Service productivity and service quality: A necessary trade-off?

This paper is about service productivity and perceived service quality. Both a high service productivity and a high customer perceived quality are two main drivers of good performances in service companies and they simultaneously occur as a consequence of a synergy of several drivers such as employees' competences and motivation, organizational efficiency, technical devices availability, information technologies employment, etc. In scientific literature a trade-off between productivity and perceived service quality is asserted and several cases derived both by market observations and academic research could bear such trade-off out. But, is it possible to state that, under some circumstances, such a trade-off between productivity and perceived service quality could be avoided? And if yes, why such certified substitution should not work?In this paper, in order to trace some theoretical answer to the above questions, a managerial model based both on service science and production economics will be proposed. The model aims to find out some key causes that allow to explain the foundations of the mentioned trade-off and the potential conditions for its overcoming; moreover, such model will be employed in order to integrate services' productivity function with new variables and to provide some managerial guidelines for improving service management.     

An End to China's Imbalances?

As early as 2005,analysts and academics became concerned about the prospects for,and sustainability of,growing current account imbalances in the world's largest economies.In the United States,low savings rates and growing household consumption,fueled in part by what later turned out to be a bubble in the property market,sucked in imports from abroad,causing the trade and current account deficit to balloon.Of course,this deficit had a counterpart among the United States' principal trading partners.     

How common is new product failure and when does it vary?

Marketing Letters - This study aims to explore how common new product failure is in consumer packaged goods (CPG) categories and investigate the conditions in which the new product failure rate...     

Tax smoothing with immigration in an overlapping generations economy

Immigration policy in an overlapping generations economy is politically determined in response to government spending shocks, where the government finances its spending with proportional income taxes and is subject to a balanced budget. The young cohort is always the majority and dictates policy. The equilibrium Markovian strategy allows immigrants when the spending shock is above some threshold and this implies a particular form of tax smoothing.     

The Role of Ethnicity and Language in Contingent Valuation Analysis

A bstract .   In order to satisfy legal requirements, many federal agencies must assess the potential effects of their policies on the public. This is often done through surveys, but frequently those surveys are only administered in English. This paper tests whether there are differences in survey response rates, refusals to pay, and willingness to pay (WTP) across different ethnicities and language for forest fire reduction in the State of California. The ethnicities studied were Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic (half in Spanish, half in English).
There was a statistical difference in survey response rates across all ethnicities, and no statistical difference among ethnicities for reasons of refusing to pay. The influence of ethnicity and language was tested using a logit model with ethnicity intercepts and bid slope interaction terms. The Hispanic-Spanish intercept shifter and the Hispanic-English dollar bid amount interaction terms were statistically significant and positive. There was a significant difference in the logit willingness to pay coefficients between Hispanics surveyed in Spanish with each of the other ethnicities. The annual willingness to pay of Hispanics taking the survey in Spanish was twice that of Caucasians, but no statistical difference in mean and median WTP between these two groups was found, due to large confidence intervals around each estimate. Nonetheless, the WTP of both Hispanics and Caucasians for the forest thinning program is substantial, and statistically different from zero, suggesting there may be broad support for this program in California.     

Spatial allocation of forest recreation value

Non-market valuation methods and geographic information systems are useful planning and management tools for public land managers. Recent attention has been given to investigation and demonstration of methods for combining these tools to provide spatially-explicit representations of non-market value. Most of these efforts have focused on spatial allocation of ecosystem service values based on land cover types, but recreation value has yet to be considered. This article presents an objective method for spatially allocating forest recreation value that is based on readily available data, demonstrates the method for a Southern California study site, and discusses the policy relevance of the method and how it might be extended to other applications and tested with additional primary survey data.     

New evidence on the monetary approach of exchange rate determination in Mexico 1994–2007: A cointegrated SVAR model

We provide empirical evidence supporting the validity of both short and long run versions of the Monetary Approach of Exchange Rate determination for the Mexican peso–U.S. dollar exchange rate from 1994 to 2007 using a cointegrated SVAR model. We estimate not only the long-run relationship, between the variables of the monetary model for the exchange rate, but also the very short run effects which have been often ignored in previous empirical work. We show that there are robust short and long-run relationships between the Mexican monetary aggregates and the exchange rate, which ultimately responds to what Bilson's variant of MAER predicts.     

