Impact of tacit knowledge on customer loyalty

Tacit knowledge about customers held by contact personnel is a priority for better satisfying customer needs and creating added value. This research project seeks to develop a model to analyse the impact of tacit knowledge on loyalty for rural tourism lodgings. A questionnaire was applied to the clients of rural tourism lodgings who had either already consumed rural tourism services at least once or were then currently consuming such services. By applying structural equation models, the results demonstrate how tacit knowledge does improve the performance of employees in engaging in affective bonds and enables better understanding of the needs and expectations of customers. Furthermore, the results confirm how tacit knowledge about customers represents a resource able to promote customer loyalty and thus a very strong potential source of competitive advantage.     

The Exponential Age Distribution and the Pareto Firm Size Distribution

Recent work drawing on data for large and small firms has shown a Pareto distribution of firm size. We begin by showing that the firm age distribution is well approximated by an exponential distribution. We then mix a Gibrat-type growth process among incumbents with an exponential distribution of firm’s age, to obtain the empirically-observed Pareto distribution.     

Medical resource utilization and costs among Australian patients with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C: results of a retrospective observational study

Objective: To evaluate medical resource utilization (MRU) and associated costs among Australian patients with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C (GT1 CHC), including both untreated patients and those receiving treatment with first-generation protease inhibitor-based regimens (telaprevir, boceprevir with pegylated interferon and ribavirin).

Methods: Medical records were reviewed for a stratified random sample of GT1 CHC patients first attending two liver clinics between 2011–2013 (principal population; PP), supplemented by all GT1 CHC patients attending one transplant clinic in the same period (transplant population; TP). CHC-related MRU and associated costs are reported for the PP by treatment status (treated/not treated) stratified by baseline fibrosis grade; and for the TP for the pre-transplant, year of transplant and post-transplant periods.

Results: A total 1636 patients were screened and 590 patients (36.1%) were included. Comprehensive MRU data were collected for 276 PP patients (F0–1 n?=?59, F2 n?=?58, F3 n?=?53, F4 n?=?106; mean follow-up?=?17.3 months). Thirty-eight (13.8%) were treatment-experienced prior to enrolment; 55 (19.9%) received triple therapy during the study. Data were collected for 112 TP patients (mean follow-up?=?29.9 months), 33 (29.5%) received a transplant during the study, and 51 (45.5%) beforehand. The annual direct medical costs, excluding drug costs, were higher among treated PP vs untreated PP (AU$: $1,954 vs $1,202); and year of transplant TP vs pre-/post-transplant TP (AU$: pre-transplant $32,407, transplant $155,138, post-transplant $7,358).

Limitations: To aid interpretation of results, note that only patients with GT1 CHC who are actively managed are included, and MRU data were collected specifically from liver outpatient clinics. That said, movement of patients between hospitals is rare, and any uncaptured MRU is expected to be minimal.

Conclusions: CHC-related MRU increases substantially with disease severity. These real-world MRU data for GT1 CHC will be valuable in assessing the impact of new hepatitis C treatments.     

Impact model for socially low tariffs in Zairian river transport

This article models the sequence of the effects of low tariffs in public river transport for goods. Within 10 years of deregulation, the public corporation had lost 83 per cent of its river traffic. The reasons for the inefficiency are made clear. The effects of low tariffs are examined, such as service rationing, overcharges, overcapacity and high budget claims, cost enhancement, and cross-subsidizing. The underlying objective is to formulate and apply an assessment method for transport policy that blends theories of rents and contestability in order to show how and why good intentions to boost demand by low tariffs in Zairian river transport produced very different results. Although illustrations are given for one mode of transport in one country, they are believed to be of much wider significance—to over 80 countries liberalizing their economies, including China, developing and east European countries. The National Transportation Authority (NTA, or Onatra) is a public corporation operating seaports, the Matadi–Kinshasa railway and an extensive network of river transportation 8,060 km long in the western half of Zaire. In the 1980s, it held monopolies on seaports and river ports, and shared the monopoly with the National Railway Authority (SNCZ) over the railways and the transport of mineral exports. The market in river transport appeared to be oligopolistic but it was dominated by the NTA. Since the NTA was one of the largest state-owned enterprises (SOEs), its experience is significant for many other SOEs and for the whole national economy. Ways to overcome inefficiencies are suggested, such as ending multiple public monopolies and cross-subsidies, privatization and deregulation.     

Inflation Persistence under Semi-Fixed Exchange Rate Regimes: The European Evidence 1974–1998

In this paper, we empirically investigate the link between exchange rate accommodation and inflation persistence in Europe. We introduce the lagged level of the real exchange rate as an appropriate indicator of exchange rate accommodation. We correspondingly estimate a non-linear autoregressive inflation equation for ten European countries (excluding Germany) for the period 1974:1–1998:2. In the estimation procedure we allow for the presence of an unknown number of shifts in the mean of inflation. Overall, our results provide modest support for the existence of the theoretically hypothesized link between exchange rate accommodation and inflation persistence.JEL Classification Numbers: F41, E42, C22     

Purchasing Power: Consumer Empowerment and Adaptation to the Free Market in Russia

Summary This article explores adaptations in Russian consumer behavior to market capitalism, impediments to that process, and the effects citizens survival strategies may have on Russias continued political and social evolution. Capitalism not only brought Russians a market economy of unenforced legislation, insufficient regulatory institutions, and widespread corruption, but also new ideas including individual rights, self-reliance, and increased expectations for market transactions, which contribute to public mobilization and legal reform designed to protect and empower consumers. Despite the ambivalence many citizens feel toward the market and the difficulties associated with the struggling economy and widespread mafia influence, emerging consumer advocacy groups have begun holding businesses and the government accountable. Evidence suggests that consumer concerns are serving as a vehicle for public mobilization in areas that are broadly significant to Russias lingering problems. Finally, though the focus of this paper is on Russian consumers, it is believed that many of the conclusions generated could be extended to other countries with emerging markets.     

Retailer-manufacturer price and profit relationships along the advertising life cycle: An empirical examination

Competitive intra-channel forces are an important factor to the success (or failure) of newly introduced brands. The present study offers an extended theoretical framework of the advertising life-cycle concept, which illuminates the changes in the manufacturer-retailer balance of power within the marketing channel along the development path of new brands. The theoretical conclusions are then tested against a unique data set. The empirical findings confirm the prediction that dynamic competitive elements will change the intra-channel pricing balance.     

Self-organized criticality in evolutionary systems with local interaction

This paper studies a stylized model of local interaction where agents choose from an ever increasing set of vertically ranked actions, e.g. technologies. The driving forces of the model are infrequent upward shifts (‘updates’), followed by a rapid process of local imitation (‘diffusion’). Our main focus is on the regularities displayed by the long-run distribution of diffusion waves and their implication on the performance of the system. By integrating analytical techniques and numerical simulations, we come to the following two main conclusions. (1) If non-coordination costs are sufficiently high, the system behaves critically, in the sense customarily used in physics. (2) The performance of the system is optimal at the frontier of the critical region. Heuristically, this may be interpreted as an indication that (performance-sensitive) evolutionary forces induce the system to be placed ‘at the edge of order and chaos’.