: prevalence of this retail structure in many markets, and availability of enough data from one such market, the Dutch flower market, which we use to validate our theoretical predictions. By using a three-stage game theoretic formulation, we show that in equilibrium only one retailer would adopt C2C and offer service as well if the other retailer does not have a high acquisition cost advantage in the supplier market, and if the cost of offering service is neither too high nor too low. Another interesting result we get is that even when a large section of the market seeks a consistent assortment, it will not be profitable for both the retailers to adopt C2C. This is because a retailer not adopting C2C can still attract customers by passing on his supply side savings to them through low prices and engaging in less price-based competition with the C2C retailer, while adopting C2C in retaliation would bring down the profits of both the retailers. We actually measure the model parameters in the Dutch flower retail market and show that with these values the model predicts the equilibrium outcome (i.e., one retailer alone offering both C2C and service) that characterizes the structure of this market. We carry out sensitivity analysis to demonstrate the robustness of the model prediction.