The Effects of Relationship Marketing on Share of Business: A Synthesis and Comparison of Models

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The article synthesizes the extensive empirical work on relationship marketing (RM) and compares the various conceptualizations to give a better understanding of the relational factors (i.e., characteristics of the business relationship) that improve a seller’s objective performance (i.e., share of business) in a business-to-business (B2B) services context. These conceptualizations, taken from the literature, link relational antecedents (i.e., communication, domain expertise, relational value, and mutual goals) to relational mediators (i.e., trust, satisfaction, commitment, relationship quality) to explore how they in turn affect a seller’s share of business.

Methodology/approach: All 4 models derived from the literature review were assessed using a dataset drawn from a survey of 948 client firm representatives of a Portuguese hotel chain in a B2B services context.

Findings: The best of the models in terms of model fit and prediction of share of business shows that only customer commitment directly drives a seller’s share of business, and simultaneous interrelated changes in customer trust and satisfaction, as well as customer perceptions of relational value, drive customer commitment, and so exert indirect effects on performance. The model that proposes that a seller’s performance is strengthened by simultaneous interrelated improvements in customer trust, satisfaction, and commitment (i.e., with these three mediators being conceptualized as a single, combined, higher-order mediator, termed relationship quality [RQ]) shows inferior fit. No combination of mediators (satisfaction, trust, or commitment) improves the seller’s objective performance over and above their individual effects (i.e., there are no synergistic effects).

Research implications: The literature review suggested four ways of modeling RM antecedents, mediators, and their effect on performance. Complex second-order constructs such as RQ lack explanatory power when predicting outcomes and mask the effects of individual relational mediators. Correct conceptualization is important, as conclusions vary drastically even with the same set of relational mediators and same dataset.

Practical implications: B2B service providers’ investments in RM will lead to improved share of business only if customer commitment is high or there is at least the potential to improve it. This requires an understanding of how valuable

the customer believes the relationship to be, and how the customer rates the relationship with the firm in terms of satisfaction and trust. A customer segmentation approach to relationship building and maintenance is advocated and detailed suggestions are put forward.

Originality/value/contribution: Apart from the work by Palmatier, the relationships between RM antecedents and mediators have not yet been examined simultaneously and findings are fragmented. The article provides a synthesis of this expansive literature. It contrasts different interplays between RM mediators, including their interrelationships as a higher-order construct, and explores possible synergy effects. Unlike previous work, this study focused on an objective measure of seller performance (i.e., share of business), whereas previous studies have tended to examine subjective measures, especially within the B2B context. Furthermore, four full models were assessed here, each of which included the antecedents to RM mediators and their links to objective performance.     

Mergers and Acquisitions: An Experimental Analysis of Synergies, Externalities and Dynamics

Mergers and acquisitions improve market efficiency by capturing synergies between firms. But takeovers also impose externalities (both positive and negative) on the remaining firms in the industry. This paper describes a new equilibrium concept designed to explain and predict takeovers in this setting. We experimentally compare the new equilibrium concept to that of competing concepts in situations without and with externalities. Moreover, we examine the predicted dynamics of takeovers and outcome implications of those dynamics. Our experimental results support the predictions of the new equilibrium concept and provide implications for further empirical tests.     

Contracting with externalities and outside options

This paper proposes a model of multilateral contracting where players are engaged in two parallel interactions: they dynamically form coalitions and play a repeated normal form game with temporary and permanent decisions. We show that when outside options are independent of the actions of other players all Markov perfect equilibrium without coordination failures are efficient, regardless of externalities created by interim actions. Otherwise, in the presence of externalities on outside options, all Markov perfect equilibrium may be inefficient. This formulation encompasses many economic models, and we analyze the distribution of coalitional gains and the dynamics of coalition formation in four illustrative applications.